Reality check…

Being able to write about a day in my life that sounds like a B horror film = Hell to the Yes.

Truth: I had never in my life been asked to be a bridesmaid before.

I just got back from tour when there was an email waiting for me from my friend, Julie Atlas Muz, asking me if I wanted to be a bridesmaid for her upcoming wedding.

The word bridesmaid instantly plunges me into nightmare thoughts of:

• chartreuse colored
• taffeta
• puff sleeved despair

Are you with me?

The kind of dress that will make you hate yourself AND your friend getting married.

Google “ugly bridesmaid dresses” and tell me if you still believe in God after looking at what appears on your screen.

But this email from Julie goes something along the lines of this:

“The commitment for being my bridesmaid is as follows:

1. Provide your own zombie schoolgirl outfit.
2. Show up to rehearsal.
3. Cover yourself in blood.”

Check. Check. And CHECK!

About that rehearsal….

We were a bunch of half naked girls in a dressing room pulling on Catholic schoolgirl outfits and smearing fake blood on each other. I borrowed Amanda Palmer’s scissor to cut off part of my top. I feigned makeup inadequacy so Gabrielle St. Eve would lovingly and expertly affix dead white powder to my skin. I licked Jo Weldon’s faux bloody chest gash….and I liked it.

I was in my own personal version of undead heaven.

At the wedding, we huddled behind the door in the hallway until we were announced. And then we started beating on the doors in a slow, loud, zombie frenzy. Then we poured through the doors and attacked the guests.

You know….what you always wish you could do at weddings.

Then the bride walked down in the aisle in a custom Machine Dazzle dress to Queen’s “Wedding March” from Flash Gordon.

Jo Weldon sat in my lap the entire wedding. Sure, there were seats to sit in. But there was also my lap.

Excellent choice, Jo.

And somewhere in all of this, when we were all outside together as the sun was setting, I stopped for a moment and looked around. Burlesque girls, fierce queens, circus sideshow legends, world renowned musicians, artists, actors, and storytellers.

And I was there in the middle of them…..

covered in blood

dressed up like a zombie schoolgirl.

I almost started to cry with my overwhelming magic of life.

My 9 year old self is fucking psyched that this is what growing up looks like.