Songs of Nerdlesque, vol. 1 Lauren Emily Whalen

“Theme from Indiana Jones”—John Williams (from TempleofBoobs:AnIndianaJones Burlesque)

This is the first time you strip for tips, and nerds.

“Have you ever danced with a ribbon?” the producer asks at rehearsal. You nod. In your early thirties you’re quieter than ever, but you did a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat fresh out of theater school, at your loudest—before eleven years of hostile work environments, a shitty nonrelationship and the suicide of one of your best Joseph friends knocked the words right out of you. And that too required a ribbon, along with far more clothes.

You are more than ready for a new start, even if you’re scantily clad the entire time.

In Temple of Boobs, the name of your “track”—the set of parts you play in the one-hour show—is also Ribbon. For you, for the past three years, “burlesque” has meant watching flawless women flit in feather boas and sequined gowns in bars that still smell like smoke of decades past, or more precisely, learning dance steps with a parasol in the tiny studio in Chicago’s West Loop where you take classes in the “art of the tease.”

This right here is nerdlesque: where cosplay and stripping meet at a dive bar, fuck in a bathroom stall, and have an unplanned baby. This particular troupe makes its home at a tiny theater in Chicago’s rapidly gentrifying Bucktown neighborhood and specializes in one-hour parodies of properties like Star Wars and Indiana Jones complete with funny dialogue, pop songs and striptease. Think musical theater, only instead of torch songs, there are tits.

You are placed in an already-running show, Friday nights at 11:30. After learning choreography and costume changes at the speed of light, to the point where you write everything down and pray you don’t come out dressed as a slutty temple dancer when you’re supposed to be a slutty monkey, you’re backstage at your first show, trying not to yawn while applying red lipstick with a shaking hand and reciting dance steps in your head while applying wig tape to your first (of three) set of pasties. Around you, the more seasoned nerdlesquers, with cool stage names like Diva LaVida and Slightly Spitfire, chatter about who they’re fucking and what they’ll order afterwards at the new McDonalds that just opened next door. You, on the other hand, are terrified and already waiting for your first cue, even though the audience, half drunk and ready to see boobies, is still filing in.

Your ribbon dance isn’t even a strip: just you, in a red leotard, sequined booty shorts and striped knee socks, gyrating and twirling with a silky red ribbon on a stick, as John Williams’ iconic score promises adventure ahead. After a few eight counts, a castmate comes onstage in her sand-colored corset with intricate hand-drawn lines. You unfasten her strapless bra (only sixteen counts, hurry! How do teenage boys do it?) and she strikes a pose, pastie-festooned tits out, while you gesture at her proudly and the crowd goes apeshit.

Soon, you’ll dress as Sexy Monkey and do your own pastie reveal, but this—the ribbon dance, the successfully unfastened bra, scored by John Williams himself, dun da-dun dunnnnn dun da-dunnnnnn— is what you’ll remember as your initiation, your foray into professional nerdlesque, the first time of many you’ll gyrate for pay. “That was so fun!” your best friend Rob exclaims as you share a cab back to Chicago’s east side. “You were the red line on the map from Temple of Doom!”

You haven’t seen the actual movie that Temple of Boobs parodies since you were a kid. For you, it was just a ribbon dance. For the drunk revelers, it was a touchstone of nostalgia, bringing to mind nights home from the video store, Pizza Hut personal pans and footie pajamas.

The power of nerdlesque, summed up in a Yellow Cab as you finger the floppy wad of dollar bills in your pocket.

“Call Me”—Blondie (from YouHaveDiedofSexy:AnOregonTailBurlesque)

You will never wear a corset again.

A few months after your ribbon debut, you’re starting to make your mark in this troupe. You score a role in their new show, with nothing but a loud voice and blonde hair when most of your troupemates’ tresses are dyed fire-engine red or Morticia Addams black. You can dance, you can drawl out dialogue, and you’re kinda funny. Very funny, if the show’s director is to be believed. More importantly, you have no shame. Or at least, you’re rapidly losing your sense of shame. Who cares if the “classic” burlesque troupe you’re toiling in on the other side of the city only sees you as good enough to “stage kitten” (aka pick up other dancers’ panties at the end of their solo acts)? Here in nerdlesque, you’re a rising star.

Too bad the show, inspired by the millennial classic computer game, despite its fun concept is… not good. Even for a genre that revels in camp, the dialogue is rough, the choreography all over the place, and the director out of her element. The hard work and sheer talent of you and your seven castmates isn’t enough to save Oregon Tail. You know it. Your castmates know it. Soon enough, everyone in the troupe will know it.

And then there’s “Call Me”: your character’s dysentery death scene, symbolized by tearaway clothes that reveal a red and black corset laced almost to the point of suffocation, which your castmates then unlace during Blondie’s instrumental interlude, to reveal red and black tasseled pasties you twirl, shaking your tits as you stumble to your demise on the tiny stage full of girls. A command performance, Friday nights at 9 p.m.

No disrespect to Debbie Harry, but “Call Me” is a pain in your ass. It’s not your own choreography, corset or gimmick, but you feel embarrassed for yourself and your new friends, who have to unravel the damn thing every week—it only seems to work half the time.

You hate feeling so constricted, squeezed in, when usually on this stage, in this troupe, and even in this silly-ass show, you feel so free. You swear your ribs are compressed like those old-timey ladies with fainting couches, only you’re in stilettos and even backstage there are only folding chairs for you to collapse on. When three months pass and Oregon Tail is replaced by a tighter and more successful Star Trek show, you swear off corsets for good.

Oregon Tail’s not all bad. The show’s inexplicably 80s-themed score is tight: Blondie, Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” and Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” (during the latter you get to run around dressed as a sexy target), among other classics. Your friend Evie, thinner and more conventionally beautiful and also in the classic troupe where she’s a rising star, is in the show too, cutting up right alongside you. The gal who plays your daughter—one of the only other blondes in the troupe—is a real published author, which you aspire to be. The two of you talk troupe dramatics and publishing over tea outside of rehearsal. You exchange favorite YA novels while sticking on your pasties with wig tape purchased at a store that caters to drag queens.

Best of all, despite the less than inspiring source material, you have a lead role for the first time since high school—something that doesn’t go unnoticed by a few of the more seasoned members of the troupe. One of whom gives you feedback you didn’t ask for backstage on opening night—feedback that’s ostensibly about corset unlacing but feels more like a rant on why you don’t belong in nerdlesque, playing a sassy, sexy lead

For the first time, you realize you may be a threat. You don’t hate it.

“What’s New, Pussycat?”—Tom

Jones (from HolyBouncingBoobies!ABatmanBurlesque)

Who doesn’t love a sexy cat? Who doesn’t love three?

By this point, you are in. In the span of just over a year, you’ve gone from a dance-only track in one show on alternating Fridays—in this troupe, there are often two or even three dancers sharing one track and as many costumes as will fit them all—to featured roles in four out of the five currently running shows. Your Friday and Saturday nights, barring Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, are fully consumed by nerdlesque: taking two buses to get to the tiny theater half an hour early, slapping on a dark eye and red lip and plenty of biodegradable body glitter, keeping your straightener plugged in for three hours straight so you can touch up your hair during those breathless backstage moments (then and now, your hair is very important to you), and keeping an Aerie-brand canvas tote containing stage makeup, extra wig tape, dance shoes and a thickening layer of whatever glitter didn’t make it onto your cleavage and ass, in the converted garage that serves as a dressing room. You blow in year-round sporting puffy coats and three layers of sweatpants during Chicago’s brutal winters and tiny dresses during humid summers, from sex dates with fuckboys or dinner with your parents who don’t know what you get up to on weekends. You are no longer afraid to shout your dialogue to the back of the sold-out house, to alternately snark on and support the doe-eyed new girls, to carve out a space for yourself, onstage backstage and in your life outside the theater, that’s as big and deep as Tom Jones’s baritone.

Your primary role in Holy Bouncing Boobies—the troupe’s longest-running show, an homage to the cheesy 60s Batman of your parents’ childhood—is Egghead, where you deliver punny lines in an oversized white suit, holding a hollowed-out egg full of glitter that you eventually smash all over your nearly-naked self. One night, you even make the dancer playing Robin, whose dry yet crazy humor you admire, “break”: mid-dialogue, they turn their back to you and you can see their shoulders shaking with laughter. It’s still one of your finest accomplishments.

But in this show, when you’re not Egghead, or a mustachioed Commissioner Gordon with a man’s gray blazer over black bra and panties, you’re a pussycat.

You and your pals Polly Pom Poms and Verna Ven Detta kick off Catwoman’s scene with a cutesy little dance—no stripping but still a crowd-pleaser every Saturday at midnight. “A trio is the hardest to sync—at least that’s what they say on Dance Moms,” Polly, who also plays The Riddler, confides after you book the part and start learning the dance. But the three of you have hit your stride and are unstoppable, shimmying and winking in silver and black leopard-print leggings, black long-sleeved shrugs with marabou circling the wrists, black ballet slippers on your feet, pink studded collars from a sex shop circling your necks.

And of course, cat ears.

You’ve never felt sexier—cute and innocent, with the promise of much more underneath your omnipresent black bra—than you do as a Tom Jones pussycat. The beauty of burlesque is the forms sex can take: in your face with twerking and rhinestone-studded pasties and perfect sprayed hair, or messy with tousled tresses and confetti glitter you roll around in on the floor of a basement bar—this is the direction you usually go with your solo work—or a sweet little kitty, shaking it at midnight surrounded by your sweet little kitty friends. You’ve always enjoyed the act of sex, the performance of it, the deep satisfaction, the way you feel completely at one with your own body even when the sex is bad, but burlesque, both your classic solo work and the nerdlesque that’s just one step above DIY and barely pays enough to cover bus fare and pastie tape and the occasional Uber, is a whole new sparkly, freaky world.

“I think I like girls and guys,” you say one night while putting on your cat ears, for the first time ever. No one bats a mascaraed eye. You grin at the nonchalant nonreaction. To your glittering friends, announcing a truth you’ve bit down for decades is no different than naming your favorite color.

“I Love It (I Don’t Care)”—Icona Pop (from BoobsonEndor:AReturnoftheJediBurlesque)

You love it.

The best time of your life is approximately 11:02 p.m. Saturdays, when Icona Pop’s ode to living your fabulous life while ruining your ex’s, blasts through the theater’s crappy speakers and you bust out onstage as a sexy Ewok.

You vaguely remember the teddy bear-like creatures from their made for TV spinoffs—your household was not a Star Wars one, leaning more toward Airplane! and John Hughes’s suburban teen oeuvre—and now you are an Ewok for three and a half glorious minutes. Years later, most of the choreography escapes you—it was more of a dance-fight with a cast-wide fuzzy pastie reveal at the climax— but what you remember most is the bouncing. The skipping. The air on your mostly bare skin, the way your foundation-caked cheeks hurt from smiling so goddamn hard, and the way you had to come down after getting offstage to put on your Han Solo outfit for the next scene. This is the selfie stage of your life.

You take backstage selfies constantly: squatting in front of a mirror in bra and panties, the book you’re reading strategically posed in front of your pastie-festooned tits in a corner of the carpeted garagedressing room, making duck faces with your costumed cast mates or having them pose like the famous Ellen “Oscar selfie” just behind the black curtain. The audience isn’t allowed to photograph or video performances—a public pic of a burlesquer’s night gig can lead to the loss of her day job, and you know people this has happened to—but these days, thanks to the “6 years ago” posts that Facebook tosses your way, you can trace your nerdlesque journey in digital color, posted with everyone’s permission on an account without your last name and with a very curated group of followers. Some of whom get a little too friendly, mistaking your new body confidence for an invitation, and are subsequently blocked, ousted from your happy little naked Eden.

“New” body confidence isn’t an exaggeration. It’s taken a good two years of professional nerdlesque and various gigs outside the troupe, plus three years of classes and student shows before that, for you to finally feel okay in your own skin.

Most days.

You are, after all, a woman in a patriarchal society. But there’s one thing burlesquers of all shapes figure out real quick: their angles. Specific poses that render so beautifully you want to cry at your own loveliness, and the ones where you resemble a turtle-human hybrid. You don’t, you won’t, always love your body, but you adore your best angles. And up here, twirling in a gray bra and thong, with a headdress with brown fuzzy ears and a shrug made of the same fake brown fur that smells up quickly and has to be sprayed often with a vodka-water mix, you have never felt hotter. More yourself.

As a sexy Ewok. Who knew?

Tonight your sister is here, as part of her friend’s bachelorette. You’re excited but nervous: you know that while your sister wants to be supportive—and has a dance and performance background of her own—she doesn’t quite understand why you elect to bare your whole body every weekend. You were happy when her Star Wars-loving pal chose this show, as it’s more comedic and adorable than straight up “I wanna fuck each and every one of you in this here audience.” As you wield your Ewok staff, or whatever its called, and pretend fight with your dance partner, you see your sister smile in the dark of the crowd. Afterwards, she warmly observes, “You look so happy up there.”

Two and a half years after the ribbon dance, you are free.

Even for just a few minutes at a time, you don’t care about days when you’re period bloated and crampy as fuck and you have to perform at 10, 11 and midnight. You don’t care about the unflattering snaps taken by a professional photographer the troupe hired, who really should know better. You don’t care about Facebook perverts or people who call you “brave” for doing this while implying that with your not-skinny bod you shouldn’t show anything below the neck, or the always-looming threat that a faceless potential employer will stumble upon a photo of you in nothing but lingerie and fake-fur ears.

You don’t care.

“I Put a Spell on You”—Annie Lennox (homage to AmericanHorrorStory:MurderHouse)

This whole act is a “fuck you” to classic burlesque.

Because at this point, though you book shows where you perform your own choreography, to music you chose, in pretty costumes you pay others to make for you, to music that’s the antithesis of poppy, weirdo nerdlesque, you’re kinda over that whole classic scene. The way other dancers eye you up backstage and then snottily vaguebook later about your shoes. The way Swarovski crystals are mistaken for artistry. The prissy pearl-clutching about your messy hair, your body that is way over a size 2, your sheer audacity of sharing the stage with self-proclaimed legends.

Whatever.

Sure, there’s bitchiness in nerdlesque, but it’s more in your face. “It’s a sorority,” your friend and castmate Nicole says, laughing and shrugging. You were never in a sorority, but you feel that statement in your bones.

(It’s worth noting that not only are there assholes everywhere, there are also classic burlesque folx who are lovely in every sense of the word. One of them mentored you during your single year in the classic troupe, providing endless feedback and moral support, as well as the occasional hit of really good weed. But at this point in your career, in your life, all you see is the gatekeeping. You’re in your thirties and still have growing up to do.)

One morning you hear Annie Lennox’s haunting, creepy cover of a song that’s ubiquitous in the classic scene, “I Put a Spell on You,” and you see your opening.

By now, you’ve done nerdlesque outside the troupe, collaborating with other dancers who share your geeky-sexy spirit, as well as during the troupe’s seasonal “cabaret” shows where you all bring in your own work. You make up an act with a queer couple that’s a tribute to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s foot fetish, set to the Violent Femmes’ “At Your Feet.” You and a few of your troupe pals perform a silly-scary “Don’t Fear the Reaper” at Halloween and Goth-themed shows across the city. And when you hear the Lennox, you have an idea that will fit right in: a nerdlesque act you make yourself, costumes and choreo and all. A marriage of the classic solos you create for the bars, and the character-driven nerdlesque that has your heart. A dark tribute to a troubled teenage boy.

Beautiful, tortured Tate Langdon from American Horror Story’s inaugural season is one of Ryan Murphy’s finest characters. A total 90s dreamboat until you find out he shot up his own school and did himself in after he got caught. A total 90s dreamboat despite that, inspiring so many confused feelings in AHS fans like yourself. A fantastically creepy fit for you, a nerdlesquer with feathery blonde locks, an odd sense of humor, and past trauma you don’t talk about outside therapy.

An artistic triumph and an eff you to the pearl-clutcher classicheads.

Perfection.

Instead of ordering up rhinestone-encrusted satin, you steal a hoodie from your little brother and buy black sweats from Target. Black lace up boots and socks, men’s, also Target. Basic black bra and panties, which you already own—going on three years in the scene, you have a plethora of black underthings. The one item you commission: a pair of pasties encrusted with silver and black beads, as darkly seductive as Lennox’s wails and Tate’s soul.

For choreography, you enlist the help of your friend Jean, who makes the steps for many of the troupe’s shows. They get exactly what you’re going for, gently assisting you with movements that undulate, that promise something bad, yet titillating. Always titillating. Jean even helps you mix the track, starting with a sound clip of Tate monologuing about “the noble war” before the residents of the murder house realize exactly who and what he is.

The crowning glory comes before the pastie reveal, when Lennox is singing about how you know better, daddy. You kneel on the ground in your black underwear, digging your fingers in a pot of thick black eyeshadow, smearing it all over your face and body in a nod to Tate’s dream-sequence skeleton makeup. At the end, a plant (usually a stage manager or willing fellow dancer) shines two red laser pointers from the back of the house on your now-bare tits, as you as Tate hold your hands up, caught, before smirking and pointing a finger gun at your own head.

“Oh my god, Evan Peters would love this!” Slightly Spitfire exclaims when you show them. You are also obsessed with the handsome actor who plays Tate, so you take this as the ultimate compliment.

Yes, it’s a tribute to a controversial character. Maybe the pearl-clutchers who hate this, will have a point. Certainly, in 2022, you might not create this same act. But at this point in your life, when your anger at patriarchy and prissiness and people in the audience and in life who will never see you as more than a piece of pretty meat, no matter what you are or aren’t wearing, has reached its repressed peak? You need to make this act. It may not be Picasso or even von Teese, but to you, it’s art. Not everyone has to love art.

And if a popular local performer can have a Charles Manson act, you can be Tate.

The first time you perform this act, smearing black makeup and collapsing dramatically in nothing but beaded pasties and a barely-there G-string as Annie Lennox scream-sings ohhhhhh yeeeeeeeeah, it’s a hit.

And the second time.

And the third time.

And the tenth.

“I Think We’re Alone Now”—Tiffany (from GameofThongs:AGameofThronesBurlesque)

You love playing boys and you love kissing girls.

To the outside world, you’re a comfortably cis femme with a patchwork paycheck: modeling nude for artists, penning reviews of local plays and working behind the desk of a barre studio walking distance from the nerdlesque troupe’s venue. You mainly wear dresses and skirts, you can French braid your own hair and you feel naked (and not in a good way) when you’re not wearing lipstick.

Two years in, you are a master of what they call “trouser roles” in the opera world. You swagger as Han Solo in two different shows, you deepen your voice as a fatherly Ewok, and in Game of Thongs you pout through “Ice Ice Baby” as Jon Snow and smirk in an ice-blond wig as the incest king himself, Jaime Lannister. You charm the shit out of spectators. You channel every bro who thought he had a chance with you. Your secret goal is to make at least one straight woman in the audience think differently while you’re onstage.

Game of Thongs was written by the friend you made in Oregon Tail back when you were a nerdlesque baby and soon-to-be threat. Your friend also scored the show, and the songs are phenomenally matched and fabulous: Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” Lorde’s “Royals,” Vanilla Ice’s one hit, and Tiffany’s mall-chick classic cover, the latter of which accompanies the Jaime-Cersei incestuous dual strip. You are not a Game of Thrones fan: too many characters, too much assault, and why all the fur? When you book the Jaime/Jon track, you watch a couple of YouTube clips (including one that becomes a very graphic sex scene that you thankfully x out of before your day-job boss opens the door to your office) and call it good. The sold-out crowds sure aren’t nitpicking your lack of nerdy knowledge.

You’re not really out out at this point, but you know you’re bisexual. You don’t have a crush on either of the lovely women you call friends, who alternate the role of Jaime’s twin-lover Cersei, or on any of the gorgeous people in the nerdlesque troupe for that matter. You’re not crushing on anyone at all, really. But thanks to nerdlesque, the trouser roles, the much more open mind you have from hanging around folx who are comfortable with their gender and sexuality and their innate fluidity, you just…know.

And that sure as shit comes through when you’re rocking white leather boots and a silk tunic over a red spangled bra and thong, sweating under your plasticky blond wig, grinding onstage with your fake twin as Tiffany warbles about holding hands and the audience swills beer and cider purchased in the lobby, whoops at every removed article of clothing or pretend smooch. Even the reluctant cishet girlfriends, who tagged along as part of a bachelorette party or on a date with a former frat brother, crack a smile. Eventually, they cheer alongside the men.

Also cheering tonight: three friends you met online in a feminist group when you were still quiet, when the idea of taking off your clothes outside the dance studio and your own bedroom was an impossibility. It’s just before Halloween and audience numbers are relatively light—so much to do in Chicago this weekend—but it doesn’t matter. Your girls, sporting Halloween-y makeup, eagerly bounce in their seats and shout approval for everyone, and just as eagerly crack open their wallets during the mid-show tip get. Your girls, who consoled you through exes and death and job stress and rejections, are eating. This. Up. Especially you and your fake twin sporting fake hair and exuding real sex with every step ball change.

At curtain call, your girls scream your name.

“Rich Girl”—Hall and Oates (from ANudeHope:AStarWarsBurlesque)

“Time for a Han Solo,” you crack to the audience, a punny adlib that always hits, as you drag a center stage.

This dance—set to an 80s standby you still warble along at every opportunity with your mom, a lifelong Hall and Oates fangirl who to this very day has no idea you do burlesque—will be your very last in this space, with this troupe, and on the last night you do it, you have no fucking clue.

And as always, you will bring the house down.

A Nude Hope is another of the troupe’s bona fide hits, and a coveted show for many reasons. Usually sells out, meaning more and better tips. The time is steady and manageable: Saturdays at 9 p.m., early enough to do the later shows or your own gigs after or go out drinking and really start your night. It’s tight and hilarious, with a whiny Luke Skywalker and slutty C-3P0 and a 70s-infused score. And then there’s Han Solo, the track everyone wants. The track that is yours.

Three years into playing the role a young, hot Harrison Ford made iconic, you still can’t believe it. You were still fairly new to the troupe when you booked the part, having just quit the classic burlesque ensemble because you couldn’t take one more minute of its disgusting male producer who generally made you feel like a slobby piece of shit because you aren’t dark-haired and thin. Trembling and vulnerable, you showed up to the next round of troupe auditions. You read Han’s lines with a confidence you didn’t feel, swiveled your way through a dance combination and improvised striptease. Apparently, you nailed it, or the nerdlesque producer pitied you. Even now, you have a hard time believing your own gifts.

It’s been a wild, beautiful ride, but three years into playing Han, and four after your Ribbon debut, you’ve decided to leave.

There’s a lot going on in your life: while you’ll never tire of the sold-out crowds and kiki with your castmates behind the curtain, you’re ready to have your weekends back. You have a steady day job along with a paycheck and benefits. You’re out as bi, and you’re dating. You’ve never had so many friends in your life. Most significantly, your writing career is ramping up after years of revising and rejection. You’ve signed a contract for your first novel and sold a short story to a magazine. You must make time to do the work.

There’s also a lot going on with the troupe, more precisely the owner of the theater who signs everyone’s checks. Per-show pay has been cut once, then again. The theater owner is based in Florida, and communication is both spotty and overwhelmingly negative. The dancers are blamed for not bringing in more and better audiences. Never mind that it’s not your job to do so.

Shortly after you give notice, promising to finish out the summer and do one final Game of Thongs on Labor Day weekend, a bomb will drop via Gmail from the theater’s sleazebag Floridian owner. None of you will be paid any longer, or for the previous month (somewhere out there, an asshole still owes you money). As a troupe, you’ll collectively decide you’re done—not with a Norma Rae or Newsies bang, but over email with a whimper. At this point you are borderline estranged from your best friend-who’s enmeshed in a toxic relationship, so when the whimper-email hits your inbox on a Monday night you will walk in the park and stare at trees, trying not to cry about the final show you’ll never get, the bigtitty goodbye you’ll never say.

But this Saturday, blissfully ignorant that it’s your last, you revel in the sparkle.

Your costume: white long-sleeved shirt, cropped just below your breasts. Navy vest, edged with matte sequins of the same color. Navy tearaway trousers with invisible snaps down the sides under the red stripe. A red bra and matching thong. Silver pasties. And best of all, chunky black zip up boots. Real shitkickers. Years later you still think about those boots. You wish you’d stolen them when you had the chance.

Your hair is tousled and bleached blonde with undertones of red. Your body, curvy and compact and powerful. Your lips, hot girl red.

The choreography is straightforward. Sexy. Genius, really. Complements Hall and Oates’ harmonies like peanut butter to chocolate.

The outer layer, the vest, you doff first. Slowly. As always, it’s all about the tease. The audience is primed, already into it. If this were a Broadway musical, “Rich Girl” would be the eleven o’clock number, the one everyone talks about. More than once, you’ve been approached at the nearby bar post-show. People love Han Solo.

Hall and Oates sing about a woman who takes and you take the audience’s energy and channel it through your body as you peel off the shirt, toss it gently to the side. Clad in your red undies and tight pants, you make your way to the chair in black shitkickers. Step up.

Daryl Hall hits a high note. You rip off your pants.

The crowd roars. They’re particularly awesome tonight: happy, respectful, not so drunk that they’re yelling gross suggestions that get them kicked out. You’re pantsless and happy.

Step down. Bump and grind. Shrug off the navy vest, drop it to the floor. Make sure not to step on it, and remember where it is, you’ll need it again soon.

Almost to the climax.

Straddling the chair, you start to remove your bra. Toss your head of bleach blonde and dark red hair, as tousled as if you just got fucked good. Taking off a bra is a tricky thing. Taking it off in front of people? Even trickier. Years after you first learned how, you still tread carefully. Go as slow as your music will allow, knowing that a hook and eye can just decide to be finicky for no reason and it just gets worse if you tug on it. You always have the option of pulling the damn thing down to your waist if necessary.

Tonight, it comes off smooth. Though your tits are now bare, they’re mostly covered by the backward-facing chair. Keep the crowd in your sweaty palm with a sexy smirk. The song plays on.

Stride to the vest, lightly despite the shitkickers. Bend over so everyone can behold the glorious pale globes of your ass, the one that more than one lover has praised for its roundness, its abundance. You used to be ashamed of your big tush. Not the fuck anymore.

This whole dance is muscle memory, built over years of being Han, of blood and sweat and tears and air kisses and sparkles and lingerie ripped and stepped on and restored and re-stoned to its former glory. A few nights, you’ve phoned it in like any performer doing the same steps every week would. More often, memory gives way to pure joy, especially on this last night you don’t yet know is the end.

Back up on the chair, your chunky black boot heels—you keep them on the entire act, like heels during sex in a dirty-girl fantasy, “step on me baby”—dig into the leather seat. Hall and Oates warn against relying on the old man’s money, against going too far. You, as Han, can never go far enough.

You can feel the breath of the audience, the collective inhale, the curiosity of what you’ll do next. They already see your glorious ass in the red thong. And of course, they’re wondering what your boobs look like under that vest. You inhale the dust of the theater, your own power.

As soon as you hear “and YOU SAY,” you open one side of your vest, then the other.

The reveal: silver pasties shaped like the Millennium Falcon.

They scream. You smirk, triumphant.

Someone throws a twenty onstage—a rare occurrence outside the tip get. You scoop up the cash, drawl “See you later” as the music fades and drag the chair offstage, heart beating loud.

This is the last time you strip for tips, and nerds.

Facing It Together Series