Cast-wise, the show was nearly twice as big this year, with twice as many performances. Sundays — days of both matinee and evening shows — got to be a little rough. On our last Sunday, between our second-to-last and last performance, I managed to get thoroughly wasted off a single free beer from the theatre lobby, stumble down into the basement, and pass out on one of the dressing room couches. When I awoke, someone was querying: “is it true Lacy has six toes on each foot?”

“I think . . . she has four,” came the response.

This party is out of control (Larger)

Controls (Larger)

Pixy Dust and Lolli Hoops (Larger)

“We were worried,” Sugar said at one of our curtain calls, “that, this year, with the added performances and with it being a repeat of last year, that some of the magic would be gone. That you guys would get here and just go through the motions but not really feel it, or that some of the excitement would have to go away. And it just hasn’t happened. The magic of this is still here.”

The massive gold curtain swayed heavily behind her, and behind it, the massive red curtain, and behind it, a 900 seats of jostling, whispers, cat calls.

The giddiness began in the dressing rooms: tucked away in the aqua-lime basement of the Somerville Theatre, framed in a flicker of half-functioning makeup lights. We had paled our faces with white cream, painted heavy circles around our lids with black, green, purple and blue, and slicked our hair into tight, glossy ponytails. We wore black satin corsets, mini-skirts and fishnet thigh-highs, and carefully dripped fake blood down lipsticked mouths.

Sugar was our Robert Palmer, and for this act we would be Addicted To Blood.

Undeading. (Larger and full album.)

Ginger Rita and I had acquired the more realistic, cap-style fangs, but Pamela had purchased what were actually labeled as “vampire dentures”: yellowed, old-man monster teeth, which required to be boiled in hot water before being stuck in the wearer’s mouth, where they would allegedly mold to your mouth and stay put. But we didn’t have any boiling water in the basement. So she just ran the water as hot as she could and let her teeth float in that for a while, and then she stuck them in, and smiled at us nervously. “BWAHAHAHAHA!” I cried for the first time in years. I wheezed and choked with glee, rolled on the couch, gasping for breath. “Nonono! Put them back in! Seriously! They, uh, they look great!”

“Screw you guys,” Pamela said. “I’m going to CVS and getting new teeth.”

“Hold up, let me get my iPhone,” Sugar said. “Could you smile again? This is going on Facebook.”

“BWAHAHAHAHA!”

Outside it was a cold, misting rain: inside we were two acts, serving to break up a vampire movie marathon that ran from 7pm to 7am; the crowd was sparse but tipsy on whatever they brought in their flasks, huddled in the theater seats under blankets, occasionally sleeping, occasionally cheering. “No one is going to like the Scarborough Fair number,” Sugar announced. “We may get some boos.” “Well . . . it’s pretty weird,” Pixy agreed. “Anyone want some rum?” Ginger Rita asked. We all looked at each other dubiously. “Is it coconut?” Pause. “Well, yeah!” “Ew NO!”

So it was only natural, really, when 2am rolled around and we found ourselves lined up backstage as J. Cannibal announced our number, that we would pop the blood capsules in our mouth and find that they began dissolving and breaking with saliva, whether you bit them or not, that Ginger Rita would run gagging to the garbage can. “Just FYI,” she whispered, “they taste awful!” Only natural that when my turn came to stagger forward and attack and devour Robert Palmer on stage, the foam guitar prop I tried to wrap around her neck would wind up smashing me in between the eyes (new scar!) and I would shout “ow!” and then “ha!”

And as the four of us descended for the final assault, writhing sexily on the stage floor and chomping down on the by-then barely-stable blood capsules which would burst and ooze in our mouths like old grapes, only natural that instead of slurping and licking the blood off our fingertips as planned, all of us would begin gagging and spitting on stage, eyes bulging with disgust. I wound up hunched over Sugar in some kind of frog position, legs bent and splayed, horking into her armpit. And then the laughter returned. For a moment, none of us could even stand.

The audience stared on, perplexed.

Full album: here (with some flagged as “moderate”, so you’ll need to be logged into Flickr with pervy preferences set to see those).

October was full of performances, but after the Boiling Point Burlesque variety show at Oberon November 1st, we just have rehearsals for The Slutcracker: after which, I abandon all of this, flee this city for colder winds, darker nights.

And I realized, I should really be taking more pictures.

A Line-Up

UnAmerika’s Sweetheart, The Fan Dance

The full album from Boiling Point Burlesque: here. (Nothing too racy or unsafe for work.)

I credit stumbling into last year’s The Slutcracker with a lot. I feel like I was reluctantly inching down a certain life path, with its certain self-righteous opinions about what it meant to be an adult, and educated, and female, and feminist, and professional, and what all of that looked like. And then this group was all “hey, want to join our club? We’re replacing all our zippers with velcro” and I was all “oh thank God yesyesyesyesyes!”

You can check out The Slutcracker blog, maintained by yours truly this year, for updates and behind-the-scenes action.