As of today, I have now been fully vaccinated for over a month, and, in many ways, it’s everything I expected it to be. A visit from a New York grad school friend spiraled into a spur of the moment road trip, and the slow return of full-fledged in-person theatre has been downright marvelous to behold.
Since I spend so much of the rest of my week toiling alone at a computer, I’ve always had the impulse to jam-pack my weekends with as much running around as I can handle. Of course, my pent-up energy after so much enforced time inside had me even more eager to explore than usual.
After a venture to some Thursday night beach yoga, next up on the agenda was my first outing to Delray Beach’s The Coop Comedy for their monthly Friday night stand up show. Known by day as the Tradition Tattoo parlor, this unconventional venue got us off to a raunchy start even before the show, as we were suggestively told to enter the space through its back door.
The stand-up comics who performed only continued the racy trend with some audaciously hilarious material. But unfortunately for me, my mother took one comedian’s jokes about his mother’s repeated attempts to set him up with dubiously appropriate potential partners as an invitation to let him know that I was single after the show (I promptly scurried away before any further conversation could be had.) And now, probably also unfortunately for me if I make it into her material, she’s thinking of performing her own comedy set at their next weekly open mic!
Then, on Saturday morning, it was off to Bob Carter’s Actor’s Workshop and Repertory Company, my first South Florida theatre home. There, I’d taken some of my first acting classes, nabbed some of my first starring roles, and had my first short plays performed to exhilarating standing O’s. I’d arrived to volunteer at their work party, which they had organized to clean out and rearrange the place as they prepared for their upcoming reopening.
It was great to be able to catch up with some theatre pals who I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic, especially my former director, who expressed interest in considering some of the scripts I’ve been working on for Actor’s Rep’s upcoming season. Exciting stuff!
Then, since I’d already made it most of the way to Clematis Street, I figured that I may as well swing by the Pride on The Block event that was taking place there that afternoon. Though being bisexual hasn’t always felt like a terribly important part of my identity in comparison to say, being on the autism spectrum or a theatre obsessive, I still suppose I had as much right as anyone to join in the celebration at hand. A multi-colored extravaganza of vendors, drag shows, and décor awaited me, as did the opportunity to purchase a wristband that would allow me one drink each at several nearby bars and restaurants.
Some of these cocktails were even themed for the occasion, so a rainbow Bacardi Jell-O shot, smoking mojito, and a glittery prosecco later, I met up with my mother to stop briefly at Rosemary Square and catch a high school friend’s musical performance in the plaza and then grab a greasy dinner at Flanigan’s. Meh, I’ll get back to worrying about calories when I’m done celebrating the end of the apocalypse!
But the next morning, I wasn’t quite so hungover that I couldn’t make my way to my scheduled appointment to donate blood at a mobile center nearby. After having donated a few times before when drives happened to be taking place at my high school or college campuses, I got back in the habit during the pandemic, curious about the results of the free COVID antibody screening offered with each donation and feeling like this, at least, was some small way I could help somebody in such broken times.