On Naked Girls Reading (Banned Books)

Friday, October 16, 2009.

What is the most sexy part of a woman that you’ve never seen at a burlesque show?

Her voice.

Oxblood, you’re too much of a horndog to care about a woman’s voice—NO, kids, I’m EXACTLY enough of a horndog to care VERY MUCH about a woman’s voice, which is the one thing we almost always miss out on in the burlesque world.  Fortunately, if you’re not feeling the aural (not oral) and literary vibe I’m riding here, you’ve got other options.  Prance on over to [link deleted by edtitor] to see the full-on R-rated pictures.  And yes, I was shocked.  I thought the “no pictures allowed” thing was to PREVENT bare-nekkid pix of our fave ladies from tearin’ up the interweb, but apparently, that weren’t the case.  An even better reason why I shouldn’t waste my words describing bodies.

If you haven’t heard about “Naked Girls Reading,” the incomparable Michelle L’Amour started this racket back in Chicago, and it’s spread to Dallas, Key West, Seattle, Milwaukee, Phoenix, and Sao Paolo, and now—to New York City, thanks to our friends Nasty Canasta and Jonny Porkpie at Pinchbottom Burlesque.  Tonight, we’re at Madame X, a full-on boudoir of a venue, with a chaise longue on a raised stage behind black bars, like a New Orleans gallery, and the audience is sequestered in plush mushroom seats, gazing up longingly, and pushed back SRO along the bar, peeking over each other for a view.  The ladies enter, climb the stairs, and about as un-fucking-ceremoniously as you’ve ever seen this lot do it, DISROBE. Literally.  Dressing robes, you dig, ditched, and the ladies sit down and wait, patiently, in the buff, for their chance to read.  The temperature in the room rises palpably.  These aren’t just any nekkid ladies.

Our hostess, Nasty Canasta, body doused in gold glitter, kicks it off with a few choice morsels from the Comics Code Authority from 1954.  Her voice is mid-range, almost flinty, with a natural musicality.  Choice lines:  “Nudity of any form is prohibited,” “illicit sexual relations,” and “undead.”  As the girls lounge behind her, it’s impossible not to notice Michelle L’Amour’s thrown-back shoulders, that insouciant haughtiness.

Jo Boobs, diminutive yet dominating, takes the stage to read from Fanny Hill’s seminal 1748 “Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure,” written, of course, by a man.  Jo puts on a serious stage voice, and she trails with a barely-noticeable sibilance, whispering, “pouting symmetry,” indeed, “no exclamation point,” we beg to differ, and as Nasty fans herself and Sapphire Jones gazes up in awe, “inch by inch,” the “soft laboratory of love,” “home-driven wedge,” hypnotic, the plush red lips parting over her fierce white teeth.

Legs Malone—my, those earrings—reads from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the bit towards the end with Scout dressed up like a ham.  Her voice is matter-of-fact, light on delivery, reminding me a little of the office girl in “The Maltese Falcon.”  The selection is one of suspense and she leans into it, the girls around her swept up along with the audience, looking up, enthralled, little girls at a campfire hearing a ghost story.  Legs yells off-mic, “Cecil Jacobs is a big wet hen!” and whispers, “swish of cotton on cotton,” imitating it, “wh, wh.”  Whew.  I wished she had read a few lines further… I wanted to hear her say, “Hey, Boo.”

After intermission, Michelle L’Amour reads from “Delta of Venus,” and we all almost asphyxiate in paroxysms of delight.  Seriously.

Gigi LaFemme takes the stage, and says, “I’m a little nervous… so I’m picturing you all naked.”  I want to believe that she stayedup all night working on that line, because it was worth it.  Gigi reads from “The Great Gatsby,” her voice smoky but not dark, mellow with a brightness behind it, like a French horn.  Her reading was well-practiced, expressive, charismatic; “radiant young girl,” holding the book to one side, the other hand on her hip, all 20s flapper chic.  “Then he kissed her.”

Gal Friday.  Gal Freaking Friday.  “American Psycho.”  By that total hack writer.  The one book on the program that I really hate.  And yet, I loved it.  Friday has a deep voice, deep as sarcasm, thin lips and a sharpness to her bottom teeth, deep as Bebe Neuwirth.  She sculpts the room with musical crescendos, raising the pitch and settling back to flat, an interrogatory tone, a steady, level gaze that accuses the audience.  Imitating the girlfriend, “What do you want me to do?” almost too convincingly, a scary shriek.  Falling flat, and getting the biggest laugh of the evening, “Eventually I drowned the Chow.”

Michelle read from “Lady Chatterly’s Lover”—and at that point, I really wondered—where was Henry Miller?  Nasty was giving us a primer on banned books, and Miller was in the thick of it—and after hearing from Anais, and now Lawrence, the favorite of the two lovers… I missed old Val.  Next time.

Closing it out in deadly seriousness, newcomer and new-favorite Sapphire Jones, reading from Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.”  And none of the funny stuff, neither, but bit near the end when we finally find out what happened to Snowden—her voice mid-range yet climbing like flak—daring to juxtapose the gentle beauty of a woman’s naked form with the harsh reality of unsympathetic death and gore.

“I’m cold.”

“There there.”

Kiss kiss,

JDX