creating a/broad, May 3, 2014

Hang Out With Me While I Pack
by Cameryn Moore
@camerynmoore

Hi, thanks, no, I’m fine, everything’s good, I just have to pack up, you don’t mind if I keep working, do you? Great.

No, my plane’s not until Sunday night, but I have to drop the Deerinator off at summer camp on Saturday afternoon, at a friend’s house two hours outside of Montreal, so I actually only have 24 hours to do it. Seriously, it’s summer camp. Last year I left my car for six weeks at a friend’s house in Hamilton and a mouse took up residence. Four months? We could be looking at a whole encampment of badgers, or whatever the hell else rummages around in the woods out there. Bears, maybe. Moose. Do the Eastern Townships have moose? So I can’t leave food stuff in my car, and although my friend said he’d drive the car around a few times a month, I’m a little scared that where he wants me to park it will actually swallow the Deerinator whole in a gaping maw of spring mud. I don’t have any other options, though. Got to put it somewhere for the summer. 

Oh, god, a whole summer without my car, what the fuck. The thought strikes almost as much terror in my heart and dread in my stomach as the idea of talking to British immigration officials again. It’s just my American ear, I’m sure, but they always sound so disapproving.

Gotta work fast today, I’m even hoping to catch a friend’s burlesque show tonight, Acme Burlesque doing a James Bond-themed evening. It’d be nice to have a night off, let’s see if I can make that happen. I’m just crossing my fingers I get no more calls on my last day on the lines. The wankers interrupt my packing flow. It’s not their fault. I have to have a last day at some point. 

It’s not my last last day, forever out of phone work. I mean, it might be. Maybe I’ll just, you know, blow up out there, hit the big time. But that’s the Edinburgh madness talking, that’s not going to happen, probably not, not right now. I don’t think that’s fatalistic or self-sabotage, just good preparation. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. I’m planning to be back on the lines in four months, that’s what I’m telling the callers, at any rate. Between now and then, no more calls to me, boys. Y’all can get off with someone else’s help.

Fuck. I wish I could just drive across Canada with everyone else this year.

This shit. Look at all this shit. This debris that I’m lying in, that I’m surrounded by as I write this. This is the part of moving that I always hate, the little bits, the tiny pieces that I manage to strew around if I’m in a place for longer than a week. Do I need this extension cord, these bloomers, these leggings, this book, these unscented menstrual pads with wings? Everyone says if you can buy it over there, then don’t bring it, but those people must have more money than I do, fuck. I can’t buy everything over again. And the only pads I saw in Brighton—the last place I had my period in the UK—they were all scented, so the pads are coming.

These little pieces of paper and knick knacks and kitcheny trifles take so much longer to pack because I’m dithering, dithering. I want to be comfortable, and at the same time I can’t haul around a bunch of sentimental shit. That’s why I’m not taking my tutu. I wore that once in Edinburgh last year and it was pointless. Tutu stays.

And other things, I know damn well that I can get them over there, I’d just like to not have to run out and get them first thing, before I’ve had time to do a show or get my bearings. Like, I have those little laundromat-vending-machine bottles of detergent, surely just one, for the first two loads, that’d be nice to have on hand. Makeup sponges. Fuck, makeup remover, I will be spending at least a half-hour cleaning out my travel toiletries bag and transferring makeup remover into a little travel bottle that I know is going to break anyway.

God, I have to finish this and start on packing my tables and the chair. These babies carry tons of stuff when I take ‘em overseas. Well, not tons, around 50 pounds is the max, but you know, stuff I don’t bother with when I’m just lugging them around in my car. In the car, I just use a bunch of reusable grocery bags. In air travel, of course, precision packing is the name of the game. Everything I need, nothing that I don’t.

Fuck. I wish I could just drive across Canada with everyone else this year. I will have been off the Canadian circuit for three years by the time I come back in 2015. What if they forget about me?

Sex toys, most of those stay, yeah. I mean, it’d be nice to meet a lot of people to get frisky with, but who has time for that shit, really? And it’s just more questions at the airport. I don’t mind answering, but I’ll be doing enough education once I actually start performing, you know? I can rest up a little before then.

Where are my orange mitts? It gets cold over there in Edinburgh. My little baggie of pound coins is rattling round somewhere too.  Oh, and the Ziploc baggie starts now. You know, the baggie that you put all the receipts into. I’ve got some from the last two months in my wallet, gonna dump those out and start fresh. Everything. Fresh. Starting Sunday evening, I am on my own again. There will be receipts to put in this banged-up bacon-print wallet. 

That’s the one true constant. There will always be receipts.

camerynmoore.com