Maybe I play too fast and loose with my affections, but I truly do love each and every burlesque show and producer in the Bay Area. (I stopped and thought about that sentence before continuing, just to make sure I wasn’t lying, and it’s true! I love them all!) Getting back into performance again is a real joy, not just because I love being naked under stage lights, but because I’ve been missing the heaving bosoms of my burlesque family. Jesus. Being away from them all has made me a real sap.
On March 25, I’ll be at Red Hots Burlesque at El Rio in the Mission. I hear they have a new stage floor, which I have never even seen, much less tromped across in glittery shoes. I kind of love everything about Red Hots: the tiny dressing room, the graffito in the sketchy bathrooms, the way the stage monitors hang low enough that I sometimes travel too far to the side and become headless to the audience, the smooth marble of the drink tickets, the for-charity raffle, the kooky mix of performers, and the way the sound person never messes up my cue. But what I really love is proprietress Dottie Lux, who makes me feel like the most fabulous creature on the planet Earth each time I’m with her. Dottie, who ad-libbed a monologue to my mother’s vagina on my birthday. Dottie, who never passes up the chance to grope me a little bit. Dottie, with the best sparkly eye makeup on the planet and her ass horn. I love Dottie. So I can’t wait to be at Red Hots next month.
On April 14, I’ll be at Little Minsky’s at Club Deluxe in the Haight. The first burlesque show I ever saw in the flesh (har!) was Cabaret Verdalet, and I remember seeing Douglas Good standing off to the side looking positively dapper. I saw him many more times at other shows, and it took me a year to get up the nerve to talk to him. Douglas, if you ever read this, I could not be more serious — you intimidated the hell out of me. Minsky’s is such a slinky, sexy, glamorous little number that I was dying to be a part of it, and to my great surprise, Douglas booked me. And then we drank together in Las Vegas, and the rest, as they say, is history.
