Kiki Maroon pops my ‘burlesque cherry’
I’ll never forget my first
Kiki Maroon invited me to attend her Burly Q Lounge burlesque revue (at Warehouse Live in Houston) Saturday, Feb. 17. I went, had one of the best times I’ve ever had while out on the town, and was left with some thoughts about why I enjoyed the experience so much, and why it was so novel.
Idon’t enjoy strip clubs. I’ll fight for their right to exist and conduct business, if it comes down to it, and I’m a staunch, vocal advocate for the rights and dignity of sex workers (the Desiree Alliance is a good place to start looking if you, too, want to advocate for sex workers’ rights), but the simple fact is that I don’t enjoy being in a strip club.
I’ve been told that not liking strip clubs is a bit off-brand for me, and I get it, but I take issue with it a little. I’m sex positive, sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m for sex in any/all situations, at all times. Those of us that self-identify as sex positive typically add a consent disclaimer, and it’s my personal experience that ideas like ‘consent’ and ‘agency’ can get pretty murky when eroticism and sexuality intersect money, or when a venue’s human capital is de-facto segregated into ‘consumers’ and ‘product.’
I think I’d use the word ‘adversarial’ to describe the atmosphere of the strip clubs that I’ve been inside. Again, your mileage may vary, but I always felt this overwhelming tension — the mostly-straight, mostly-cis men seem preternaturally wary of ‘money-hungry’ dancers and on guard against being scammed, tricked or otherwise defrauded, while the dancers are on guard against being raped, killed, attacked, etc. (with good reason).
Because their financial well-beings are inversely related (and 1:1, since every dollar a dancer makes is one less for some patron), the dancers and customers are inherently opposed, locked in a competitive, zero-sum game that leaves little room for empathy or real, intimate, unguarded connection.
The concept is so tantalizing! I love being visually stimulated by someone’s body (especially if they’re into it!), but the rigidity of the strip club dynamic — boldface, heavy lines drawn along gender divides — turns the whole proceeding into (for me) a dystopian horrorshow.
Strip clubs could be sexy, I always felt. Should be. But…
My politics and my own deeply-ambivalent feelings about my identity and privilege(s) got in the way, according to some very pro-strip-club friends of mine. I wasn’t going to have ‘that kind of fun,’ certainly not at any venue or event, unless I lightened up.
I’m happy to report they’re wrong.
It’s not really fair to Kiki and the Burly Q revue that ‘strip club’ and ‘burlesque show’ were so linked in my mind beforehand. Saturday’s trip to Warehouse Live was my first-ever burlesque show (this story’s titular line about ‘popping cherries’ originated with self-described ‘fluffer’ Honey Moonpie, by the way, not me), so it was the first opportunity most of my preconceptions had to be challenged or corrected.
In a very literal sense, I can say that everything I know about burlesque, I learned from Kiki Maroon.
I figured I had a pretty good idea of what would transpire. Why I figured that, I don’t know, because I was ignorant and had very little idea, it turns out.
Takeaways? The show was definitely sexy. Sexier than anything I’ve seen in a strip club, for sure. Full disclosure: I’ve been to three clubs on five occasions, plus I used to play poker in the back room of a club twice a week, which was plenty for me, but it by no means makes me an expert. The way the crowd (mostly couples or multi-person-love-units, due to the proximity of Valentine’s Day) appreciated and supported the performers was my first clue that this was an entirely different sort of erotic environment.
The way Kiki described it in an email to me was, “It’s less ‘take it off!’ and more ‘you go, girl!’” I didn’t fully appreciate the difference until I was sitting in the crowd and the house lights came down.
I’m not sure precisely how they would characterize the on-stage dynamic, but I would call Kiki the host (it’s her show!) and Honey Moonpie the emcee, and the interplay between the two was crackling.
They laid out some rules for the show, which explicitly included, ‘don’t be an asshole,’ and ‘be nice to each other, and nice to the performers.’
As a thought experiment, imagine if those were the rules at a strip club!
The lineup was terrific — stunning, mesmerizing, sensual performances by Miss Something Blue, Ruby Joule and Vicious Delicious. From what I understand, the performers rotate in and out, depending on their availability, which adds to the collaborative feel of the whole event. To say nothing of the fact that both men and women were welcome on-stage, and the man in question — Mr. Delicious, himself — put on arguably the sexiest performance of the evening.
The standup comedy, from Kiki and Dusti Rhodes, was four sets of tight-fives if I’m not mistaken, from figuratively-grizzled veterans who blended effortless crowd work with frank observational and loosely-autobiographical, smart, bawdy vignettes.
I keep calling it a ‘burlesque revue’ in my head, revue meaning: a light theatrical entertainment consisting of a series of short sketches, songs, and dances. There’s something charming about the vaudevillian roots I see poking through the Burly Q show. I don’t have the connection to the source material that I’m sure Kiki and all the Burly Q performers, crew and contributors do, but I could tell that it hearkened back to something, and it made me wish I knew.
The show, being a Valentine’s Day-themed affair, featured a lot of discussion about love. Most of it was light-hearted ribbing aimed at more vanilla, middle-of-the-road ‘normies,’ but towards the end of the show, Kiki waxed earnest with a soliloquy dedicated to her ‘one true love: you guys.’
It got the requisite ‘awwww’ from the crowd (Even I did! I couldn’t help myself — she’s just that charming), but I couldn’t shake the parallel I’d been considering all evening. What would that sound like at a strip club?
I can easily envision a dancer saying it, but not meaning it. Just think about it: How would the experience be different if the performers and audience loved each other like Kiki and her patrons love each other?
To be honest, I think some people (men and women, alike) would hate it. But I think most people would warm to the genuine sentiment and give-and-take between those on stage and those watching them, and in that kind of familial, intimate atmosphere — with a collaborative spirit, rather than an adversarial one — the sensuality is magnified a hundredfold.
I can only speak for myself, but I know lots of dancers and former dancers. None of them were ever excited to go to work. They were in the sex business, more or less, but work was work was work.
Burlesque doesn’t seem like work, watching Kiki and her performers crush it on stage, falling into each others’ arms offstage, laughing and generally having a delightful time. It’s contagious, too. It caught me.
I’ll be back on March 24 (I’ve seen Kiki mention her Patreon here and there — it seems like that’s probably a worthwhile investment, since she puts on a great show, like, 15–20 times a year), and as often as I can in the future.
I’ll be back because Kiki (along with others, I’m sure, who I’m eager to learn about and meet) and her show confirmed, like, some deep-seated, profound sentiments.
What makes sex sexy?
It ties into an idea I’ve been kicking around more and more as the Harvey Weinstein, et al. fallout continues to develop and evolve. ‘Consent’ is kind of a shitty word. I once ‘consented’ to let the police search my car when I was 16 or 17, because I didn’t know any better, no one had told me the police would do that to me, I thought they were allowed to do it whether I wanted them to or not and I was nervous, scared, confused and panicking.
To the extent that we teach about consent, or encourage it to be considered, at all, that’s the kind of consent most of us are trafficking in before we encounter real training in sexual dynamics and individual agency.
‘Radical consent’ is an idea I see thrown around, but it’s still got that word ‘consent.’ Consent is fairly neutral in its denotative sense: ‘permission for something to happen or agreement to do something,’ the OED says.
That’s what it has felt like, to me in my life, watching dancers on the pole performing for crowds of worked-up men in the clubs I’ve been to. It’s not like anyone put a gun in the small of their backs and walked them out onto the stage on threat of death, but their consent to be ogled and whatever else feels… tepid. To me, in my personal experiences. If there’s a strip club you know of where things are radically different, and I’m misguided, I welcome the correction — leave a response, and I’ll look into it. I’d love to promote more sex-positive, healthy, collaborative-spirited sensual shows, but I don’t know them yet.
The ‘consent’ of Kiki’s performers is as radical as it gets. They’re thrilled to be up there. For most of them, they’ve set aside inordinate amounts of time to hone and refine complex, nuanced, almost-lyrical acts or sets, devoting full-time-job hours to burlesque which is, for most, not the bill-paying gig.
I discovered that, for me, the experience of watching and enjoying someone who is enjoying giving the performance magnifies the pleasure (aesthetic, lustful or otherwise). I’m an NBA fan, and I used to love watching guys like Chuck Hayes, Shane Battier and Luis Scola play their fucking hearts out for the Rockets (to say nothing of guys like Mario Elie and Hakeem Olajuwon, in an earlier era). I used to hate it when Andrew Bynum or Michael Beasley would come to town, because they had all the talent and physical gifts in the world, but they just didn’t see to want to be there.
Remind you of anyone?
I started out with the intention of reviewing an event, and it’s devolved into a rambling discussion about consent and sexual mores. Such is the life of The Sex-Positive Blog’s Editor-in-Chief. There are real problems in this country, and a lot of them involve the way we relate to one another sexually.
It only gets fixed by relating better, and by modeling warmer, more loving, inclusive, welcoming behavior.
Kiki is doing that with the Burly Q Lounge. If you’re here in Houston, and you’re sex-positive, progressive, into sex and fun and eroticism, but (like me) find that strip clubs or similar environments leave a bad taste in your mouth, you should check out Kiki Maroon’s show. Trust me — she leaves a wonderful taste in your mouth.
And if you’re not in Houston, hey — plan a trip! Or check out the burlesque options in your area (there were performers from Austin and the RGV Saturday, I believe, and there certainly seemed to be a larger, wider culture of burlesque that Kiki & co. belonged to).
There’s something else out there that celebrates sex and bodies and dance and flirting — I won’t say something better, but definitely something better for me.
Why not find out if it’s better for you?
