Burlesque

It's odd how the echoes of my coming-of-age bounce around at unexpected times.

Last night, the young lady I accompanied on guitar over the summer was opening for a burlesque show at a local comedy club.  Our - well, my - plan was to go hear her sing and then leave. But everyone in the group was sticking around, and it ended up being a good thing that we did, as the musicians ended up closing the show, as well.

After their first set, they were immediately followed by a couple of comedians. The first apparently wasn't able to evoke a laugh from anything except crude humor, and when that didn't work he really didn't have a backup plan. The second, who was really the first because he was the host of the program, did a much better job with his much funnier material.  Then came the burlesque girls.

Now, first of all, I was in a really tough position to watch any of the show, as the stage was at about 8 o'clock relative to how I was facing, and there was room neither to turn my chair nor to put my legs if I could have. Secondly, the "girls" - these women couldn't have been younger than 40 - did the first part of their dance routine in the aisle that was directly behind me and one table over. Still, they finished on the stage, and I was able to turn my head to take in the end of their quite amateur performance, as the more daring of the two struggled with her brassiere, with her back to us, of course, so we could see her fumbling with the rear-facing hooks - so that she could reveal her pasty-clad breasts at the end of their number.

Still, despite this, I found there was more than my spiritual sensibilities at play in my emotional response. No, I wasn't at all aroused by the performance, just very uncomfortable. It took me a while in the evening to realize that, even though the mood, the atmosphere, and the context were very different, this whole striptease evoked the uncomfortable lunches and evenings out with my stepfather, into the strip joints and porn shops of the Baltimore area.

Sigh.

So it seems I can't even process the issue of whether there was anything wrong with me being there last night strictly on its own merits. There are times when I wish that the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was real . . .