Kinky Boots
Chapter 9
Next Time
9 Kinky Boots
Consent is sexy. Real consent, though, includes the word “no.” Welcome to my journey into the ancient, venerable art of burlesque, and my encounter with yet another malignant narcissist as I entered the local scene.
~
AUTHOR’S NOTE: In this chapter, for Substack publishing purposes, I have changed the names of most institutions and performers, or have mentioned them without names, with one or two exceptions.
Chapter 9
Kinky Boots
I arrived a little late for setup—I had to hurry.
They had the smaller card table, rickety, swaying, and draped with a green cloth, set off to the side of the “bar”, for the array of snacks that were halfheartedly part brought from the troupe, part culled from protein bar supplies of the dance studio where the event was taking place. There was a bigger (still just as flimsy) table for all the booze, as that was the brunt of the offerings of the night. The important stuff. The bigger table, too, swayed under the weight of the bottles. Draped in purple. Donations only.
It was The Spring Fling, a kink party hosted by a notorious Boulder burlesque troupe, of which I was a senior member at the time, though I’d be quitting by the end of their summer Fringe Fest series that August. I was out of fucks to give at this point in my professional world. I had stuck with them for a good while, gave them second and third chances to treat me right, which they failed to do, and I was done. I had learned, and finally was no longer willing to allow myself to be exploited.
This event took place at the dance studio where the group normally taught its classes, held rehearsals, and sometimes performed its smaller events. It’s tucked away in an old rundown strip mall, sandwiched between an Irish step dancing academy and some kind of niche fitness place. For this event, the troupe had festooned the foyer with embroidered curtains, ornate fainting couches, and placed a stunning, barely-clad woman with a clipboard, stationed at the rapidly-frosting-over glass door. The clipboard contains the long list of consent rules, on which each patron must sign their name in agreement before they’re allowed further into the space. Once each patron is cleared for consent and either shows or purchases their ticket, another sumptuously fringed curtain is drawn aside and they’re ushered into the wide room of the main event.
This room is even more surprisingly vast than the foyer—from the entrance, it doesn’t seem like this room could be physically possible. There’s a small carpeted area just inside the entrance, before it becomes wooden dance floor. Normally there’d be big windows looking in on the dance classes, but at the moment those have been covered up to make a snug safe spot for those who need to take a break between activities, or feel the cold snowy air coming in from outside—the inner room, vast as it appears, is very warm. It’s kept that way for all the people wearing not a lot of clothing.
And there I was, running late, slated to perform first in the central burlesque lineup.
So. I guess one fuck left.
The central focus of the Spring Fling event is the stage: a black platform plonked 3 feet high, right in the middle of the room. Tonight, too, the troupe’s traveling dance pole has been erected on its own platform right in front of the stage, ribbons trailing off its tip, promising a Spring maypole dance later. It’s covered in pink rubber, making it easier to grip as well as more overtly phallus-like than a normal metal one would be. All the kink scenes are arranged in a sort of perimeter along three of the walls, so there’s a little audience area in front of the stage, and then walkways encircling the rest of it—if an audience member treads that horseshoe, they can look to one side and see the stage, while to the other will be rows of booths containing various kink activities, called “scenes.”
A kink party is a performance event that lands somewhere in the gray area between a regular burlesque performance and a full-on BDSM dungeon. Tonight, there’s a shibari artist who is one of the guest stage acts. He’s a big, burly, hairy, leather-vested man with surprisingly gentle looking hands that work dexterously with his many colored ropes. His partner is a smallish, hyperflexible woman, dressed in a slip the same color as her skin. Their performance consists of him tying, knotting, and otherwise trussing up the woman, till she’s elaborately wound up in a bow shape, knots decorating her every vertebra, and he hoists her artistic form up onto a hook and pulley, flying her out in big circles that almost overlap into the milling, gazing audience. He’s got a booth here tonight, too, to tie up any guests who’d like him to, for a tip. No flying or stage for patrons, though—that’s a skill set only his partner has.
There’s a high quality leather worker showing off his craft, too, who is skilled at flogging with any number of handcrafted whips or paddles he makes by hand. In the foyer area, there’s a silent auction where some of his recreational punishment devices are there for attendees to bid on.
There are several rules on that consent list about touch and exposure: no female nipples or any type of genitals are allowed to show. No touch without explicit and continued consent, and no fluids are allowed outside the body—this includes saliva, sex fluids, and blood, so there’s no cutting or piercing or anything like that offered here. No penetration with or into anything.
But over in the very back in the left corner behind the stage, there’s a big wooden X rack, where one of the lead instructors, black vinyl straps encasing her legs, will apply electric shocks at just the right voltage to a patron buckled in place. Again, for a tip.
Amid the left row of scenes is my friend, stage name of Mordecai Mordecom. He’s a burlesquer too but he’s not performing tonight—he’s showing off his visual art skills instead, for body painting.
Down one from him is a booth where anyone who tips can get tickled, massaged, or stroked with silk scarves, glove leather, sharpened pencils or metal pen nibs, feathers, or the backs of fingernails. Down that same row near the air vent is a booth where patrons can get their skin skillfully treated with flames, flogged with burnt branches of herbs, or dripped on with melting wax.
I was late; most everyone else working the event was already in their scanty, glittery getup. I half-jogged to the performers’ ersatz green room to change. It was a tiny alcove, performers' bags and vials of glitter and bottles of alcohol crammed into the corners. There was a space heater running, to help the scantily clad against the unseasonable-even-for-Colorado blizzard that had been pelting Boulder all day. The tiny room was warm, and smelt of powder and flowers and other feminine things.
This Boulder burlesque troupe also went through some other titles that were nods to its contemplative origins. The heads of the group did a lot of lip service into making its members feel empowered, all the while grooming them into emotional dependence. Their gimmick surrounded making the profane sacred, and their public workshops were advertised with an inner personal journey of sexual healing as the tantalizing outcome. Less a professional dance or theatre training track, the idea behind their work was more akin to a meditation or yoga retreat than a bombastic burlesque revue. Boulder has been well known since the 1970s at least, of being a center of the white appropriation of Eastern practices such as yoga, Zen Buddhism, Shambhala, and etc. Self-help workshops meant to guide a rich white woman through some omphaloskepsis, in other words, are several thousand dimes a dozen in Boulder. Calling the workshops contemplative completed the empowerment illusion, giving all participants the idea that they were being taken on a journey of self awareness into sexual liberation.
Boulder is also home to a small private university which is known for its (white) Buddhist-centered, contemplative education. Its program in Somatic Psychology is one of its most popular and well known degrees. The head of this burlesque was a graduate of its program of therapy through movement, and a practicing sex therapist herself—an unhinged narcissist with the stage name Madame Malbec. She was a master manipulator, cultivating a cult of personality around her—she had the whole thing set up to make her followers fawn at her feet, worshiping her as the intoxicating leader of the sex cult. Any deviation from Yes, Madame met with disapproval, denigration, and then the gradual shouldering out of the malefactor. All with a sweet smile.
As far as I know, and from what I gathered by watching her perform and listening to her instruction within the troupe, Madame Malbec didn't have much dance experience, and a not very complete knowledge of the history of burlesque as an art form. Like many theatre artists I’ve encountered (especially in that area of CO), she disdained the larger-than-life, artificially-sparkling-eyelashed, Vegas showgirl style of classic burlesque in favor of something more ‘authentic.’ The corrupt guru of the striptease, the home she shared with the group’s resident erotic photographer was called the Ho House. It was considered a great honor to be invited over for drinks at the Ho House.
I found them one summer, working as a reviewer for the Boulder Fringe Festival. One of the group pieces in their Fringe show included inviting audience members to come up onstage, disrobe as far as was comfortable, and appear as extras in a mostly improvised dance about polyamory. I tried it. I was surprised to find that I had a great time. This felt much more freeing and joyful than what I perceived as the more transactional drudgery of a strip club act. I auditioned for them at the end of that summer, and got in.
Now normally, in any dance or theatre company, you audition, you get cast, and then you perform for them, either in just that one show you tried out for, or you’re added to their casting pool, or company. Whether or not you get paid to perform, that’s how it works.
Not so with this Boulder burlesque troupe: imagine my surprise when, after the great news that I had gotten in, hearing that I wouldn’t be performing for them for the next at least month. What me ‘getting in’ meant was that now I had the opportunity to fork over $300 for three weeks’ worth of workshops, at the end of which, if I was all paid up, and did well in their student graduation show, I could then be added to their performance pool. There was a list of other perks, too, that supposedly I was paying for: a professional boudoir photoshoot, access to the troupe’s costume collection, the lessons themselves, and each newbie would be assigned a current member of the troupe as a mentor, what they called a ‘burlesque mom.’ Though the drag mom and mentor thing has been the way for many years, in this particular case it smelled a lot like an MLM or a sorority to me, even as intoxicated as I was with this new performance form, and, yes, the feeling of sexual liberation it did admittedly give me. But I had always hated the sorority dynamic, and I wouldn’t have done it had a friend not offered to pay the fee in full for me. That chunk of change out of the way, I decided that I’d try it—after all, if I put myself through the brief training program, I’d learn a lot more about the art and then be a working member of a professional troupe, and next time they’d let me perform more regularly. That all sounds worth it. Right?
Yeah, no. I learned next to nothing about the burlesque arts from Madame Malbec. She began her welcome to the fresh coven of newbies by telling us about herself and demanding worship in all of her subtext. Also insisting that, though she was a therapist by trade, she couldn’t be our therapist. But then? Each rehearsal began with 45 minutes total, at least, of each member talking about our lives, spilling our guts, and feeling the saccharine girl-power support of the rest of the group. Unofficial, sloppy group therapy indeed.
By the time this Spring Fling event was on, in other words, I was sick of rehearsals consisting of almost no dance, but instead mostly this pseudo group therapy that supposedly wasn’t therapy. The only reason my burlesque solos were any good, I soon realized, is that I was already a good dancer, choreographer, and performer. Nothing I got from the troupe or its instructors made me a better burlesquer—even their costume collection was threadbare, paltry. And they made us buy our own costumes most of the time anyway.1
It was hard, though, after a long abusive marriage, to not get caught up in all the ‘pussy grabs back’ indoctrination. It did feel powerful. And I’d never been to therapy before. The mere catharsis alone felt good, at first. I fell for it, I admit it. Once included into the circle, the cadences of the vocal fry and upspeak of Madame Malbec led me right along, though at this point in my life I did see what she was doing. Unlike my husband before her, I was able to watch her spin her sticky web around all of us, myself included. I let it. But I did see it, this time. I thought I was willingly choosing it.
For a while, I thought it might be worth it—maybe if I gritted my teeth and bore her nonsense, kusa-like, being a regular performer could be an okay exchange. It never was—the extra shows, the sex work for secret clubs that nobody who worked them talked about, the group photo shoots even, never included me. It was always the youngest, whitest, smallest, most feminine ones that did the brunt of the performance (and other?) work. They’d reluctantly allow my dances to appear in some of their shows, but it took me going through their whole program and then a few shows before I shook off Madame Malbec’s cult blinders and began to look for a way out. I received a pretty big guilt trip when I finally did, and even then, like the mob, they didn’t really let me go. Not fully. Madame only asked for utter submission to her every whim (and three hundred bucks), that was all. Only to surrender our whole body, soul, sobriety, and sexuality to her glory.
At the Spring Fling, then, I was beginning to feel the effects of this institution’s narcissistic abuse, particularly of its director. I was starting to learn, finally, from my experience with other controllers, other narcissists in my life up till then. When a burlesque troupe trains its members by forcing them into mandatory hours of group therapy and director worship, giving lip service to diversity while discriminating in favor of young white cis women, and whose concept of consent doesn’t include the word ‘no,’ then it’s nowhere near a safe place for anyone. Especially me, just freshly separated from a gaslighting and controlling husband. I also realized that I wasn’t being included in all the extra work—whatever it was—that the troupe was involved in. I soon realized it was for the plain fact of my size, age, and brash personality. I was cut out of all their latest group boudoir pictures; they actually reshot their troupe photos with only a couple of the performers, some of which hadn’t graduated from their course yet, all of whom were young, petite, white women.2 I was begrudgingly allowed to perform, sometimes. But that’s it. Next Time was already beginning to get boring here.
Thing is: A tribe who diminishes their members, gaslighting them into thinking they’re empowered? That ain’t no tribe, and a group who indoctrinates its women into keeping their legs wide open at all times ain’t sex positive, either.
The dance studio in its transformed state could get quite busy: 150 patrons would pack it pretty full, and there were nearly that many there by the time I performed, first in the lineup, after an hour or so of body paint and walkaround work.
Patrons at the kink parties run the gamut—sure, there’s always handfuls of doofusy college boys who don’t dress up, who come in tipsy, in sagging jeans and smelling of weed, and whose proto-masculine swagger tends to dissolve once they get into the big room. If there’s a burlesque act going on they can safely focus only at the stage, but the woman whose breasts are standing out from the ropes being wound about her ribcage just got her left nipple licked by the professional tying her up. Is that allowed? Her chin angles up and away from the action, and it’s hard to tell what she thinks of it. The man strapped to the X frame just behind the stage? I happen to know he’s a local chiropractor—I’m not sure if it’s ironic or hilariously fitting that he’s strapped, arms high and tight, to this rack-like device. The expression on his face as a tall, black-strap-clad, shaven-headed domme applies electric shocks to his exposed nipples is something well beyond the cluster of college dudebros’ world experience, and it shows in their shuffles and blushes. Suddenly, they realize they might just be in the presence of something rather out of their league.
Mostly, though, those who pay fifty bucks to come to the kink parties are women of all ages, including bachelorette parties who travel across the room and back in glittering, protective, paper-crowned and feather-boaed knots; and that particular type of 30-40ish age range, wiry, incessantly high, shamanistic man that Boulder has quite a few of—those that take microdoses of acid or mushrooms before drinking only organic herbal drinks and dancing with slow sinuous abandon alone to the DJ’s tunes, playing both trippy lights and electronic music between stage shifts. To be fair to the college doofuses, most people who come in smell like cannabis. It is Boulder, and the only thing we’re just as famous for than weed, is microbreweries.
Costumes across all these patrons also are wildly varied: here, there’s a black bearded friend of mine in a white unicorn onesie galloping around; here, two incredibly beautiful middle aged women, besties, each with smooth tanned skin and chestnut hair, wear matching skimpy lingerie and, hearing I’d never given nor received a lapdance in my life, both clamber over me in a duet, the buttocks of one of which I will never forget. Over here, a pert young woman wears a full hot dog costume, mustard and bun included. Here, a small man in knickers and realistic green horns, chest painted turquoise, prances about and hands out flowers. His posterior-pinching gets too non-consensual and we have to tell this wee Pan-leprechaun to knock it off, at which he cackles and bows and starts to ask first. Women towering in platform heels that look impossible, a person of indeterminate gender in bell bottoms and a crop top made of some skintight iridescent material, rippling over their body’s every plane. A couple classic-looking springtime faeries are also walking around, draped ribbons and scarves getting fewer and fewer (and glitter adorned skin more and more visible) as the night goes on.
Last time I worked one of these events, at the holiday themed kink party called Winter Wonderland, a strapping blond male dancer, ripped as a Chippendale’s, strode around with a big sack of sex toys and condoms across his back, handing out his gifts, nothing on but a Santa hat and very brief red and white fur shorts. And black boots that looked kinkier than anything St. Nick could have imagined.
My first costume wasn’t for performing in, rather it was something to wear fabulously as I walked around and hobnobbed as a troupe representative, before the stage performances began but well after the kink scenes were in full swing. It consisted of an old piece of diaphanous burgundy lingerie, which flowed prettily and gave my beer belly a bit of a disguising as well as comforting space. I had a choker, too, made of black lace and with a black rose made of ribbon in the center—again, a combination of sexy and comfortable. But the highlight of my pre-show outfit was my new footwear: a tall pair of black, ribbon-woven boots with the stupidest high patent leather heels and platform soles I have ever seen, let alone touched. Let alone tried on. These made me well over 6 feet tall, and emphasized my long legs. I’d been practicing with them at home, as I figured I’d need to get used to standing and walking in them so I wouldn’t make a fool of myself in public. I’m supposed to be graceful, statuesque, glorious when onstage, but even more so when walking the floor down off the raised platform, amid the common spectator rabble.
I didn’t want to be a ‘safe person’ people could come to when they felt threatened, either. I didn’t want the responsibility—I had done that job last time for the holiday party and my number of fucks since then had diminished considerably. And I didn’t necessarily feel safe to comfort anyone else venturing into the rotten world’s shimmying facade, since I knew it was that, and that nobody in charge of the event cared one whit about any patron’s safety, after having gone through the rote minimum. I didn’t feel like spewing the consent agreement again, for this reason—I hated having to corner everyone trying to have a good time at the last one, and they never listened anyway after they walked through that curtained door, even if they did sign the paper so they could get in.
I did, though, want to show off myself and my talents up there on the raised stage. I was mainly just averse to the close-up, over-saturated, too-slimy and way too personal sexual vibe of the rest of the thing down on the floor. To be fair, whenever I did walkaround work, I was never given unwelcome or icky attention. Of course. Why would I be? I’m a big woman, with powerful presence and imposing mien. Most creepers are too scared of me to creep. So it wasn’t that necessarily—it was more the particular type of performative labor that I didn’t like—similar to the RenFaire walkaround obligations: I like performing choreography, and I’m good at it, but improvisation is just too much work, and it’s not one of my strengths, even when I’m emceeing, though I do a better job at that than the close up magic that is walkaround improv.
But there was about an hour and a half of kink party shenanigans before my piece went up, and a paying gig is a paying gig. A hundred and fifty bucks for a couple hours’ resplendence was an okay deal for an adjunct and a theatre actor, used to getting nothing or next to nothing for her brilliance. So I got into the ridiculously awesome boots and the pretty yet comfy lingerie, and threw my black lace robe on over the whole thing as a kind of armor. My ankles felt iffy in the new boots, which made me tower over even the men in the room. They began to hurt almost immediately, but I doused my skin with more sparkly powder (surely glitter would perk me up) and demanded a drink to help me cope. Their whiskey choices weren’t, but I supposed beggars couldn’t be choosers. I ended up sipping on Jim Beam and some kind of piney IPA all night.
Since the costume for my dance did not include stockings, I visited Mordecai Mordecom at his body paint booth. I had him decorate my thigh as a performance spangle, and to kill time so I wouldn’t have to walk around so much. He painted a glorious vermilion rose, metallic gold sun stripes rising from its background, winding thorny stems resembling a caduceus trailing underneath, and opalescent wings spreading across my haunch. My stage name is Valkyrie Rose, and the beautiful begemmed body paint suited me perfectly.
The first time I was asked for my burlesque name, I was on the spot in a big way—Madame Malbec had me onstage before their group number for Fringe Fest. The number involved them calling up anyone in the audience who wanted, to come join them, disrobing only as far as was comfortable, no experience necessary. Before this piece began, they did a quick impromptu interview of each intrepid audience dancer, asking them what their burlesque name was. Thrown for a loop, I glanced down at myself, taking an inventory of what I was wearing: little blue dress with tiny polka dots, bright blue bra, teal underwear, tall black Doc Martens.
“Um, Blueberry Tart,” I stammered.
Mme. Malbec rolled the new name off her sultry tongue, trying it out: “Blueberry Tart…” she drawled. I immediately fell in love with the name. I thought I tasted blueberry for a moment.
Later, in the workshop, part of the early development process was for all of us to, not come up with cool and clever stage names, but to “find our inner burlesque character.” This process involved guided meditation, journaling, all sorts of channeling type nonsense which I wasn’t interested in. But I did find that I wanted to pick a stage name that had more deeply to do with who I am. Along with the punniness and innuendo that always needs to be part of a stripper or burlesque name. I had Mme. Malbec, Mlle. l’Orange, Mordecai Mordecom, and Maybe Baybee in that group as name models. In my early research into the Denver burly scene (very aligned with the drag scene), I found drag and burlesque performers called Mona Little, Raspberry Cabaret, Stiletta Maraschino, Katya Peepin, Giselle Over, Blass Femme, and Whiskey Ginger, to name only a few.
I wanted to reflect something of my warrior training in my burlesque name. Kunoichi was the term for a female ninja in the Japanese arts I studied. But then I imagined an emcee trying to say that, and I thought twice. Plus, I’m a huge white woman—though that’s closest to my authentic brand of combat, it still didn’t smack of cultural sensitivity. Hm, I thought, what are terms for big white warrior women? I played for a moment with the name Boudicca, thinking I could get a booty and/or dick pun in there but that was just too complicated. Valkyrie! There we go. A big magical Nordic warrior woman, carrying the fallen to Valhalla. I added Rose to the name as a nod to my late bloomer-ness. Valkyrie Rose.
I had a piece of music composed for me that remixed clips of Wagner’s ‘Flight of the Valkyrie’ for my first ever self-choreographed burlesque piece, which incorporated the seiza rei3 of my first martial arts practice, and my first wedding dress.
It was still a couple years before the divorce was final, and only a couple months since I’d moved out of my husband’s place and been living all alone for the first time. Not even roommates. I was free to make my own choices of life activity, foods, everything, and learning the theatrical stripping trade from the Boulder burlesque troupe had been one of those things. My little studio apartment was within walking distance of their performance space. For the Spring Fling, I would perform one dance piece and that was it—I wanted this to be an in and out and pocket my fee sort of thing.
My mom shook her head at my gravitation to burlesque in my mid-40s. She called it my midlife crisis. Maybe she’s not wrong, but more than that: I deserve to be treated like a goddess.
I was taught this truth from a young age as a Talented & Gifted kid: as such, kids are set apart (and weirdly worshiped) for being extraordinary or not normal in the way that mundane humans are. And hard or dirty work isn’t for the talented, it’s beneath them. This is why all gifted kids go to college. If they were to go to a trade school and get a ‘regular’ job, they’re slumming. And if, like a friend of mine, they dance at a strip club to pay for their college? The ultimate in demeaning work, far beneath them.
But at graduation with my MFA, I was over a hundred thousand dollars in debt, and my friend the erstwhile stripper owed not a cent. So. Which job is the demeaning, exploitative one again, the adjunct or the stripper?
Of course, I have always been larger than life, which means I have powerful stage presence but also was always the ‘ugly friend’ and the big woman never cast, because nott small or pretty enough. And in my 40s? I was bigger and more imposing than ever before. And so? Being celebrated for my particular, unique (and big!) sexiness was a drug. Even just going shopping for sexy, pretty things to wear was a revelation, as I normally dressed just like a man, or shlubbily in sweats.
My husband noticed this change, and before I moved out especially, would often comment on the fact that I was suddenly dressing in more feminine fripperies only now that I wasn’t his—he took it as a personal affront.
“Why are you wearing stockings now? I always wanted you to and you always just dressed like—“
“Like what?” I’d ask.
“Well, just like me. Now you’re finally dressing like a girl.” As though I was doing it only to spite him. Which of course made me that much more inclined to go back to the addiction that was the girl-power burlesque tribe telling me how beautiful I was, and how awful all men are. Because boy oh boy, was it true...
The group had booked me for one burlesque act to be performed at the Spring Fling, and I did want to do my dance piece for a larger audience than I’d had at its recital-like debut, and so I agreed to be added to the lineup. But I didn’t want to spend time walking around, or do any kind of ‘service’ booth. The thought of servicing patrons all night made me feel squicky. Strip onstage? Sure. Tickle strangers all night? No thanks.
Future burlesque events put on by this group would be alcohol free, but at that time they were very socially demanding of booze. It’s almost as if they required their members to be in constant heavy drinking mode. A way of controlling their stable? Maybe. It’s certainly a way to feel falsely powerful while giving all one’s power away. I was pretty used to it, though: Most of my marriage was spent drinking more alcohol than you’d think possible for one woman. But then I’d started my heavy drinking habits years before, in college. I mainly acquired hard drinking as a social skill, but also as a way to deal with the extraordinary taxation acting training takes on the psyche. And the Band of Young Men made post-performance drinking par for the course, a necessary practice in order to fit in socially with the dudes. The same was true for the martial arts group headed by Ninjaboy who, like me, did his early performance and social circle building under them.
Of course, using alcohol to cope with pain is a bad habit. But I got quite good at it, and I never lost a friend or a job or my health from it like my husband had. I learned to keep up with a group of swashbuckling guys, and this might be why I usually had a comparatively clear head while working with this burlesque group, years later.4 Their social booziness was actually one of many red flags that clued me in to their unhealthy dynamic, disguised as empowering positivity. It put me on my guard—their encouragement of heavy drinking in the midst of heavy therapy-esque dependence and even encouraging backstage drinking, turning a blind eye to intoxicated performance, which no other professional theatre or dance groups will ever, ever do. This normalization of being constantly hammered rang one of a few alarm bells, the full series of which made me leave the group not too long later, as I’ve mentioned.
After all, If you’re drunk enough, you’re considered not capable of giving consent, in sexual assault law courts. This state of being aligned perfectly with the burlesque troupe’s warped idea of what sex positivity and consent means: the ‘yes to everything, no to nothing’ concept I’ve talked about before? This was their idea of what it meant to be empowered and to be sexually powerful in particular. Fuck the patriarchy of course, but if any of us deigned to say no to anything asked of us in the group? Well, jeez, you’re obviously self-repressing. Can we support you to go deeper? Maybe if you won’t do this, you don’t deserve to be in this group. Are you too ashamed of your sexuality to join us—I mean, we’re all actively SEX POSITIVE! All the sex all the time! It’s EMPOWERING! Don’t you want to be empowered? Here, have a shot…
That snowy spring night, though, I began my dance piece by handing out little flower bundles to the audience, moved through my choreography with much audience suspense and anticipation and appreciation. It was a hit song that most of my crowd knew, and so they followed the gestural story I told (aligned with the lyrics), stomped flamenco-like with me at the chorus, and even sang along. I often do a thing where I undo three buttons, then stop, look up at the audience, shrug, nonverbally ask if I should continue, and threaten to button the shirt back up if they don’t make the noise I require. This audience complied beautifully. I had them, for that three minutes I had waited an a hour and a half for, in the palm of my hand.
After, I ended up cooling off in another little, briefer, black lace number till maypole time. I received many compliments not only during the piece in the form of cheers and singing along—nothing like a full audience singing, “I’m in love with your body!“ at you—but also several of them approached me with direct compliments as I did my obligatory concluding walkaround. Audience worship is quite a drug as well. And when they’re able to come up and tell me what they think to my face, flush with adrenaline? It’s a boost. An upper, instead of the downer that alcohol is. This one I admit I’m still pretty addicted to.
Treat a woman, especially an ugly, sexually awkward, late bloomer woman like a goddess, and she’ll easily fall prey to manipulation. Put her up on a stage/pedestal and declare her glorious? She’ll do anything asked of her. And if the burlesque work is draped in trappings called Empowerment and Sex Positivity? The result is a stable of beautiful, seemingly strong women that are in fact utterly dependent on Madame Malbec for their well-being. This was how this Boulder burlesque troupe, headed by one of the most insidious narcissists I’ve ever met, got and kept their girls. They did a lot of lip service surrounding pride and sex positivity, but their version of that was a bunch of young white women who always say yes. No such thing as ‘no’ in their version of consent, and there were no other bodies represented. Once I noticed what they were doing, it was kind of like the premise of schlock sci fi movie They Live: I saw through their booty shaking facade down to the reality of their attitude and their system and its exclusionary rules. I saw the ugliness of it, and they knew it. Once they knew I knew it, they drove me away, using bitchy-girl bullying and subtle excuses to shoulder me out. After they made sure I had paid my fee.
Whenever I perform well, it feels good. But seeing others perform mediocrely, particularly those I was supposed to represent, nay, champion, was grating to the nerves. I felt out of place amongst those who professed to be my own tribe. Maybe because I was seeing through the cloud of glittery booze and sex, seeing that they didn’t care about me at all. And that, as a large and older woman, I did not fit the description to remain a safe and subservient member of the stable. Not a proper member of that tribe. Not once I’d paid my three hundred bucks, that is.
At the climax of the Spring Fling, around midnight, the maypole dance ensued. This consisted of, as even the most vanilla person would expect, lovely young scantily clad ladies weaving their dancing way to braid a bunch of long ribbons into a beautiful plait, encasing the pink stripper pole they were attached to. But there was one exception.
There was a Spring Goddess in this piece, who led the weaving dance even though she was a newly indoctrinated tribe member. She was fully naked. She was so naked as to be completely shaved clean—every round and pale curve visible (and they all were) were hairless, but for her head, whose long curled locks were topped by a flower crown. She smirked at her audience as she danced, her steps clumsy. The other maypole dancers looked embarrassed. I was repulsed.
It was a huge turnoff; not because I didn’t appreciate her beauty, which looked as though it were lifted right out of a Titian. No, it was just that I had never given consent to see her full nakedness, and I wouldn’t have given it, had I been asked. Her surprise raw appearance as lead dancer was an insult to all the consent rules we were supposed to be careful of and to enforce, and a slap in the face to the audience who’d all signed a form in order to be let in.
Of course, if I were to voice this objection to anyone in this troupe, the reaction would be something of a combination of: what are you, a prude? and: How dare you denigrate her SEX POSITIVE glory? That did it. I was officially out of all fucks. This was gross and I felt violated and had nowhere to go to escape it but home.
Only a couple minutes later, I, fully clothed, was lacing on my much more comfortable, wearable and waterproof Doc Marten boots, and the troupe’s resident erotic photographer was there too, in the outer dressing room, no trace of her shimmering mermaid tail and pearly shell pasties anymore, but a bulky coat and boots for the snow. She declared she was taking an Irish exit, and was feeling too introverted to do any more partying. I explained that’s exactly what I was doing, and that I was walking, so she drove me home.
It was spring, and so even though the snow was prolific that night, it fell heavily and was heavy. Wet, heavy snow plipped onto her windshield and clung. It slushily inserted itself into the crevices of her tires. Turns slipped before they righted. It was walking distance so it wasn’t a long drive, but I was happy to mount my three stories of stairs to escape the not-quite-cold clamminess, before it became ice.
I thanked and hugged her across the car seats. She peeled away, leaving a boat-sized wake of watery slush, cresting in a wave as she left.
The next morning, every drop of the snow had melted away into only slight fragrant dampness on the asphalt. Spring had a fling with the snow, and then it was over. Like three minutes of me flinging my tape-xed boobs to a cheering crowd. Enough time for three cheers, and then it melts away, as though it never happened.
My handmade wedding dress, as far as I know, still lives there in their communal costume bin. Raw silk and yards of tulle, antique mother of pearl buttons down the back. Vera Wang pattern. Made by my mom. Also burnt out velvet gauntlets for same. A beautiful thing. I have danced two different numbers in it and have therefore said goodbye, so. It got a good and glorious sendoff.
I was told that the reason for my unceremonial cutting was that I wasn’t looking directly into the camera. I very nearly made a stink about disability discrimination (I’ve got strabismus in one eye and it actually can be accommodated if they’d said something or worked with me). But I didn’t have enough fucks at that point in my relationship with them to bother.
Opening bow/chant ritual in the Japanese martial arts I studied.
At that point I had cut way back on my own consumption, and was a much more reasonable drinker, though with occasional nights of partying. I had survived the blitz-drunk years of my youth and, having watched my ex husband nearly perish from pancreatitis, I treated alcohol with a whole world more caution and temperance than I had done in the past.