Books'n'Blurlesque

Why the hell am I up so early? At least I don't really have a hangover.

Yesterday was productive and fun. I spent most of my morning putzing around and pondering whether or not we'd be able to go out on the lakes with the impending weather. It was cloudy and there were green and yellow bits all around us on the Doppler radar. I got some laundry going and a bit before noon I headed out to run errands. First I stopped at a bookstore (bad idea) to grab a new Polish cookbook. The one I own is fine but it's a thin volume and I wanted something with more recipes and perhaps even some culinary history. Having found a suitable volume, I figured, "What the hell – why not get a book on canning?" So I snagged one of those as well. Walking to the cash register, I looked at the precariously placed cheapie shelves and found that they had a buy 3-get the 4th free sale going on so I started perusing. Unsurprisingly, I came up with four books:

Master and Commander
Rise of the Vulcans
Bush at War
IBM and the Holocaust

And so I walked away about $70 poorer. From there it was off to get some shirts for work. I had bought three not too long ago but ruined two of them. While I suspect the spots were from coffee stains, I cannot be sure. What I do know is that they seemed fine one day and the next thing I know I'm pulling them from the dryer and the fronts are littered with enough spots to them looks like they were made for cheetahs. I just don't know what the hell happened to them. So I tacked the aisles at Target until I got to the men's clothing section. Wandering around, a couple signs caught my eye: 30% Off and 50% Off. I found some completely nerdy looking plaid shirts and quickly snatched them up. Some of the items just were so ugly that even I wouldn't wear them and I pondered what guy in his right mind would. I mean, I'm not fashionable, to be sure, but I just don't understand how any 21st century man could find ochre an attractive color. The 1970s are gone and best left that way. Realizing that most of my tube socks resembled Swiss cheese, I also bought a pack of those. In addition, I snagged a couple pillows as well seeing as how mine are old, unfluffy, and stained. After blowing another $70, it was off to get a haircut.

Paul seemed to be in a good mood. There was a guy getting a trim so I had to wait a little while so we BSd. I noticed that Paul had moved stuff around so now the chairs for folks waiting are all on one side and there a coffee table with magazines. Plus he had put up some framed posters which detailed the working of the mechanisms of the AK-47 and a couple other assault rifles. Paul, you see, is a champion of libertarianism and guns. He collects them and seemingly always has one disassembled in his shop that he's cleaning or one whose stock he's staining. When it came time for me to get into the chair, he put on the first episode of Space: Above and Beyond. Paul is a bit sci-fi fan and downloads such TV shows constantly. It was bad. Really bad. Like a poor knockoff of Starship Troopers. But I suffered through it and through Paul virtually eliminating my sideburns. Why he insists on shearing them so short is beyond me. When I walked in, I really had no idea as to how I wanted my hair to look so I basically gave him carte blanche to do whatever he felt like as long as it was short. It came out reasonably well, I suppose. I must admit that I really don't give a flying fuck how my hair looks as long as I don't have to mess around with it. With my new hairdo, I took off for home.

Arriving with my hands full, I found that Stevie's friend Brian was there with his wife Cheryl. It was nice to see them again as they're both really cool. We made some small talk and then I prepared a spot of lunch. Still having leftover pork, I made a sandwich. I toasted a couple pieces of rye bread and slathered some garlic jelly on one. Then I layered some pork onto which I put some sour cream and jalapeno slices. Oh man! It was tasty! I mowed it down and had a piece of chocolate-covered barfi for dessert. It was nearing 4ish and I wanted to get to the Club Majestic for the burlesque show a bit early as to not be left standing in back. But first I had to rinse whatever gunk Paul had put in my hair.

I got downtown a bit after 4 and thought I'd stop in at a coffeehouse before going in but, to my surprise, there was a line already so I jumped in at the back. The doors opened soon after and I hustled inside. It was the first time I'd been in there since it became a dance club. The Majestic was built in the first decade of the 20th century and hosted vaudeville shows and the like before becoming a movie theater. A few years back it closed but was reopened fairly recently as a club where people can take X, listen to techno, and shake their bums. Walking in, I was handed a program by one of two fine-looking ladies. Taking in the theater, I immediately thought of A Clockwork Orange and expected Billy and his boys to drag a naked woman kicking and screaming onto the stage. The place looked OK. It had retained much of the old look while acquiring a bar, spot for a DJ, and various lights and such that clubs have. The seats right in front of the stage were reserved so I grabbed a seat in the middle. I proceeded to pop a few truck driver pills and get a gin & tonic. The audience seemed to be mostly women. There were several groups of 3 or 4 them scattered about the place. There were also a lot of couples. While I won't hazard a guess as to the median age, I was definitely younger. It was the early show so perhaps it is to be expected to have the more middle aged crowd attend and the younger folk go to the 9 o'clock show.

The show started at 5 with the house band, The Cherry Cordials, coming out and playing a bit of music to warm us up. Then the host, Lonnie Tiburon, came out and did an introduction. He was followed by Jewels of Denile, a member of the Mad Rollin' Dolls, who would be swapping out the placards with the names of each routine from an easel at the side of the stage. The first bit was a rendition of "Fever" by Cherie D'Amour with her two boys, Ricky O'Toole and Boy. It was quite humorous. Shiva's Gifts was next and involved three women dancing to "From Rusholme With Love". They did the whole bit where they stood in a row and held their arms out. Strip Fu was a funny routine. It involved Lola Martinet and Pixie Valentine going at it. They wore karate outfits and they moved their mouths while dialogue completely out of sync with their lips was piped through the PA. There were ropes dangling from above the stage and they wore harnesses so there was some really hilarious mock-Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon kung fu action going on. When there were at opposite sides of the stage, one of them did a bunch of hand motions and a Jedi Force push hoolie and the other woman's outfit flew off. So the near-naked fighter did the same to her opponent. More kung fu ensued.

In addition to the Cherry Pop Tarts, there were a few guests. The Hot Pink Feathers brought their samba-cabaret mix from San Francisco.



They were excellent! I have never seen butts shake so fast in my entire life! They performed three times throughout the night, if I recall correctly. During one of them, the woman on the right in the picture above shuffled front and center and shook her thang. Then another got all jealous and hip-checked her out of the spotlight and jiggled her boobs like nobodies bidness. Then the third pushed her away and undulated her entire body in ways I never thought possible. Great stuff. Also appearing was Mona N'wal, a local who teaches and performances Middle Eastern dancing. It was my first exposure to live belly dancing and it was marvelous! The Caffeinatrix had taken belly dancing lessons and described it to me but seeing it performed before my eyes was a whole different matter. While the performances up to this point were drenched in gleeful abandon, N'wal's dance was more subtle and more graceful yet erotic. Just beautiful. Another local, delicate MICH, performed a fan dance with video accompaniment. A white sheet acted as a screen which had a rather abstract image of vertical lines projected upon it while MICH did a wonderful fan dance. The part where she ensconced herself in the feather fans and removed her top was just entrancing. And then she turned and faced the screen with her fans behind her, enveloping her torso. Then she opened and closed the fans like a clam shell. I really dug this part too – must have something to do with my appreciation of Botticelli's Venus. The last of the guests was a couple from Chicago who call themselves Tightly Bound. They were simply unfucking real. They do aerial dance with straps. Two of them hung from the ceiling and they were put to good use. They began doing some steps on the floor but soon ascended. The guy bound his wrists with the straps and then did summersaults to hoist himself up to the rafters. He then grabbed another strap from the balcony and let it down so his partner could grab it. Once she had, he hauled her up to him whereupon she gracefully stood on him, flipped around him, and just all manner of acrobatics. Truly amazing. If you ever get a chance to witness them, by all means take it.

Another bit by a Cherry Pop that I want to mention is a solo routine by Lola Martinet. Attached to a rope was a sheet folded and tied in such a way as to create this triangular tent that one could lie in. Her dance was called Illusions and was tremendous – I really loved it. She would do some dancing with, say, one foot dangling from the sheet, and then she'd jump into it so that the curves of her body stood out in relief from the sheet. In a Barbarella-like moment, she was lying down inside of it with a light behind so we the audience could only see a dark outline taking off her stockings. What really sewed up my crush on Lola was the final routine involving the entire Cherry Pop cast. It involved Chastity Dickums being all domineering and Lola ran out onto stage with her hands bound and a ball gag in her mouth. All I could think of was spanking…Ahem.

Here’s a smattering of pictures from their website to give you hint of what it was all about.















Needless to say, the show was fantastic! I have never gotten so frisky from just watching a woman remove gloves. The gin & tonics went down like water, the pills gave me a good buzz, and, with women wearing very little onstage, my mind just fell into a good place. Every so often I could feel that feeling between my legs. The show is not about crassness or vulgarity, it's about fun and exuberance laced with sexuality. I really enjoyed how the low-brow humor and the exposure of flesh were set side-by-side with routines that were more "arty". I don't think it totally unfair to say that the core of the show was the human body. One minute women were shaking their boobs at high velocity and the next there'd be people doing this graceful act dangling from straps high above the stage. While most of it was about the body portrayed in a prurient light, there were also times when it was about the body as being art in and of itself. And the Cherry Pop Tarts are not a bunch of waifs. Pussy Divine is a big girl while Chastity Dickums is much smaller. The rest of them fall somewhere in between. And they range from, I'd guess, late 20s to early 40s. My only complaint was that they were all white. I'd love to see some women of color up there next time. We'll see.

As I headed to my car, I was high, horny, a bit drunk, and just full of life. I felt like I could do anything and was ready to please any woman that dared get close to me. It was just a wonderful feeling – that sense that everything in life is mine for the taking, that everything is ripe for the picking.