Welcome to Wonderland – St. Thomas, Virgin Islands – [10/31/2013]

Cause everybody’s crazy here in Wonderland
You simply won’t believe your eyes
‘Cause if you haven’t been you’ll never understand
You couldn’t in a million tries
You’ll see some combinations no one ever sees
There’s nothin’ even normal ‘bout a swarm of Bees
And I sure hope I can, get back to wonderland…
~ Care Bears In Wonderland

At the beginning of the contract when it was roughly decided what theme the entertainment team was going to dress to for Halloween I threw out Alice in Wonderland as an idea for the purely selfish reason that I already had my amazing Cheshire cat costume in my drawer (thankfully I always pack it with me, as it’s been my go to ship-side Halloween Costume for ages now). I had no idea the team would prove to be so enthusiastic when the time came. We had a fully fledged Alice (Techie), Queen of Hearts (EM), Mad Hatter (CD, and the poor guy must have been baking in that outfit), Tweedle Dee (DJ), White Rabbit (Kitchen Host who looked SO awesome!), plus me, and my costume was actually the least elaborate, which is saying something because I put so much effort into Chesh down to the last chain on her punk-style earrings.

Seriously, if we don’t at least place in the fleet wide costume contest this year the judges need their eyes checked!

Though my supervisor’s reaction to Chesh was amusing

That looks…amazing. Seriously, I didn’t expect sexy Cheshire, I saw your curled hair earlier and wasn’t sure but…whoa….

Oh yeah, I did the hair again. Once a year I submit myself to sitting in a salon chair for an hour having my stubborn tresses yanked and twisted into about a billion tiny tiny Shirley temple spring-like ringlets. It takes a full hour, and a half-can of firm-hold hairspray and even after I shower my hair is in soft waves for a day afterwards, but it’s worth it.

Overall, the night was a success, more so and in different ways than anticipated actually. I was scheduled to attend the Monster Mash costume ball, which I felt rather hypocritical having do as “my” boys were stuck playing the ballroom lounge which is supposed to cater to pretty much only the dance snobs.  But one must do as the schedule demands, so I dutifully trooped across the stage with the rest of the team, danced the requisite first song with them and the guests and lingered for about a half an hour on the fringes watching the guest costume contest (the Flintstones won) and once it became obvious that I was last team member on the floor (so to speak) I cut out to the ballroom lounge.

Now, the ballroom lounge is supposed to cater to the ‘regulation’ dancers that occasionally come on board. But this was Halloween, which only comes once a year, and the new rules for the lounge actually state that it’s supposed to be ‘ballroom only’  for the first set, so after that set was over? Amras started playing the fun stuff, which was taking a risk but paid off big time as the big group of professional dancers that’s on board LOVED it. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the floor in that lounge that packed. Chalk one up to bending the rules for the sake of my brother’s intuition.

And the most important part of that paragraph for me is this: there are professional dancers on board.

Which means that there are leads. REAL leads, people who know how to lead more than a stumbling basic, people who can test me, who can actually work my abilities.

Which led to:

Excuse me sir? Do you swing dance?

I would LOVE to!

First time I’ve been able to really dance in nearly half a year.  And I worked ; as in it feels like you’ve hit the gym for an hour after you do just one dance. There hits a point in a swing out where you can nearly hear your muscles screaming that you are SO going to feel this in the morning, especially when you’re still knocking off the rust so to speak, but there’s not much you can do about that in the middle of a dance. And it feels GOOD, if there can be such a thing as good pain…

Four dances like that went a long way to burning off some of the bizarre amount of energy I’d had all day (seriously, if I’d been a cat I would have been claws-dug-in-to-the-ceiling-back-arched hyper). By the end of the night I still had a few claws in the ceiling so to speak, but most of the worst of it had gone.

Amras would say later that I looked like I was in my element. This is true. There is a joy to really dancing that I just don’t get often enough. You’re putting yourself completely in the hands of your lead, and if the lead is good enough you don’t even have to think your feet simply move.

Also, swing dancing in a costume that has a tail leads to many fun things, especially with a song like “Hit the Road Jack”…

Ahem…

Of course this morning I feel like I’ve walked into a few brick walls and may well be black and blue from the neck down (‘you have more bruises than a pro football player’ ‘yeah, I’ve got a harder profession’) – but again, it was worth it.

At one point I was standing in line to get my picture taken, and one of the guests asked me where I was going after the party was finished, to which I responded

Change costumes and go to the OTHER party

What? It was true! Come on really, after all this time are any of you really surprised?

The quick-change to Green Faery from Chesh is something I’ve only done once before, and I honestly didn’t think I could pull it off as quickly as I did. Especially since it requires a full make-up change (out with the whiskers in with the vines), which, thanks to Amras and Alasse’s success shore-side I was actually able to do right (they found me jade green eyeliner, do you know HARD it is to find jade green eyeliner??).

Although I always say I have to be in exactly the right frame of mind to wear my green fairy costume, the truth is I don’t really have any other costume I feel as comfortable in. The Absinthe Fairy was built to use for dancing in the nightclub back home, it’s constructed on a capizio forest green dance leotard so it’s like wearing a one piece bathing suit. It looks a lot less sturdy than that of course.

That said, I didn’t stay at the after-party very long, it was fun, but it was smoky (the OB really is too small for a smoke machine) and loud and over-crowded and once midnight hit the insane charge of energy that had been carrying me all day finally died and I found myself suddenly unable to keep my prettily done-up eyes open.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween.