Follow the Yellow Brick Road

To go ahead and state the way way obvious, the thing that makes a tour way way different from doing any other show is the whole touring aspect - basically it's a glorified road trip with a little applause thrown in. Although it is definitely different than any road trip I've yet experienced.

To be fair, I don't have a lot of road trippin experience. When it comes to family vacations, we are, and have always been, predominately fliers. Yes, we've done driving trips, but most are day trips or under four hours. For example, we've flown down to Key West (gay vacation destination capital of the South) more than we've driven up to Ogunquit, Maine (gay vacation destination capital of the North. Yes, we like to vacation in places with lots of gay pride. As my father astutely noted, you know the restaurants are good. Plus you're pretty much guaranteed that any tourist with a fannypack is wearing it ironically, which I find very reassuring.) The only thing of note that ever happened was on one long trip (which wasn't even that long) down to Colonial Williamsburg in which my sister drew on me with a permanent marker. I know. Crazy.

Funnily enough, touring reminds me the most by far of the few seasons I spent on the competitive cheer circuit. Same size van: three rows of people putting on the type of makeup favored by renegade clowns and crackwhores. As you might imagine, the small college co-ed competitive cheer league is not a large one, so most cheer trips were only day trips. We'd roll out of the dining halls at 6:00, causing the few insane people who were awake (either runners, girls in smudged makeup doing the walk of shame, or those who were still drunk) to ask "this school has cheerleaders?" and head on down to SUNY Albany or the Basketball Hall of Fame or what have you. Usually we'd be back in time to make the pregame parties. We did, however, take one big trip: an overnight stay at a Howard Johnson in Trenton, NJ, to compete at the Trenton Arena. (Come to think of it, this may be where some of my NJ prejudices come from.) We packed a cooler full of snacks (Reduced Fat Cheez Nips, Reduced Fat Wheat Thins, Reduced Fat Cheese Sticks, Diet Coke and 5 Calorie Lemonade, causing the one straight male to growl "It's like traveling with models! I just want FULL FAT!"), curled eachother's hair, prank-called the Seventeen Magazine help-for-transgender-teens-hotline and played "Never Have I Ever" over the walkie-talkies.

As you might imagine, the biggest problem with traveling with 13 girls was bathroom breaks. (13 Cheerleaders = more diet coke than one could imagine humanly possible.) We nearly doubled the projected Mapquest time thanks to the sheer volume of bathroom breaks. Turns out, however, that bathroom breaks are an issue in any longterm van situation. And things recently took a turn that would never, ever have happened in the cheer van.

Friday afternoon rush hour. We were stuck in it pretty much bumper to bumper all along the New Jersey turnpike, the Staten Island Expressway, and 95. Right after we've left the turnpike behind, our Sound Boy announces he has to pee. Our Sound Boy is actually not only sound, but also our house manager and our understudy. He looks like a mini Justin Timberlake, has the attention span/energy of a five year old hopped up on pixie sticks at a birthday party with a clown, and is our unofficial "troubadour," as he either plays the guitar/sings in the van or controls the CD player with a somewhat iron fist. ("No! Track nine! Track nine! No, wait, it's skipping! Augh!! New CD! NEW CD! Track five! Track five! No! No! NO! No more Brittney Spears! Damn it, Stephanie! Take out 'You Drive Me Crazy' NOW!!!") As we go along, the peeing complaints increased. I wasn't really paying that much attention, as I was driving on this hellacious stretch of road and trying not ot die. Plus I was secretly a little pissed off about the Brittney Spears incident (they said in the meeting driver got to pick the music and they only let me listen to three songs on the CD!) so I was ruminating on that. And just to be perfectly clear, there were no rest stops. Nor was there anywhere to exit. Like I said, bumper to bumper traffic. Frankly I don't even know how the situation got so out of hand, as I was thinking about Ms.Spears tragic journey, and whether or not she had it in her for a comeback, when all of a sudden the shrieking informs me that Sound Boy is, in fact, peeing. In the van. In a travel coffee mug.

Needless to say, this was highly disturbing. I am not a pee in public places kind of girl. I didn't even know peopled peed in the woods until I visited my cousins in Maine when I was 6, to say nothing of vans. Actually, I knew a couple people at school who peed in vans, but that had fewer travel mugs and more community service as punishment involved. Once the shrieking died down, Sound Boy assured us that he was going to dump the pee out the window. But there really wasn't anywhere convenient to dump it. The windows in the back don't really open all the way, and we couldn't pull over - stuck in the middle lane. So we spent most of the State Island Expressway cruising along with a mugfull of pee, while someone (usually me) screamed out at sporadic intervals "I can't believe we have PEE in the VAN!!!!!!!!!!"

Eventually, something had to be done. My fearless navigator tried to take control of the situation (because really, you just can't drive down the road with a travelmug full of pee. That's unhygenic) by convincing Sound Boy to hand him the pee.

Me: Get rid of the pee!!!!
Sound Boy: The window won't open!
Navigator: Give me the pee!
Me: Don't you DARE bring that pee up here!
Navigator: Give me the pee! My window opens and I'll dump it out!
Me: That pee is NOT coming up here!
Sound Boy: I can't pass it off! There's a dribble situation on the side of the mug!
Me: Oh my GOD I don't want to know I just don't want to know!
Sound Boy: No it's fine, I got it, I got it.
Someone in the back: We can't just drive around with pee!
Me: I can't believe there's pee in the van!
Navigator: JUST GIVE ME THE FUCKING PEE!
Me (crying softly): There are so many things I could have done with my history major that didn't involve urine.

At some point, thanks to the vagaries of traffic patterns, we made it over to the right lane. Still in standstill traffic. Amidst shouts of "GO GO GO!" sound boy opened the door and dropped the entire travelmug of pee by the side of the road. Everyone then yelled "DRIVE!!!!!!" and slammed the door shut, but of course I couldn't go anywhere -traffic. So we basically pee-bombed the side of the road and then just sat there.

This was not in my contract.