Tuesday Laveau

Tuesday sees me at the counter, I turn my head and we smile, warmly at one another. 

She joins me at the counter and orders me a coffee as I scan the chalkboard menus before choosing a bowl of pumpkin soup. 

We find a table and settle amidst a busy lunchtime at The Kitchen, part of 'The Station', a YMCA refurbished, former Bristol city fire station. Red wood, white walls and objects retained from The Station's former life are a canvass against which customers talk, have Christmas lunches complete with crackers and hats, as Tuesday and I begin to talk. 

Her eyes, under loaded black lashes, move sensually, switching from her hands, clasped with electric nails and a turquoise flower ring to an invisible point, floating above her long, black hair. She leads the conversation, we make small talk about Bristol, the city, it's life and how we relate to it. She speaks, with a soft, flowery, part American accent, about her journey, born in Bristol, moving away, spending time in New Orleans and returning again, to this city. 

As her head lifts and falls, her necklace slips around her collar; Tuesday, revealed and concealed. Her hands move like fans, her fingers stretch like feathers in pointing wings and her lips curl and move as shining eyes express pleasure and warmth.

When it feels right, when we have established that connection, she asks me what it is that I want to do. She knows a little about my exploration of burlesque, my questions about how a woman comes to and experiences performance, within burlesque. 

I tell Tuesday that I wonder about what it means to a woman to perform, to assume that identity and what it is that the audience take from this.

Tuesday doesn't buy the empowerment argument, believing that its a cliche used to justify engagement in an adult entertainment industry. Instead, she advocates a freedom of sexual expression in performance. As Tuesday, she lives that indulgence, takes that freedom and Tuesday Laveau lives as long a day, as completely Tuesday as opportunity allows. 

Tuesday quotes Oscar Wilde;  "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth". 

The fear we live with, the fear of approval, is suspended when the mask is worn. 

Sexual prejudice, morality around sexuality and the repression of thought and expression are challenged by burlesque. Burlesque celebrates the body, whatever its shape. The revelation of body, the movement of dance, the narrative of performance, the chemistry created between performer and the audience has the potential to progress the freedom of expression, of body, of sexuality, of comedy and experience. 

Tuesday and I part in the city, she bounces away, full of life and I admire her greatly.