VACUUM DEBUTS: 30th Anniversary Northbound Leather Fetish Party (Patreon)

I'm hovering around the backstage area, flitting in and out of the green room to make sure that no one has disturbed the web of CAUTION tape I've strung around the tower.
There's a lot of hired staff here tonight, a lot of performers, a lot of DJs.
Lots of people who have no idea that their really cool rings and very spiky boots and various sharp piercings could lay waste to my new, expensive balloon-baby in one fell poke.

I'm nervous.

Really nervous.

"It's because you wish you had more rehearsal time," Tig says to me on the phone. "I know you. If you could have it your way you would have rehearsed for hours and hours more. But it's gonna be good. You're going to get up there, you're going to learn a lot, and you're going to apply it."

Tig's advice is very practical but does nothing to alleviate my anxiety at this precise second.
Oh god please let the latex not rip.
Oh god please let the latex not rip WHILE I AM INSIDE IT.
Please let there be no power malfunctions.
Please let me not fall over inside this thing in front of 600 people.
What if the vacuum's are so loud that no one can hear the music?
How can I make the vacuum's quieter?
What if it's all just too slow? What if everyone is bored? What if – 

There's not much more time for 'what if's though – 
Zel and Jasper and Miranda are carefully ferrying my tower and it's various accoutrements through the side door of backstage, up onto the elevated platform of the stage.

I take a deep breath.
I hold it.
I let it out slowly.
I do that again.
And then I do it in a contortion handstand, toes grazing the wall for balance while I close my eyes and try to find a smooth, easy, balanced place inside myself.

Chill the fuck out, man.

I'm wearing the nude thong that amounts to the entirety of my costume, with a black robe over top of it so that I'm not basically naked walking out there to get into the tower.

Zel's head reappears through the double doors of the sidestage.
Go time.

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There's cheering and screaming the second I walk out on the platform of the stage. 

Something to be desired here, I think to myself. I pad quickly barefoot across the surface of the stage to Tiffany, crouched behind the tower and getting the vacuums in place and the gasket ready.
It's not like we had stage partitions that we could hide me in. Maybe I should have been more hidden or wrapped up in fabric. A little more mystery.
Oh well. Is what it is, today. Not like they haven't seen bits and pieces of what's about to happen all over Facebook for the last week.

Tiffany gives me a smile.
I crawl in to the tower, slithering in on my belly, head-first, trying not to stress this small opening of latex in any way before we get going. I get the upper half of my body in, twist around halfway, and carefully maneuver my legs and feet all the way inside the tower.

I stay crouched on the ground, doing a visual check of the interior.
Nothing looks out of place; there's my breathing tube; the tape on my toes is holding still, that's good. Okay.
Deep breaths. Nice and calm. Good run.

The DJ fades her set off into silence, and I hear the first heavy, bass-y thuds of the heartbeat in the soundscape that Greg Harrison created for me.
I reach slowly for the breathing tube. I have no idea what the lights look like behind me or in front of me; if I'm backlit in any way, folks out front will see my silhouette. Better to err on the side of caution and make sure that any movement I'm doing is in line with the rest of the piece.

I bite down on the breathing tube, slowly rounding my spine up vertebrae by vertebrae to standing, letting one hand drift forward out of the murkiness to press up against the front wall of latex. Hello, I'm here.

The crowd screams. Don't get too excited just yet, I think.

Tiffany's turned on both vacuums and my world inside is rapidly shrinking. I shift myself to the back of the volume and arrange my limbs in the jumble of separate pieces that will appear to the audience with the rest of me hidden to the back.

The vacuum releases; I find my way to the next shape, just a floating torso in the midst of all that latex. There's a human in here.

The latex swells and constricts around me, breathing, releasing, and I allow myself to crumple slowly to the floor in preparation for the first trick of the act. There's a transition that has to happen first though – a sequence in bridge, with air fully inflating the volume.
I sense an unfamiliar vibration through the latex; a distinct little thump.
Oh no, I think.
Please don't be – 
And as I slowly maneuver my bridge to twist around and fade back into the rear of the volume, I see it: 

The breathing tube has completely fallen out of its port.

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Shit fuck shit fuck shit shit shit.
The music is very loud. It's very dark at the back of the tower, where Tiffany is seated. I don't know if she'll be able to see or hear me to tell her not to punch the vacuum on again. This is exactly what I was worried could happen in this apparatus, in this situation.

I know that Tiffany is going to think she needs to turn the vacuum on again in just a moment.
What are my options.
I can decide that that breathing tube isn't going back where it's supposed to, and ... what ... hold my breath for every one of these shapes for the rest of the act?!?!?

Hard no.

Fuck it.

I stand up, breaking 'character' (not that we can quite call it that at this point, but, y'know...) with swift and decisive movement.

BVVVVVVVVVV --!

Tiffany's punched the vacuum on.

Very little time now.

I grab the inside edges of the breathing tube port, fishing the end up the breathing tube up towards it with the other. The latex 'neck' of the port is long, and patched just this morning. Don't fucking tear it don't fucking tear it, I think, as I shove the tube through it as delicately as I can in the zero-time-allowance that is happening.

I can't have it fall out again. It's just gonna have to be stuck way through. Too bad about how it looks.
 
Okay.

Okay. 

I've got it.

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I shove the free end of the breathing tube between my teeth, clamping down hard on it as I drop down to my forearms and begin fighting the encroaching latex to get my feet upwards and forwards in the volume into some semblance of the trick I've choreographed.

I make it.

Somehow.

The crowd is quieter though . . .

Did I lose them in the transition? Are they bored? I wonder how much of the breathing tube thing they saw . . . 

There's nothing you can do about it if the drunken hordes out there are bored. Just keep going. They have no idea what you're about to do next. 

I plant my hands firmly on the ground and move into the first of my three big handstand poses.

"JESUS."

"WHAT. THE. FUCK."

"I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW THEY'RE BREATHING."

A chorus of inebriated confusion rises up in a wave from the crowd and crashes through the latex as the walls fully lock me in to what I'm confident is a really good S-handstand. Yes.

I smile to myself inside the volume. Now we're talking.
'Classic' is next: I plant my hands firmly on the floor panel of latex and carefully press up into a handstand. I let my toes delicately trace over the PVC tubing on the inside, avoiding the latex, and drive my feet down towards the front panel of latex until my heels are in line with my chin.

BVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV - !

The vacuum hits its final, higher-pitched whine and I know it's about to fully close me in. The crowd is losing it out there. I know this shape looks right. I nail the next handstand too, and by the time the latex encloses me fully in the final floating 'fetus' shape I know that I've done it.

I let myself sink slowly down through the latex and air begins to rush back into the volume. Tiffany opens the gasket at the bottom and the tower completely re-inflates.

That's it. You did it. It's done. That was good. Good job.

The worst thing that could have happened, happened.
And I figured it out.
No traumatic experiences inside the tower.
Check.

Wait - except a blowout - that is also one of the Really Bad Things that could ha–
Stop it. Didn't happen. Stop thinking about it.

I didn't even notice the sound of the vacuums.
I could hear the track just fine.
I got some audience reactions.
Okay, then.
Okay, then!

Tiffany holds the opening of the tower for me and I slither my sticky, sweaty self out of the volume. The crowd it yelling at the top of its lungs, but right now I'm insulated from that between the vacuum tower and the DJ booth in the inky, unlit darkness of that small space.

"Go bow!" Tiffany says, grinning.

"I – uh – crap, where's that robe –"

We scrabble around in the dark, finally landing on the piece of silky fabric, and Tiffany shakes it open and lets me shove my arms through the sleeves of it. Maybe this is redundant, it's not like they didn't just see me pretty much naked anyways inside the tower for the last 8 minutes. 

I stand up, holding the edges of the robe closed in the front anyways, and take a few steps forward, around my tower and toward the edge of the stage.

Blink blink.

I didn't understand how massive this crowd was.
It's an absolute horde of humans, all in their shiny black PVC and latex and leather, arms snaking high in the air, yelling at the top of their lungs, piercing whistles cutting through the wall of sound.
I know that Marika and Douglas, who made my tower, are out there. I hope they liked it. I really hope they feel proud looking at what they made up on stage.
I know that Tig is out there, somewhere, in his fancy Fluevog heels. I hope it was good enough. I hope he thought it was good.
I know that friends and acquaintances from past life chapters and current ones are all out there, hopefully responsible for some of all that cheering. I hope it was what they thought it would be. Or better than what they thought it would be. Something.

I see Zel and Jasper out of the corner of my eye, hurrying in to start striking the tower and vacuums off the stage for the next act.
I smile, small. Blink blink. And make myself take a small bow.
I let myself look up and out over the crowd one more time, trying to take in the enormity of people in front of me.
I wave a little bit.
And then I run away, back to the relative quiet and bright lights of backstage.
Dazed.

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