Tits, magic, and shock tactics

It’s Gemini season, and the twins have crawled their way out of hell.

Geminis have a reputation for being the most chaotic of the zodiac. Into it! Over it! All the yes! Hell fuckin’ no! C’mere. Go away. Don't text me. Why aren’t you texting me?

Of course they’re mercurial; they’re ruled by that mixed-messenger god, so you can thank them for that bullshit, too. 

Those born under this sign are also known to be clever, curious, highly intelligent, maybe a wee bit vain, creative, absolutely incredible in bed, and baby psychopaths. Catch a bad Gemini, and they’re pretty much the root of all evil. Find yourself in the company of a good Gemini, and you’re getting into some fun trouble.

So in the company of a good one, my friends and I find ourselves at Eli’s Mile High. I’m parked front row beneath the infernal red glow of the stage lights with my sweetie by my side for Abracanasty, a freaky, freaky night of my two favorite things: tits and magic. 

Abracanasty isn't traditional burlesque. It's DIY punk burlesque. It's horror theater. It's vaudeville, BDSM-adjacent. The performers flirt with disgust, beauty, absurdity, desire, often in the same breath. 

When the lights dim, a fair-skinned sprite prowls onto the stage, stepping toe by toe before salamandering her way into a hula hoop that lights up at her touch. This is Vixen the Forbidden Magician, a mistress of misdirection full of card tricks and hoop tricks. Her moves are quick and spidery, darting around like a demon-fairy. 

She sets the tone for the night when she reaches into her mouth and slowly tissues out a gauzy handkerchief, yards of pale fabric unspooling from somewhere deep inside her deep throat, ectoplasmic and impossible.

I turn to my sweetie: “Could be us?” 

I’m slackjawed already and we’ve got five more dancers and a magician to go. 

Gemini is an air sign. What does air feed? Fire and flame, baby. 

Across the stage stalks Ruby Revolver, clad in chainmail and steel, a medieval fire goddess with a harlequin grin and a massive sword. Tongue out, eyes gleaming, she sets the sword on fire as the crowd gleefully watches the flames crawl up the blade. She ends with her tits ablaze in sparkler pasties, and we’re all howling now. Baby’s on fiiiiiiire. 

It’s funny to think that outside, Oakland is continuing its ordinary Oakland business (which, define: ordinary), while inside at Eli’s, everything feels fever-dreamy. People are putting their kids to sleep, cars are streaming down 580, but in here, the vibe is anarchic, alchemical. Oakland and its multitudes! Like real hot Gemini shit. 

Oakland is officially a Taurus born on May 4th 1852, but I like to think she’s spiritually a Gemini.

The thing to know about Gemini is that her greatest strengths are her brilliant mind, her fabulous curiosity, and her ability to communicate. That’s why the body part most associated with Gemini is her mouth. What that mouth do? Sarcasm, mostly. 

The Gemini’s weakness, however, is whoever just walked out on stage because GOT DAMN!

A succubus emerges, unfolding from the shadows.

This is Countess Malfaz. 

Towering and curvy-horned, snake-tongued, she slinks across the stage in a classic red, hip-hugging chiffon panel skirt, swirling it around in her tease-o-rama. She quickly releases the skirt and her corset in order to sashay for us in a G-string with her feather fans. 

My sweetie likes her in particular, and the heat that rises in me is difficult to name. It’s not jealousy… well, maybe a little, but more admiration. The peculiar thrill of witnessing someone so completely inhabit her own power that the desire is contagious. 

This feels very, very nice on the feral Gemini’s eyes and brain.

You know what else at least one Gemini enjoys? A little blood letting.

Enter The Cat Sweet. A one-woman horror show with a literal axe to grind. 

Angled into the bottom of her eye sockets are metal hooks with strings fastened to a heart-shaped box that swings like a pendulum with every step she takes across the stage. It’s grotesque and mesmerizing. The crowd squeals, tethered to her gaze. 

When she unhooks the heart, she takes a staple gun and some playing cards and with an unhinged fearlessness stamps the cards into her body and her face. Puncturing each one by one to everyone’s shock and horror and delight. The spectacle falls somewhere between sexual reverie and shock attack and horror. All of this to the tune of “I Did It My Way.”

Then she grabs an axe and an angle grinder.

She drives both together along her torso, squirting a dramatic shower of bright orange sparks that spray both her body and the crowd. People are now screaming “Oh my god” and “Holy fuck.” Some sparks singe my skin. I feel my body electric. 

How can a magician follow that act? But here he comes, Sean Francisco. He asks for a volunteer, and one of my friends has found her way onstage to participate in a card trick as the guest magician. For this bit, she gets to pull someone else up, so she chooses the birthday girl: Hi. It’s my birthday and you’re in my house. 

Now at this point, thanks to my total fear of being the center of attention (a Gemini trait I did not inherit from the ancestral Twins), I am completely blacked out. I am told that everyone lost their minds and there was a Queen of Hearts in an envelope at some point and I jumped around utterly gobsmacked because that’s what Geminis do: we adapt to our environments. Queens of mirroring and mimicry. I feel like a one-way mirror, wanting to be seen and invisible at the same time. 

But there’s no two ways about this: Abracanasty was a goddamn blast.

This was art, high and low, gay, lesbian, feminist, punk, sacred and profane, sexy and grotesque, playful and unsettling, subversive. A night of contradictions. Tis the season.

I write this as we approach the Summer Solstice, the final day of Gemini season, when the portal will close and we’ll all get roped by our little demon ankles and tucked gently back into the cute little hells from whence we writhed.