This Must Be The Place

Bodies are temporary

I don’t want to bury the lede, so let’s just say – someone extremely close to me is sick.  

“Someone” so as to protect their privacy. Also because there’s a chance this someone might end up totally fine, and I have a tendency to make loud proclamations that I feel cringe about later on, however: it is a more serious sick than the flu or a cold. And it involves many doctors. So.

I had this experience over the weekend though that I wanted to tell you about, an experience that’s related to the sick. I’m constantly circling round and round for an overarching, personal ethic about the body, how long we’ve got with it, and how we’ll use the time. It’s connected to eroticism and the suggestion of sex, which would definitely make this someone laugh. They always laugh when I tell them the latest thing I’m up to in Sex World, a chuckle that says – “sounds weird, but you do you.”

I did do me last weekend, and this is what happened.  

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It was a Saturday afternoon and I was walking out to my car, using my keychain to locate it with loud, echoey honks. Hospital parking garage. Looks from fellow hospital goers. Sorry, sorry. 

The opening bars of Talking Heads’ “This Must Be The Place” started playing in my head, almost psychically guiding my fingers past other Spotify options. How about more Beyoncé? Even more white noise? This one has rain sounds! No, I want to listen to David Byrne sing a love song that came out when I was a baby. 

Home is where I want to be

Pick me up and turn me round

It’s a song about feeling like home is a person, and it’s a much better song than the one that states this sentiment more bluntly. More mystery please. I like my songs to give me room for interpretation. 

I turned on the car, drove home (my house-home) to change into an outfit more appropriate for the evening. “Appropriate” will sound funny once I describe where I went. But here’s a clue: somewhere over I-35, I dared myself to see if I could wear a leotard in public. Exit Airport Blvd. It’s got holes in it? Exit 183 North. My bra would show a lot? 

Leotard might be too generous. It’s part of a costume I used for an aerial show years ago, and technically, it’s a black bodysuit with lots of pieces cut out. More like a handful of netting artfully sewn together. The kind of top you should cover with another top to walk from your car to the club in downtown Austin, which I did. My “safety shirt” as another woman called it. Haha, safety shirts. 

There it was: a show I’d performed in the night before. An Edgar Allan Poe-themed spectacle of pole dancers, aerialists, acro artists, smoke machines, strobe lights, etc. etc. I think it’s the last time we’re performing there; the venue’s too expensive now. This always happens. But that’s ok, art is fleeting and this show thrives on an underground vibe anyway. Cue me showing the doorman my ID (lol– I’m 42), stepping inside, ears bending to the emcee acting like a gypsy-witch lady. She was reading macabre poetry about a woman gone mad. It’s Poe, everyone’s always mad or dead. 

The creator of this show spotted me, a lost little puppy in a Hot Topic bodysuit, and pointed me towards a table. Thank you! I slid in next to strangers. 

Now, in situations like these, I typically take a Charm Offensive. Tell jokes, make the table glad I’m there instead of quietly mad that they now have less legroom and surface space. But I had just come from a hospital, I was wearing something ridiculous, and these two things combined engendered a more dgaf mindset. Not rude, just toning down the people-pleaser part of myself that will happily cut off a finger if it gets you to like me. Whenever I meet the opposite of myself, a shameless bitch type of person, I’m like – ok, yes! Can we be friends? Can you rub off on me? You’re so in touch with your own likes and your dislikes. How did you do that? Teach me your ways, bitch.   

But as it turns out, my table mates and I didn’t converse much. By the end of the night we could hardly, physically talk.

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Later, I described the whole thing as a portal, where I just kept getting aroused anew. Shouldn’t everyone be so lucky? 

To be so turned on, so consecutively, and not in a “I want to fuck that person” sense – more a joyful, sexy ambience that envelopes your entire being. That’s what banana-shaped pasties will do to a person. You’re not thinking, “damn, I’d love to see what’s underneath those pasties,” you’re thinking: “isn’t it so special that I could be anywhere in the world right now, Fiji to Paris, but instead I’m right here watching my friend’s beautiful breasts, little pieces of yellow plastic taped to her areolas?” 

The premise of that particular piece was a bunch of monkeys (see: banana pasties) trying to get her attention, backflips and whatnot around the bar. What this has to do with the canonical works of Edgar Allan Poe, one shall never know. What’s more important is that we were shrieking. “Hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” someone at my table said. I raised a glass. 

But then, a she-devil entered the stage. Followed by a Catholic schoolgirl. I don’t have to tell you where this is going. They tempted each other until they were down to strings, contextualized in a rather athletic duo pole act. Did you know you need a lot of flesh for pole dance? Well sinners, flesh you shall have. I always think I’m being sooo edgy when I wear things like a netted bodysuit, then I see someone proudly dancing in a piece of string she might have purchased at Michael’s and I’m reminded how far I have to go in my own liberation. 

On and on it went: a BDSM-themed duo chair act between two tall gorgeous ladies, a straps act by a femme fatale spider, enough strip-to-pole acts to sate me for a month, yet somehow…I wasn’t hitting my limit. I just wanted more and more. And somewhere between a floor hump and a bra toss, it hit me: 

“This feels really good, to be around people so at-home in their bodies.”

My tablemates, the ones I hadn’t charmed, nodded solemnly. 

“Are we being healed right now?” our looks said. I think that we were. 

Saturday.

Back when I was first learning aerial silks, I choreographed a piece to a Rihanna song, and there was this one part in the chorus where it made sense to stick your butt out. The mood of the moment. But my then-instructor said that hurt her heart, to see me stick my butt out, because she grew up taking ballet. Tuck the pelvis in, long elegant lines, spine forever extending. I put my butt away. 

As a performer’s bare ass jiggled an arm’s length away from me on Saturday night though, I was hit with a wave of ecstasy. Oh my God, look what she can do with her body! Look what all of us can do with our bodies. Look at this permission. 

That’s what it felt like. Not male gazey, not cheap, not any of the other descriptors we use to denigrate people (mostly women) who take their clothes off. No, this was a rapture of body joy, and what’s funny is I’ve been a part of naked-leaning shows before – seen many a pastie in my day – but this felt different. Less like seduction and more like freedom.

This freedom transcends sex but it’s not unrelated to sex, it’s Esther Perel eroticism made physical. The pleasure of simply having a human body, gratitude for something so basic yet miraculous, a gratitude we can show by taking full advantage of this skin and sinew. Stripping. Taking a peaceful walk in nature. Bro hugs or hell, ballet.

But we don’t get to keep these bodies – that’s the thing. Eventually, we have to give them back. They are ours to enjoy though and possibly share, for a period of time. 

Hi yo, I got plenty of time

Hi yo, you got light in your eyes

That line always gets me, because not everyone does have plenty of time. David Byrne probably did when he wrote it. I wonder how he feels now?

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I was walking around a Target the next day when I told my sister-in-law about my discovery. She is the best person to discuss these things with, very yes-and with me. 

“Aww,” she said. “That’s beautiful, actually.”

And I could tell she meant it, could tell she got what I was saying and that I’d maybe pinned something down. 

“Sacred? Is that too strong a word for it?” I asked her.

“I don’t think so. Not at all,” she said. 

In the days since, I’ve come to realize how casual I’ve been about life. This whole time. Once, when my parents pointed out their burial plots to me, I almost laughed in their faces – “you guys are so silly! Burial plots.” Quote marks with my fingers. It’s the same whenever my husband talks to me about retirement. “I’m barely out of my 30s!” I want to cry. “I’m not even finished making all my irresponsible choices yet.” 

But life – it suddenly seems very precious. 

Hospital to my house, my house to club, club to my house, house to the hospital. Hospital to hallway. Hallway to my home. This someone is my home. 

And you love me 'til my heart stops

Love me 'til I'm dead

It was Sunday, the day after the show. I kissed them on the cheek. So, so grateful for this body.