The boyfriend has flown back home and it is starting to feel like the last week of the Fringe. People on the streets look tired and their brains are fried. Wednesdays are the hardest days at the Fringe because even if you are on holiday for a week, you don’t go out to watch a show on Wednesday. You are recovering from whatever it is you did to yourself on Monday and Tuesday. You might go out on Thursday but even on vacation, you are still looking forward to the weekend. It is just hardwired in the brain. If you are a local not on vacation, you don’t go to a show on a Wednesday unless you are a diehard fan or you hate your life. That’s my theory in a paragraph.
I’ve got a breakfast meeting at Starbucks with people from the Ouch BBC podcast. They came to the show the night before. I suspect they wanted to make sure I could get through an entire conversation without using the word “cunt”. It was a struggle but unlike all my applications to the BBC 4 Radio Comedy Award, I manage to not drop the c-bomb the entire conversation.
I sit in the cafe for three more hours and do my best to not move a muscle. I have been walking so much that the side of my big toes are bruised. I didn’t even know that was a thing.
In the afternoon, I go to the BBC tent to record the podcast with two other comedians doing the festival with other physical disabilities, Jon Long and Aidan Green. The green room has clear boxes of perfectly-cut triangle sandwiches that look like the start of an OCD infinity mirror. I’d like one but no one has opened the boxes yet and I don’t want to be that asshole because it looks too perfect. It’s fine, I’ll get one later. Plus, I‘ve been given a white and red stripe bracelet that lets people know I am with the BBC or that I have started working at TGI Fridays. (It’s also on my good hand to which means I have no idea how I will take it off.)
We talk a lot about growing up with a disability and I have always thought having a really supportive group of friends and loved ones is really important. I moved around a lot as a kid and changed schools relatively often. We always lived in the Kansas City area but far enough away that I had to change school districts a lot. When asked why we moved so much, it was really hard to answer. I had never given it much thought. After thinking about it now, I believe my parents were just very bad with confrontation. They would have a tiff with a neighbor that would eventually become an all out war. I remember one neighbor’s dog kept killing our dogs and another neighbor got upset when our dog killed one of their cock-fighting chickens. Of course I remember this AFTER the podcast. It’s fine, the BBC probably wouldn’t have let me say “cock”.
With the BBC or TGI Fridays? Either way, I need the money.
I fall over a man in a wheelchair near the Royal Mile. By far, this is the best fall I’ve ever had at the Fringe because it happened so slowly. Slow falls, once you’ve hade enough of them are great because you become Neo in the Matrix and can maneuver your body in a way that makes it hurt less. The fall was my fault anyway, that’s what I get for trying to dodge a flyerer.
I had an audience of one and I wasn’t angry she wasn’t more people. I found out she was a Midwesterner from Chicago in the UK for the first time. We chatted a bit about travel and then I told her to go to someone else’s show. An educated black American lady did not fly across the pond to see me. She had just taken a flyer. I told her to go see Jessica Fostekew’s extra show at the Monkey Barrel or any other show there. I’m playing the long game at the festival.
My flyerer Is upset more people didn’t come and promises to work “extra hard” tomorrow. What a sweetheart. I knew I chose a good egg. He is probably the best flyerer I’ve ever had at the Fringe.
Now that I don’t have a show, I have time to drop off my wet hiking towels at home before watching the best drag show I’ve seen at the Fringe this year, Divet. Yuriko Kotani and I are drag show buddies and we both agree it is the best drag show we’ve seen and we’ve gone to see Rupaul’s Drag Race Contestants. It was the perfect show for a Wednesday. Parodies of music divas and some of the best dancing you could hope for. I wanted to take pictures but was too captivated to pull out my camera. Do yourself a favor and follow Jero on Instagram who was also on the Finnish tour of Kinky Boots.
Afterwards we get drinks at the industry bar and talk about our plans for September. Start writing next years show, natch.