"Where's Celexo?"

I'm celebrating my 100th post today: it all started back on Nov. 17th, as I was laid up with a broken foot, and look how far we've come. In honor of this milestone, I've decided to enter story number 3 into the vast collection of Celexo's Great Stories. Past editions include the great debacles in Vegas and on the camping trip from hell. And today's story, titled "Where's Celexo", is quite certainly a debacle to the nth degree.

The Time: 2003, Summer
The Place: Opera Theater of St. Louis, as Celexo was working his first union crew gig
The Players: Celexo, age 24; Celexo's Dad; Andrea, aka "Goth" Chic; various other crew members

That summer was quite an enjoyable experience for me. It was the first time I had worked on an official backstage crew before, and it was doubly interesting because the company worked in repertory, which meant that instead of producing one opera at a time, they put on an entire season within the span of a month (or 5 weeks?). Anyway, this meant that crew members had to break down and load in a new show everyday, sometime twice a day (matinee + evening shows were a pain in the rear).

So, as crew members, we had a lot of down time in between acts, in between shows and sometimes we were required to be there to break down and load in a show at 11:30PM, then be back the next morning for rehearsals of a different show -- ugh, it was not exactly a glamorous schedule.

The union guys had a lot of fun with it...actually, I think they had a lot of fun with alcohol. Pretty much every show/load in-or-out ended with us all sitting out on the loading dock drinking beer. What's wrong with that?

Well, as we all know, alcoholic use tends to fog your decision making process, and once you couple that hindrance with a backstage romance, hoo boy watch out -- you've got yourself a humdinger.

Enter: "Goth" chic, or Andrea as everyone called her. Being single that summer, and plied with copius amounts of alcohol, I entered into a (rather questionable) relationship with said "Goth" chic. It was exotic, at the time, to say the least, and I enjoyed the rather antithetical coupling of me (uber-preppy/dorky) & her (black clothes, bleached-blond hair, pale skin).

I also enjoyed the fact that she rented an apartment about 5 minutes away from the theater, when I was staying w/my parents that summer, about 40 minutes away from the theater. This made those quick turnaround days very easy on the system.

Often during that summer, those of us who were at least 21 liked to frequent a Monday-afternoon blackjack tournament at a local casino (I never won, but placed 2nd once and in the money a few different times). Anyway, this fateful Monday night I stopped by the tournament, played, lost and left to meet up with "Goth" chic (as she wasn't 21 yet, she couldn't get in the casino).

Once I arrived, I turned off my cell phone for reasons escaping me although I'm sure they were good at the time. Now, the remainder of the story shifts perspective from what I know to what I heard the following day. I spent the night at "Goth" chic's apartment, apparently oblivious to the hilarity ensuing outside in the real world.

My parents, god bless them, must have thought I was still a teenager -- not the post-graduate, has lived on his own now for six years person that I actually was -- and got worried when I didn't come home that night.

My dad, god bless him, frantically drove to the casino to search for me assuming that I'd been mugged and was lying helpless in a ditch, or even better, that I'd been in some sort of gambling induced haze and was still playing blackjack (alas, this was prior to my poker-playing days*). He couldn't find me; duh, I'd left hours ago! But, he did talk to a security guard, and perhaps a state trooper -- am I making that part up? I can't quite remember...

Anyway, his next step was to call the technical director at the Opera Company, but dad waits until 8am, or so. This is where the story veers into a Terry Gilliam-inspired romp: apparently, the TD tells my Dad about the relationship, and gives him "Goth" chic's number. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall of that conversation -- if only one of them would have mentioned a terrorist or something, the FBI would have recorded it!

The next thing I know, "Goth" chic is answering a phone call from my father -- remember, I'm 24 years old!!! -- asking if I'm there and if I'm all right.

Well, you'd think that this story would be over right here, right? Um, no...it gets better. So, of course the TD tells everyone about the early-morning phone call, and eventually some joker prints up a million sheets of paper with the phrase, "Where's Celexo?" on them. I was pulling them off the backsides of set pieces for the remainder of the season.

So, remember kids, always tell your parents where you're going or else they'll freak the heck out...oh, by the way, Mom: I'm going out to see "Jerry Spring: The Opera" right now, so don't worry if I don't answer the phone.

See you all soon,
Celexo

* Ironically, I remember a certain tenor in the company who joined us every now and then at the casino who actually played poker. I couldn't believe that he did -- I was so jealous, and overawed because the poker room, at the time, was this really intimidating place for me.