Mary Bellamy

Sometimes I love Fairbanks. Saturday was one of those times.

My main goal for the day was to get done up for the evening. It was not just any evening, but Harvest Ball, the biggest gay event of the year. Naturally, Gary was my date, but he had promised to dress up for me. In turn, I took a shower around noon and set my hair in fingerwaves. I've been obsessed with vintage hairstyles for a while, and my fingerwaves have been coming along nicely. With my hair and makeup did, I pulled out my trusty prom dress. Vintage green polyester with some nice beads - I got it for $1 at a flea market in 1993 or 1994 and wore it to my senior prom. Since I'm still wearing it 15 years later, I'd say I got my money's worth. However, it lost the "best bargain" title because I also wore my full-length fur coat. $0.99 at Value Village!

Gary, Liz, Hayley and I met up at the Carlson Center. Being a gay event, naturally there was a drag show. I've seen some of those ladies give better performances, but the crowd was still going crazy.

Liz and I also performed a poi fusion routine. I was conflicted, because generally in a drag show, performers collect tips. Collecting tips form the audience while dancing is just too close to stripping for me. I already have a co-worker who refers to every performance as a "hoochie coochie dance." I have no issue with other performers collecting tips, and honestly I think we should be rewarded for our work, but we certainly weren't going to deviate from our choreography to accept crumpled dollar bills. Sorry, it's not something we work on during our two hours of rehearsal each week. However, while we were dancing, several members of the audience came up and quietly placed money in a tip basket near the stage. I assume it was shared among all the performers at the end of the night. I don't know, since we were long gone by then.

Rather than sticking around until the bitter end, the four of us grabbed some more folks and headed over to the Boatel. If you've never been to the Boatel Sleazy Waterfront Bar, it's pretty much summed up by its named. One fellow bought Liz some Scotch to celebrate her passing another milestone for her Ph.D., and I had an unfortunate martini involving green bean juice, as they were completely out of olives.

As I left the bar that night, I saw my first northern lights of the season dancing across the sky. It's still unseasonably warm, so I stood outside in strappy sandals and my senior prom gown, taking in the beauty of the aurora. Sometimes that's all that it takes to make me happy.