First Burlesque
As the latest Burlesque for Peace event prepares to take over Antones I can’t help but remember my first show.
It was in talking to an ex-stripper friend of mine that the idea first appeared. She talked about how much she enjoyed being on stage and being playful and sexy, but how the environment of the modern strip club was stifling and didn’t allow for any creativity or real performance. I’ve always been a fan of big horn bands and that loud, bold brass music from the old burlesque shows. Before the idea of nude performance was, well, stripped down to what we have today those shows were so much more. Instead of women simply dancing naked around poles all night, there were huge performances with outrageous costumes, long teasing dance routines, fans, people under water with flowing silks, comedy acts and songs. The more we talked, the more excited I became. I started contacting potential venues and then, as often happens, I got distracted by some other series of projects and it never came to fruition.
Years later I was riding out the end of a tough breakup and living on my best friend Steve March’s couch in San Francisco. He had hundreds of books lining one entire wall, and every day he would leave a few more book spines protruding seductively from the enormous bookshelf and head off to work. I paced back and forth through the sunlight that bathed the wooden floors of his large studio apartment, ingesting books about psychology, spirituality and the self and scribbling furiously in a notebook on the end table. In the evenings he would return and we would jump into his Miata to roar into the city for sushi and philosophize late into the night.
It was in this context that I got the call. My friend G-Fire was hosting an all girl DJ night at Elysium, a club in Austin, for her birthday. She wanted male strippers and wanted to know if I was down to be one of them. At this point, I’d never done anything of the kind. The idea was terrifying and, therefore, immediately something I couldn’t resist. Better still that I had only days to prepare and was currently halfway across the country. I packed up my notebooks and headed home.
Back in Austin I drove straight to my favorite thrift shop and rounded up a whole pile of outfits and equipment. When I got to the club I was nervous, excited, and ready to throw down. I burst through the door to find the two other guys cowering at the bar, huddled over drinks. They were simultaneously attempting to goad each other into taking action and trying to somehow avoid the whole affair entirely. I had a duffle bag loaded with costumes and wasn’t having it. I found the next DJ and told her roughly the kind of music I was looking for and went into the bathroom to change.
Her voice boomed through the speakers as she called the audience forward to the stage, “and now I give you… The Professor!” The house lights came up and the music started slowly with a simple pulsing beat. I was standing, head down, my hands held before me completely covered in a thick black graduation gown. The gown turned out to be a good choice, as it completely hid my knees, which were clattering together like castanets.
Each of my arms extended into the opposite sleeve and I slowly began to wripple around like I was working something out under the front of my outfit, doing my best to imitate the girls I remember changing under sweatshirts on the bus after track practice. Then my arms burst free and a huge white bra flew out of my sleeve, arced through the air and landed on someone’s head. The crowd went wild.
From that point I teased and danced and worked my way through layer after layer of outfits. Having never done this before, I had no idea how long it would take and I was only halfway done when the DJ had to scramble to put on another track. It was also my first experience with shoes. There’s nothing sexy about trying to pull off shoes. Hopping up and down and spinning didn’t help, so I yanked off a sock, inhaled it deeply, and threw that out to the crowd earning me more cheers.
As girls were scrambling to fill my waistband with dollar bills, the other two guys were running for their chance to get on stage. Each one turned it up another notch, one by leaping off stage and doing a knee slide. When all was said and done all anyone wanted to know was when it would happen again and how they could get a turn. A few months later, Audrey Maker started ramping up for the first Burlesque for Peace.
For months afterwards I would meet countless people at parties who would insist on calling me The Professor, many of whom only knew me as The Professor. I had so many demands for a rerun that I eventually did another version of the same act that was much better scripted and featured a ruler and a variant of the famous endless handkerchief gag using neckties. Another year I had a really profound moment helping my friend, who had finally left the army, strip off her uniform for the last time. As I handed out her medals from a silver bowl, she threw the trappings of the life she was leaving behind to the crowd.
The all volunteer show has raised money for numerous causes, from the clearing of old landmines to Amnesty International. This year the focus is on voter registration and there have have been several sexy librarian vote drives leading up to the event. I haven’t performed in the last few, but I definitely got a twang watching my housemates Natalie and Jules prepare for their first show this last week. As they bounce and giggle their way through the house, covered in balloons, I have to wonder if, or when, The Professor will one day return…
