on tarts
Today I did something I intentionally didn't do yesterday, and unintentionally didn't do for the preceding years, days, and months of my life: I bought a tart pan. It has a removable bottom. *insert a joke about tart buying a tart pan here*
The less respectable version of devo, the one that inhabits a teeny-tiny portion of my insides, was jumping up and down for joy for quite awhile afterwards. The rest of me rolled its eyes and thought, "what's the big deal? So you bought another piece of bakeware."
The writer-philosopher in me thinks it is not so simple. Consider the opportunity you may not have taken to make a joke about a tart's purchase du jour. The past couple days I've begun to realize I need to begin seriously considering how my sexual identity appears to others.
In the vanilla ball game, I am the fly ball that landed a couple counties over. Waaaayy out of the ball park. But apparently, since my sexuality is something I've only begun to address recently, and discussed rarely, many people simply assume I'm vanilla. I play a pretty convincing innocent girl from the Midwest. Erm .... at least I used to. The audience at Monkey Town on Thursday probably won't buy into that any more. And I am not sure how I feel about that.
I like the mischief involved in misleading and surprising people. Do I care if I'm misunderstood? Not particularly: it adds to my fun. There is nothing to misunderstand about performing a kinky orgasm onstage. That is, I think, about as overt as it gets. The first time I performed ATTB, I panicked backstage beforehand. Part of it was the fact that I had seen someone in the audience whom I didn't wish to have come. But it was far more than that: the insulation, the persona I've developed over the years in order to perform better, vanished. Up and fucking abandoned me. And I have never, ever, EVER ever performed something as simply myself. And that piece?
I had a good mind to flee and avoid the business of performing altogether. No one backstage understood why I was so ... flustered ... about the prospect of actually performing that piece. At the very least, I thought, I'll just leave right afterwards. Avoid the audience, avoid the composers, avoid the performers, just go home and cower until my persona comes back.
But I didn't, did I. And THEN I did it again, except moreso, at Monkey Town. The entire ROOM snapped to attention when I screamed in the middle of the piece. And most of them saw my facial expressions during the pauses.
Back to the baking: my culinary and confectionary endeavors have become more adventurous of late as well. I've discovered I can make up recipes and improvise dishes, and people will eat them because they are delicious (so far). And I've never made a tart before, only pies, and I've just been wanting to.
And so why not buy a tart pan and make a fucking tart? A year ago I would have balked, made up some excuse for why I oughtn't attempt something so out of my league.
But this has been a year of un-inhibiting myself, a year of acknowledging and exploring my sexuality, of trying (many) new things, of ridding myself of old things (like prudishness) ...
so the tart bought a tart pan. If you're nice to her, maybe she'll let you sample it!
The less respectable version of devo, the one that inhabits a teeny-tiny portion of my insides, was jumping up and down for joy for quite awhile afterwards. The rest of me rolled its eyes and thought, "what's the big deal? So you bought another piece of bakeware."
The writer-philosopher in me thinks it is not so simple. Consider the opportunity you may not have taken to make a joke about a tart's purchase du jour. The past couple days I've begun to realize I need to begin seriously considering how my sexual identity appears to others.
In the vanilla ball game, I am the fly ball that landed a couple counties over. Waaaayy out of the ball park. But apparently, since my sexuality is something I've only begun to address recently, and discussed rarely, many people simply assume I'm vanilla. I play a pretty convincing innocent girl from the Midwest. Erm .... at least I used to. The audience at Monkey Town on Thursday probably won't buy into that any more. And I am not sure how I feel about that.
I like the mischief involved in misleading and surprising people. Do I care if I'm misunderstood? Not particularly: it adds to my fun. There is nothing to misunderstand about performing a kinky orgasm onstage. That is, I think, about as overt as it gets. The first time I performed ATTB, I panicked backstage beforehand. Part of it was the fact that I had seen someone in the audience whom I didn't wish to have come. But it was far more than that: the insulation, the persona I've developed over the years in order to perform better, vanished. Up and fucking abandoned me. And I have never, ever, EVER ever performed something as simply myself. And that piece?
I had a good mind to flee and avoid the business of performing altogether. No one backstage understood why I was so ... flustered ... about the prospect of actually performing that piece. At the very least, I thought, I'll just leave right afterwards. Avoid the audience, avoid the composers, avoid the performers, just go home and cower until my persona comes back.
But I didn't, did I. And THEN I did it again, except moreso, at Monkey Town. The entire ROOM snapped to attention when I screamed in the middle of the piece. And most of them saw my facial expressions during the pauses.
Back to the baking: my culinary and confectionary endeavors have become more adventurous of late as well. I've discovered I can make up recipes and improvise dishes, and people will eat them because they are delicious (so far). And I've never made a tart before, only pies, and I've just been wanting to.
And so why not buy a tart pan and make a fucking tart? A year ago I would have balked, made up some excuse for why I oughtn't attempt something so out of my league.
But this has been a year of un-inhibiting myself, a year of acknowledging and exploring my sexuality, of trying (many) new things, of ridding myself of old things (like prudishness) ...
so the tart bought a tart pan. If you're nice to her, maybe she'll let you sample it!