Fully sick
Once again I wake up to a glorious day. The sun is shining down brightly on the freshly cleaned courtyard, heating up whatever recent mess my dog Toto made this morning.
There is the constant call of numerous birds from my window, more than likely from the terrible Indian myna. Oh what a fabulous day, you may be thinking.
Well, I can sit here and tell you how fabulous it is and how I should be out on North Bondi Beach soaking up as many rays as I can, but to be brutally honest I’m as sick as a dog. My temperature is going up and down like a seesaw and I’m coughing up things you wouldn’t want to see.
Pumped full of medication I pound away at my keyboard, each tap feeling like a hammer to my head. Although it’s the tail end of the flu, I still find myself slumping on anything that will support me. I feel like a bag of Toto’s poo, wrapped in a very glamorous Peter Alexander nightshirt.
It’s shithouse when you get a cold or flu in summer. In winter you expect to get a sniffle here and there and even the odd fever, but summer?
Which comes to my point this week: what happens when a drag queen gets sick? Is she able to throw a sickie? Is she entitled to sick pay?
The majority of showgirls are paid as contractors, so we invoice for the work we complete. Luxuries like sick pay and holiday pay are nonexistent (unless you are signed to just one venue -“ then deals would have be struck).
Most showgirls will go on no matter how sick they are -“ don’t work, don’t get paid.
Many times I have worked with either Verushka or Claire when one of them or even both of them had something fractured or cracked. They’d be jumping around like fools on stage, then straight back to the dressing room for more painkillers and a quick lie down.
Vanity Faire fractured her ankle many years ago and just put a sock over her cast and kept dancing on only one heel.
And many a time I have had severe hay fever and had to perform with no make-up on my nostrils, as I couldn’t stop them from running for days. Sneezing and coughing in every long dance break, or when I was doing a spin, kept the audience in the dark re my illness.
So next time you decide to throw a sickie or complain about having a head cold, spare a thought for that poor showgirl bound up like a Christmas turkey, madly trying to go on with a bad case of the squirts. Sometimes she makes it, other times -¦ It isn’t pretty!
