I wished I looked as classy. Valka had loaned me one of her party dresses, a strappy gown that swooped down low on the chest, and was shredded at the bottom and covered with sequins so that it looked like my legs were covered with shiny feathers. On her I was sure the dress would look glamorous, but on me it looked like I was trying to grow up fast. Valka helped me tease out my hair and told me I looked like I could be in a Bon Jovi video. “You’re a vixen,” she said.
I did not want to be a vixen. I did not know what I wanted to be, but a vixen did not seem like the kind of thing that would come natural to me. I missed my flip-flops the minute I slipped on Valka’s patent leather high heels. “They’re fuck-me shoes,” said Valka. She scared me sometimes. I stared down and wondered how I was going to last in them all night, and if I really was required to have sex with someone when I was wearing them. Maybe I was a fraud if I wore these shoes. I had been with my husband for so long. And things had never been right in that area anyway. I had thought about what it would be like to have sex with someone else, sure. To see if it could be better. Or different anyway. But to fuck? That was a real particular kind of act. Fucking was like howling at the moon, and I was no stray. Or had not been one in my past. I suddenly wanted to rip the shoes off my feet and throw them across the room. Who knew there could be so much trouble with just one pair of shoes?
But there she was, so happy to see me like that, so then there I was, a rock-and-roll vixen for the night. And later on we were going to an after-party where all the stars would be; Valka had found out about it from some fan club mailing list she was on. She was going to get to meet the Beatles at last.
But first, the show! Oh, what a show that was! All of the performers really sounded and looked just like who they were pretending to be. I thought it would be creepy, but I really got caught up in it, like everyone around me. Lots of people were dressed up like me and Valka, like we all could have been extras in a music video for all the different bands, or in the bands themselves. Even before the show started it was fun pointing at all the different costumes, the Elton Johns with crazy disco suits and big sunglasses, and Michael Jacksons made up to look like they were zombies from that ancient “Thriller” video, and Dolly Partons, big blondes with big fake inflatable chests (both men and women were dressed as Dolly), and Tina Turners in short skirts and high heels and big spiky wigs. The grossest and weirdest were all the older women dressed up like Cher, wearing these see-through body suits with ribbons covering their private areas just like in that video where she was dancing around on top of a huge boat in front of a bunch of soldiers. There was a huge crowd of them that had all come together. Their bodies bulged in all different directions out of their suits and they were drunk as skunks and cackling loudly. “Icky,” said Valka, when I pointed them out. She had become a real lady in that outfit of hers.
And then the show started, and we sat back with some cocktails. What a ride. From the minute the curtain came up, you did not have a moment to think, they would not let you. There were lights and the music coming from the stereo was so loud it was like a fire engine right next to your head. The sets kept changing every time there was a different performer so there was always something new to look at. First there was just an explosion of girl performers all at once: Joan Jett and Pat Benatar and Gwen Stefani and Mariah Carey, all howling out their greatest hits in under three minutes each. The risers looked like city buildings, and they moved up and down when each performer was beginning. Then the city lights turned out, and all of a sudden there was a sunset with real ripples of water for the Beach Boys, and what looked like real sand, too. “How did they do that?” I said to Valka. I had smelled the ocean, I was sure of it, even though I had never even been to one before.