Okay, I'll admit it. I love to sing karaoke, almost as much as I love to go out dancing, neither of which I get to do very often. Those of you who read this blog back in the dark ages, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, may remember that my lack of opportunities to sing and dance like a crazy person has been a running theme in my life. I love to think about life and meditate upon its possibilities, and am a first class navel-gazer. I am also terribly silly with a performance streak and love to dance!
So, now that I'm around a group of young party people on a regular basis, I have plenty of opportunities to live it up, if I so choose. And I don't choose to all that often. But every now and then, it's nice to blow off some steam.
Friday night, Hubs and I went to the bar to hang with some people there and have a few drinks. And afterwards, he went home to avoid the spectacle, and I went with a few friends to karaoke night at the local pub. I started with a little Gretchen Wilson (everything sounds country when I sing it, so might as well work with it). My loud, yeehaw voice, paired with some phenomenal hip action (if I do say so myself), drew a little attention, some of it from a crowd of fun and rowdy lesbians across the bar. Then, I sang some Meredith Brooks as a duet with a friend, sharing a microphone and again making a scene. Then, a duet with a friend's boyfriend. And later, we put in a request for me and my three girl friends to sing Lady Marmalade, and we waited.
While we waited, two guys came up and sang "Hey Ya" by Outkast, which of course necessitated the kind of crazy dancing from me that made my friends all think I was drunk (which I wasn't, as I had quit drinking around an hour earlier). But it's Outkast, people. It's one of the laws of the universe that you MUST shake it like a polaroid picture when that song comes on, especially when all the other cool people in the bar are.
At some point, feeling all happy and full of joy, I went around and started inviting women I had seen having fun earlier in the night to come sing with us when we get called. I invited a few of the Outkast duo's backup dancers. I invited a woman who had been sitting with her boyfriend, quietly but happily lip-syncing along all night long. And I went over to the studded-belt ringleader of the lesbian crew and invited her. She put her arm around me and said, "You want me to sing with you, baby?" Yeah. That would be fun, actually!
Anyway, we never get called, and eventually all my karaoke friends (except for one guy I know, who seemed thoroughly disinterested in karaoke) went home. As luck would have it, within 10 minutes of everyone leaving me there, the karaoke dude gleefully calls me *and all my friends, who are no longer there* up to sing Lady Marmalade (the Moulin Rouge version). I giggle uncomfortably, being thoroughly sober at this point, and shuffle all alone up to the karaoke stage, a little bit nervous about the spectacle I was about to have to make all by myself. Before the music starts, I mutter into the microphone something along the lines of, "all my drunk friends left already." As if drawn by the inexplicable force of sisterhood in self-humiliation, the entire crew of rowdy lesbians (who had been making spectacles of their own all night singing Dixie Chicks and some old school rap) come out of the woodwork-- weaving through the crowd, jumping the railing, and crawling through the bar to make their way to the stage with me.
Before the first beat of the song began, I was surrounded by what has to be the most awesome, funny, live-it-up crew of tipsy, fun women that this progressive college town has to offer. We made a spectacle, alright, and it was SO. MUCH. FUN!
A little later, after the bar had thinned out a bit, a few other friends (who had just gotten off work) came and joined us, and I got to shoot a little pool with a couple of guys from work (something else I haven't done in YEARS).
.....
I sang karaoke and blogged about it back in January of 2006. Once, maybe almost two years ago, we lived in an old farmhouse across the highway from a biker bar, and I went to the biker bar to sing karaoke with the hellraisers. I need to get out more often. Friday night was fun, and although Hubster, being the strong and silent type, isn't much for karaoke and doesn't necessarily want to have to go party with me, he is enjoying second-hand all the benefits of having a life partner who (for the first time in many years) feels alive, youthful, playful, and fun, and it's all rubbing off on him as well. I don't think I want to be a crazy party person all the time, but if getting out every now and then keeps me feeling young and alive and silly, I might have to up my biennial karaoke night to make it something a little more standard.
My family, my marriage, my continually growing relationship with God-- those are my priorities. But I'm starting to think there's a way to keep those as priorities while still giving myself regular outlets for silliness and spunk, which nurture my heart and feed my spirit as well, albeit in much different ways from spending time with my family or in meditation. There is room in my Reality for a much wider diversity of celebration and joy, both of which I seem to need more of in my life. Don't we all?
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