The Soloist

Usually, when I sing onstage at church, three women sing with me. Or rather, I sing with them. I'm the weakest voice on the team. We have one very confident singer with a good range, one who harmonizes, and one stellar soprano. Then there's me. If I'm really warmed up I can reach most of the high notes, but sometimes I quaver, and if the song moves a lot between high and low notes my voice tends to wobble "in the break". Yeah. So usually I let my voice fill in as background texture, while the other lead.

Of the three other women:

1) One is going to go into labour any second now,

2) One just lost her mother-in-law yesterday,

3) One is sick.

So guess who's singing tomorrow, in front of what will likely be a very full church? Full because the Sunday School children are doing their pageant tomorrow, so everyone will be bringing extra relatives, friends, and video cameras?

Oh, you guys are so smart! I knew you'd get the answer.

I won't be totally alone. But the other guy onstage is... a guy. So I can't hide behind his voice. I'll be exposed for everyone to hear. Fortunately my mother is attending the service, so I can count on there being one person who's thrilled to be my audience. As for the rest, well, what are they going to do? Fire me? If they don't like my best effort, they can come up and take my place.

In other news of things Christmasy, I went to a fabulous dinner party on Thursday night. My friend works for a very upscale retailer located in Toronto's Yorkville district. That's the downtown area where all the richest people in the city, and all the most loaded tourists, go to shop, eat, see, and be seen. In the summertime, wealthy, middle-age men cruise their mid-life crisis show-off cars up and down the narrow, boutique-lined streets.

My friend's employer has an annual Christmas party, and my friend invited me to be her date.

We ate a very fancy, multi-course dinner in the private function room of an uber-swanky restaurant. We downed delicassies such as braised octopus, gorgozola polenta, aged steak, and tiramisu. Wine flowed more freely than water. I ended up chatting with one of the two owners of the retail establishment, a 50-year-old Hong-Kong-born Chinese man, very cultured, accomplished, and, I assume, richer than sin. We were also surrounded by the Fashion People, so pretty, shiny, and charming that I felt as though I must be living in a TV show. It was slightly overwhelming, but whenever I found myself at a loss for words I simply dug deeper into my mushroom risotto or whatever splendid dish was before me at that moment, and sipped more wine. My anxieties floated away on a gentle, Italian-flavoured river of hedonism.

At the end of the evening my girlfriend declared that I'd been an excellent date. Then she went off, hopefully to end the night by licking the face of a particular co-worker. I've yet to follow up with her to see if that was successful.