Latex Dysfunction, Continued! (Patreon)

"My mind was elsewhere"

ON WHAT, ESS?! I heard you all screaming at your phones/laptops/morning coffee over yesterday's morning update cliffhanger.

Well, dear patrons, I was highly distracted by the draft bodysuit that Marika had drafted for us. 

Was I distracted because it was beautiful and elegant-looking and I just couldn't stop staring at myself in the mirror? Unfortunately, no.

Was I concerned that the lingerie look of it all was cut a little too high in the bum and I should have asked for a more modest design?

COME ON, FRIENDS, OF COURSE NOT! (hehe)

No, no. My mind was fully preoccupied by the fact that I'd just realized that this beautiful latex bodysuit, this not-small-aspect of the overall costume design, simply wasn't going to work and I was 10 days out from shooting the act.

As it turns out, installing a drive-through zipper in a latex catsuit is a very different thing than installing a drive-through zipper in a scanty little latex bodysuit. Latex stretches in all directions. The stretchiest latex catsuits actually don't have zippers at all! They're called 'neck-entry catsuits' and the name says it all. Imagine that scene from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective where Jim Carrey is climbing out of the fake rhino he was spying on poachers with, but in reverse – and that's pretty much what it looks like to get into one of those garments. I've worn a neck-entry suit only a few times, and each time I have required a dresser to help me get into the damn thing. Once you're in, however, it fits beautifully. Nothing feels restricted in your movement. 

Zippers, on the other hand, are fairly useful in facilitating ease in other important aspects of wearing latex. For example – if you plan on mundane bodily functions happening like, you know, using the washroom occasionally over the course of the day, you'd better believe a zipper comes in REAL handy. 

In the case of this act, the drive-through zipper idea was in place because it needed to function like a burlesque costume piece. Normally, burlesque ladies cover up their midsections with cute, flattering little corsets. But, the steel boning present in a corset is a dealbreaker for a contortion act. It would keep me from bending entirely! Thus, the bodysuit idea was born. It would cover my midsection, and come off in a fun way that would eat up a bit of time between trick sequences and let me catch my breath.

Ohhhh, how wrong I was, dear patrons. Turns out that went you install a 36" front-to-back zipper in a garment as scant as the bodyuit Marika designed, very little fabric can actually stretch anymore.

The result?

(1) Getting punted ingloriously and messily out of every contortion handstand I attempted to bend my back in, AND 

(2) the fantastically unpleasant experience of feeling like the garment had turned into a horror-movie torture contraption, to the effect of it forcefully trying to saw me in half from the pelvis up with a dull one of those wire-style cheese cutters any time I moved my body into a halfway-deep backbend position.

Yeah. I know.

If reading that description made you ~uncomfy~, then just multiply that and imagine the physical sensation.10/10 DO NOT RECOMMEND.

I should have known in that moment of the first handstand that this bodysuit idea was OFF THE TABLE. But did I stop? No! Of course not! That would imply that I wasn't flustered by the distant alarm bell ringing in my head that a major re-design was probably on the fast-approaching horizon with VERY LITTLE TIME TO ACCOMPLISH IT.

So, like any good chicken-with-their-head-cut-off, I decided to just keep trying the handstands. 

I was (have been) (still am) very frustrated with the inconsistency of my contortion handstand entries during the course of this creation. Is that a reasonable thing to be irritated with myself about given that it's really only been a couple short weeks that I've been able to get fully back into a contortion range of motion without agonizing nerve pain from the injury I had earlier this summer? No! Of course not! But here we are.

I placed my gloved hands in the widest position I could manage, preparing to do a sideways penché entry into the handstand trick sequence that ends in me slowly lowering myself to the ground gracefully, slowly, as if every fibre of my pec muscles and triceps aren't screaming bloody murder.  My thumbs and fingers had a firm grip on the black Marley dance floor (aka fancy vinyl); the latex covering the palm of my hand had an even firmer grip on the floor. But my dumb, sweaty little hands were absolutely swimming with perspiration inside the gloves.

I shifted my body weight over my hands, took a breathe, and squeezed myself up and over to get into the handstand position. 

My legs arched over my head (OW, stupid bodysuit, went my internal monologue). 

My back settled into the engaged softness needed to create a beautiful arched contortion shape. 

I took another breath. Slow, slow, slow, I told myself. Don't rush the push-up. Control. Control it.    And as I was finishing my internal pep-talk and beginning my slow descent, my right hand went ZSSSTHWIP!!!! ––

––and rotated out sideways inside the damn latex glove, which stayed firmly fixed to the floor.

I gasped as the torqued wrist stopped handstanding and crashed down hard. Simultaneously, the end of one of the underwire cups in the CURSED BODYSUIT erupted from its slender latex prison, giving me what I'm convinced was at least 1/4 of a nipple piercing that I didn't want, AND! the  beautiful, heavy, decorative beaded tassel at the top of the bodysuit's 36" zipper managed to find a position squarely over my solar plexus as I plummeted down toward earth.

OUT went my wrist, STAB went the wire, SMASH went the tassel.

My other hand instantly shot to my twisted wrist, gripping it as hard as it could as I lay there, ignominiously winded by a beaded doo-dad, pierced by an errant underwire. 

No no no no no – my brain jabbered away in an instant panic loop, focusing on the wrist above everything else. 

Ow ow ow OW OW NO THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.   

 Ice. Ice. You need to ice this right now, said the calmer voice in my head.  

 I stumbled up and over to the small side table next to the studio stereo, fumbling my water bottle open. There were still a few ice cubes left inside – I clumsily fished them out, splashing freezing water over myself and half the table in the process. I sat there doing Lamaze panic-breathing and staring blankly at the ice cubes slowly melting over the abused hand. Trying to stave off thoughts of the unacceptable. Don't even think it, don't even think it, don't even th–   WHAT IF YOU'VE JUST INJURED YOURSELF LIKE AN IDIOT AND ALL THIS WORK JUST WENT DOWN THE DR–

No. No, we're not doing that, I told the panicky voice.   Soon enough, the paltry amount of ice in my water bottle was gone. I wiped my snotty nose, packed up my things, and took myself home to bury my wrist in proper ice packs for the next hour.

Hard Lesson Learned #1:

Latex is a slip-hazard. Either powder the CRAP out of your garments to soak up sweat, and RE-powder in between runs, or change the design. Or both.

[ I did both ]

Hard Lesson Learned #2:

Avoid full-body zippers that will betray you and try to saw you in half, and/or beaded extravagances that will attempt to take out a rib if you land on them.

Or something along those lines.

* * * * *

I won't be so cruel today as to leave you all cliff-hanger'd, since the shoot for this act is in TWO DAYS. 

I'm pleased to report that,  moral-crushing as this rehearsal and latex experience was, my ice-the-crap-out-of-it + ibuprofen response had me able to continue on with my rehearsal schedule. I probably scared myself more than actually hurt myself.

But LAWD, DID I SCARE MYSELF.

I called Marika on the drive home from that rehearsal and we immediately sketched out a back-up plan for the costume. I picked up the FINISHED PIECES yesterday morning and will be shining them up and taking them for a test-drive tomorrow -- ! 

I think sharing the photos of the finished latex with you all tomorrow is the PERFECT WAY to put a button on this lead-up process you've all been with me on, leading up to recording the demo.

Keep hangin' in there, the week's almost over!

XO

Ess