I didn't write a blog post yesterday because I was in transit pretty much all of the day. I arrived back in NYC this morning, having flown from Cape town to Johnannesburg, then Jonhannesburg to Dakar (in Senegal) and then Dakar to NYC. I actually feel not too bad, considering. I slept a lot on both the long flights and have had a nap this afternoon, been to yoga and feel quite perky. I am sure I will hit a wall, but I sincerely hope it is not in the middle of one of the Broadway Bares peformances which I am making an appearance at tonight. It's the twentieth anniversary of the show, now a Broadway institution - and a very hot and horny one I might add - and I have been asked to go along and be one of twenty celebs who have appeared in years past. I don't know exactly what I am to do, they just said be there at 9pm and wear something sexy. Just another Sunday night then.
Friday was my last day on The Runaway, and now Desrae has disappeared into the ether, though I think she will always be quite near and easy to access should the need arise. My body hair has started to inch back, my acrylic nails were dissolved away and buffed by the Kathy the nail lady on Saturday morning, and now Desrae is no more. He will live on of course when the show is broadcast early next year, but she has definitely left the building, babes.
It's funny because the whole gender thing means that nobody, including myself knows whether to settle on calling Desrae he or she. I always thing that however someone defines themselves is how you should too, but there is a blurry line with tansvestites and drag queens when they define themselves at different times, and in jest, as both. Desrae was definitely all man, but I think he would take being called she a compliment.
My last day was as hectic as usual, with a million different make-up and hair changes, and a really upsetting scene which was interrupted, before they got round to doing my close-up, by a massive swarm of bees who for some reason decided to come into the studio and make such a racket to say nothing of the fear they instilled in us all that we actually had to stop work and wait till they were smoked out, the smoke had cleared and the piles of dead bees had been swept away!! When we came back in to pick up where we left off (especially difficult in an emotional humdinger of a scene like this one - thanks, bees) it was so weird to look at the lights and see behind the gels that are clipped onto them mounds of dead bees. It happened so quickly and nobody could explain why. But it certainly was a memorable exit.
On Friday evening I celebrated my wrap at the Nobu Bar of the One and Only hotel with a few friends, and much fun was had. The show actually wraps tomorrow and the offical wrap party was last night so mine was a sort of early, splinter wrap party.
I wore a blue Calvin Klein jump suit, a random choice for such an occasion I'll admit, but the reason is that I had brought it to Cape Town with the idea that if I didn't wear it before I came home then it would have to be a part of the next clothes giveaway party (I have all my friends who are my size round and we play a game and the winner gets first dabs at the pile of clothes, the runner-up second and so on. It's recycling at its most fun). However I confessed to Neal the costume designer that the reason I never wore it was that it was actually too big. I had worn it only once, at the Life Ball in Vienna when the theme had been sci-fi and I was a blue and silver alien. So Neal said he would see to it that it was taken in for me, and lo, on the second to last day, the lovely Fachary (that is not how you spell it but how you pronounce it, and as I don't have the piece of paper with it written down in front of me, that's how we're going to type it today, sorry Fachary) did just that and so I wore my perfectly fitting and reinvented jump suit to the little bash. And it was a smash.
It is funny to be back here and it be so much warmer than it was in South Africa. Of course, it's their winter there just now, but still, it was a bit weird all the same. I am so glad to be home, albeit only for a week. It has been a long time and I have missed my pack.