It’s the way that I move, the things that I do

I always quite liked the idea of having a secret identity. You know, fronting up at work each day and making your contribution, and then suddenly when the five o’clock whistle blows, you transform into a super hero, or a rock star, or a wrestler, or maybe even a secret agent. It keeps everyone guessing and it certainly adds an element of excitement to the daily grind. Whilst I don’t fancy the idea of getting all “Fight Club” about it, and rocking into work the next day bruised and battered and missing a few teeth, lately I’ve been harbouring a desire to add some spice to my life.

So a while ago I went along to a Richter City Roller Derby bout. It was magical – Brutal Pageant vs Trash Malice. Bogan outfits, bitchin stage names, brutality on skates. Awesome. While I enjoyed wincing at the thrills and spills with my beer in the bleachers though, it wasn’t enough to just watch, I kind of wanted in.

Skating with girls like Thigh Voltage, Goldies Spawn, Florence Might Impale, and Scarface Clawdia, I felt was going to be a good time (although somewhat painful perhaps). I left that night mulling over my stage name – Stine Roller? Chrissy Crack Her? Insanein Devane? Or maybe even Tits McGee? All viable options, I thought. I can skate, but while we never focused on brute-force-biffo at the Taihape Skating Club after school, I was confident it was something I would excel at.

When choosing a second identity though, there are a variety of factors that need to be considered, like whether it fits into your schedule and budget, the level of commitment they expect and whether that matches what you are willing to give etc. A couple of other important factors for me are:

• What are the odds of paralysis?
• Could I lose my teeth?

You may think that’s a bit drastic, but if you’re a regular reader you’ll know I don’t exactly have the best luck in the world, and have sustained fairly decent injuries from previous involvement in extra curricular activities which resulted in severe depression, social ostracism, and a bit of obesity, so I’m not that keen to put my body on the line again, to tell you the truth. That being said, I think I will just have to stick with being a roller derby enthusiast from outside of the rink. That also rights off bull riding and barrel racing which I’d also quite fancied. Damn.

So continuing on the search for a secret identity/guilty pleasure type lark, I went along to a Real Hot Bitches meeting yesterday. The Bitches are a bunch of bitches that get together to wear lycra and shake what their mothers gave them in semi-sync to big tunes of the 80’s.

I felt the low hum of uneasiness as I walked in the door – who’s that bitch? Can she dance? And who the hell does she think she is sauntering in here sans-leotard? They were threatened by the aura of cool I was emanating. If it wasn’t for the fact that I turned up in a Toyota Corolla wearing newly acquired ‘dance pants,’ I think I might have felt like a bit of an outlaw rocking in in my well-worn ACDC t-shirt and biker jacket.

Yesterday’s “choreo” though, (pronounced phonetically, FYI) was a powerfully sexy set of moves to Whitesnake’s “Here I go again.” Those bitches cut right to the core of my bogan heart with that tune, and they knew it. The dance told a story of seduction, involving Bobby, a lone wolf who is tormented by a gang of lycra-clad women writhing and thrusting their way across the stage to bath in his presence. Powerful, and subtle, all at the same time.

So yeah. Unless you can suggest any other extra curricular activities suitable for secret-identity purposes, which won’t see me losing an eye or an incisor, I am considering lending my own powerful presence to the Real Hot Bitches, in a semi-regular way.

Thoughts and suggestions are welcome. In the meantime, have a gander at this:

Together Through Life Part II

You could not even make this stuff up if you tried. So after my rant about music last night, I woke up feeling ready to rock and roll once more.

I bought the most beautiful guitar you have ever seen in your life earlier in the year, (her name is Lucinda, – just so you know) and have been feeling a bit guilty about how much I haven’t really been playing her. I took up lessons with this old rock n roller – Frank, who was great, up until he insisted I learn a couple of Sting songs. There are three men I have absolutely no room for in my life and that’s Sting, Phil Collins, and Freddy Mercury. So I don’t see Frank any more – see what I mean about being ferocious when it comes to music?

So I went into a guitar store this morning and got yarning to the bloke behind the counter. I told him about my predicament with Frank and Sting, and we spent a good wee while getting to the core of who I like and what I want to play. He said to me “I don’t get many women like you coming in here, and after spending 10 minutes with you, I have the perfect teacher in mind – you love all the same stuff and you’d get on like a house on fire – here’s his flyer, give him a call.” As my luck would have it, the teacher he had in mind has also been mentioned previously in here – the charming musician who charmed me all the way backstage at a gig and then charmingly dropped in that he’s married.

My heart was maimed in action last week already, so it didn’t really need any further surface injuries at that point. Oh well. Ordinarily, rock n roll makes me feel 10 feet tall and bullet proof, so when I sought solace in a few rocking riffs today, I was shocked and saddened that it had let me down and was openly pointing and laughing at my outrageously bad fortune in matters of the heart.

Again, you could not make this stuff up if you tried.

But on a side note, it certainly highlights how bloody small this place is. Two degrees of separation in these parts most of the time. I have a friend who reckons that there only seven people in New Zealand and I seem to know them all. Feeling the need to escape the city for a bit, Dooney and I walked the Tongariro Crossing last weekend, where I bumped into three of the seven up there. So with those three, the naughty guitar teacher, me and Dooney, that only leaves one left. The odds aren’t looking good.