Popination Impersonation
a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Opera Colorado (the Ellie Caulkins Opera House at the DCPA).
Raising the Bar
I thought I’d do something unusual today, in the form of a multi-period Popinations of Yore type post, where I begin a few years ago at a particular bar, and then show my progress in attitude about same as I frequent it more and more. It’s a strange bar choice, too, not the usual pub popinatings—we’re going to the bar at the Colorado opera, at the nationally renowned Ellie Caulkins Opera House, which is where most of the biggest Colorado opera happens, when it’s not in Central City.
We’re starting today with an older reflection on a bout of impostor syndrome I wrote about in 2017, not long after my partner and I began dating. I’ve added a couple updated bits after that, which show… well, I hope you’ll find they show how I grow as I go (oo, nice rhyme!) to the opera again and again through the few years following, but. Well, just see what you think. Oh, and I was not able to snap my own pics of the lobby bar/s, as I haven’t been downtown in a while, and won’t be back till later in the year. But I’ve added a couple other pics to make up for it.
Part 1: 2017
Looking down on two different gussied-up crowds: one inside milling about, one outside that’s more staggering by. The indoor crowd is in various forms of black tie and gownage; the outdoor crowd sways under giant Derby Day hats and carry their high heels in their hands. Partner and I are inside, upstairs, leaning with elbows on the chrome and glass bannister, watching both streams of people flow by and swirl in eddies below us. We observe and quietly snark, sometimes making the other suppress a guffaw.
This is exactly how he and I first met, almost thirty years ago, in high school. The only differences: then, we sat side by side in science classrooms, the teacher being the main recipient of our intelligent (albeit teenaged) banter. The barely-suppressed guffaws would be tolerated for a while, as we both were good students, as Metal and Goth as we looked, respectively. But we would eventually get admonished. Here, nobody admonishes us, and tonight there are alcoholic drinks in our hands, levitating over the railing as we chortle.
It’s the bar in the lobby of l’Opera, and though we have dress circle seats (!!), we have come up to the balcony bar with our pre-show bevvies to do what we have done together since we were fifteen.
Partner is able to look and act posh so effortlessly. Or so it seems. But then again, he is so, partially at least, from one side of his family. Must be some kind of blood memory. When I knew him first he was that skinny metalhead kid with the brain that scintillated and tickled mine, and his voice, as Tybalt, awakened things in my young self I didn’t yet understand. Tonight, he is easy and lovely in his finery. Me, I’m in a little cocktail dress from a vintage store, and nearly all my accessories are from Target. I am an impostor.
As far as I know I’m a composite of Irish and Polish peasants. And I work now as adjunct faculty, which I will just let you do an online search about, instead of explaining here. Grew up in a trailer and I still live paycheck to paycheck, in my 40s. If an historian were to investigate my life and oeuvre, they’d no doubt conclude that my vastly superior intellect and predilection for higher education is a mutation that is out of place, impossible; the same reason why some of them refuse to believe Shakespeare could possibly have written his own work. (Do not get me started. Oxfordians, y’all pipe down.)
At first intermission, we ambled back to the opera lobby bar (this time on the ground floor), and I found myself in the middle of old and new high-level professional friends of my partner, forcing conversation like pulling a stubborn lawnmower starter. And feeling like an impostor whose cover is about to be blown…
I’m what new science calls an ambivert, slanting on the introverted side of that fence, as I’ve mentioned before. I am also a performer, and no shabby one at that, if I do say so myself. When I have been put on the spot in the middle of a gaggle of aristocratic strangers in the past, I’ve done well. One memorable instance of this was at a party and I was able to take the time first to prepare my Charisma Switch.
What’s the Charisma Switch? It’s a thing I can do when I switch from nerdy, socially inept awkward wallflower to the radiant center of attention and charming life of the party. It’s a superpower. Sometimes I talk about it like it’s the D&D stat: I’ve got a nat 13 Charisma, but I have a ring of +5 to Charm. My Constitution is only a 9 or 10, though, in social situations. But I digress. And this turn is over.
This party several years past I just mentioned: by about halfway through the proceedings, I ended up planted in the center of the room, sitting on a round seat, with all the well-to-do no-longer-strangers-now-fans surrounding me like an audience in the round, rapt at the stories I told. This sounds pretty great, right? But it takes a major effort and planned preparation to do so.
Tonight, At The Opera, we happened by chance to sit next to some Very Important People in the dress circle, and so the social bit was unexpected, and I had trouble flipping that switch as quickly as I needed to. Socializing with just Partner alone feels natural and comfy, but suddenly needing to be the Woman On The Arm Of A Powerful Businessman was a task I was not prepared to handle.
The martini at the lobby bar at First Intermission helped, as did finding common ground with one of the women, because of her dancer background. But I realized then and there that I’m going to have to figure out how to keep the Charisma Switch flipped on, at least in public, for most of the time, if I’m going to be partners with this man.
The opera was quite entertaining and I loosened up a little around the Businessmen And Their Women after more conversation. And when one of the women said with a friendly smile they’d see me soon, no doubt, I began to see just a bit, in the near distance, what I was getting into. Actually becoming, as Ariel once sang, A Part of [His] World.
Interlude: The Cruise Room
And it was time for a post-opera drink, and Partner and I were dang good looking, so off we went to *the* speakeasy. Like, the longest-continually-running bar in Denver. Well, since prohibition’s repeal, so not technically a speakeasy. But. You get the idea, style-wise. Art Deco and original everything inside from the ‘30s, and…
My flower-embossed pantyhose had committed operatic suicide on the walk there (thankfully not the bloody one we had seen onstage in Lucia di Lammermoor), so they were left in the bathroom garbage of this place, the original wooden bar of which was crammed with too-drunk after-Derby partiers with obnoxious seersucker and no concept of personal space. The cocktails were original recipes, old old old school, artisan to end all artisan, and so very delicious. I got a Sazerac.
The touch of the Green Fairy in my drink and my very short cocktail dress (now with no hose) emboldened me, and I mentioned the above misgivings of my social awkwardness, admitting that I hadn’t been ready to become arm candy in a high powered situation tonight. He corrected me: “Partner in crime, please, darling.”
Very sweet of him, and I appreciate his faith in and respect for me, but I do still feel like an impostor. Like I don’t, and never will, belong. Watching him waltz between the childhood I remember with him (and earlier life I have heard him speak of), to this smooth talking business world that, let’s face it, he’s really good at, and knows well, and loves, made me freeze. Like I do when I try and perform improv. Which I don’t. Because of the above. Fake it till I make it? Yeah, maybe. Anyway. I guess we’ll see, won’t we…
Part 2: early 2023
There’s sort of a Part 1.5, in a way, happening before this, as Partner and I went to the opera again in 2022 and had a lovely time, just the two of us. The opera we went to that year was Carmen, and I wore my old velvet scarf with the roses on it in honor of the character. That was five years later than the above passage, and we had gotten through lockdown and other pandemic strangenesses together in that interim. I had gotten more used to the ridiculously posh dinner we’d have pre-show, and had acquired a new gown (albeit from Macy’s, a birthday gift from my mom, but still). And I’d gotten very accustomed to improvising on the mic during Blue Dime Cabaret shows. Still adjuncting, but a very different scenario and a whole different ballgame.
But the real Part 2 of this story of my Impostor Pilgrim’s Progress happened in February of this year.
My 50th birthday was in February of 2023, and I wanted to do something special to commemorate my achieving a half century of existence. Partner set up a luxurious (to me) staycation getaway, which included a hotel room in the theatre district of Downtown Denver, fancy small plates at the pre/post show restaurant in the Performing Arts Complex, and a night at the opera. This time, an unknown piece called Die Tote Stadt (which soon became one of our very favorite operas ever).
I wore the Macy’s gown, which is long and black and includes see-through panels in its shoulders and long swirly skirt, but this time, instead of the conservative velvet, I wore over it the chain link harness Partner had gotten for me at a previous year’s Goth Prom. I wore this with a dark shrug and black platform boots adorned with silver zippers. This, very unlike that first cocktail dress, was terrifying looking, and with my added height, I did catch quite a bit of attention. This time, I felt not like I was cluelessly trailing behind my partner who knew what was happening and how to behave and I was the bumpkin rube, but like the crowd needed to arrange themselves around me instead. It’s a balance of owning my own weirdness, while not being so weird that I was inappropriate. I embodied both worlds: the young punk Goth and the middle aged professor in a conservatively luxurious environment. All the things I am, needing to be no one but myself, and being that. And that? That works.
I even ended up getting compliments on my outfit, trailing young gothy opera fans around in my wake like so many baby bats.
Part 3: Spring 2023
I got my own dang self a plus-sized purple party gown with my own dang money, and we went to Turandot with Partner’s work colleague and her beau, on sort of a double date. She is a trained opera singer herself, and maybe it was that that made the opera environment more comfortable, maybe it was the bright color of my dress, or maybe it was just the plain fact that I’d been a few times now. But I felt right at home, not in charge but in my element.
And now? (maybe I’ll come back for a Part 4 later) She’s going to be in it, in the chorus of Don Giovanni in November. The Opera is my scene now, as much as that of my friends. Ope, I have to go gown shopping…
Today? Well, I’m still living paycheck to paycheck, but who isn’t, these days. Still partners with my Partner in Crime. And now I know exactly when I’m supposed to applaud when in the audience of the Opera. Stay tuned for Part 4.