Kosher Asian Food with Grammy Winners

My Chair Dance Class

Kitten posing in one of her signature Burlesque numbers

Marsha the Birthday Girl and her Fancy Friends

Last night I had the pleasure of formally meeting Kitten in person.  We had made plans to spend time together last week but her busy schedule kept our plans from working out (which is all for the best considering that I was studying for our first exam).  I have seen Kitten perform before so I was not surprised by how beautiful she is.  I was, however, really impressed by how genuinely nice she is.  We agreed to meet at the dance studio I teach at for my class at 6pm and then she had arranged for me to accompany her to a birthday dinner for a friend of hers.  She ended up watching the class (we are 3 weeks into the choreography so she didn’t decide to jump in) and showering my students with compliments about how great they look and how far they have come in such a short time.  Then she showers me with compliments the entire night about how pretty I am, she likes my hair, she thinks I’m a great teacher, she thinks I’m a great dancer (generous compliment there), etc.  So then she tells me we are going to the place “Genghis Cohen” for a birthday party for a longtime tenant of hers, Marsha.  Kitten also happens to mention Marsha is a famous, songwriting lesbian, and Genghis Cohen is kosher Mongolian bbq.  So here I am, sitting at this table with people that have won Grammy’s, people that have written songs that everybody knows (Faith Hill’s “This Kiss”).  And everyone is so gracious and accepting (mind you I don’t really know how unbelievably famous these people are at this point).  I end up talking to this teenage girl who has Asperger’s and recently decided not to go through a sex change.  Kitten leans over and whispers she thinks the girl has a crush on me.  Of course, because how could this situation get any more bizarre?  I am explaining to Kitten and Syd (my new teenage lesbian friend) about what the assignment is about, and I see a look in Kitten’s eyes that tells me she doesn’t like to think of herself as aging.  To be completely fair, I don’t think of her as old or aging or anything of that nature.  I felt bad having mentioned it because I don’t want our time together to be about her age or mine or the difference between them.  Rather, I want the time we spend together to be an oral history project, a how-to guide for growing up and being fabulous.  It just so happens to be lucky for me that she just barely makes it to the young-old category so I can hang out with her and have an excuse other than I’m creepy and I want to learn everything there is to know about what her life is like and how it feels to have thousands of people know your name and think about you naked (these are on the list for my life aspirations, in case that hasn’t been said).  Kitten is young in just about every way there is, functionally, socially (she’s been married but doesn’t have any children), psychologically (the woman runs her own fan website from which she generates a profit), and biologically as well.  She still has a very social life, and many friends (mostly other creative geniuses like herself).  We got to chat briefly about her relationship with Russ Meyer, the kinds of merchandise that she sells, and the other things she does for work (she owns two houses and an apartment building, all of which she rents out to tenants like Marsha the birthday girl).  She also was very forthcoming with me about her experiences with addiction, and I was able to share my experience with her.  We even talked about maybe going to an AA meeting together.  She invited me to meet her other friends and was absolutely the most hospitable wonderful woman I have ever met.  Especially considering I was a complete stranger, asking her for a favor on good faith.  She even sent me an email this morning with a song Marsha wrote for another legend, Shannon Doah, with a note saying I had permission to use it if I wanted to.  She also sent me a funny article about a stripper rupturing a man’s bladder by falling on him.  Needless to say I am having an absolutely wonderful time getting to know Kitten and I absolutely can’t wait to spend more time with her.  Our tentative plans involve going to the gym together, going to a meeting, going to another legend’s house, going to GlamourCon together, etc.  I should have zero issue getting this assignment done and reporting the most interesting things.