The Big Crunch (Part 1) (Patreon)

Back at the start of June, my European agent sent me a message on WhatsApp:
Ess …. Would/could you come to Switzerland in autumn for a month?

We talked on the phone a  week later.
It was to be a high-end dinner cabaret in the heart of Zurich, put on by the same producer who’d offered me and the VACUUM act a spot on the show he was producing for the company Ohlala (before the pandemic ruined all our plans).

The dinner cabaret would likely fall in the month of September. My technician, Miranda, was available and willing ("As long as it doesn't interfere with Hallowe'en gigs, I'm good," she assured me). It would be over before the next season of Motherland: Fort Salem, if it gets renewed. The gig sounded pretty perfect, all around.

We chatted a little longer about what else I had going on at that moment: a couple stunt gigs for different TV shows, one of them involving a full-enclosure catsuit made by none other than the fabricator that made the tower apparatus for VACUUM.

“I get to keep the catsuit after the gig is done, too!” I told her excitedly. “I’ll have to make something with it, maybe a solo contortion act or something.” It’s not every day that you get to keep a custom-built catsuit modified specially for contortion (without heavy modifications, if you want to have your arms overhead for any period of time you have to be either Arnold Schwarzenegger to be strong enough to resist the tug of the heavy rubber, and/or extremely lucky that all that brute force/strain on the seams doesn’t make the whole outfit burst at the seams like an overfilled balloon).

My agent responded by sending me four or five pictures of her niece getting married in the Ukraine and - for some reason - several dogs (no, they weren't her dogs)(just... random dogs). I took it as a pleasant but meaningless end to our conversation.

That was a gross misunderstanding on my part, as it turned out.

On June 22nd, the European agent messages me again:
Gooood morning! Do you have that Latex-Video already?!

Errr … “Do you mean … the new act concept I was telling you about? The one outside the tower / just me?”

“–Yes, he’s interested in that also.”

“–Because if that’s what you’re referring to, then no – not yet, not even close.”

“Ah. I mean the act in latex?!”

“That act is easily 6 to 8 months away,” I wrote, anxiety mounting. “There’s research and development that needs to happen even before choreography starts.”

“Then I [sic] miss understood.”

“Is he still interested in the tower act?”

“You mean VACUUM?”

“Yes, I mean, is he still interested in VACUUM?”

“Doch. Yes, VACUUM.”

I wished her a good weekend, put my phone down, and walked away with an uneasy feeling.

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[to be continued...]