The Beautiful Dancers

I just re-discovered this bit that I wrote in my journal after Homebake last December. I meant to blog about it at the time, but never got around to it. I smiled for a long time after I read this again today...

I went to Homebake yesterday at Sydney's Domain and there I mingled and danced and elbowed and laughed with and got irritated by and smiled at thousands of people.

There were people who accidentally spilled their beer on me and people who purposely threw their water at me. There was mud, and BO, and sweaty people who felt sickeningly slimey as they pressed up against me on their way past.

I had just lost my friends in the crowd and was feeling hot and sweaty and thirsty and I really needed to pee. As I was heading towards the porta-potties, I passed by a group of about 10 people. Six of them were in wheelchairs, looking to be in various stages of mobility.

Some of them could move pretty well from the waist up, while some had more limited movement, and could only move their necks and heads. One guy had a Mohawk that was dyed lots of gorgeous colours. He looked very rock.

The music from the main stage started up again and they all started to dance.

And I started to cry.

The chair dancers were all so into it, huge smiles on their faces. They were moving to the music, totally feeling it. Before the music began, some of them looked a bit uncomfortable (although that may have just been me misinterpreting) and a bit contorted, but when the music began, they all found a way to move and groove and show their love for the music.

It was absolutely beautiful.

They looked like they were relishing every second of it and and I felt truly happy to be witnessing their beautiful dancing. Each chair dancer had their own style and I couldn't imagine a more inspiring picture of music appreciation anywhere.

Edit this!

I submitted a piece last week to the Sydney Morning Herald's Heckler (opinion column inviting readers to whinge about anything they like in 600 words or less) and it got published today. The automatic email you receive thanking you for your submission says that the editor will contact you if your piece is going to be published. Well, I was never contacted, so you can imagine my surprise when I went to check out today's entry and it was me! :-D

I was pretty pleased...until I saw all the edits. I admit it, I can be overly sensitive when someone edits me, and I understand now that I had some bits in there that were a bit too American, but I wasn't expecting quite so much editing for an opinion piece. I would understand if it was a legitimate news article, but it's just a silly 600 word opinion piece, so I'm a bit surprised.

Perhaps my next Heckler submission can be about the Heckler editor? ;-)

One gripe I have is that the editor replaced my use of "nightstand" with "bedside locker" - um, what? Who the hell has ever used the phrase "bedside locker"? Maybe "nightstand" is too American, but that is no excuse for "bedside locker"!

Granted, the editor has far better punctuation than I do as I have an aversion to semi-colons. However, the editor committed bigger crimes than my dodgy punctuation, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not saying that my suggested title was the most exciting title ever, but I am pretty sure the editor used the most boring title EVER! At least with "Welcome to My Fully Furnished Hell", someone other than my friends and family might have thought about clicking on the link. But "Being colourblind would be a blessing in my home"??? Zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Sorry, I just dozed off ;-)

The editor also took out some of my favourite bits and, hilariously, he/she created a big honking typo when he/she removed what I'm sure was tagged as a "bad" word. I had a line, "everyone who visits subconsciously cocks their head to the side to watch a show." Obviously "c.ocks" got picked up, but instead of changing the word to "tilt", just the letters "c.ock" were removed, and the "s" was left remaining on its own! So it now reads: "everyone who visits subconsciously s their head to one side to watch a show." - HA!

I told a friend today that I thought my ideal punishment for the editor would be to lock him/her inside their "bedside locker" for many hours, forcing them to read my mildewed bible. Then, after that, I would make him/her write "I am afraid of 'c.ocks'" 1000x times on a blackboard. ;-)

Oh well, it was still a great editing exercise for me. As you all know by now, I can't tell a short story to save my life! The piece was originally over 1300 words, so getting it down to 600 words was painful for me. ;-)

Anyhoo, I'm posting the original submission below, but you can read the online (tainted) version here. :-D (p.s. Do ya'll like my new pen name? ;-)

-----------------------------------------------

Welcome to My Fully Furnished Hell

Browsing through real estate ads for "Apartments for Rent" terrifies me when I see the phrase, "fully furnished", which translates to: "filled with butt-ugly furniture that will make you suspect you have accidentally moved into the 70s".

The only reasons people move into cheap, fully furnished apartments are: desperation, poverty, and colour-blindness. I blame my current fully furnished residence on desperation and poverty. Colour-blindness would have been a blessing.

My apartment building was once a motel.

This is obvious.

The couches came in a tiki-style maroon, black, and ivory pattern. The chairs were pukey green. The motel lamps were a fetching coral colour. The curtains were a dark, ugly, dusty rose colour that clashed with everything else. On the walls were soft-porn paintings of Japanese women.

A ceiling fan came in the bedroom, but it only had 2 speeds: "Why Bother?" and "Holy Crap, I'm Going to Die!" On the first speed, I didn't feel any air movement . On the second speed, the noise was petrifying and the fan vibrated violently. I felt like I was lying underneath helicopter blades that were ready to shoot off the ceiling. I wondered how long it would take for someone to notice I was dead and decapitated in my own bed.

The "AC" is a vent in the wall that has an on/off button and that's it. No temperature controls or settings of any kind. There is a monkey in the basement of the building and he decides when the musty "AC" air should be warm or cool.

The TV that came with the apartment is the first colour television ever made in Australia, boasting 3 and a half channels and no remote. The antenna fell off an ancient alien spacecraft, and a wheel on the TV stand broke off the day I moved in, so the TV is crooked and everyone who visits subconsciously cocks their head to the side to watch a show.

I should also mention that my couches aren't really couches, but cushions stacked against the wall. Anyone who attempts to sit on these "pseudo-couches" will slowly slide onto the floor within 4.2 minutes, which is why it is necessary to rebuild the couch during commercial breaks.

My living room closet is a graveyard for ugly motel-ish decorations. If you attempted to open it, you'd be attacked by the aforementioned motel curtains, couch covers, lamps, lampshades, and soft-porn paintings.

And the best bit: a bible came in the bedroom night stand. Seriously. (This bible is currently mildewing nicely in my bedroom closet.)

The sad thing is, it turns out I'm actually living in the nicest "cheap and fully furnished" apartment in all of Sydney! One furnished unit I inspected looked like a cross between a garage sale and the set of Three's Company. (I half expected Suzanne Somers to jump out when the real estate agent lowered the bed that folded up into the wall.) Another furnished unit featured the depressing décor of a jail cell that would inevitably lead me into a life of crime.

I'm not saying that cheap, fully furnished units should all be decorated by Martha Stewart, but is it too much to ask that everything not be so damn ugly or scary? People who can't afford to buy their own furniture have feelings too!

I've "re-decorated" (i.e. hidden or covered all the ugly stuff) the best that I can, but I dream about the day I will be able to afford to move into a brand new NON-furnished apartment where the only bible in my nightstand is the Kama Sutra.

Amen.