Florence of Alabia

I can't point my toes. I can barely wear heels anymore because of my muscle cramps. Sometimes I leave my glasses on so I can see, and that sometimes means no giant false lashes. And I can't wear my nails long or wear fake nails because it achieves the same results as putting a cat in doll clothes, and I will be crawling out of my skin until I have short nails again. (Honestly, a lot of burlesque/drag "rules" are pretty ableist and don't take into consideration why some people straight up can't do xyz.)

Florence and Lawrence of aLabia, together at last.

I drew a whole Tarot deck and it took me 3 years. This is my Empress. Preorder the full deck here.

FEELS

GOOD

I really was going to retire. It wasn't one of those "Oh, maybe if I say I'm retiring, people will be extra nice to me and more people will show up to my 'final' show" kind of things. I really did plan this show to be my last burlesque show. It was on the same stage where I did my first show, it was my burlesque daughter's first show, it was all about cheese, and it was something I made. I put it all together and made it good so I could go out on a high note. But then, last night changed everything for me.

Why I Was Going to Retire

I was 24 when I realized I was trans, and that scared me, so I decided to shove all those feelings in a locked box in my head, and finally figure out how to be a girl, dammit. I had made friends with burlesque people and done a little work with them before, and I was being given another opportunity to get onstage and take on this super femme performance. I learned to be a girl, but it was in the context of burlesque, and it was last year that I realized it never stopped being a performance for me. I would straight up dissociate while doing some of these performances, drifting outside my body while my body relied on muscle memory. Realizing that other people were girls off and onstage, and I was just pretending to be a girl, an even then, half of my performances were very genderqueer, and the other half were more drag queen than woman. Finally getting to the point where I stopped denying being trans, my relationship with femininity and my performance of it changed. No longer practicing being a woman in my daily life, I lost touch with how to do it onstage. Going through transition, which means second puberty at 36, my body is changing, and it feels extra vulnerable going through that with an audience.

I am also increasingly disabled. In the week leading up to the show, I saw three different doctors (4 if you count the radiologist NP), had 15 blood draws, 30 x-rays, internal hemorrhaging for some unknown reason, and a hip that threatened to stop working. When I was starting out 10+ years ago, younger and stronger, working out was for increasing my strength and flexibility. Now, I spend twice as much time training my body just to be able to touch my toes. I have asthma that makes me wheeze just from walking up stairs sometimes. I need mobility aids to get around during flare ups. There were entire categories of food I couldn't eat for a week going into this show. Burlesque is so physical. When I was young, I could dance every night for three hours straight while living on a bus and eating gas station food and drinking so much whiskey. I look back on those days in absolute awe. I can't do most of that anymore. I did a show in Chicago a month ago and my back locked up in the middle of my act and I just kinda froze, wishing I could just abandon things in the middle of the song and go lay down. Forever.

And folks, I've also got baggage with burlesque. I always tried not to let the audience know about backstage drama, but there was a lot of it. Super Happy Funtime was toxic in a lot of ways, and run like an actual cult. The leader of the show was very charismatic onstage, and quite horrible offstage. I met some of my best lifelong friends in this show, but we're all still recovering from the experiences years later. Even outside of that troupe, I encountered a lot of other shitty people who were often in positions of power in the community, producers and primadonnas. People have strong feuds with each other. Known abusers get booking because they're popular with audiences, and the performers just have to rely on whisper networks to keep each other safe. "Don't be alone with that guy in the dressing room. He's a known creep." Why is this guy here at all??? And most shows never paid near enough to put up with all of this.

So basically, baggage and body issues put me through the ringer, and I thought it might be time to move onto other things. I still wanted to perform, but it would have to be something else. This is what I thought, leading up to last night's show.

Why I didn't retire

Last night's show went so well, that I truly am still coming to terms with the fact that it actually happened and I'm still processing it all, but I know for a fact that I'm going to continue to do this.

First of all, everything just went right. Okay, one thing went wrong, and that was the curtain getting stuck shut, but aside from technical difficulties, everything was perfect. I haven't seen the official numbers yet, but I'm pretty sure we sold more than twice the tickets we needed to break even. This is a big theatre, so if only a few people showed up, the crowd would seem even smaller, but at least 2/3 of the seats were full and we sold out of cheese before the show started. People drove for hours to come see this show. They were extremely generous with their applause and their tips. They laughed at my awful cheese puns. They participated in the cheese eating contest and the winner went home with a full wheel of real cheese and the runner-up went home with a full wheel of fake cheese.

The backstage vibe was warm and supportive and sweet. Everyone got along. They found out if was my burlesque daughter's first ever show and they all made sure she was feeling taken care of and welcome, helping with makeup and shaking off the jitters. Everyone had their props organized, and our kitten was seriously the hardest working kitten in the biz, having to clear up so so so much cheese off that historical stage floor. The theatre was so easy to work with, and they told me that they loved that the whole place smelled like cheese.

So, I was feeling like a good producer for sure. I could put a show together, fill the seats, and pay people well and also treat them well. I treated everyone how I always wanted to be treated. Producing a good show on the same stage where I got my start, with some performers who had also worked with my old troupe, was especially rewarding, knowing I could make it happen without having to treat people like garbage who were lucky to be onstage and who certainly didn't deserve money for it. I was feeling like a good host, entertaining the crowd between sets while never forgetting that I'm up there to warm up the crowd for the performers, the talent who I booked who everyone came out to see. I connected, I made the audience laugh and the performers felt good. Now, could I still perform?

Y'all, so much of the success of this act came from two things: glasses and flat shoes. My eyesight is terrible, and not being able to see makes me panic. Not a great thing for a performance. I also cannot point my toes without setting off a chain reaction in my body that locks my muscles up, so high heels are just not a thing I can do anymore. I kept my glasses on and I performed my act in sneakers, because I planned an act where sneakers made sense. It turns out that acknowledging your disabilities and working within the boundaries of what you can do makes a huge difference. WHO WOULDA THOUGHT? Being steady on my feet and not worrying about falling offstage or being unable to find a prop freed up so much more of my brain for remembering moves and connecting with the audience.

I was also in my body for this in a way I very often wasn't before. While HRT can bring about awkward puberty gangly pimply sweaty teenage feelings, it also has made my brain line up with my body more than it ever has. Being able to speak in a lower voice, my boobs shrinking down to half the size they were pre-T, and not caring about being hairy felt so good. I performed a character that didn't need to be a girl. (The whole original act was inspired by Richard Simmons.) I felt like I was off the hook for being obligated to perform femininity. Which doesn't mean there wasn't plenty of femininity in it, but I also didn't spend any time worrying about getting rid of the masculine parts of myself while doing it, which was another thing that distracted me in a lot of past performances. I could put more of my authentic self onstage than I ever have before, and rather than feeling vulnerable about it, it made me feel powerful. The audience wasn't cheering for my mask, but for me this time. Whoa did that feel different, and good.

By realizing that I haven't lost my strength as a performer, that I just have different strengths now, I can work with what I do have going on, rather than the past framework I always worked in before. In some ways, it is like I retired, but more in a way that a caterpillar retires from being a caterpillar when it becomes a butterfly. I feel free in a way I haven't in awhile, to experiment in new ways and create new things.

So yeah, I'm gonna keep doing this. I'm going to keep creating what I want to see in the world. I'm going to do just one or two really big shows a year rather than worrying about lots of little ones, because I can spend more time making sure they're exactly what they should be, a special occasion, a spectacle, a reason for an audience to put on pants and spend money when they could watch porn at home for free, a reason for a performer to spend time rehearsing and money putting together a costume. I'm going to create acts that let me be myself, in the body I have. I'm going to nurture a creative scene and try to be the ideals that I hold.