Little Miss Sun Shine

She’s onstage now, in rehearsal. Her dancers and musicians go all out, but she holds back, conserving her energy for the real thing. Mostly, she sings her songs, looking for problems in their presentation, calling the problems out to be corrected, often displaying rare skills at multitasking. One song features lengths of rope being swung around, for example. “Are the ropes clean?” she asks into the mic. “Do they look a shade of gray? Have they been cleaned since this tour started? No, they have not been cleaned. Oh, let’s just do ”˜Pearl.’ Can someone pop those ropes into the washer? Where’s Sue? Sue! We should take this from the second verse. Sue! Where’s Sue! Sue should be backstage! Are the girls doing aerials? Give me the second verse. When you find Sue, have her collect all the ropes and throw them in the wash right now. Please.” Poor Sue. But the nice thing is, Perry doesn’t speak her words with anger or frustration. It’s all done matter-of-factly, like putting together a show of this size ”“ 97 crew members are traipsing around in 13 semi trucks and seven buses, carrying roughly half a million pounds of gear, including eight human-size gingerbread-man puppets ”“ is pretty much a breeze for her.

The next day, however, over a plate of 1 pm-shortly-after-her-wake-up-time scrambled eggs, she admits that, in fact, the rigors and responsibilities of touring have got her totally stressed out. It’s not like when she was on the verge of stardom and slogging through mud on the Warped Tour in the summer of 2008, which caused her face to break out in agonising acne pustules and led her to discover the wonders of Proactiv, but it’s big-time stress nonetheless. She’s unadorned again, dressed in plain pyjamas and wearing no makeup. She says that, no, she does not say grace before meals, because “grace is with me and abounding with me at all times. Instead of the traditional prayer, I just stuff my face.” But today she just picks at her food. She looks tired, a little washed out. “I still have eye boogers,” she says, “and I’m in that mood of just waking up.” She says she had “stalker” dreams during the night; she doesn’t want to talk about them, though. She says she has been congested for days, is on antibiotics, and has been hocking up lots of green mucus.

She talks about what it’s like being her at this moment in time. She says she always smiles for her fans and puts on a happy-to-see-them face, even if she’s having an off day and might not feel like it. “I remember coming to LA for the first time and meeting Gwen Stefani and how gracious and wonderful she was, and then meeting another favourite artist of mine and what a cunt she was. It ruined my dreams of that person, the cunt, and I will always be a fan of the person who was gracious.”

She says she misses the simplicity of her former life, being able to go shopping, being able to go out dancing. Sometimes it all gets too much and she plays “ditch the bodyguard” and heads off in search of “a real life.”

She says she also misses In-N-Out Burger. “I get the Double-Double with onions, no fries or milkshakes, just the cheeseburger. I want that shit hanging from my mouth the rest of the day, and I don’t want anything changing it!”

She says that she has been watching the TV show Ancient Aliens recently. “Oh, my God,” she says. “When it talks about the sky people, how everyone comes from the sky, and how the Pyramids were used for star observations, it’s too much for me. It all seems to connect the dots. It’s blowing my mind.” What’s also blowing her mind are documentaries like Gasland, about the horrific consequences of natural-gas drilling, and Inside Job, about the financial crisis. “It just feels like the thing that is running our country is a bank, money. I know it sounds like an intense viewpoint, but I’m only slowly but surely getting the wool taken off my eyes. When I was a kid, I asked questions about my faith. Now I’m asking questions about the world.” She goes on, “I think we are largely in desperate need of revolutionary change in the way our mindset is. Our priority is fame, and people’s wellness is way low. I say this knowing full well that I’m a part of the problem. I’m playing the game, though I am trying to reroute. Anyway, not to get all politically divulging and introspective, but the fact that America doesn’t have free health care drives me fucking absolutely crazy, and is so wrong.” She says this with a good bit of anger in her voice, getting worked up for the first time today.

She also gets riled up talking about the liberties taken after a recent story stated that “she’s really been involved with only five guys in her life.” “There’s no dirt on me generally, so they have to dig it up and say, ”˜That means she’s slept with five people.’ It doesn’t mean I’ve slept with five people, necessarily, I just said I’ve had five relationships!” She doesn’t elaborate, perhaps necessarily.

She says that if the gossip press keeps hounding her family, they will regret it. “I will come with all fury and fire,” she says, “and it won’t be cute Katy anymore.”

She says, “I can’t juggle any more balls right now! If I juggle one more ball, I will lose all the balls. I’m going to die!” and “I don’t want to be a girl anymore!” and “Waaaaaahhh!” She says that sometimes she can feel an anxiety attack coming on and has to tell herself to “breathe, breathe deep, breathe constantly.”

So that’s where she is right now. It’s not all candy canes and cute cuddly cats, no matter what you might think. “I’ll let you wear my shoes one day, and come back and tell me how it is,” she says. “They’re very glittery, but sometimes a crystal will get stuck in the underbed of your toe, and it hurts like a bitch. That’s what happened to me yesterday. I put on my catsuit, and I got a crystal stuck under the bed of my finger. It’s not fun.”