To me, opera is the cultural equivalent of cod liver oil - you know it’s good for you, so you gamely show up for it, but it doesn’t always go down so well. Also, it costs more than a pair of pants, even creampuff pants, which is saying something. So I don’t often go. But when my friend Cafa, who, along with our friend Xath, has a “30 and under” subscription, offered me Xath’s ticket to Saturday’s performance of Tancredi, I jumped at the opportunity to take in a little culture gratis, much in the same way as I would have jumped at a free pair of pants. Free pants!!
The last time I went to the opera was with Katr, who took me to Die Walkure, directed by Atom Egoyan. Great music, great singing, REALLY impractical costumes and what - WHAT - was going on with the set? There were two old women sitting behind us who kept whispering “This is so STU-pid. Do you want another Werther’s, Joyce?” and then loudly unwrapping their candy and sucking it petulantly. They left after the second intermission and I took their aisle seat, so that Katr and I could have more room. Side by side creampuffs in those seats for 4 hours - even creampuffs in love get crowded.
I mention the seats because although I remember being a little uncomfortable in my seat during Die Walkure, I didn’t remember doing myself a harm merely by sitting down. This was not the case on Saturday. I saw the seats comin’ and I assumed the fit would be tight, don’t get me wrong, but when I squeezed my ass into my seat and felt the back of the chair in front of me digging painfully into my knees, I knew that there was no freakin’ way I was going to make it through the opera, lesbonic overtones or not. I turned to Cafa and said “Aaah . . . I can’t sit here.” Cafa, lithe young thing that she is, went “Oh . . . geez. Really?” and then we began to make various apologetic noises to each other as I eased my way out of the offending chair and tried, as the lights began to dim, to figure out what to do next. Cafa kindly asked the guy on the aisle if he would mind switching seats - he DID mind, but, in all fairness, the man was disabled. I shooed Cafa back to her seat and told her that I’d figure something out - or go home, whichever seemed most appropriate.
The staff at the Hummingbird Centre were nice but had NO idea what to do with a creampuff who was calmly pointing out that the chairs in the second balcony were inaccessible to fat people and asking if there was anything to be done. There wasn’t - all the aisle seats were taken and there would be no sitting on the stairs, due to fire hazard. Sadly, I called Katr and told her she’d better get her OTHER girlfriend to leave, ‘cause I was comin’ home early. And instead of Tancredi, we watched another diva - Jennifer Lopez - in Maid in Manhattan. I don’t know what was more appalling - being too creampuffy for a seat at the opera or watching Ralph Fiennes humble himself (playing a REPUBLICAN, no less - why didn’t he just smear himself with dog shit, while he was at it? Jesus.)
It’s common knowledge that often, when you fall in love, you get fatter, ‘cause instead of going to the gym in the morning, you’re getting it on and feeding each other grapes and instead of going to the gym in the evening, you’re going for drinks with your friends to introduce the new love interest and then going home to get it on and feed each other grapes. Or a pie. Whatever. My friend Padu’s sister Madu refers to it as “happy fat” and happy it has been.
Katr and I were both built for comfort rather than speed when we met, so we didn’t give much thought to our joyous union’s effect on our collective fatness. We have, of late, begun to recognize that eating for two has certainly taken its toll over the past couple of years. Oh, we’ve taken some half- or occasionally three-quarter-hearted steps to get back down to our respective slightly leaner, meaner singleton weights but these efforts have essentially come to naught. With the onslaught of spring, we’ve become more active and more interested in vegetables, but clearly it was too little too late for the Hummingbird. The thing is that we have REALLY expensive tickets to Wicked tonight and are now terrified that the asses we fed with our love will no longer fit comfortably into the Canon Theatre seats. We saw the shitty Producers there with Katr’s brother last summer and were quite comfortable but a year is a long time in creampuff love land.
Am I ashamed of my love ass? Hardly. Am I inconvenienced by my love ass? Clearly. I hate to say it, but there’s no other way - gang, it’s time to lay off the cheetos. And now, if you’ll excuse me - there’s an ellipterdactyl at the Y with my name on it and I hate to disappoint the wild life.
