Saturday 20th June 2009 - Ritual Humiliation

The Grown-up Ladies Shuffleboard Team clearly has a long reach.  Their Oregon Chapter has abducted and humiliated me.  I should never have deserted them, but everything changes, a chap has to move on.

The Sawdust Theatre in Coquille (I think they say "Kaw-kwill") was just a set-up.  The breakfast ladies yesterday must have been in on it.  It looked like a genuine, well-kept theatre,

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but within its walls, conspiracy was bubbling.  They were out to get me. 

I had gone down at lunchtime to be sure of a ticket, like a turkey voting for Christmas.  The only outlet for tickets was an up-market second-hand ladies clothes shop.  That should have given the game away: I know the kind of ladies who frequent these establishments.  But I went without my cowboy disguise.  The lady selling tickets pretended to be most interested in my story.  The word was out: my doom must have been the talk of the changing cubicles all afternoon.

When I arrived in the evening, I was set upon by a bevy of beauties.  They showed me their garters.  One of them even put her garter round my arm.  I was foolishly flattered.  Little did I realise I was being marked.

I was plied with alcohol by another lovely, who, with a quite convincing accent, pretended to hail from Port Glasgow (on the Clyde).  The son of yesterday's breakfast lady contributed to the plying (young men will do anything for ladies, won't they?).

Not knowing what was in store for me, I settled down with my free popcorn to enjoy the performance.  They call it 'melodrama', with 'olios', but I recognised it as something fairly close to pantomime, the main difference being that the inner play was not a traditional story, but one about their own neighbourhood.  No doubt it will become traditional in time.

The audience played their part, booing, hissing, oohhing and ahhing to order.  The players strutted their stuff, unfolding the play, and singing and dancing through the olios.  I now realise that the men were acting under duress, but they covered up perfectly.

Then, just when I was at my most relaxed, in totally deluded enjoyment, the lynch mob appeared,

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and dragged me off to my ritual humiliation.

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I only hope the Grown-up Ladies are satisfied with You-Tubing me (that's where the rather poor quality pictures came from).  Or will I have to keep looking over my shoulder for the rest of the trip?  Where might they strike next?  At the very least, I must try to keep out of second-hand ladies clothes shops, up-market or otherwise.