Lesbian Dancing After The Show: An Improviser's Non Improvised Life

Totally Awesome Edits

When I started my blog on The Red Room years ago, a friend of mine (who has a thing about grammar and spelling) offered to edit my blog. He says it is as "Close to Compulsive" as he gets.

Sure. Here is the text...make me look pretty, baby.

For the few times that he edited my blog, I was indeed grateful. Completely grateful. Then I think he realized I churn out blogs like I down a glass of wine. He sent me an email: If there is one that is important to you? Send it to me.

I stopped sending them to him after the fourth journal entry. What is important to me is not important to others. So I stopped sending them, as I found that I needed a person who considered all of my writing important enough to properly put in commas, hyphens and follow the "I before E Except after C" rule.

On the blog entries he did perform literary magic on, his copy editing was wonderfully non-intrusive. It is mostly commas, spelling and the occasional "Does this make sense in this context?" It is then me explaining the references he and maybe nobody else in the world gets. If people are interested they will Google the reference, I said to him in an email.

I love a great Copy Editor.

My aunt, the one who thought my grandmother's funeral site was not the right one... is not a great Copy Editor.

All the members in my family have been involved in teaching in some way or another. All of my aunts are former teachers in History or English. So the syntax is the thing. The preposition is the thing. The sentences that I'm writing right now is NOT the thing.

When I went home in November to say my goodbyes to my Grandmother, I was asked to be "The Voice of my Generation of Grand-children." That generation being my sisters and brothers. I was to write the obituary for the five of us.

My sister Angel was already in my Grandmother's house. I asked her if she was okay with this and she did not have a problem. It seemed that my other sisters and brothers were also okay with this.

In the house (with my grandmother still alive in another room), I sat and wrote my remembrances. It was witty and urbane. Spell-checked for your approval. Double-checked with the oldest sister to make sure I did not sound like a jackass.

Spell Checked and Sister Approved. I left it in my aunt's computer and flew back to San Francisco happy in the idea that my words were going to represent the five grandchildren on my mother's side.

My mother who was also there sitting in a chair. Not knowing where she was.

I arrive in Chicago exhausted at two in the morning from a horrific flight into Philly for my grandmother's funeral, where I am given close contact to a man larger than Kevin Smith in the seat in front of me. He is sleeping in my lap when he puts his seat back and I am trapped like a bug, to the point of tears. Our flight attendant (who could not move me) gives me three bottles of wine to knock me out, as a consolation prize. This experience only comes with a time consuming layover into Chicago.

I finally get into Chicago and limp to the train from crushed legs, getting off at the Damen stop to hobble to my friends' home.

The Church (Trinity) is quite a few miles away from the Wicker Park area of Chicago. My sister Angel (a woman who has just driven from Seattle to Chicago) takes pity on me and picks me up in her car. I'm in black jeans, a black top, and black sneakers. I have the black dress, but I am cold. Life in San Francisco has made me weary of weather under thirty degrees.

I'm in the car. Angel was there for the viewing at the parlor yesterday. She smiles and says "I just want to show you the program I picked up at the viewing."