Costume Therapy

Published in the July/August 2012 edition of Zaghareet Magazine, an international magazine for Belly Dance aficionados.

I slashed through the straps of my best fitting, most expensive “go to” bra. You know the bra I am talking about? The one that makes you five pounds lighter and gives you the perkiness of a twenty year old. Ok,  thirty year old. The one you wear to a job interview or a first date. My shiny, new-fangled stainless steal sewing scissors, razor-sharp, snipped through the straps as my heart-thudded in fear. It’s only a bra, I repeated to myself, while our instructor assured us “it’s only a costume” and it would be alright.

Belly dance takes “retail therapy” to a new level. Of course perfected technique and top form are vital to the dance, but any performer would agree there is nothing more confidence-boosting, mood-lifting or splendor-enhancing  than a sparkly, fits-like-a-glove costume. It is the best therapy money can buy. Being a well-endowed dancer, however, can sometimes make buying a custom-fitted, yet reasonably priced outfit difficult. I knew it was time to start learning how to sew.

My mother was an exceptional seamstress. She made my three older sisters’ clothes when they were young. Purchasing a store-bought Halloween costume was unheard of in my house growing up. But like many “modern women,” sewing was not a skill passed on to me, nor was it even taught at any of my schools. In the days of pre-big box stores sewing certainly, but unfortunately, was not exposed to me as a pleasure or hobby but a necessity in times of tight money for a single mother of four. Prior to belly dance, embarrassingly, it just never occurred to me that I could make my own stuff! Why? I have a job! I can just buy it, right? And besides, I could whipstitch a torn seam by hand in a pinch. That was all I needed to know. As I advanced as a dancer my new hobby suddenly seemed to come along with the same type of necessity to sew that my mother probably felt.

Last spring, the oh-so-talented-in-more-ways-than-one Michelle Morrison of Farfesha Studios in Albuquerque, NM held a costume-making workshop and I decided to give it a try. The year prior had not been kind to me. Dance, both practice and performance, became my escape. The support of the beautiful women of the troupe and the ability to take my mind off the real world of divorce, finances, and work made the studio my sanctuary. And now costume therapy would begin to take on a whole new meaning.

With Michelle’s supply list in hand, I headed to the local fabric store a few days before the workshop with the concept of matching my new costume with a flowing chiffon lavender skirt I had purchased at a swamp meet months prior. A satin in the most delicious eggplant caught my eye as the foundation for the bra and belt set and I was instantaneously hooked. Before I knew it, I was obsessing over rhinestones. 8 mm or 10 mm sequins? 8 inch or 10 inch Egyptian fringe? Bra padding? For me? The DD girl?

Sprawled on the wood dance floor with all my dancer friends, surrounded by baskets of material, coins, shells, ribbon, batting, we spent several Sunday afternoons cutting, fitting, sewing, bleeding. It looked as if a sewing shop exploded on the dance floor. As music played, we drank our tea, talked about men, and let the children run wild. Satins and baroque fluttered in a rainbow of colors across the wood while we chattered over how it was possible that Rachel Brice bends like that. I realized exactly how it must have felt for women to congregate around the sewing table long ago. It was female bonding, rich with self-confidence and self-worth. Sadly, this has become a rarity among women outside the dance studio in American culture. We are catty and competitive in the dog-eat-dog professional world. We sometimes fight for and cheat over men. We dress for each other, always seeking approval to be accepted from our own gender, the same humans who struggle, create and nurture alike. There are just not enough bonding moments among women to celebrate our sameness and accept our differences. We distinguish ourselves as mothers, a common association among most of us, or we are objectified by the media, and sometimes even devalued by both. If we are not mothers and we are not supermodels, what are we? We are sometimes lost in our identity and don’t always have female role models to help find us.

I have since completed the gorgeous purple costume and am now tackling mermaid skirts and gauntlets. I have started to transform a teal prom dress into a bra, belt and skirt set. My sewing talents have even transferred to my regular wardrobe, altering skirts and embellishing blouses. I find myself now surfing the web for design styles, rather than costumes to purchase. Watching my instructor dance flawlessly in an outfit she created that is just as flawless makes her performance all that much more inspirational for me.

This is more than beadwork, I thought to myself.  It was smiles and kind words from fabulous women of all walks of life that makes you feel everything is going to be alright even if you just destroyed your best bra. It is the delicate hands of people I love and admire, constructing creations as one-of-a-kind as the goddesses who wear them. It was seeing the finished products months later, flaws and all, which had beauty deeper than what was on the outside, like the women who wore them.

 

 

Motley Crue: Bringin Pyrotechnics- and me- Back

October 2005 were some pretty dark days for me.

Among several catastrophes I can't begin to describe, a soldier, the only soldier from my husband’s unit, was killed by an IED. Already in a state of emotional instability, the print in the Sunday newspaper leapt at me and burned my insides. With no name attached to the lost soul in the article, I kept repeating “if it were him, you would have known by now,” knowing that in the most delicate situations regarding the military, the media is the last to know.

Military funerals can’t get much more depressing. I mean, funerals in general are somber obviously, but there is some great terrible sadness that looms over a soldier’s interment. I really did not want to go, but a military friend convinced me that it would be good for me. The boots, the helmet and the rifle display, an ominous memorial still dusted with the sands of Mesopotamia. An eerie mannequin of what was his being, now blown to bits and unviewable in the coffin on the pedestal.

Looking out at a crowded auditorium of uniforms, all pressed and orderly and few tears being shed by the hardened troops of all branches that gathered there, I felt like a fool, balling my eyes out for a man I really didn’t know, who was the brother of all these men, whether they knew him or not. Every military spouse envisions herself and her husband in that place and but for the grace of God, it wasn’t my husband’s boots under his coffin and my children sobbing. That is why it is so easy to cry for a man I didn’t know.

The pain was nearly more than I could bear over the next few weeks. Soon after the soldier’s passing, and not too surprisingly but painful none the less, my brother passed away. My brother, mostly unrecognizable from debilitating cirrhosis, was visible in his coffin, unlike the soldier. His Dallas Cowboys blanket draped over him slapped me in the face as a reminder I never really knew him at all. He died in my mind much like my father - last words never being said and a lifetime of unspoken expressions lost to infinity. Two funerals weeks apart droned in my head as mind-numbing sting.

And then…as if the shadow of death had not loomed over my doorstep enough, it made a phone call. My dear high school and college friend was murdered. Another funeral, another family shattered. More acquaintances meeting under unhappy circumstances. His last words to me were that I had such beautiful skin. Its weird I remember that so clearly. His killer was never found.

Only one strange and random savior pulled me up from the drudges of the world- The Dirt, Motley Crue’s patchwork account of their rise to fame and miraculous survival of everything unholy and Rock Star-like. When tragedy strikes, they say its best to identify with other’s tragedy, offering the perspective of “I am not alone” or (at the very least) “ok…things could be worse.”

I know, it sounds completely ridiculous. Motley Crue? Poor little rich rock stars who took too much heroine? I admit I had an odd identifiable relationship with them. Or maybe I was just identifying with the feeling of sinking to the bottom of a Jack Daniels bottle.

Nikki Sixx was unloved and homeless by the age of 16. With nothing left to lose, he stole a guitar, not because he knew how to play but because he had to learn how to play to save him from living under an overpass. Vince Neil was detached and from a broken home but with rock star looks dropped out of school for something greater. Mick Marrs lived with sickness and physical pain. Tommy Lee- well he is just Tommy Lee, happy to be alive and having the only “normal” supportive parenting of the bunch. Typically, he is the only one still having a good time and completely UNsober.

The autobiography was a collection of snippets from each band member’s viewpoint on what was happening to them at the same moments of their career- tragedies, drug use, marriages and divorces, money made and lost- all the while managing to keep it together enough to make killer music. (Slash actually notes in his autobiography that Motley Crue taught Guns N Roses how to manage their tour. He really thought they were a class act. Imagine that.) The account culminates with Nikki Sixx’s notorious heroin overdose, after which he escapes from the hospital to go home and do more heroine. Unwavered by the near tragic demise of their band mate, Motley Crue pays acknowledgement to Nikki’s near death experience by writing one of their biggest hits, “Kick Start My Heart.” Nice.

I guess that’s what I identify with- keeping it all together under extreme circumstances. Making it look easy. I felt like a fucking mess, with wounds still not healed, and everyone kept telling me that I made it look easy. That they couldn’t have gone through what I had done. Fuck, sometimes you have no choice.

The book ends with Vince leaving the band. I remember feeling so angry that they could go through so much and recover only to hate each other, a greater waste than the many thousands of dollars they spent on booze and heroine. I felt such respect for the dedication and devotion they had to their music, despite the wild world that spun around them. The most unserious band, with music all about drugs, girls, sex and girls, so serious about their profession. Nikki drove the band with such conviction, he said, because he had everything to lose and nowhere to go but the streets.

At any rate, flash forward a couple of years: the band has survived reality television, Pam Anderson, and “reunion” tours of countless other lesser talents than themselves making a killing on the road and have come to realize an inspiration from 1984…Cruefest. Cruefest is this summer’s hair band festival of not-so-serious hard rockers hand-picked by Motley Crue, gathered for an evening of beer, cymbal smashing and titty cams…definitely my kind of event.

Younger groups Trapt, Buckcherry, Papa Roach, and Nikki’s newest project Sixx AM carried on the standard tattooed rocker tradition of the Crue adequately. I say adequately because everything The Dirt taught me to admire about the headliners overshadowed all others the second their presence hit the stage.

Like an army whose any single soldier is impressive but rallying together is formidable, Crue feels much more vulnerable individually than as the collective as the years have rolled over them. Vince, whose distinctive bad-boy features had every high school girl swooning in my day, appeared heavy and drunk on his reality show after the breakup. Tommy Lee became everyone’s favorite freak show with a tumultuous relationship with Pam Anderson, THE sex tape (with Pam), fights with Kid Rock (over Pam), and gradually painting every inch of exposed skin with ink (allegedly giving Pam hepatitis). All of this overshadowing his tremendous talent as a musician. None of the members has had much success starting successful individual music endeavors, including Motley Crue minus Vince Neil.

So here they were again on the stage, the power of the collective looking better than ever. Tommy was happy (his Pam back for now), Vince slim and his voice sounding as perfect as the Too Fast for Love days. Nikki still with fabulous big hair, faded tattoos freshened by new girlfriend Kat Von D and Mick, whose body was frail as ever but guitar licks monsterous. Their style had maintained the “hair band” image yet looked fresh and update and, well, as intimidating as ever. Every song was flawless, showing they still had the professionalism to pull it together with a new found seriousness. Yes, even Motley Crue found politics, shifting its banned-by-Christians-everywhere Shout at the Devil from satanic verses to political rhetoric by flashing photos of Bush giving the finger on the jumbotron.

And then there is the lost art of pyrotechnics. Pyrotechnics in the 80’s was like leather jackets, spikes and eyeliner. No respectable rock star got on stage without it. I used to compare the level of success of a band by how many fireworks flew. Then Great White put an end to it, what I thought would be forever, with their club incinerating show in 2003 that killed 97.

My hopes were raised when I saw a glimmer of gerbs at Iron Maiden this summer that pyrotechnics might be returning. The Crue, however, raised it from the dead. Reports, flame projectors, torches, airbursts, the whole deal. I would swear the displays even looked different- as if with a shorter lifespan that made me sense the band had paid a bundle for new, safer technology.

They show ended with Tommy Lee’s rendition of Home Sweet Home on a beautifully graffitied grand piano complimented by a montage of photos on the screens from childhood to the current tour. They survived, I said to myself. I survived, myself replied.