Fallosophy

It’s a Stage Door day, which is my absolute favourite kind of day; plus it’s Christmas, so there’s basically no reining in my enthusiasm. I’ve reached Peak Joy. My outfit, a bubble-hem high-low strapless gown designed to show off my shoes and shoulders, matches my jubilant mood. My brand new black patent Louboutins are about to make their début with the Aradia Ensemble at the Glenn Gould Theatre in Toronto. I’ll be singing Handel’s Messiah. My shoes will be singing my praises.

Stage Door days start with self-indulgent stage door mornings. Hair, nails, lemon water, maybe a massage. Namaste. I try to keep myself grounded as I prepare for centre-of-attention time. I don’t suffer from pre-performance jitters, but I do have to keep the butterflies at bay lest I have a repeat of the time I was in Newfoundland, so excited to be headlining Mozart’s Requiem, that I had to make a stop at Emerg to have some chest pain checked out before the concert. An ECG confirmed I was medically fit to sing, and the doctor sent me away with a prescription to slow my roll, eat a banana, calm the fuck down.

Phase two of Stage Door days starts once I’ve crossed the threshold of the stage door in question. I have a quick convo with the butterflies to let them know there’s nothing life threatening about the compounded energy of the other singers, the last minute lipstick and lip trills, the cheesy prayer circles while the orchestra tunes to A440. Then, the blur of performance, followed by applause, flowers, kudos, a boozy after party, and the decision of whether to linger in post-performance insomnia, smiling stupidly at the ceiling, or to insist on sleep by drowning my hyper-arousal in champagne. Either way, I’m not taking off my makeup until tomorrow.

Ranking almost as high as the high I get from performing is a day spent in Paris, where even a bad day is better than a good day anywhere else. I don’t even need a full day to get a decent Paris-buzz–a two hour layover at Charles de Gaulle can be an effective microdose if I plan my airport shopping right: a jar of Edmond Fallot dijon, an éclair from Maison du Chocolat, a foulard if there’s time.

A trip to Paris is always special but my most recent visit to the city of lights two months ago was especially memorable for the day I climbed the 1300 steps to the bell tower at Notre-Dame Cathedral to high-five Quasimodo himself. It was a particularly poignant achievement after being too weak to do it just a few years ago. From the Galérie des Chimères, I reached out to touch the 800 year-old monsters and gazed at the Seine, Sacré-Coeur, Saint-Suplice, la tour Eiffel. My accomplishment felt epic, like I’d come back not quite from the dead, but the dead-adjacent. I reclaimed a precious experience that I thought MS had permanently taken.

A slaying of this magnitude deserved a proper trophy. Since I wanted to thank my feet for carrying me up and all over Paris, shoes seemed a fitting solution. Not sensible shoes, of course. Victory shoes. Shoes that scream celebration. And that’s how I ended up at Christian Louboutin’s famous flagship store, maxing out my credit card on the scarlet-soled stilettos I’ll be wearing on stage tonight.

I haven’t deluded myself into thinking I’ll be able to wear a heel this high forever. I simply decided to take full and extravagant advantage of the fact that I can wear these statement shoes now. The statement of course being: va te faire foutre, MS.

While the shoes demand attention, Fuck MS is more of a whisper; something I keep to myself. There’s no reason the other singers, and especially the conductor, need to know about my condition. This is a professional gig. I’m still new on the scene, and my unreliable health doesn’t feel like the kind of intel that will make me seem like an asset.

Backstage, everyone clocks my shoe game. The girls want to try them on (absolutely not), the basses roll their eyes, the tenors get it. When I walk on stage, I swear I hear someone in the audience gasp. It’s the appropriate reaction. Artsy, fancy, gay, these are my people. Pitched forward, tits out, I feel like a goddess. I feel so good that the only reasonable thing left to do is sing.

After the concert I slip into something less formal but no less considered; knee-high boots and a 60’s style printed mini-dress with a red chevron print and two white pom-poms around the neck. I deposit my gown at coat-check, but I’m not letting my shoes leave my site. My Louboutins, tucked safely into their red dust bag, are stashed in the tote bag beside me.

“Let’s get another bottle, shall we?” It’s not a question. Kevin, Aradia’s Irish-American artistic director, knows how to party. I’m on a post-performance high myself, and a bit of a red wine one too.

“What happened to your heels?” Snarky Bass asks when he sees me.

“Oh, those are just part-time shoes,” I laugh. “Heels like that aren’t sustainable.”

“Sopranos,” he says and rolls his eyes again.

“I think they’re fabulous,” Kevin says. “It’s ballet shoes you have to be careful about.” Someone launches into a story about the blackened toes of a dancer they once dated. Before the table finishes the next bottle of wine, the conversation has taken a deep-dive into footwear-related trauma: Ingrown toenails, broken metatarsals, stepping on tent pegs. Even the city’s coolest culture-makers like a good gross-out story.

I decide to share the harrowing tale of how my former French boyfriend ice-skated over my finger when I was 17. The story has everything: international intrigue, a jealous rival who intentionally crashed into us as we skated together holding hands, a potential career as a violinist cut short by a severed, then re-attached digit, a romance torn apart by guilt and shame; it’s practically Shakespearean.

I open my mouth to speak but in a rare example of The Banker getting a word in before me, TB starts to speak too. He’s probably gonna talk about the time he stepped on a tack. Boring and predictable. There’s no drama in this anecdote, no plot. He didn’t need stitches and a tetanus shot. He didn’t hallucinate a terrifying nurse with a syringe the size of baby’s arm after a hefty dose of narcotics. Still, I yield the floor because that’s what marriage is about.

“That reminds me of the time I had one of Ardra’s needles stuck in my toe,” he starts. Shit. This is not the story I was expecting. “We were in Montreal, and she was about to shoo…shoot,” he stops cold, then looks at me, panicked.

I raise my eyebrows, with a look that says, ‘I can’t help you, you’re on your own’. TB is about to tell the story about the time my MS was being treated with subcutaneous interferon and my auto-injector failed. After slamming the device into my thigh, like I’d done hundreds of times before, nothing happened. Ever the hero, The Banker had tried to intervene. Wearing nothing but boxers, he’d stood barefoot in the bathroom of our hotel room trying to dislodge the loaded syringe from the stuck device. When he was finally able to open the auto-injector, the needle flew up into the air with the grace of an Olympic diver, before gravity took over and stuck the landing directly in the middle of TB’s bare-footed big toe. Mesmerized, and not yet in pain or sensing danger, like a psycho, he yelled, “Quick! Get the camera.” As far as medical misadventures go, I don’t deny that Needlegate is a solid story, but without the MS context, ‘drug-filled syringe in the toe’ sounds a lot like the mishap of a junkie.

“Not needle, but, uhm, like a…” The Banker’s blubbering attempt to bail on the truth only makes things worse. His sketchy plot holes reinforce the are these two on heroin narrative. I’m tempted to out his third nipple, but I respect boundaries, and that’s his story to tell. In any case, it’s too late. The table is hooked and wants to hear how Pulp Fiction turns out.

“Actually, I have MS,” I say, in the chillest, it’s-no-big-deal way I can muster, knowing the truth won’t set me free. If all the world’s a stage, I’ve been playing young and healthy, someone capable you can count on, who’s not under the constant threat of episodic illness. My secret’s out, but the role I’ve been cast in has only shifted. The truth is only palatable if I’m a certain kind of patient (positive, self-sufficient, kick-ass, but not so kick-ass that people think I’m faking). I slip my hand in my bag and touch my Louboutin, like a talisman. “Actually, my husband’s charming anecdote is about my MS medication. It’s an injection that keeps my disease stable. Perfectly legal. Not even fun.” Haha.

“Really?” says Kevin, with the usual surprise of someone who thinks I look ‘normal’. “You have MS?” I do a half nod, half shrug to reinforce my ‘no biggie’ narrative. Kevin decides whether or not I’ll get hired for this ensemble again. It’s not the time to enlighten the masses about the realities of invisible illness.

“But,” Kevin continues, wide-eyed, confounded, “but, you have so much energy!” It’s not true, but I’m glad he thinks so.