Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

Finally, at my fourth Bang For the Buck, I stripped. Down to my panties & garter belt. In front of about three hundred women.

It went off pretty much as I practiced so many times, no wardrobe malfunctions, plenty of eye contact. My song? My own special, two-minute edit of Neko Case's "Look For Me (I'll Be Around)"*. It was my main inspiration. My character? Fifties hausfrau. I tickled the front row with my feather duster to the opening bars, slowly peeled my rubber gloves off, shed my heels to "When your feet are back / On the solid ground", took the black bandana off my head and waved it pointedly**, then off with the dress & petticoat, pinged the garters off (So much harder to get on than off!), peeled my stockings, faked a yawn, and ran. I think I set the record for amount of "stripper droppings" left on stage.

The Siberian Siren also stripped, and managed to beat out a few pros to take third place in the "competition". Unlike me, she has dance moves (She spent much of her childhood dancing ballroom.) and a figure to die for. She credits me and my status reports for nudging her into getting ready & doing it.

One of my trans friends was there in dapper, old-school butch and decided to strip at the last minute to, I must say, excellent effect. When she told me it was at the spur of the moment, I could only reply, "I'm going to say this with as much love and respect as I can muster: fuck you."

Raffle prizes: thong underwear in leather & vinyl, in my size. I didn't own any thongs before, sadly, and I wanted some. I think that worked out quite nicely.

I was yawning my way through the last hour of the strip-o-rama - maybe the adrenalin rush took it out of me - so I didn't stay for much of the play party afterward. I did flirt a little with the fantastically long-haired woman behind the counter at the front door, though, who remembered me from one of the goddess nights.



*It pained me that I couldn't use the song in its entirety. The whole LP that it's on, Blacklisted, is solid gold. My editing software? Audacity.

**In the gay men's hanky code, a black hanky means you're into pain. I held it in my right hand. Ahem. I heard a few people laughing; I'm pretty sure they got the joke.

The Siberian Siren's birthday (observed) this year was at her main squeeze L's crew Shameless's annual Valentine's Day night, this year at the Monkey Loft. The highlights:

• Solid groove. Duh.
• L got a photographic birthday cake for the SS. I'd never seen anything like that before.
• A tradition at this event is the smashing of a Valentine-themed piñata filled with condoms, lube, and cheap sex toys. The SS and her auxiliary squeeze A picked up a few of these off the floor. One of them was, as A & I immediately saw, a set of cock rings. The SS, despite her considerable experience in other areas, didn't know what they were, such is her ignorance of men. The SS wins at lesbian. (When I told my mom this story, she said, "Don't you ever get tired of things that are so obvious?" No, Mom, I don't. Sex-positivity gets a bad rap these days, but there's a lot to be said for the real thing.)
• I got the SS a present that (ahem) she & I can both enjoy. Or she & somebody else, of course.

---

A few weeks ago my tango instructor invited me to a queer milonga out in West Seattle at the home of a friend of hers. What's a milonga, you ask? A tango party, naturally. The house in question has no front entrance due to a steep slope, an outsize living room with recently installed hardwood floors, and a sweeping view of Puget Sound that was entrancing even at night. There was:

• The Russian hostess, who knows the SS. (The SS was invited, but declined.) She asked me how I knew her, and when I hesitated ever so slightly over how to word it, she said it was OK if I didn't tell her. I guess she really does know the SS. Hey, we met at a charity event. Really.*
• Drinking - Hello, party full of gay people.
• Another trans person in a crowd of fewer than twenty!
• Kids and a giant dog.
• The scraping of the rust off my basic tango skills.
• The picking of my jaw up off the floor after watching other people's not-so-basic skills. I accused them of telepathy, but they all firmly denied it.
• Flirting with some of my former classmates, et al. Yeah, surprising as sunrise.

---

Speaking of the Bang, I've been logging the practice time and feeling pretty good about the results. I may be as ready as I'm going to get by the time it happens.

---

Today: zappy got this >< close to removing the last of the hairs from my neck. Maybe in my next six-hour session Ms. Zappy will be able to clear me. It would be nice not to have to shave even if only for a day or two.


*Bang for the Buck in 2012 at the CSPC.

I haven't been posting much. That means I'm in a funk. Dating is even more dead than usual lately; my only hope is apparently to take all most of my clothes off in front of a few hundred mostly queer shrieking women, about which more anon.

---

M'boy and I were lucky to escape Kirkland in the snow for Seattle yesterday evening. Even though he was properly pilled up, we agreed that I should drive. It didn't help matters that my tires are nearly bald. We even postponed eating our PCC dinner until we got to my Lake Place. He got to experience from the shotgun seat what it's like - in a word, slippery - on suburban streets, some of them with non-trivial slopes, when it snows. For those of you outside the Seattle area, the eastern suburbs, of which Kirkland is one, are at a slightly higher elevation than the big city and therefore get a bit more snow. We didn't do much talking in the car.

---

Now that I've got my choreography for Bang For the Buck written out, my project for the weekend is to memorize it and, of course, practice.

I have to tell you, taking a lot of items of clothing on & off repeatedly and trying to do it sexily is exercise. Stripping is hard! Let's go shopping... for lingerie!

---

Speaking of shopping, the Siberian Siren's birthday is coming up. I know exactly what to get her.

Little things have been going wrong all week, from going to the wrong P.O. to pick up a package that was sent to me to family foo to the office move & someone else's bad practice delaying the release of a two- three-month project. I don't even feel like updating LJ or checking out OKCupid.

It's time for Happy Thotz®:

• I'm having Ethiopian dinner with a friend - a queer & cute but happily partnered friend - at Meskel in less than two hours.
• M'boy comes tomorrow. There will be Red Mill tomorrow night, and maybe the Mini Maker Faire at EMP on Saturday.
• The new office should be really cool, and it'll be on a much less sketchy block downtown.
• It's about time to start getting my costume and stripping routine ready for Bang for the Buck, which happens a month from today. I have my song edited down and my accessory shopping list ready. I'm going to rock this as hard as I can.

What do you know? The Happy Thotz® worked!