Beware my thighs in March! That’s how the saying goes, right? Well, it should. Have you seen me in March? Listen, between power snacking through the Wine + Food Festival then slurping my caloric weight in cocktails at Charleston Fashion Week, by the time I make it to the Festival of Houses and Gardens, docents mistake me for a pierogi with legs.
Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Every year we play this game, Charleston. March arrives and with it a torrent of social events so big Rob Fowler could track it on his Storm Team 2 Doppler radar. We’re talking the kickoff to a marathon of fêting that doesn’t truly end until the final drop of champagne hits the throat of the last reveler at the Spoleto finale. Four months of canapé-chomping, air-kissing, cocktail-bantering, arts-and-culture-absorbing chaos. And it all begins this month.
First, there’s the March 6th Invasion of the Gastrominators. On a crusade to worship at the feet of their idols—your Brocks, Latas, and Deihls—the eaters descend upon Marion Square inhaling pork belly and pimiento cheese faster than you can say bon appétit. Not to be outdone, I of course fall in, attempting to match their gustatory stamina. Just when I’m on a roll—fat and sassy after swabbing up my last bite of pulled pork at the final Rigs, Pigs, & Swigs event—the fashion police sirens blare and lo, next thing I know I’m being charged with indecent exposure attempting to enter Fashion Week in a bandage dress that looks more like a wound dressing. Funny, it fit in February! Oy. Nothing says haute couture more than being surrounded by Amazonians while you’re looking like a human sausage. Add the bright lights, the pulsing music, the oxygen-restricting Spanx, and it’s all rather dizzying. So I ask you, what’s a gal to do in this vogue fantasia? Champagne cocktail please. What’s that? There are 13 grams of sugar per serving? Well then, make it a double.
Now, don’t roll your eyes and lecture me on self-control. When I’m facing down the barrel of five days of sartorial small talk, wherein the opening line typically goes, “Oh my God, your outfit!” I’m going to need a little hydration. I can only come up with so many synonyms for “fabulous!” (However fabulous the Emerging Designer collections may be.)
So you’ll forgive me come March 24, when I pedal up to the Legare Street Tour on the Festival of Houses and Gardens looking like an exhausted carnival bear on a child’s trike. I’ve been schmoozing and snacking for three weeks straight. Oh and now you ask me to take off my shoes to tour this manse? Well, fine. Oh wow, actually that feels great. My feet are so swollen from the heels and the booze, I’m beginning to waddle. In fact, I’m knackered; maybe I’ll just take a little rest on this original Thomas Elfe rice bed and....
“Ma’am. Ma’am! You’re drooling! No touching the furnishings! You must leave at once!”
Oh no! How long was I asleep? It’s March 31? Oh God! The Cooper River Bridge Run is in five days. I gotta train. After all, those I-slept-through-the-Bridge-Run-Party Bloody Marys aren’t going to drink themselves.
