The Thong Also Rises (14 page)

The desk clerk sighed. She'd obviously heard this question a few thousand-million-jillion times before. “Yes,” she said, the word ending in a slight “zee” sound. “It's nice, if you like the
Don Giovanni
music.” Somehow, I wasn't reassured.

We arrived at the theater early the next night. Although advertised as a “beautiful hall decorated in Art Deco style,” what we encountered was a sad, dimly lit theater with limp,
red velvet curtains and green plaster walls the color of split pea soup.The walls had been gouged in several places, leaving white, dusty scabs. In the lobby, a pale young woman stood beneath a clothesline of cheap plastic marionettes, hoping for a sale.

When it was time for the performance to start, instead of subtly dimming the lights or ringing a low chime like they do for performances in New York, the National Marionette Theatre of Prague sounded something akin to an enormous school bell. Its insistent metal clapper reverberated painfully throughout the lobby. Startled, I didn't know whether to head to my seat, dart out the door for recess, or alert the captain that the sub was taking on water.

The show began, and the first marionette to appear was Mozart, who was dressed in pink satin with white ruffles at the neck and sleeves. He had curly silver hair that looked slept on, and his round wooden face bore a slight resemblance to Barbara Bush. As he jerkily “conducted” the imaginary orchestra—the real music was on tape—the other puppets made their appearance on the small stage. Controlled only by strings, they moved haltingly, like they were walking across a rope bridge in high winds. It was going to be a loooong night.

As the production got underway, my snootiness kicked in. The backdrops were painted in a style that could best be described as Scenery 101. I could see the thick hands
and
cleavage of several of the puppeteers. How unprofessional was
that?
I felt like I was watching a fifth-grade talent show where at any moment a little Indian girl would be tied to the stake while her parents clapped their enthusiastic approval. Most unsettling of all was that the marionettes' faces didn't move. At all.
Don Giovanni
maintained the same painted-on,
noncommittal expression regardless of whether he was seducing the peasant girl Merlina or being engulfed by flames for his evil misdeeds. It just didn't seem right.

Yet, despite myself, within a few short minutes I was smiling, a silly what's-the-harm-in-this grin that lasted the entire performance. I don't know if the grin appeared when I realized that puppeteers are supposed to be part of the act. Or when I realized that this particular production of
Don Giovanni
was intended to be a comedy. Or when the Mozart marionette drank too much wine and fell asleep, loudly knocking his little wooden head on the edge of the imaginary orchestra pit.

Regardless, it dawned on me that the point of marionette theatre is not to convince audience members that the puppets are real in an animated Hollywood kind of way. The point was to give people an enjoyable, low-tech excuse for listening to great opera.

When the performance was over and the puppeteers emerged for their applause, it was clear from their pink cheeks and broad smiles that they took immense pride in their art form. I stood and clapped like a stage parent.

As we walked back to our hotel after the show, Angela said, “I'm glad we're not like those people who don't try new things because of fear or because they think something is beneath them.”

“Me, too,” I said, gazing at the gold reflection of the city's lights in the river.

“Sometimes, it just takes learning about something to appreciate it,” she reasoned, sounding like the host of a children's television show.

I concurred, thinking of all the times in my life I've passed up opportunities because of fear, snobbery, or pre-conceived
notions. I thought about how often I've let closed-minded assumptions color my enjoyment of an event. I thought about how foolish many of my long-held, but unexamined, fears and judgments really are. Maybe
Magic
had been so scary because I was eighteen when I saw it and, frankly, a lot of my life was tinged with terror at that point.

As we neared the hotel, Angela made one final comment about the show. “You know,” she declared, “those puppets didn't scare me
at all.
”

“Me neither,” I said, secretly wondering if I'd have time at the airport to purchase a souvenir marionette.

Shari Caudron is a Denver-based writer whose work has appeared in
Sunset, Reader's Digest, USA Today,
and other publications. She is also the author of
What Really Happened,
a collection of stories about the lessons life teaches you when you least expect it.

Think about it—Mars is cold and dusty, Venus is hot and steamy.

T
HERE IS A DISPARITY BETWEEN WHAT WE
(
FEMALE
types) think is a great vacation and what they (male types) think is a great vacation. Now, me, I think a cruise is just about your perfect vacation. One of the main selling points of a cruise is the time available for not doing Jack Shit. You can not do Jack Shit for the entire duration of a cruise. One reason is there is nothing that you can possibly need that is not on that boat. Add to that the staggering number of lackeys; as a passenger, you have at least twelve to fifteen of them assigned to you personally, and their sole reason for being is to prevent you from having to do Jack Shit. In addition, a whole covey of free-floating lackeys will come to your aid should your own personal set be out performing some other task for you when another urgent need arises—maybe a new umbrella for your drink. I do so love lackeys, and there are just hardly any at my house. Truth be told, there is only one—and she is me.

Another great thing about a cruise is the excellent food.
The first qualification for food to be excellent, in my book, is that somebody else prepare it, and all I have to do is show up and eat it. And there needs to be plenty of it—especially if other people want some of it, too. On a cruise, somebody else does all the cooking and apparently they do it round the clock because there is food everywhere you look, whenever you look. You can even order every single thing on the menu at every single meal and nobody will bat an eye. I love to do this because I always want to taste everything, and plenty of times I want to eat every scrap of it. But then, I am a notorious pigwoman….

What I'm saying is that the [Sweet Potato] Queens like vacations that are luxurious and pampering in nature, ones that involve lots of lolling about in lush surroundings. Guys, on the other hand, do not.

The following is an absolute true-life example of what can happen if you give a guy a bunch of money and a travel agent. It should provide all the proof you will ever need to support this ironclad rule: Never Let a Guy Plan a Vacation.

A good friend of mine recently returned (by the skin of his teeth) from a “dream vacation” that cost a gazillion and a half dollars. My friend Bill and his friend Ron put their heads together to figure out the farthest-away place that would cost the most
possible
money and time to reach, and would offer the
worst
accommodations imaginable, where they could go to and try to kill something big. Hmmm. How about Bearplop, Alaska?

So Bill and Ron coughed up big bucks and went to an inordinate amount of trouble to go to this godforsaken place in the nether regions of Alaska in order to hunt moose and grizzly bears. See, this is what the other women and I think qualifies this trip under the stupid category. Who of sound
mind would go out of his way to try to have a confrontation with a grizzly bear? A guy, that's who. And clearly, a guy with not enough fiscal responsibility weighing him down. These guys have got that old problem (I never have it myself):You know what I mean, when you get too much money in your checking account, it will start backing up on you. You have to keep it moving freely through there in order to avoid the backup problem. When the money gets backed up, you resort to absurd measures to clear it out in a hurry.

Anyway, they have to fly for a couple of days to get to the part of Alaska that has people living in it, before they can head out to their forsaken vacation spot.
Forsaken
may be a misnomer; somebody would have had to live there in order to then forsake it, and I don't think anybody ever has or ever will live where these guys went. And don't you just imagine there's a good reason for that? I mean, look at Gulf Shores and Destin—you can't sling a dead cat without hitting a condo with a thousand people in it. That's because those are desirable locations. Where Bill and Ron went, you could sling a dead cat for a couple of thousand miles and not even hit a gas station or a mobile home park. Which, in and of itself, doesn't sound all bad, but the climate isn't exactly what you'd call a big draw.Y'know?

Wheee! They are on the trek to their final destination, getting on progressively smaller airplanes at each leg of the journey, until finally, it is just Bill and Ron and the pilot in this itty-bitty plane which the pilot informs them is still too big to fly into where they're going. They land on this bald
knob on top of a mountain and the pilot tells them to “get out and wait right here 'cause I'll be right back.” And with that, he took off, leaving Bill and Ron on top of the bald knob with no food, no water, no nothing, including no idea when the pilot was coming back. Ostensibly he was going to get yet a smaller plane, but his parting words were no comfort to our intrepid travelers: “There's a tent in that box over there. You guys can put that up for shelter, in case I don't get back.” Now, I
gotta
tell you, I'd have been stroking out big time. No way would I have let that guy fly merrily off into the wild blue yonder without my person being on that plane.

So Bill and Ron were stranded on the bald knob, somewhere in Alaska, and several hours later, the pilot returned, circled the knob, and flew away. This was perplexing to our heroes, a radio being high on the list of the things they did not have, along with food, water, shelter, guns, toilet facilities and/or paper. But by and by—then hours later—the pilot came back and landed, and took Bill away with him, with promises to Ron to “be right back.” Happy Ron. “I'll be right back” is my all-time favorite line. And when
I
use it, what I really mean is: “Good-bye! If you're looking for me— I'll be the one that's gone! Just try and catch me! If I ever come back, it will be one chilly day, buckwheat!”