Peaches Does Herself and Taps My Boot

I don't want to give you the wrong impression. I'm not as jaded as I was in that last post, the "Valentine's Day at the DMV" one. It's only been a month, but my perspective on love, dating, marriage, soul mates and all that stuff is way, WAY better. Why, just in the last few weeks I've gone from listening to Elliott Smith's "Everything Means Nothing to Me" to Peaches "Fuck the Pain Away."

No really, this is an improvement! You have to be alive to fuck the pain away, people, you have to have ambition. Did I tell you that I met Peaches, by the way? Like, yeah, actually met her.

Ok, I didn't actually meet her. But I touched her shoe with my foot WHILST her shoe was on her foot! It's a great story, so a couple of months ago I was at the Prytania Theater when...wait...you want to know who Peaches is? You don't know this? Oooooooh! Well, no wonder you weren't as impressed as I thought you should be. Ok so Peaches is a musician who looks like this:



Iiiiiiiimpressed? So am I. But on the night that I touched her shoe, she looked more like this:



I'd gone to see the mock rock opera "Peaches Does Herself" and knowing what little I did about her, I'd decided to go by myself. See, Peaches is sexual in a....in an undefinable way. Which is one of the things I like about her. She's a Tomboy sometimes, and then not other times. Just when she feels like it. "Tomboy" is putting it mildly. Sometimes she wears girly lingerie and sometimes she wears a dildo and a beard. She's boldly freakish. Whatever her sexuality is, and I'm not really sure, it's hers and she doesn't care if anyone understands, accepts it, or thinks she's pretty. There's a line in her song "I U She" that says "I don't have to make the choice, I like girls and I like boys." Her movie has hermaphroditic joy, like it's something beautiful instead of perverse, which is totally different from the message I've gotten about sexuality which is if you stray from being a feminine woman or a masculine man, there's something wrong deeply with you.

From my perspective as a person who's trying to let go of a lot of shame and repression, this is a liberating perspective. And also in the movie a lady lights matches and tucks them into her inverted nipples. That is liberating for a whole heap of reasons, not least of which being that I was always told not to put fire near my breasts. The Half Naked Cow Girl set me free (THAT'S HER NAME).

Anyway, as open-minded as my friends are I didn't know if they'd be comfortable so I went alone, and that's how I ended up in an empty row near the back of the theater. No! Not so that I could do that! It really was a coincidence. Which, now that I think about it would have been a great chance for me to take advantage of myself, but I'm just not the kind of girl who would use a vulnerable person like me in a movie theater. However, it proved to be a great spot for accidentally touching a musician's shoe. BECAUSE near the end of movie this woman and this guy filed into my row, and the woman sat down next to me. I thought it was a little weird that they would pay to see a movie where they'd only watch the last ten minutes of it, but I decided to not judge them or turn my head to look at them. Except for when I crossed my legs, and accidentally tapped the woman's shoe with my boot.

"Sorry," I whispered, glancing at her quick enough to notice that the sides of her head were shaved but in the dark I didn't recognize details of her face.

I don't think she heard me or even noticed that I'd tapped her shoe. Since I'm quiet and hyper sensitive to touch it's possible that only I noticed the tiniest tap of a pin drop point on her foot, and only I heard my squeak of an apology. So I let it go and focused on the last five minutes of the movie, where Peaches rides a tricycle contraption through the streets of Berlin repeating the line "Fuck the pain away."

Just before the lights came on, the man in my row got up and the woman next to me followed him to the front of the theater. And then he introduced her as Peaches.

I'll never wash that boot again.

She was there for a Q&A thing at the end of the movie. I didn't ask any questions, though that would have been a great opportunity to actually talk to her so that I could tell you guys something more exciting than "I touched her shoe and she didn't notice." Though I'd liked the movie, I couldn't think of anything to ask that had anything to do with it.

"Do you ever feel shy or embarrassed?" That would have been my question. But the questions from the audience were like, "Was the mutilated dildo custom made?" "How did that woman stick matches in her tits?" And then something about feminism. "What do you think the difference is between your style and, say, Lady Gaga's?" I don't remember how the question was worded. It was something about female sexuality in main stream pop culture vs. Peaches. You would think that an interesting question like that, especially since I have daughters, would stick with me rather than "How did that woman stick matches in her tits?" but here we are. I do remember, however, the woman starting the question and Peaches cutting in with, "You're going to ask me something about feminism, aren't you?" She didn't say it in an irritated way. It sounded like she could just tell. I guess she gets that a lot.

I've been listening to a lot of girl music that I've lumped into a category called "I don't give a fuck." It's not all one genre, just has that same theme. Joan Jett, The Donnas, Peaches, and The Pack A.D. are a few. I needed raw, dynamic women who are funny and pretty sometimes but not all the time. Just like the rest of us.

So here are the questions I would have asked Peaches if I had no problem speaking in front of a theater full of people:

1) Are you really confident about your sexuality and your body or is that a stage thing, and if you really are then how do you do that?

2) Did you always not care what people think or is that something that you had to work on?

3) What do you think healthy sexuality is?

4) Did you sit next to me because you thought I was cute in the dark?

5) Hee hee.