Who from my labors rest

Last April, when I was a "Xanadu" dancer backing up a fabulous drag queen in the always spectacular Who's That Girl?, one of the other drag queen's choreographers saw me perform and asked me to be a backup dancer in the far more prestigious Miss Continental Pageant over Labor Day weekend.

Flattered beyond description and thrilled that I'd get to work with one of Chicago's leading dancer/choreographers, I of course screamed said yes and ran home to put it in my calendar.

The choreographer and I kept in touch over the summer, but as Labor Day approached I realized I'd never heard another word from him about doing the show. I finally called him last Tuesday to see what was up/when rehearsals were/etc. And he said: "Oh, your drag queen dropped out."

So were ya gonna call and tell me, buddy?

I was very disappointed and more than a little frustrated, but -- thinking strategically that I wouldn't want to alienate him and blow any future chances at doing more of this go-go boy stuff (which is TONS of fun) -- I played it cool and started making friendly small talk with him.

And after about the 10th time he turned our conversation to the topic of me fucking him, I realized that perhaps I was being strung along only for a sexual encounter that just wasn't going to happen. So I cordially ended our call and turned to face an ugly new reality: I'd kept my Labor Day weekend completely open for the show and now I had nothing to do. No parties. No barbecues. No weekend getaways. Nothing.

Sigh.

But then I started thinking about all the unfinished projects on my to-do list, and I decided to tackle them all. So -- big breath -- here's what I accomplished this weekend:

• I finally stenciled the bathroom, and it looks hella cool. The pattern is this swirls-and-squiggles thing that looks part Keith Haring and part Aztec and totally sweet marching joyfully around the tops of my walls.

• When I realized how wicked handsome the chocolate-brown-and-sparkly-silver stencil paint combination looked on my walls, I used it to repaint my new cubey candle shelves that Jeff made me. So now the bathroom has thematic continuity.

• I headed down to Fleet Feet on Sunday to get a new pair of running shoes so they'd be all broken in in time for the marathon. While I was there I also got padded running socks, BodyGlide to protect against unsightly chafing and a FREE moisture-wicking shirt available to every shoe-buying customer who's running the Chicago Marathon. I swear, the Fleet Feet staff is so friendly and so knowledgeable, I'd buy my crack and hookers there if they'd let me.

• Since I was in the neighborhood, I popped over to the new CB2 to look for a shelfy thing for my piano music. I not only found something I kinda liked, but I fell in love with the store's whole aesthetic. Now I desperately want to remodel my entire house in Post-Ironic Sturdy/Industrial Danish Modern -- mostly so I can casually set out troughs of fake grass and mean it.

• While I had my credit cards out, I wandered over to The Container Store so I could stare at all the crap organizers they sell and rub myself longingly. (Is their catalog little more than organizer porn or am I just writing this sentence so I could introduce the phrase organizer porn to the masses?)

• I didn't find any organizer stuff I wanted, but I did find some brushed steel box shelves on sale that would look super sweet in my bedroom. For the last three years I've had framed album covers of "A Chorus Line" and "Evita" and a framed poster of "Les Misérables" hanging over my bed, which has done very little to persuade the endless parade of muscular blond men with melon-like buttocks and thick, kissable lips in my bedroom that I'm not a bottom. I've been thinking for months that they (the show tune art, not the muscular blond men with melon-like buttocks and thick, kissable lips) needed to go, and these box shelves were exactly the kick in the bedpan that I needed to make that happen.

• When I got everything home, I realized I'd need more than a few empty box shelves to complete my over-the-bed transformation, so I dug through my box of unhung knickknacks and found a few other things to hang artfully with my shelves. I also found a bunch of crap I'd been saving that looked much better in the dumpster.

• I also decided to prime and paint the extra cubey candle shelves from the bathroom with silver stencil paint and incorporate them into my over-the-bed tableau. (I know -- it sounds like I'm hanging an awful lot over my bed and I'm clearly in danger of having things fall on my head as I sleep overdecorating, but trust me: I'm an enthusiastic disciple of Less Is More. So it's gonna look cool. Play your cards right and you just may be invited over to see it. Plus, I have a pretty big bed, so there's plenty of room for visitors who compliment my decorating skills to romp between the sheets with me hanging things with judicious restraint.)

• While I had the primer out, I decided I should also prime and paint the ugly white conduit that was installed around my bedroom walls when the building got cable a couple years ago.

• While I had the furniture pulled out, I realized I really should thoroughly vacuum along the baseboards in the entire house. After all, it had been 3 1/2 years, and the dust buffaloes were starting to herd.

• And since the house was pulled apart in every direction, I also decided it was the perfect time to do a bunch of laundry as well and let it hang to dry from every available surface.

Whew. As of this writing, some things aren't totally finished -- that stencil paint takes longer to dry out than Rush Limbaugh -- but I slept a very satisfied sleep last night knowing that it didn't really matter that my crappy friends didn't invite me to any of their crappy Labor Day barbecues. Because I had important decorating things to do.

(OK, I did go to Jeremy's last-minute get-together on Sunday night and a nice last-minute dinner with Bob, David and Steve on Monday night. But the operative words here are "last-minute." I am a Boy of Destiny! I want my social life scheduled in advance!)