Friday night, after much drama and back-and-forthing and me being only half sure if I wanted to participate even though I’d committed a month before, I performed with my hoop at a party.

My friend Kara had asked me to hoop with her and a few other friends at a party called “Gathering of the Ram.” The theme of the party was all about battles and competitions. There were DJ battles, and fire performing battles, and we were supposed to be a part of a hoop battle.

Oh, and there were wrestlers. Semi-professional wrestlers. And they were on right before us.

After much hemming and hawing, the five of us who were hooping had determined that we weren’t really into doing a hoop battle. This made the performance feel more fun, but it also introduced a major contrast between what people had been watching all night (i.e., men in singlets pretending to beat the shit out of each other) and us (i.e., five weirdoes dressed in red and black playing with hula hoops).

To make matters weirder, everything was running late. Our 12:30 am performance became a 1:00 am performance. At 1:20, the final wrestling match ended with fake blood everywhere and a contestant storming off stage with a bloody towel theatrically held to his face, and the announcer thanked everybody for coming and ta-da!, that was it.

Erm, we got no introduction. But we had a little skit worked out. Jordon stepped forward and grabbed the microphone.

“WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU ALL GOING!? ARE YOU READY TO SEE SOME WILD, UNTAMED HOOPING!?”

People got curious and stopped leaving the performance space.

Julie stepped forward and calmly started hooping. Jordan pretended to interview her, shouting, “ARE YOU GOING TO THROW DOWN THE CRAZY-ASS HOOPING SKILLS TONIGHT?!” as he intentionally knocked her hoop down.

She smiled at him and said, “Excuse me, I’m aligning my chakras,” and started hooping again.

“ALIGNING HER CHAKRAS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! THAT’S FUCKING HARDCORE,” Jordon hollered into the microphone, stepping towards Julie (knocking her hoop down again) and asking, “WHAT SORT OF HOOPING SMACK DOWN ARE YOU GOING TO DEMONSTRATE TONIGHT!?”

She said something else new agey (aura enhancement, I think?), and started hooping again. Jordon shouted one more time, and knocked Julie’s hoop down again, and then she proceeded to pretend to beat the crap out of him. They had a little routine all set, that involved her beating his head on the ground and them rolling across the floor, locked in combat.

Then the wrestling announcer stepped forward and said delicately, “Um, we’ve just realized that this is real blood all over the wrestling mats, so, um, we’re going to need to get this cleaned up.”

HOLY SHIT! BIOHAZARD! Jordan and Julie both immediately dropped what they were doing and dashed off to the bathroom to scrub themselves. The wrestling people cleared bloody the mats off the stage, and we all got pretty grossed out.

Meanwhile, the crowd is just standing there waiting for the show to start.

Five minutes later, Julie and Jordan returned, and we proceeded to do our little show which consisted of 1) Julie hooping 2) Rob hooping (…and dropping his hoop) 3) Me hooping (and dropping my hoop before I even got started) 3) Jordan hooping on stilts (and falling off his stilts) 4) Kara & Julie tandem hooping (and dropping their hoop twice) 5) me double hooping (and deciding the show was over when I dropped one of my two hoops).

It was fun, but strange. People watched and we dropped our hoops while ROLLING AROUND IN BLOOD! There was no battle, but as evidenced by all the hoop dropping, we really challenged ourselves

(also written about on hooping.org)