Surviving another Beyond Vanilla

Beyond Vanilla, the yearly celebration of all things kinky in Dallas has been pat of our city's Leather community for 21 years. For many of those years I have been a part of the event, either as an attendee, presenter or organizer.  This year I served on the organizing committee as entertainment chair and figured I would be getting off easy.  Not so fast.

My chief duty was producing a show for Friday night entertainment and helping out with things during the Teeter Totter-a-thon, the fund-raising and fun event that benefits Bryan's House.  How hard could it be?

Well, considering the fact that I always bite off a bit more than I can chew, pretty hard, but fun.  The Friday night show was my chief concern.  Since it was our 21st year and we had adopted a Las Vegas theme (21 and all) I figured a Burlesque Review would be the kind of thing that would be perfect.

Enter my friend Lillith Grey.  Lillith is a very attractive woman, a Leather activist, a burlesque performer, a producer and PhD candidate. She generously offered a list of performers she thought would be suitable for our show.

Thanks to YouTube, I managed to view most of the performers acts and put together a roster of folks who would give the show the kid of pizazz I thought it deserved.  Now, all we needed was a stage, lights, sound and Las Vegas table games to round out the decor.

All day Friday, with the help of my friends Ron, Steven and Claire we assembled the stage, put up the lights and wired up the sound system, By 4:00pm everything actually worked and all that was left was performers, dealers for the Blackjack tables and our DJ for the evening.

After a last minute scare when one performer got lost on the freeway, we ran though the show and it came off flawlessly.

What I forgot was, taking everything down.  Surprise!  Forgot to schedule volunteers to help.  Today, I managed to rope Ty into assisting and we are loading the car this morning.

Now I know why I will never join the Circus.  It's all glitter and lights during the show, but mainly a lot of back breaking work before and after that nobody sees.  Ah the glamor of show business!