My stomach whines, my lungs burn and my kidneys ache. The carpet absorbs my tears, my burdens and my glitter.
Each year as I sit amongst the ruins of another Mardi Gras, a vague yet eternally relevant question falls from my amyl bleached lips. What was all that about? I blinklessly survey the damage to my flat. What’s before me is the kind of destruction only ‘The Gras’ can create. ‘The Gras’ – sounds like a good name for a disaster movie. Thousands of sub-plots, all about the plot being lost. I identify the flat as mine. It must be, why else would I be sitting in this dump. Sifting through the devastation I assess the hoc-ability status of any valuables remaining. My crossing eyes stop crossing for one brief second to seize upon a gold mine. One of my international visitors kindly left his Clarins products in my bathroom. Those Happy Hocers in Kellet street should give me enough cash to keep me in sushi with extra wasabi for a couple of days. Everywhere I look and I look everywhere, decay prevails. I lift a fur coat from the floor and blink for the first time in days as I unveil some quivering queen who has taken shelter under the fake fur. Clad only in a sequin band aid, this is the single most terrifying display of depravity I’ve seen since, well, since the fog cleared from the mirror after my shower this morning. He is not familiar to me but then his constant convulsions make it difficult to make a positive identification. Perhaps he is a friend in which case I should consider calling an ambulance. Perhaps he is stranger, in which case I should consider calling a friend so we can both have a laugh. A violent convulsion this time hurls him in the air. Conveniently, he lands facing heaven enabling me to get a good look at him. The fading shade of lipstick his sporting strikes a familiar chord. Is it? Could it be? No? Yes! Shocking Burgundy. I have some vague recollection of some chatty, anaemic homosexual wearing that very shade arriving in my lounge room shortly after the parade on Saturday. Someone got stuck with him somewhere along the line, like chewing gum to your Docs. Someone’s trade, someone’s dealer, brother, sister, girlfriend, whatever luvvie. I’m certainly no authority on the subject of house guests around this time of year. They come, they go. However if it is the queen I think it is, I can safely say he wasn’t a picture of health then. Oh dear. I drape the fur across his quivering frame, returning the worm to his cocoon. I pray for a butterfly by morning. My stomach feels light and my eyelids feel heavy, reminding me of two concepts – eating and sleeping. I continue to scrounge around for valuables, scratching, sniffing, scratching, sniffing. But there is nothing more for me here. How is it I realise so many things when I’m on my hands and knees, (I realise on my hands and knees realising so many things). The Clarins range decorating my bathroom cabinet is the only thing of any worth.
Realisation 1 – Can’t hoc facial products. Realisation 2 – Sell them to my neighbour. I knock on her door and put forward what I consider a reasonable offer. She tells me to get some sleep and slams the door in my face. Realisation 4 – Reality is such an unnecessary state of mind. I walk back into my flat and fall to my hands and knees, again, realising I forgot realisation 3.
From my hands and knees I roll over into the security of the foetal position and cry. My stomach whines, my lungs burn and my kidneys ache. The carpet absorbs my tears, my burdens and my glitter. Glitter, in plague proportions, otherwise known as drag queen dandruff. Glitter finds its way into my bed and underpants all year round. Even when I declare my flat a drag queen free zone which I’m forced to do every so often in order to exfoliate my social life and to regain a semblance of sanity, glitter finds its shimmery way back into my nether regions. Like the very air we breathe glitter will always be with us. Perhaps it’s a constant reminder that we must shine in order to survive. Or is it just that we simply appreciate the kind of cheap makeover a bottle can provide? I can’t eat it so who cares.
I fall into a much needed slumber, dreaming that each piece of glitter is a diamond. Reality ebbs slowly from my sad bones. Replacing it is a parade of fears and delights emerging from my subconscious. My own internal Mardi Gras, where I want to be.