"Overcoming a fear of breasts" Burlesque for the modern prude.

I remember, through the foggy haze of my wanderlusty youth (my Brigadoon boyhood, if you please) the first time I saw sex for sale.

"Glossy"

that was the first comprehensible verbiage that i could muster after my poor, pre-pubescent brain had been shattered by my bosom-buddy's 'you have to promise not to tell' personal safari into his father's walk-in closet shoebox-cache of a spank bank investment portfolio.

Playboy was the next beacon in the fog.

Of course i remember the name Pamela Anderson, but that's as much a luck of timing: if i had been a seven year old in the early 50's, the name's would be different, but the EFFECT of the magazine would have been the same.

I was lost, for just a moment, in a private (except for some kid, who's name i really can't remember, so i'm not just omitting it for privacy's sake) show room with a technicolour gallery of exquisitely air brushed caricatures of female humanity's pop-sexuality.

Remember, i was a kid, so whatever physiological responses that are supposed to occur in the wake of this kind of momentous exposure, i didn't get em (that i can remember; maybe the blood loss to my brain from...nevermind).  Or maybe i did, or maybe it was all in my head.

Maybe, that was, for me, the moment that began my transition out of larval human into full blown philogynist.

We all know that advertising and presentation is what makes a product succeed and the success of a product is as much in how memorable it is as it is functionality...ummm...
anyway
it was my initial exposure to human sexuality through this venue of softcore pornography that would serve as a rough outline of my understanding of what 'beauty' means, what 'sexy' means, and even (sorry mom) what 'woman' means.
or meant
or means.

and so it went;
follow the bouncing ball(s) and sing along, won't you? 

American boy experiences glossy print porn
American boy immediately seeks out more
American boy sucks at this poon hound shtick
American boy maybe asks his dad for help

That was a lesson learned the hard way

Refrain:
Some lessons are too easy to let go;
These lessons are got at work and play.
But there are just some lessons that you never forget
And these are the lessons we learn the hard way

Etc...

Don't fret about faulty parenting folks; my parents raised a well educated, sex-positive hippy dude, no doubt.  i just maybe would recommend against enlisting them in your search for porn.

Anyway, folks, the sad sack attempt at lyricism above only serves to highlight my next point:
sometimes, we learn to be ashamed of our libido.
We learn that the objectification of women is unequivocally wrong, and genitals (DO WE NOT HAVE A BETTER WORD  FOR THEM YET?!) were made to be respected in the abstract, and any and all sex trade is a perpetuation of institutionalized sexism and misogyny, and to participate in such things is a diminishing of who the woman is, of what womanhood is, and eyes above the neckline mister, etc.

We learn a harsh black and white perspective on yet another subject that, it seems, does much better with sequins and bright colors than it does with shades of grey.

I saw my first burlesque show, is what i've been getting at.
And it was amazing.
It was loud, and rowdy, and intelligent, and fun, and fleshy and a little randy...and it wasn't smut.
I was not watching, for all the historic context of the practice and purpose of burlesque, a powdered nose peep show.

Let me explain.

St. Patrick's day is a big fucking deal, apparently, especially in this city.
These people certainly think so.

It's Sunday, March 18th, 745pm, and i'm EXHAUSTED.
I've got the chest funk from hell and a pint or two's worth of St. Saturday's reveling under my waistcoat, making a fermented phlegm swamp out of my upper and lower respiratory system.
All of this compounded with aught but a two hour nap to bridge the time between Saturday's adventuring into Sunday's work-a-day monotony has got me loopy.
But i promised, i Promised my dear friend Adrienne that i would go with my favorite ginger {Her} to a red-head-centric burlesque show.
She's been yammering at me about this whole scene for about as long as we've been friends, and it's about time i see what all the damn fuss is about.

Stoner-cold and more than my share of grumpy, we stomp up to the box office and the attendee tells her that she ain't paying for shit cause she's a ginger and that'll be twenty dollars, sir.
Glare at her.
Glare at friend.
Back to her.
Sulk to ATM.

Finally, we pass the threshold into the room itself to see...a dude onstage, with a mic, bedecked in a Mal Reynolds brown coat and a facial hair configuration that would make a confederate cannon commander blush.
Our MC, it would seem, has a touch of the dandies.
He's leading the crowd in a pledge.
A call and response pledge to not be a douche.
No touchy
No camera
No phone
No touchy
No douchy
Seriously no Touchy
No problem.

I like this guy.

And, like that, with a quick introduction of the shtick {every act is named after the brand of the performer's bottle-red hair} the evening is off.

***
I want to offer a punch by punch review of the Experience of these performances, but i don't know if i have the vocabulary for it.
I'll discuss some highlights of what most stands out, and maybe i'll review a show in a later post.
***

What i remember most is each performer's costume choice served as our first impression of the tone of what we were in for, followed immediately by the music.
Sight and sound set a scene where a set would have taken twice the time.
Succinct and to the point, the tone of each performance lived in every sequin, every feather; every nuanced, curve-accentuating fold and pleat.

I remember: a strip tease conducted to an aria, with the soaring high notes paralleled by the exquisitely handled 'pull' of a glove; a young lady conducting her entire affair as if she were a cross between Enya, Titania, queen of the faeries, and Pippy Longstockings; an  'elbow to the ribs' jab at the whole Irish event set to a drinking song; a boy-lesque magician act where a musclebound, bald all over {save some rather impressive, o'natural ginger red mutton chops} fellow held the business end of a taser-type 'wand' and, using the sizable static charge coursing through EVERY INCH of his body, used the sparks generate to light a torch...every inch...insert the inevitable 'fire crotch' joke; a beautifully handled old-school burlesque act performed by a woman of exquisitely Rubenesque proportions; a sendup of the entire conceit of burlesque {and jazzercise} wherein the performer came out and just did a jazzercise routine with SLIGHTLY more gyrations than originally choreographed, and all to the original voice over.

I was laughing far too loud, and clapping and cheering and having the jolliest of times i've had in quite a while
The MC even complimented my suit.

All the while i was sitting, late comer that i was, not in the front row center stage, but off to the far stage left, next to the bullpen: i had a de facto backstage pass to watch these people just be with each other and hang out in between performances...in their performance outfits... 0_0

Enough of that.

What i mean to say in any of these recollections, ladies, gentlemen, boys, girls, men, woman, hims hers and any shade of ambiguity you prefer for your pronoun-cing: these scantily clad, conventionally beautiful to the {wo}man performers were within lawsuit distance and all i could do was revel in the sheer audacity of the thing.  i was Free of the hyper-commercialized crutch of layering shame and eye-averting apologies over a perfectly natural impulse to See, to Observe, nay even to Ogle!

"Ogle away, ye respectful patrons of the anachronistic arts!"
It was written in every movement, every pasty, every tassel.  Every second spent in that room was one spent in giddy hearted worship of the female body and it's excellence.

who the hell is going to tell these women, any of them, that they are victims?  I just saw a woman with half her head shaved and the other half in a power pixie cut do a work of such heartbreaking elegance that i was between chest clenching epiphany and riotous laughter the whole time.

and...and, well , the best part is that i never felt any of that sweaty soul'd smutty feeling i've known since that first feathering through the oily(ew), leafy folds of some kid's...some father's nudy mags he probably left findable ENOUGH so that his son could find out one, short sighted way to look at a woman without ever stepping up to the plate and having a conversation about it.

Burlesque is a conversation with it's audience, a bawdy diatribe on who and what we accept as sexy and how it falls to the viewer, the audience, the Partner to decide if 'sexy' means naked, or if 'sexy' can mean funny, intelligent, expressive, articulate, sarcastic, genuine...and also naked.

Thanks for reading.

What about this

All I seem to have to talk about these days:

Today I saw this.
This is what I said to whomever.
I felt such and such about either of those.

When I was at WVU, while we were desperately trying to retain whatever the hell they were teaching us in between our dating dramas and binges (pizza, video games, exuberance, etc), we were persistently, habitually, ritualistically asked by the enigmatcally frazzled Jerry McGonigle-

"What about this?"

I've heard it since called a 'check in' or 'I did, I saw, I felt' or, in some circles, a 'safety meeting' but, in my head, in my humble jumble of education and life experience, that first one, that simple, impossibly open ended interrogative
"What about this?" Is what you ask after something important happens.

I think I just saw something important.


The 9-5 commuter subway is a mystery world to me, still.
We all sit, ignore the vagrants and beggars and go about our working class business, trying to distract ourselves from our proximity and the moments of our life we're losing to our transit choices. 
Eye contact is discouraged but not out of the question; outright engagement with a stranger is a rarity to be avoided for the sake of making easy and Quiet everyone's morning commute.

And, for your sake as well as ours, don't make us notice you.

I like to read.

It was the usual, quiet, safe morning when he sat down.
He took a seat next to the door and was almost completely lost behind his standard-issue, metal mesh handcart: maybe it was painted red to match his coat, or maybe to match his mood, but radio flyer red it was no matter the dichotomy of aesthetic intent v. narrative significance..
Quiet and small, he sat behind his little cage instead of in it, while the rest of us sat in our city-sponsored cage, waiting for an escape into sunshine.
I can't tell you  much else of what he was like before the girl bumped his cart with her suitcase.  
until that second he was just one of the crowd; unnoticed by most and soon to be forgotten by all. 
And then like a foolish, unwitting child at a derelict zoo, this sorry girl rattled his cage.

This first words were just noise, because i wasn’t really listening.
Children are told that there is a value difference between hearing and actually listening.  
through the admonishing tones of their disgruntled and discriminating parents they learn by contrast: “I know you heard me, but are you Listening to me?”
I wasn’t listening to any world but the one of my subway-commute playlist.
Until she yelled back.

Suddenly a solitary outburst of unjustified rancor (‘Don’t bump my fucking cart, bitch!  Apologize!’)
had become something else.  suddently we were overhearing a conversation.
A scene.
I shit you not, ladies and gentlemen, but i thought i was watching a piece of poorly rehearsed street(car.  A streetcar named claustrophobia) theatre.  
It was impossible how quickly the escalation happened.  
And how psychotically intense the exchange remained for as long as it lasted.
It was just a poorly paced acting excercise, because they were shouting for WAAYY too long.
Ten minutes.  
They were spitting bile at each other for over ten minutes.  
A little man, --

                      we all see him now, and measure him: a presumably african-american black man with long braids and a red hat to match his red coat. as is fashionable, his dress is oversized to his build, and even with that allowance of anatomical ambiguity we can all see that he is short of stature and slight of build.   a high toned, almost youthful timbre to his voice and rhythm makes everything he says, every hateful, angry syllable sound like a lame joke delivered in the hazy air of a closed door, sneaky-cigarette-smoke-out.  just another lost kid talking trash in between pink lunged hacks, lurking in the locker room during seventh period.  Maybe he's so angry because he's tired of people thinking he's just a punk kid telling stupid jokes.
                                                                           --near screaming (he’ll get there soon enough) at a young woman also of a presumably african american descent.  she could have been no older than twenty, let’s call her a cool nineteen, and there she stood, meeting intensity with intensity, finding her practiced tactic of strongly worded rational explanation lost on a personality we are all coming to see is unhinged and careening towards some kind of major metropolitan meltdown. 
Railing against people, and how he doesn't give a fuck and all this while she is standing, feet planted, unbending against the gale force wind of his tirade.
She's demanding that he treat her with respect because she is a student, and she is getting an education, and she's smarter than him and she won't just please, miss, sit down because we're all watching now and there's something in his eyes that no matter how hard i try i can't really believe that he's faking it anymore.

He sat, planted in the seat he claimed as his bully pulpit, his wire mesh-throne of indignation over a petulant nation of rude train people who bumped his fucking cart and wouldn't apologize.


And we just watched.
Sir Terry Pratchett has a running theme in his Discworld books that the city rabble of his fictional city of Ankh-Morpok love a free show, and there we were, the city rabble of my dream home, watching a co-ed, freshman-year David-ess try to slay her own personal goliath-in-miniature.  she had no sling, and the only stones she slung were slang and sticks, breaking no more bones than if she'd kissed him.
and finally, as he reached out to her, as he finally touched her, we realized that they weren't pretending.
he wasn't pretending; he actually was a brain-fried manic who would lay hands on a girl for buming his cart.
she wasn't pretending; she really thought it was a good goddamn idea to get in a shouting match with a lunatic on the subway.
and now we had to start pretending; pretending we knew what the hell to do.

she was standing in front of me when he touched her so i don't know if he struck her or just grabbed at her, but suddenly the cocophany of the preamble was gone and the only sounds were the grunts of exertion as he attacked, the sigh of panic she attempted to retaliate, and the intake of group consent as we moved.

before i talk about this next part, i want to make abundantly clear that i was not thinking when i did anything.  the moment i felt the shift in the room/car/air/whatever, i moved and i did what made sense.  he was surrounded on all sides and suddenly he was being held back, all i had in front of me was a young woman who had just been talking about her future, promising her promising life yet to be lived,and she was angry, enraged, and diving into the brawler's braying of a batshit black dude.

So i grabbed her.  i grabbed her by the waist and i pulled her back and fell into the seating bank I'd just lunged out of (i think i even had the presence of mind to apologize to the dude who's lap i landed into) and started talking.
because what's the one thing a situation like this needs but more fucking talking.
softly, quietly, i'm trying to calm her down
"miss, i know, miss i'm sorry, please, i understand but i need you to stop.  you need to stop.  you're going to school.  you cannot get in trouble.  miss, do you hear me?"

nothing.  just words, just the kind of meaningless prattle that comes out of a panicked brain when something NEEDS to be said.  but, alas, substansive contributions to the moment at hand are not the stuff of adrenaline fueled panick-prattle.

before i ran, full tilt out of one of the scariest subway ride of my life, i made eye contact with her.
i saw, for the first time, the honesty of this young lady's Fear, real fear, at what could have happened if he'd hurt her.
if he'd had a knife.
or a gun.

i left her, standing still, while the men who had him restrained were calling for the police, and i ran up the stairs, desperate to be far away from that place, because i couldn't think about anything but the look on her face when she actually stopped and started breathing again. 

i think she saw that, in a second, she was put at the kind of risk it took a quartet of pro-active working class professionals to pull apart.  she almost got herself, and anyone in that cart, seriously injured.

and we said yes to that, as we say yes to everything in this city, because it is what it is.
we have no alternative; we watched their exchange until it was something we all understood. 
violent.

i've asked my dear father (Doctor of Psychology, Dr. Jonathan Stevens in the HOUSE) what this kind of social contract means and he suggested that people in groups are often directionless in times of criseis until someone takes control and guides the group.
violence is someone trying to take control away
which was enough to get my ass out of my seat.

This crisis paraliysis is largely caused by the weighty expectation of social norms.
we do not act as we feel we probably should because we know that it is expected that we not act at all.
No one in that train moved or said a word until he got violent because we were too scared of the passing disapproval of a stranger.
Ironic, then, that a listless anti-social, someone with no appreciation of the nuanced delicacy of social norms, might have been the very best person to handle that very delicate situation.
maybe that's what i'll do next time i see imminent social catastrophe brewing on the subway
"excuse me, sir?/miss?  i'm trying to read my book.  could you please be quiet?"

...
anyway


i don't honestly know if there's a point to me telling this story other than i felt compelled to tell it.
this is not me progressing as an artist, an actor, or even a new yorker. 
this is a scared man/boy/person coming to realize that i cannot control when life decides to do some stupid crazy shit, and sometimes that crazy shit's gonna land in my lap...and then it's gonna hurl me into someone else's lap while i hold on for dear life.
but i do trust, now, more than ever, that no matter how deeply i dive into my little imaginarium, i am never alone, and these people, this world of strangers... and stranger still: we've got each other's backs. 

There's another theatrical touchstone, another mantra i learned, and this one is more recently added to my emotional lexicon. 
I learned it from the unstoppable Symmonie Preston.
I'll end with her words, so simple in their delivery, and so sure in their meaning, and so persistently validated in my everyday experiences with people, even at the worst of times:

"If you fall, I will catch you"

Thanks for reading.