The tale of a potted petunia

BY PETUNIA PAP SMEAR

The road to the Utah Pride Festival is fraught with danger and excitement. “June is bustin’ out all over,” and with it comes the Utah Pride Festival and Parade. In previous years, I used to participate in the parade every year. I’m sure most of you have never noticed me because I try and be inconspicuous and blend into the crowd. I would count walking the parade route as my entire annual quota of aerobic exercise. It is not such an easy feat for a Gravity Enhanced Buffet Queen to walk the whole Pride Parade distance.

The very first time I marched in the parade, I had just obtained a brand new pair of 5-inch Platform Ruby Slippers which I thought I needed to wear. They looked incredible but made my walk as unstable and gangly as a newborn giraffe. So as always, it came down to a choice of style versus function, and of course, style won out. I was sure that my twirly whirly breasticles would have enough of a gyroscopic effect so as to help stabilize me.

About halfway through the parade route, there arose an oncoming breeze, sufficient enough to cause the breasticles to begin spinning rapidly before my eyes, slightly hypnotizing me and making me dizzy. I felt my ankle give way as my left heal twisted out from under me, and so began a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad, great, and torturous fall from grace. I stumbled and, to my amazement, caught myself before I went all the way down. Just as I was breathing a great sigh of relief, I stumbled again. To add insult to the continuing injury, the heal of my right foot got caught up in the hem of my hoop skirt. At this point, the scene on the street held a very close resemblance to the Hindenburg disaster, although much less graceful. Bystanders were running for their lives to avoid being crushed. Resigning myself of all hope for remaining upright was lost, I screamed what witnesses later described as a “Death Squeal” as I made my way down toward the pavement.

God does indeed watch out for little children, fools, and apparently drag queens with un-sensible shoes, because just before my lipstick met the road, I felt someone throw their arms tightly around me from behind and return me to the land of standing upright. Amazed that someone was strong enough to pick up my Bodus Rotundus, and grateful at being saved from becoming roadkill, I slowly turned around in order to thank my savior. I was delighted to discover that I was being held in the arms of an Adonis, wearing only a dazzlingly white smile, a perfect suntan stretched over a rock-hard six-pack, and a very well-packed Speedo. I’m sure he probably was also wearing shoes, but who in the world would ever notice? Surely, he had just come from the set of filming a Falcon Video. I nearly swooned. He seemed to think that I was still stumbling, so he kept holding on to me. Who was I to correct this beautiful “Boy Scout” as he performed his good deed for the day? He kept his big, strong arm around my waist and walked with me for the rest of the parade route until I safely reached the festival grounds.

The most dangerous and fraught thing about Pride is the fact that, with my beehive hair, twirling breasticles, and cape, I cannot fit inside a port-a-potty without removing my hair and cape. Just as cast members in Disney Land must never remove their heads in view of the public lest they destroy the magic, any drag queen worth her tiara must never remove her hair in the public’s eye either. Every year when I’m planning my Pride Day wardrobe, I come up against the most important of all eternal queries: ‘To pee or not to pee, that is the question!” Because of the difficulty relieving number one, I try not to drink much because what goes in must come out.

A few years ago, I had a budding case of heatstroke from lack of hydration. So, if on Pride Day you should find me lying in a ditch somewhere and I don’t respond to your jingling of shiny objects and promises of glitter, please pour a bottle of water over me, and when I regain consciousness, shove a pizza in my mouth.

Side note to God: Please, please, please don’t let me have a fatal heart attack while I’m wearing my Pride Day rainbow sequined dress with the twirling breasticles. It may look fabulous with a capital “F” and would send all the other angels into fashion hell, but it chafes, and I don’t want to spend eternity chafing. Besides, it is next to impossible to sit demurely on a cloud while wearing a hoop skirt without giving a very indiscreet showing of the family jewels.

Like always, these events leave us with several eternal questions:

1. When a breasticle pops off during a parade, is the proper distress call “Boob Down?”

2. What kind of street cleaner would be required to remove lipstick from asphalt?

3. Should I attach a generator to my pinwheel breasticles, so I can become a mobile wind turbine and recharge cell phones at the Pride Festival?

4. When I am inside a port-a-potty does that make me a “potted petunia?”

5. If I consumed a 420 edible, would that make me a “potted petunia” as well?

6. Should I begin attending Pride with a mobile crane equipped with a plastic blue tarp of secrecy (stolen from covering a haystack) to do the heavy lifting when I need to pee?

These and other important questions to be answered in future chapters of: The Perils of Petunia Pap-Smear.