the cape. People will have to come to terms with this version of a clown. The costume he proposes I wear is his costume from last year. It’s no bombshell what he has in store. It’s a striped poncho with multicolored earth tones and a festive woven straw hat. I ask for something a little less insensitive.
“You don’t like my sombrero?” He asks, reaching for another costume inside his locker. After shuffling through a pile of cheap textiles and trinkets, he pulls out white cat ears splashed with glitter on a headband.
“That’ll do,” I tell him. He’s floored I’ve accepted what he clearly brought out as a joke.
Like everything else I’ve seen in this castle, there’s a harmless anomaly to this hall’s style. A locker room this fiery and flavorful should be situated in a funhouse. I stand on its visually gelatinous floor. A pale–yellow rubber surface—as smooth as a neutron star—I crave badly to sit on. The tall rectangular metal lockers throughout the spacious hall are limned with lime green and numbered in white up top with the finesse of a paintbrush. Between banana yellow walls are butterscotch yellow backless microfiber benches with button tufted rolled ends. Some benches bear shades of yams. The colors used to paint the hall make sense of the name the jaguars have for it.
“Ta–dah, the Lemon Room!” David had spoken with grace when we first walked in here. The sort of flair one must have to develop this design is well recognized in its intricate details. The scarce ginger marigold stamps on the walls and ceiling, the polishing of steel lockers to a mirror finish—that which has sealed their shine—and the modern iceberg chandeliers.
Inspired by the natural beauty of icebergs, these crystal chandeliers float freely in the air as icebergs would out on open water. Each is a slight variation from the next. All blocky flat–topped shapes with steep vertical sides. Their spectacular inner light source shifts in color. Fading in and out of kindred shades of lemon chiffon, lemon meringue, and lemon glacier.
David told me not to worry. That what I was seeing wasn’t witchcraft. It’s physics. The chandeliers are lightweight, sitting on a cushion of air produced by downward directed fans inside them. At the chandeliers’ underbelly, several inconspicuous openings allow the running fans’ airflow to escape. Air pushes down and out, chandeliers are lifted and moored.
Their bulbs need only be changed every ten thousand years. Wireless charging pads run through the base of the floor. The chandeliers are constantly charging when the room’s not in use. Zorian programmed them to rise solely when the Lemon Room’s in use. This keeps them charged at all times. Their fans also serve to keep the temperature in here cool.
Much like a standard walk–in closet, the Lemon Room’s lockers are something a person can step into. Each locker contains a boudoir for jaguars to change in. They’re more akin to storage units than lockers. David’s locker is filled to the brim with clothes. Sedimentary rocks deposited as strata aren’t far in looks to what lurks inside his issued locker.
He’s organized his wardrobe in layers. One layer somewhere in the middle is designated to swimwear. A vibrant stash with all the hallmarks of a drunk rainbow. A few layers under that, amusing costumes and props are squeezed into the mix by the narrowest of margins. A great way to organize if you want to keep your clothes as far away from being wrinkle–free as possible.
It’s impossible to deduce the depth of each locker. I’ve only David’s to go off of. Each locker is an arm’s length to the next. The long side of a common foosball table is the width of each locker door. In terms of how far deep each locker stretches, David tells me they range in size from utility closet to cavernous warehouse. The Lemon Room itself is a sizeable room so it’s hard to imagine a warehouse inside a warehouse.
The locks are notches on the lockers themselves. A thin platinum rectangle, the length of an average house key, was inserted into the slit at the locker’s center when we arrived. The locker automatically opened, lowering its door a level below us. Anytime a locker opens or closes, it emits a short bloop like a river otter blowing bubbles underwater. David had placed the platinum key under a bench leg. It’s easier for him to hide it and know where it’s at than to lose it and have to ask some wally financiers to replace it.
“You’ll meet the Quaestor class when we get you a locker. Till then, borrow whatever it is you need from mine.” David’s quite the optimist to think I’ll say yes to a bid I’ve yet to receive from this brotherhood.
I’m welcome to share his clothes since I’ve none of my own. So long as I remember to put the key back under the bench leg. I appreciate his offer but one night in Neptune shouldn’t call for a fashion haul. “Can I get a shirt?”
David closes his eyes. At random, he pulls out a red tank top with ribbed trim at the neckline and armholes. Destiny’s spoken. It’ll go well with the Union Jack shorts I’ve on. I hold off on putting it on. Till scrubbed, I’ll remain shirtless. I don’t delay sliding the headband over my head, behind my ears.
“You guys should really consider changing the rules of Neptune so that girls have an in at least this one time a year. Then someone could appreciate how adorable I look in these sexy kitten ears.” I most likely look like a dimwit.
“Didn’t you say you had a girlfriend you dog?” David pokes fun at me.
“I’m a cat and yea. The next time I plan on getting lost in the rainforest and finding a horde of lonesome men, dawdling in swimming pools, I’ll bring her with me.”
“Have you got all you need?”
I nod my head yes. David stomps his foot twice in front of his locker. In a flash, the locker door rises from below with a bloop, securing its contents once more.
“Where to now?” I ask gleefully. It’s obvious I’m an ignoramus who’ll follow David like a puppy dog.
“Hit the shower.” David leans his back against his locker and raises his left foot, planting it on the locker door. I turn from him and start walking down the hall. Foxed by my course, I spin my body to him.
“Wrong way. Front of the hall to your left. It’s the only chamber with a beaded door curtain.”
I nod, changing route and idly salute him. At the front of the hall there’s a light wood beaded curtain. A pale khaki matching the sands of Hyams beach, Australia. There’s a fair amount of light through the curtain. You can see past it into the other room. Its tree design is a makeup of leaves depicted as mint green whorls and a trunk depicted as a tower of irregularly stacked russet brown cubes. If real, the cubes would certainly tumble. I fling the red tank top over a bench outside the curtain.
I delicately approach the curtain and push aside its wooden strands constructed of spherical, cubed, and cylindrical beads. At first glance I’m in a white room with dark, rich stained wood floors. The hanging quirky LED light fixtures birth the stark white light of a hospital unit. Their black beams follow the outline of a chicken’s footprint. One circline fluorescent lightbulb sticks out at the end of four separate cutoff points. Three face out where a chicken’s front claws are based, and one’s popped into the rear where a chicken’s back claw bides solo. Each black beam is held aloft by two fine iron–black cables hitched into two steel–gray metal plates on the ceiling.
The walls are a powder blue satin. All the ring lights work in unison to subdue their blue hue. Dark green flowering plants, nearly two feet tall, cover opposite sides of the illusory white room in concrete round pots. The pots’ texture parallels the natural oak bark in Neptune’s nursery with their deep, nearly black ridges.
To be used for firewood when camping.
I dispense an expendable thought to the universe. To my right, obstructing the pathway to the bathrooms, is the backside of a shirtless platinum blond gentleman in heathered medium–gray loose–fit joggers. He has a heart–shaped café au lait birthmark on his right upper lat. He’s fidgety, idly kicking his bare feet in the air and shaking his arms at his sides. A method to cut loose. I do so sometimes for mental preparation or to relieve stress. I wonder, is it something significant that yearns for him in due course, expecting of him the utmost readiness?
Just ahead, a long egg–shaped room with soft–green glass mosaic tiles—iridescent on the floor and matte on the walls. Two freestanding stainless steel shower panels are stationed parallel to one another inside. Each shower panel has five shower heads powered on by five nozzles around their center. Several lit antique kerosene lamps circle the room on protruding non–uniform glass shelves; safe from the trajectory of the five running curved streams.
Hard to pay no heed to the nudity at my forefront within the working showers. Never have I had to use a communal shower, though I’ve been privy to them in the men’s locker room at Pelican Island Econgregation. The five men washing themselves are all familiar with one another, carrying on a conversation about battle. All of them have the color shifting fuchsia to powder blue metal bands I saw on the men swimming in the diamond–shaped pool. One strapped to each wrist and ankle without the ball and chain you’d envision on a 17th century prisoner. Buffed enough to reflect the dour flames within the antique kerosene lamps but strong enough to deflect a 9mm bullet—nix, nix.
The platinum blond outside the showers stops kicking imaginary soccer balls and stiffens his arms, taking a deep breath. He turns to his side towards the beaded exit revealing an unmarked right shoulder. The first man I’ve seen without the black jaguar tattoo. “Hey!” I call out wishfully. “Are you new here?”
He points to himself and looks around as if there’s someone else I could be talking to. His near silver hair’s short at the sides and tousled at the top. Pieces fall in every direction like sloping swords. In this light, his ice blue eyes appear lucent under his hard–angled burnt umber eyebrows. It’s almost as if I can smell fresh spearmint leaves getting waded over cool salmon. His semi–transparent irises can’t be igniting the smell of winter blasted gum, for all the aqua ivory they equip. I savvy it’s the soapy men showering. He’s hawk–nosed, lean and long, faintly freckled at the shoulders, and harbors an athletic chest.
“Naaaaah, not exactly. Whoa–ho–ho! See ya accepted the bid! Wahoooo!” he says in a zany, unique tone of voice like a cartoon voice actor. He prances towards me with his chest puffed out and asks if I’ve had a taste. I realize that fresh mint breeze I smell is his breath that billows, breaking upon my face. I taste the spicy and invigorating air approaching.
Is this what he means by taste?
“A taste of what?”
“The mochi leaf,” he says, reaching for my right hand and taking from me the pickle green leaf Baba had given me outside. “Oh, my oh my! What in the wacky world happened there?!” he asks, taken aback. He grabs my right arm and tenderly traces along the long, thin vertical scar on the ventral side of my forearm with the tip of the leaf. The leaf glides from the end of my bicep to the start of my palm. He looks me straight in the eyes with unbound curiosity, still holding my hand. He brusquely lets go, leaving me with the leaf once more. I close my grip on it and let my arm rest.
“I tried to kill myself,” I announce with a stone–cold grave face.
One of the nozzles in the showers is shut off. The overall pitter–patter of falling water dies down. A nude man in the chameleon metal bands walks past us into the locker room. The unmarked platinum blond stands awkwardly, grabbing his left shoulder anxiously and crossing his legs. He’s debating an appropriate response.
“I’m kidding. Surfing accident.”
His face calms and he releases the long, high pitch whistle sound of a boiling kettle pot—his variant of a sigh of relief. A line appears between his brows. He didn’t have to say anything. I knew what he was asking himself— ‘Does he think he’s funny?’ Without expressing it aloud, I do.
Another nozzle is shut off. The man walking out, physically small but generously built, is stopped by this platinum blond when asked, “Ay, what was your name again? Hehe! My memory’s playin’ tricks on me! Was it Tom? No wait, John! Oh, can you give me a little reminder? Pretty please?”
“Billy,” the man replies, squinting at him as though his vision’s briefly turned fugitive.
“That short for William?”
“Sure is,” the man says gruffly, now standing moodily, watching as the inquisitor prepares another dumb statement.
“Ya know, I never understood why that is. Names like Billy short for William and Chuck short for Charles.”
Within earshot, the rest of the men showering laugh aloud. The compact man tires of their short interface and swaggers off. I too decide to hop in the shower and get back to David at a gallop, inattentive to slippage. I make a beeline for the showers. Two more men walk out as I get inside. One, having left a shower running. I grab my sides searching for a pocket and detect a cool donut zipper located on my right butt cheek. I slide it back with a pinch and stuff the leaf inside, halting it from making a sly getaway.
I step into the stream, not needing to turn it on. My cat ears bow under the water pressure. I leave my trunks on for they’re swim trunks. If there’s any need to get naked, I’m ignorant. This will be like the dog days running late for school. A rushed sponging. The water’s warm but not warm enough for steam to spring long like a kangaroo or mushroom toward the edge like my mother’s bad decisions.
“Polka Yankel,” the lone man in the shower across from me introduces himself with a jovial wave of the hand. A black man with a brush cut and gray eyes that’re as flashing as his metallic bands.
“Koa,” I reply, not needing someone else to choose a nickname for me. I grab a crescent–shaped golden bar soap from a tray attached to the shower panel, mid waist. The bar soap slid in and out of my armpits, into my swim trunks, round my crotch, and down my crack before I could regurgitate Polek Yankel in my head.
“So, you American, English?” I ask airily as the foam whipped up by the bar soap is cast off my skin in dollops.
“Eh, just because I speak English doesn’t mean I fall in line with those two categories. I’m Australian. Born in Brazil. If you manage to pass the rounds maybe you’ll be put in Celeres too. Oh, I’m a Celer by the way. The pro–gravy vambraces and greaves probably gave that away,” he says gloatingly, clinking his metal bands twice in tapping his wrists. A smug smile wedges his full lips. My eyes scour the corners of the room, heedless of what he means by rounds, Celeres, and pro–gravy.
“Unless you’re new here. Oh, you are new. Not just new but fresh off the boat new…I see.” His proud expression dims as if telling me what he was—a Celer—had gone to waste. “I pay no mind to when things start around here.”
“I know not what great honor that must be. A Celer. But I’m sure I’ll learn. See you around Polek.” I turn the nozzle right ending the jet of water.
“Polka, Nihil.” I catch a trace of irritation in his voice a step away from the boundary between iridescent green glass tiles and dark rich stained wood floors.
“What did you call me?”
“Nothing.” Polka returns to washing himself.
I walk out smelling like freshly squeezed lemonade. Not far from my steps into the bright yellow locker room, Polka passes me in a flash. His bowling balls of an ass make me quail as they roll down the hall. Each cheek giving the other a chance to project, bouncing with every long stride.
I look back to the light beaded curtain realizing I missed the platinum blond as I’d zoomed out. The only other ‘other’ I’ve seen thus far. As I stare back into the shower room without a touch of the curtains to push them aside, I see the platinum blond. Now alone inside the green room, he walks about pounding the walls with clenched fists. He whops at them like a street fighter, sticking to a double punch for his go–to move. He waits a second, breathes heavily, and then pressures an ear fast on the matte green walls. The antique kerosene lamps scarcely tremble on their glass shelves every time his fists make stark impact with a wall.
What on earth’s he doing?
I neglect my chance viewing of his tantrum and look to David. He’s still waiting in front of his locker, carefree, with a fluffy white bath towel in his hands. Polka paced a bit further past David into an open locker with dazzling cyan blue lights as four more men walked out of that same locker, slipping by him. Each dressed in an elaborate costume.
A semi peeled banana, split cleanly down the middle. A blue–ringed octopus that resembles the half–peeled banana with twice as many peels for tentacles and dark blue rings omnipresent on its body. A gray wolf wearing lavender nightgown pajamas, a pink shower cap, and large gold aviator reading glasses. And lastly, a fantastical brown jungle cat with a smooth and polished spring green paw glove on his right hand and a brown furry paw glove on his left hand. A white gold hoop earring highlights his left ear—long, pointed, and facing forward. Most beetling of all are the six broad angel wings extending from his back. They’re spray–painted silver and made up of what look like real feathers.
“Wow.” I watch in confoundment.
“Hurry up you! Don’t start lagging now,” David calls out to me as he’s twiddling the towel.
“Aren’t we leaving?!” I bent slightly to grab the red tank top, which’d almost fallen over the bench, and race lazily to him, pointing behind me with my left thumb towards the entrance.
“This way!” He nodded to where the costumed men were headed.
Must be another exit.
He pitches the towel to me and I catch it, drying myself with it before I reach him. I slip the red tank top over me, tilting the cat ears on my head. We’re moving so fast now I neglect centering them.
“Drop the towel,” David orders. “The plebs will get it later.”
The end of the Lemon Room is its entrance’s twin. Broad mustard yellow swinging saloon doors one could look over and under without tiptoeing or kneeling. As we push aside the swinging doors, we enter a gray room. Sizably different from the dark and narrow wet cave walls across the Lemon Room. This gray room is airy, round, muted, and aglow with white light issued from an undulating cloud sculpture overhead. It’s well–contrived from what’s suggestive of heavy–duty bubble wrap.
At the room’s center, three Asians are lounging on glossy white egg chairs with cobalt blue plush interiors. They’re surrounded by the echoes of our footsteps. There’s one empty egg chair alike all the others and a large, rounded ash gray chabudai with a one–by–one–foot square hole carved into its center. The short–legged table is commonly the dining room centerpiece in traditional Japanese homes. A hill of smooth black stones rises from the floor through its square opening leaving no gap but a square outline to be seen.
Unsure of what the sitting men are supposed to be, my best guess is gay popes. Their long lavish robes all have a shoulder cape and are raffish in their select color when put against this gray backdrop. There’re no dippy hats to add to their religiosity. One’s in crimson red. The many black hairs on his shoulder cape alarm me to the fact his hair’s been recently chopped to a short French crop with straight lash–skimming bangs. Another’s in chocolate brown. His pointy and whacky raspberry wine hairstyle that’s straight and short at the sides almost outvies the joshing nature of a thrift store wig. The one currently rising from his chair is robed in buttermilk yellow with jazzy medium–length messy black hair.
“What’s taking Baba so long?” the man in buttermilk yellow asks the two in repose.
“Izumo, if I have to teach you the essence of patience, I’ll sacrifice my own and have to seek refuge in Buddha all over again,” the one in crimson red says bitterly, looking extremely sulky.
“The crux of the matter is that we all have places to be,” Izumo splutters, watching beadily as we pass them by.
“Ah, some levity in this most taxing day,” the one in chocolate brown says optimistically with shadowed eyes.
“I do jibe with the eight–armed cephalopod.” Izumo now smiles, goggling at the blue–ringed octopus.
At the end of the gray room, I look back. The mustard yellow saloon doors, culled out of a Western art flick, pop vividly next to these looping gray walls. A disturbance at the center of the room shifts my focus. Without warning, the pile of black stones totters. A single stone torpedoes from inside the mass, knocking over several stones across the chabudai. I didn’t see its collision with a wall, but I heard a thud, managing to catch its fall from the corner of my eye, ending in another thud. I see the lone black stone reeling on the floor. A convulsive possession of something inanimate.
How batty.
It spins uncontrollably, jerks an inch off to the side, flips once, and continues to spin like a machine assisted dreidel. David ushers myself and the other guys off. There’s nothing to see here but a living rock. We enter a gray hall at the end of the room, walk for about five minutes, and turn through a gap.
We wend our way across more gray halls, getting sootier by the moment, snaking and sloping as gales of laughter come approaching. At last, we reach a dark room. Its doorway’s a literal hole into the earth. The ground here is weathering rock—frore and coarse–grained. The ceiling’s untouchable by sight. Mounds of dirt have compiled here over time.
Where’s a broom when you need one.
I step on a mound and my foot sinks into its cold, pebbly depth. I’m filthy all over again but I don’t feel like dirt. Tall golden candelabras with vaguely visible thin black candlesticks border the room. Their flames appear to be floating as their base is only palpable through squinting. The borders of this room are also unclear. Darkness runs mocking revolutions over light, though in theory nothing’s faster than light.
The energy in here is both tragic and comic. On one hand, there’re men dressed in costumes that took a light and witty approach to the holiday. On the other, there’s something genuinely disturbing about those who’ve chosen the fear component of Halloween to play up. A polestar for evil in the flesh. There’re gruesome monsters here and there.
Hybrids. A lion–eagle, a rooster–snake, an owl man, a donkey–camel, an elephant–fish, and a hippo–goat. The ultimate bloodcurdling front for me are the human portrayals scarred by illness and war. Men who look to have reworked skulls, unrecognizable as human. Those coated in blisters and boils. My stomach churning as they shift into the candlelight. Men bringing to mind the harsh realities of war. Fake guts spilling out of their stomachs, blood–stained head to toe. At least it’s all an act. A calming thought.
“This gathering is a conceptualization of hell. A drove of demons in their untold forms. Jesters in amity with damaged humans. Earth’s animals all thrown into a blender to see what newfangled nonsense is spat out,” a paunchy construction worker with a yellow hard hat to my right voices boastfully so with a slightly rugged and hoarse quality to his cadence. He wears a confident grimace.
“And here I am as a cat,” I say dully, looking around at the mass.
“Ah Swamidoss, a great work of art it is. The best yet, I’d say!” David says amiably to the construction worker, not meeting his eyes but in awe of the scene before him. The banana, octopus, grandma–wolf, and angel–cat disband, one by one tapping Swamidoss over the shoulder, each with passing praise.
“Nice one!”
“I dig it.”
“Never fail to impress.”
“You sure outdid yourself this year.”
Swamidoss’ fierce black eyes, though small, speak frankly of the delight his work’s being bestowed.
A blinding white light bursts from ahead, quickly filling the gaps of a large rectangle. It’s a movie screen. The stately size of this subterranean theater’s no longer suppressed. Dusty black walls are crisscrossed with a network of golden boldly delineated squares, rectangles, and triangles. A sleek Art Deco room with a twist of abandonment and to that end—grunginess. Ahead, I count them. Eight chairs to my left and eight to my right, split by a wide rift—the descending path towards the foremost seating. The lot of monsters and dead men walking scramble to their red velvet padded seats before being called to do so.
A grainy black film is projected onto the screen. Darkness swallows all men beyond the distance of candlelight. As the film progresses, I register, it isn’t white specs that’re making the film grainy but stars that come into focus. Billions, making a spectacle of the cosmos. Suddenly, it’s a swirl of them in high definition from a remoteness that makes them seem small. The pure white hailing from the stars—fresh as an untouristed village subsumed under a snow blizzard—manages to make the falling rows of seating visible. Murmurs of excitement spur in the dark.
What’s there to be excited for in this roundly underlit and humdrum ambiance?
“Jaguars take your seats!” an orotund voice echoes over us as if next to us.
“Go on Kamikaze. Pick a seat. After the performance, go ahead, mingle a little. I’ll be here at the rear. If you get lost, don’t dither. Come and find me,” David informs me in a strangled whisper by cause of a show starting.
“Ok.” I become taciturn with no plan of mingling.
I wander through the center aisle as some men begin taking their masks off and placing them on their laps. Eight rows in, I’m halfway through the theater. I scoot my way through a row to my right, picking a seat in between a decaying pale blue zombie with his nose hanging to his face by a thread—a good chunk of his pink brain being aired—and to my right, a solid yellow Lego man in a plain red tunic with a block head and one plastic claw hand. His second plastic claw hand is settled on his lap as his right hand’s holding a peach drink cast with a pink bendy straw.
How’s he—
My question’s answered before I can think it. He inserts the straw through a mouth flap in his block head, slurping the peach drink from his glass.
“Nice costume doofus,” a man sitting directly behind us remarks snidely, stoutly pushing the Lego man’s block head forward with the heel of his palm. The Lego man’s peach drink spills a titch. Few drops trickle over his bleach–washed blue jeans. It looks as if he’s tinkled himself after making a quick stop at the urinal. I spin my head round.
The bully’s a seaman in a white sleeveless top with a striped collar, gold button detailing, blue necktie, and white pants with blue stripe accents at the sides. A white sailor hat with a dark blue embroidered anchor on the upturned trim covers his molasses brown hair; seen through his long, moderately thick mutton chop sideburns.
“What’re you looking at bitch?” he says grumpily with near vacant eyes.
I face the movie screen. The Lego man seems unbothered having kept still. The stars recede from view as the screen’s lifted. Behind it, a stage is occupied at warp speed with three clashing figures. White chocolate next to dark. Dark chocolate next to pumpkin spice. All chocolate but a one–off flavor, each is. A spotlight follows the three.
A lavender impression of a man, purple from head to toe owing to a skinsuit and brash single–toned full face makeup. To his left, an angel in a shimmery silver satin loose–fitting t–shirt, a golden rope tied in a reef knot at the waist, and bare feet doused in sterling silver metallic paint. Two crystal stakes are fused to his back—the main stems to a wealth of white feathers.
To the right of the two, a shiny black glob—the very picture of melting burnt mozzarella cheese. Detectable are two black gloved hands—the glob’s sole human properties. At its midsection is a bulbous half sphere like an igloo discharging flashes of white light. An overt flickering light bulb in need of an electrician. They know a thing or two about loose wiring.
Sideburns back there must be looking for trouble, picking on block head and calling me a bitch.
A sad melody begins to play characterized by a piano’s dalliance with a violin. The sad music quickly turns eerie as the chess pieces begin to move on stage. The spotlight breaks into three. The angel and glob ballet their way to the foremost corners of the stage. The glob reveals its black human feet for the first time in its pointe work. The two figures kneel on their right knee. The glob does so by extending its left leg in a black stocking, springing from its insides and stomping its foot flat on the stage.
The two turn to face center stage where the lavender man stands facing the audience. He bows his head. From either side of the stage, two rows of lavender men come waltzing in in rapid shuffling steps. They form a line at the original lavender man’s sides. Every one of them but the man in the middle faces the audience. The spotlights fade away. The entire stage is lit in clover by a screen behind the lavender men, showing those same men but from a vantage point overhead. An inward light, like that of two warm cozy hotel room lamps, inhabits the screen and in turn the stage.
The line of lavender men curve inward till they form a circle, then shift to face each other’s backside. Now all bow their heads and begin to walk steadily clockwise like zombies in a computer programmed loop. The circle rotates for some time till one lavender man awakes and exits the circle. Standing alone on the outside, he’s become a glitch in the system.
He desperately runs counterclockwise alongside the rotating circle of men. Eventually, the lot of lavender men walking turn to stare at the black sheep, halt, and two men fiercely pull him back into the circle. The circle closes in on him, getting tighter and tighter till he disappears in a huddle. No longer a circle but a clump of lavender men fighting or stacking themselves, one over the other.
The uncanny melody shifts tone and becomes one with a glorious tune played in the art of drums. Fired up slapping of rawhide vibrates from under the stage, into my soul, and oozes down to feet.
I want to dance. Maybe after business. Should I let sideburns’ comment fly, or should I grab it by the wings? Screw magnanimity. Have at it!
As the huddle breaks off, the stage’s lit brilliantly as if the sun’s cropped up underground for an unnoted visit. The lavender men return to their rotations, switching gears and walking counterclockwise with their heads lifted. As the circle enlarges back to its previous size, I look to the screen behind them. In the center of the circle is one lavender man in a…bridal gown I suppose.
The lavender man in the middle of the circle is in an unfussy white dress with flowy, long bell sleeves and a skirt that’s quite broad. On his head is a club–shaped white hat most relatable to a bowling pin. A gap within the circle effortlessly forms and the bride exits looking lost. The gap closes instantly.
A sign of guidance appears to the left of the stage in the form of four angels. Not one differing from the frozen knelt one at the left foremost corner of the stage. Not having moved since falling into position opposite the glob. Each forthcoming angel carries an object of intrigue to the bride. Pumpkin–shaped glass vases with an element inside. Dry dark brown earth, a black liquid, nothing (I reason this typifies air), and fire.
The bride looks longingly at each vase like I would a menu of seventeen distinct hamburgers. At last, he chooses the pumpkin vase with a black liquid inside. The drumming intensifies. The three angels whose gifts were unchosen retreat saddened from where they came, leaving behind their pumpkin vases on the stage. The remaining angel embraces a hug from the bride and he too leaves, but in style, taking flight above the stage.
The bride looks round for anyone outside the circle. The coast is clear. He pulls three lavender men from the circle. With his pumpkin vase at his side, he directs the three to pick up the unchosen pumpkin vases. They’re beholden to the bride, falling to his lavender feet and kissing them. At full tilt they gather themselves, take the pumpkin vases, and retreat to the right side of the stage, out of sight.
A gap in the circle forms to let the bride in. He enters, bringing his chosen pumpkin vase with him. No sooner does he enter that the gap closes. He gets in the middle of the circle, lifts the pumpkin vase high over his bowling pin hat, and starts spinning clockwise. His broad white skirt rises to his waist as he spins like a bat out of hell.
On the screen past the lavender men, the image of them walking jointly in a circle with one white–dressed man whirling in the middle looks to be an eye with purple eye shadow. The black liquid swirling in the pumpkin vase could be interpreted as the eye’s pupil.
Five minutes go by. The Lego man takes another sip of his peach drink. As he does, the bride becomes lead–footed. Under a spell, he takes the pumpkin vase from over his head and starts spilling the black liquid on his every side. Splish–splash! Aiming it at the lavender men’s feet. One by one, the lavender men slip and fall till there’re no more standing, laid like rag dolls across the stage. Some men, up to four, stacked themselves on top of each other flattening those underneath.
Mashed potatoes.
No more black liquid’s left within the pumpkin vase. Thus, the bride stops pouring. Leaving the empty pumpkin vase at an end of the circle, he resumes spinning amongst the fallen lavender men. This time, counterclockwise. Another five minutes go by.
What an outrageous concept for a show. What’s the message?
The drumming draws to a close. At last, as the bride is spinning, he lifts the bowling pin hat off his head. Loads of red paint come gushing out of his hat, forever staining the white dress. The fallen lavender men get bespattered with red paint from drops flying off the ends of his long skirt. An abstract scene quickly turned militant with bloodlust. Before another five minutes can pass, I seize the Lego man’s peach drink and throw what’s left of it behind us unmistakably hitting the seaman.
“What the fuck!” an adenoidal voice yells outraged.
That wasn’t the seaman I heard. Expecting everyone behind me to be angered with me, I turn. But everyone’s gaze is fixed on the wet seaman’s left–hand side. An orange–suited astronaut, also sopped by the peach drink, with a globose white plastic helmet and tinted gold visor sits there silent still. From the bemused looks of those unmasked, close–by, I can tell they all know what I know—that voice is female.