During the opening weekend at the Sundance Film Festival, Jon and I were invited up by a few friends to see the John Legend concert and then hit a few of the other parties. We weren’t in Park City for more than a couple of minutes before we remembered why we usually avoid the festival: parking four miles out of town, waiting 45 minutes for the shuttle bus in sub-zero temperatures, and then the smothering crowd of people along Main Street, shoulder-to-shoulder, barely able to move a single inch on the sidewalk. While arguing with the bouncer at the first club about whether or not we were worthy or holy enough to enter, we saw someone famous cross the street. I knew that I had seen her somewhere before, I just couldn’t place her face, and a few seconds later Jon causally leaned down and whispered her name in my ear. “That’s Miss USA,” he said. I assume he knows this only because he has seen her in a bikini? And not because he remembers that her evening gown was just so fabulous?
I am not very good at maintaining the celebrity-lay person code of conduct where you’re just supposed to let the celebrities go on living their lives and pretend that you don’t want to run up and lick them on the face, so I cupped my hands around my mouth and hollered, “MISS AMERICA! MISS AMERICA!” Right, except she wasn’t Miss America, my mistake, how was I supposed to know when only two seconds ago my husband had whispered her correct title in my ear? Was I supposed to be paying attention? Because I wasn’t, I was busy plotting out how I could fling my body in the air and wrap it around her head. That’s how I show my patriotism.
After dancing like mad at the John Legend concert we all tried to get into a few other parties but couldn’t because of OFFICIAL VIP LISTS and a whole litany of other ridiculous things like FIRE CODES and MAXIMUM CAPACITIES, whatever, those are just fancy terms for YOU AREN’T PRETTY ENOUGH, ALTHOUGH WE WILL CHANGE OUR MINDS IF YOU SLIP US A FIFTY. So we ended up at the Queer Lounge where I watched several young men undress my husband with their lurid imaginations. I suggested that he might not want to make eye contact, at least not for longer than a second because that would probably lead to all sorts of uncomfortable conversations about how he’s married to a woman, sorry, and yeah, she was born with a vagina. A real live one.
So my friend and I leave Jon and our other friends to head to the ladies room which is just outside a door and down the hall from the club, and when we try to go back they tell us that they can’t let us in because they’ve reached capacity. So we have to go back down and outside again to stand in line and wait for a few other people to clear out. And all I can think about is my pasty white, six-foot-three-inch tall husband standing there nodding his head back and forth to the THUMP THUMP THUMP of the techno upstairs, wondering where the hell his wife has gone, surrounded by all these nubile, sweaty young men who are probably at this point thinking, DUDE! HE DITCHED THE VAGINA! DIBS!
So I go up to the bouncer and I’m all, listen, all I did was go to the bathroom and they won’t let me back in, and get this, my very Mormon husband? He’s upstairs. Alone. And he’s frightened. You understand?
When I am standing at the judgment bar of God answering for all my transgressions, I am going to have a hard time apologizing for this one. Especially since the bouncer let me in.