“Naked” truth with memoirist Fancy Feast

NYC burlesque artist Fancy Feast discusses her memoir, Naked:  On Sex, Work, and Other Burlesques, and how being a fat performer, phone sex worker, and sex toy store clerk revealed to her Americans’ fears and expectations about sex.

In this episode:

• Burlesque artist Fancy Feast
• Host, sex educator, and energy worker Karen Yates 
• Naked –buy on Bookshop and support Wild & Sublime and independent booksellers

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Prefer to read the convo? Full episode transcripts are available on our website.

Transcript

Fancy Feast  0:03  
There's something really titillating and tranquilizing about being in that space. There's something really liberating and transformative about it, but then it is also where we encounter harm, because people are are defended against acknowledging and integrating those parts of themselves, and so a lot of that ends up then getting projected outward, so as a as a performer, I can create a sort of safer vessel for those projections.

[MUSIC] 

Karen Yates  0:31  
Welcome to Wild & Sublime, a sexy spin on infotainment, no matter your preferences, orientation or relationship style,. Based on the popular live Chicago show, I chat about sex and relationships with citizens from the world of sex positivity and comedy, you'll hear meaningful conversations, dialogs that go deeper, and information that can help you become more free in your sexual expression. I'm sex educator Karen Yates, our monthly patreon supporters pay for a large part of our operating expenses. Their contributions from $5 on up, help us big time. Plus members get discounts on show tickets and merch and receive wild and sublime news before anyone else and more interested in helping us spread the message of sex positivity. Go to patreon.com/wildand sublime. 

Karen Yates  1:27  
Hey folks, we are continuing with our summer reading fest here on wild sublime, concluding today with my interview with Fancy Feast as we talk about her recent book naked, a series of essays that describe her life in New York City as a burlesque artist, clerk in a sex toy store and a phone sex worker. Fancy feasts essays cannily interrogate society's relationship with sex and how our shadow sides pop out when sex is public facing. Fancy also recently became a therapist. In Act One, we chat about how she came to be a burlesque artist the New York scene, and what it is like working in a sex toy store. In act two, we discuss fat phobia and fat liberation. Fancy recorded on the land of the Lenape and I from the land of the Council of three fires, the Ojibwe, the Odawa and the Potawatomi nations. Enjoy! 

Karen Yates  2:30  
Welcome Fancy Feast.

Fancy Feast  2:31  
Thank you so much for having me.

Karen Yates  2:33  
Oh, I'm excited. I'm excited to get into it today with you. You're such a beautiful writer, and I thought it'd be marvelous to have you read for us the first page and a half of your book.

Fancy Feast  2:46  
I'm sure, oh, [coyly] my book...? 

Fancy Feast  2:48  
"I'm going to open my dress for you just a little, because I'm nice and because when I do, we will both get something out of it. I'm the one on stage undressing, but I am not revealing myself to you. Rather, you are revealing yourself to me in the milky glow of reflected stage light. I am observing your face and how it changes, whether I can provoke your surprise or catch you in a private moment that no one but me gets to witness. The fourth wall is flimsy, nevertheless you lean against it like it will not fall away, and I can see the pleasure and bewilderment splashed across your face in momentary bursts, the wonderment of your mouth, which has fallen open, the shame and embarrassment that knits your brows together and prompts you to cast down your gaze to your hands to examine the folded gum wrapper there the laughter that bursts forth from you like rain dropping from a cloud and humid spring. 

Fancy Feast  3:47  
"'Hi, baby. Thank you so much for coming to the show. Looks like you're having fun.' I'm the one taking off my clothes, but in these moments, you are more naked than I am. Make no mistake you are not the voyeur you imagine yourself to be secreted away and safe in the audience of a darkened theater, in the back row of folding chairs in a sweaty, beer soaked bar. You feel safe because I am the show and you paid to see it. What you don't realize is that you and I are here for the same reason, because we like to watch the differences. I know you are watching me. You have no idea that when I strip for you, we each face a reflective surface."

Fancy Feast  4:31  
Thank you so much. 

Karen Yates  4:32  
Thank you. This book was much different than I anticipated it to be. I thought it would be kind of a upbeat recounting of the burlesque life.

Fancy Feast  4:44  
Sorry, I tried

Karen Yates  4:47  
and intense like instead of something very intense and very in my face and disturbing, and so thank you for that.

Fancy Feast  4:59  
Oh. Gosh. My pleasure. That's also, by the way, how I would describe my stage performance.

Karen Yates  5:07  
You nailed it, right? 

Fancy Feast  5:09  
Yeah. 

Karen Yates  5:09  
Very good, very good. So I wanted to ask you, what's interesting is, I, you know, Wild & Sublime does, like, four or five stage shows a year, and there are burlesque artists, so I'm really interested in the subject of Burlesque. And you know, you recount in the beginning how you know your your eureka moment when you were pretty young as one of the Kit Kat girls in Cabaret, which you advocated for, I think, right? Instead of being Frau Schneider, 

Fancy Feast  5:38  
Yes, couldn't do it. 

Karen Yates  5:42  
Yeah, but as you went on, first, I want to ask you, what was, because you're a burlesque artist in New York City, what was the lure, given that you do recount the the real intensity and difficulties of the job, what is the what was the lure and what keeps you in it?

Fancy Feast  6:04  
That's a great question. Um, so what got me hooked was this, this sort of alchemical combination of a lot of my preoccupations and interests. So I've always been a theater kid. I am so interested in sexuality. I am. I love storytelling. I love sort of satire and wit, and then I'm then I like to break rules. I'm a bad girl. So this is, this is a place to, kind of to do all of those things to sort of realize this, this goal that I had for myself, and my identity as the sort of next place to next place to put my my interests and questions. And that feels relatively accomplished. That was that was like my decision when I was 22 and so now the thing that I'm still here doing all these years later is because I really love to entertain people, and because it is a one of the very few DIY art forms where I can, I can fully conceive of something and then have it on stage the next week, and have hundreds of people see it with relatively few barriers to entry, and to do so In a way that that also really celebrates and acknowledges my, my body, my existence, like I'm not. I'm not subject to somebody else's story about me. It's a time and place for me to tell stories. 

Fancy Feast  7:34  
Yeah, yeah. You have this great...The book is, which is a series of essays, is chock full of these bombs, these these, like these lyrical bombs. And early on, you say "Americans fear sexuality so much that we imagine that the kinds of people who express even a little bit of it will get it all over, everything indiscriminately, like a pen exploding on an airplane." And I was like, Oh my gosh, it's it's so interesting to me. I mean, I can relate, because I'm a sex educator now, but I wasn't always a sex educator. I was just your average performer, director in a vanilla kind of world. And then moving into the sex realm. It changed everything. You know, it changed everything. And the book isn't just about burlesque. It is about how your life bumps up against sexuality and it bumps up against people's attitudes and fears and insecurities and coping mechanisms around sexuality, and that's the gritty, ugly part, right? Because you're on the front lines, you're really seeing stuff. Yeah, I would love for you to just talk about that for the moment.

Fancy Feast  9:02  
Yeah, I am... I realized that a lot of my play space, in actually, all of my careers, and the different different roles that I've chosen, I'm in the sort of Jungian shadow space like I'm in the parts of of one psyche that people don't, don't, tend to lead with or disavow or do not, do not acknowledge, but are nevertheless curious about and comes out in sort of other forms of expression. And there's something, there's something really titillating and tantalizing about being in that space. There's something really liberating and transformative about it. But then it is also where we encounter harm, because people are are defended against acknowledging and integrating those parts of themselves. And so a lot of that ends up then getting projected outward. So as a as a performer, I can create a sort of. Safer vessel for those projections, and where there's like a power difference, there is a stage for me, and there's a time limit, and I think that that feels like a nice way to step in and step out of that. When I was working, for example, selling sex toys in retail that was so much less safe because then we're just on on the same playing field, except I'm not allowed to leave the store because I work there, so So I'm dealing with people's unintegrated shit, but I also can't really protect myself

Karen Yates  10:35  
absolutely. And I love that how you framed that whole thing, because I'm like, You were almost more protected as a burlesque artist, I want to read this. "I wanted to read this piece that you wrote about working at a toy store. I could see that the deficits I saw in customer behavior were not merely individual failures of character, but a structural ineptitude and unwillingness to contend seriously with matters of the body. People made jokes or acted out because they were scared. And they were scared because they had never been appropriately acculturated to accept bodies as realities, bodies that failed, bodies that did not live up to an abstracted ideal, bodies that made smells and tastes, bodies with parts that were small, that should be big or big, that should be small or hard when they should be soft or soft when they should be hard bodies horrifyingly, the change that had limits and preferences, bodies that could not they could not always control, bodies that were not enough, which is what would bring some people careering into the sex shop, looking for the missing piece that would completely satisfy satisfy themselves or their sex partners, Looking for the quick fix to disguise their existential trenches."

Fancy Feast  11:43  
Ah, I regretted writing those sentences that I was reading the audio book. Like, too long, 

Karen Yates  11:49  
too long, too long. I need more breath space! Um, talk about, I mean, because we will get more into the burlesque. But talk a bit about your time at a sex store, because it was I also want to hear about the Packers that flipped me out. Yeah, tell, tell us a little bit about working at a toy store.

Fancy Feast  12:10  
Yes, I wanted a cool girl job, and I got one, and then some selling, selling sex toys was such a a window into community that I wanted to be part of. So I was working with sex positive, queer people, sex workers, trans folks, artists like it was all the people that I had moved to New York to sort of rub elbows with. Those are my co workers. Those were my managers. Those are my friends, and they still are. But then we were dealing with the public in New York, and I was working on the Lower East Side, and some of my shifts lasted until 11pm on weekends, so we were dealing with a lot of drunk people. There was there was no security, and we didn't have security cameras, because we wanted the store to feel welcoming, but that meant that we were just a sort of conduit for a lot of weird, energetic stuff that was coming in. So it was like only part of the job was retail. We were trying to sell sex toys to people. We were trying to help people connect with whatever kinds of merchandise makes make the most sense for their desires. And that's often we're doing that while our customers don't really have language like we're trying to do that interpretation work. And then beyond that, we also found ourselves engaged in therapy, social work, case management, crisis intervention, lots of hand holding. It was, it was a really I was like, oh, retail and so that'll give me time to be an artist. It'll give me emotional space. I just have a job that I clock in and clock out of. Did not happen that way. It was really, really energetically taxing to do that work.

Karen Yates  13:53  
How long did you do it for?

Fancy Feast  13:54  
Seven years? Wow, yeah, the financial crisis really was a hell of a thing. I graduated right into it. So it was scary to to do a lot of moving around,

Karen Yates  14:07  
Talk about the story with the Packers. I found that so weird.

Fancy Feast  14:11  
Oh, god, yeah. So, so we started selling, uh, we always sold some gender affirming stuff. So not sex toys, but sort of gender expression items. And we had soft packs, which look like a flaccid penis and testicles, and they're made out of like a soft silicone or a cyber skin, and they're intended to create a bulge in the pants. So if somebody wants to beef up what they already have in their pants, like, you know, get a little more of that silhouette. And for people who are not familiar with the needs of trans people, like the importance of completing a certain gender presentation, like for gender dysphoria, reasons for safety, reasons for preference, reasons for the layman, it just looks like. Like, these are soft dicks. And why would anybody want a soft one if we're also selling the hard ones, if we're selling erect penis shaped things like dildos. And so they would be this source of derision and ridicule. 

Fancy Feast  15:17  
And so people would come in and they would pick them up and be like, Oh, what are these for? They don't work, and hit each other with it because it was, it was flaccid, it would move. So they were using them as as projectiles in the store, or, like, just expressing lots of disgust about them. And mostly it was just due to ignorance and a lack of education. So that's when we would sort of step in, intervene, you know, ask people not to use our merchandise as hats or projectiles or whatever they were doing, and then, and then do that educational piece, like, Oh, here's what they're for. And that would stop most people, but not all people. And so it was just this. It was this other, like compounding violence, like, as if it's not already very hard to be trans and exist in the world. But it was, it was this, like other sort of disembodied, ambient violence that was happening a lot,

Karen Yates  16:07  
But you said that they always hit each other in the face. That's the thing that I found so bizarre, like that, that the amount of face hitting without consent, like there was like, That struck me as just, I mean, I can understand chucking it around like that's sort of base level childish behavior, but like this kind of violence that we get perpetrated everyone in their face, I mean, so strange to me. 

Fancy Feast  16:31  
It made no sense to me. And like the sort of frequency of it was astonishing. And when I when I spoke to people in other retail jobs, I mean, everyone has their version of it, like, because we were selling sex stuff or gender stuff, there's like, an added layer of intensity, but everyone's like, Yeah. People are just like, touching this stuff inappropriately, hitting each other, like people who worked in stores, people put things in their mouth all the time, like people were putting Yeah, people were like, chewing on our massage bars. I was like, what do we just walk in and put things that we don't, that we haven't bought, that don't belong to us in our mouths? It was like a, like a sort of we haven't passed, like the Freudian, like oral stage, like we're not, we're not past the 18 month mark or whatever, in our development, I don't know,

Karen Yates  17:22  
oh my gosh, yeah, moving along here. Yes, you have done your work primarily as a burlesque artist, burlesque performer in New York City. Do you consider but? But there were definitely, you know, you were touring. You were also working in far flung places like what North Dakota and Fargo exotic? Yeah, exotic. Very exotic. Fargo is exotic. I have been there. What is there a major difference? Because I think there is between the New York scene and the rest of America. And can you explain what that is?

Fancy Feast  17:55  
Absolutely, there are some ways that you can really peg a New York City burlesque performer. Our scene is known as being extremely innovative. We are a site of a ton of headliners, international, internationally known performers. So it's, it's, in some ways, it's like the, I don't know what you'd want to call it, like the Algonquin round table, or like, you know that it's like, it's the sort of creative site where there's a lot of this, like energy we're feeding off of each other. So work is innovated at a very high level and a really sort of speedy rate. Beyond that, New York audiences are different from other audiences. They are not particularly polite. They are jaded. They are bored. They need something truly entertaining. And so we are then pushing ourselves to to find something that is to do something in our work that they've never seen before, that also sort of drives that innovative piece we're known for being pretty gritty and offensive, which I'm very happy about, and we're also known for having to be really thoughtful about our costuming, because everything has to come on the train with us like we don't have SUV hatchbacks, we don't have storage spaces. So either it's going to be really slutty and small or it's going to be a sort of IKEA assembly experience, yeah,

Karen Yates  19:24  
yeah. I was reading, and it was surprising the amount of copy that was given to say, Fake blood, fake poop, like all of these various fake fluids. But then there was like real fluid and real insertables, and like that seems to form a bulk of the experience. I mean, would you say that that that like that is just basically a common, a common feature, or more uncommon in your face? Explain, 

Fancy Feast  19:57  
Well, that's, that's author's bias, because that's the stuff that I like. Like. So I think, I think nowadays, like, in some ways, the book is a historical document, like in the by the time that I was, that I was in the scene, there was a lot more of the, the DIY and punk ethos still in, in a lot of Burlesque. And there was a, I think, due to just sort of like city wide initiatives, there's been a ton of closures at the DIY venues. And so there are fewer places where we can get away with things like fluids, or we can get away with insertion where we can get away with full nudity, like a lot more has had to go above board. And so work has gotten safer in the past few years. And I also think in general, like audience tastes like, people are freaked out, um, in a way that like is not pleasurable, like, in a way that is not intended. So, so work is getting a little more, a little a little less fluidy, a little more look at my pretty costume, and I'm, I'm not, I'm not that interested. Yeah,

Karen Yates  21:00  
Yeah. I know in Chicago we have the nipple rule. You know, nipples have to be covered and, and they're like the, I think you, I think you might have talked about it, that there's, like, a butt crack, there's an area like, it's kind of up for interpretation, but you talk about that, and is that in place in New York as well?

Fancy Feast  21:20  
So theoretically, in New York, if there is a an alcohol there's a liquor license, you can't have your genitals out, and you also have to cover your nipples. That's theoretically some some venues, I don't know if they paid off the cops or if everyone just looks the other way, there are some places where you can get away with more than that. But like, if you're in a theater space or a place that has a cabaret license, I think then you're you're able to have things like full nudity, because that's then seen as theatrical performance,

Karen Yates  21:53  
Right? Can you explain, for folks who don't understand what the difference is between burlesque and stripping?

Fancy Feast  22:00  
Oh, golly. All right, I'm gonna just get in trouble when I answer this question. So it used to be that there wasn't a difference, and that if you wanted to see strip people taking their clothes off in public, you'd have to go to a burlesque house. And there would be a show with Sideshow performers comedians. There would be funny little skits, there would be a musician, there'd be a jiggle dance and Lady and and it would reset. And then in the in the 60s and 70s, that started to branch out, and there was specific places for stripping, like strip clubs opened, and burlesque houses were just much more expensive to run. I think the mob wanted, you know, to make more money, go to the mob, and so burlesque mostly went underground like there wasn't, there wasn't a ton of Burlesque performance in those decades. There was a little bit. So that bifurcation is not really a for me, it's a designation about venue. Some people are going to disagree with me, and that's fine. I think it has a lot to do with an audience's expectations of what they're going to see. 

Fancy Feast  23:10  
There is a sort of stereotype that that Burlesque is more creative or theatrical and that stripping is more designed to be simply titillating. I would push back on that kind of distinction. There is the thought that, like Burlesque is classy and tasteful because it has sort of retro elements to it, and that stripping is is crass and tasteless. And I disagree, and I I think we should really destroy that kind of hierarchy. I think stripping is generally more lucrative. And so my, my sort of theory that I posit in the book is that, because people make more money in strip clubs than they do in burlesque, it's seen as scarier, like it's treated in a way where it's like, it's not it's it's trashy, it's not respectable, because people are earning a living that way, and it's really terrifying when people earn their living through sexualized labor.

Karen Yates  24:01  
Yes, you said that, and I loved that. It was such a provocative line, because you can go so many ways in saying it, and it's really gender. It's you're really talking about gender. And, yeah, do you want to unpack it a little bit more about this? The flirtatious you wrote, I actually pulled it out. They're expecting women are expected to offer this kind of flirtatious attention and service, this kind of exaggerated gender performance, for free. You don't have to. It's right there, yeah.

Fancy Feast  24:37  
I mean, yeah. So it's like, they it's seen as really dangerous. If it's if somebody's saying, like, No, this is actually a set of skills and labor and time and I deserve to be paid for this, that everyone's like, Oh, trashy blech! And then if it's like, oh, but I'm doing it for fun and empowerment and $50 then people are like, Oh, wait, yes, very feminist of you! You know what I mean? It's absurd. Yeah.

Karen Yates  25:04  
Uh, one of the things that you go into great detail in the book, and I was really resonated with, was the whole concept, especially you as a burlesque artist, around fat phobia. You're a fat performer, and this is can be at certain points part of your act, and you go to talk about other events, I want to talk about the Seven Deadly Sins event in a moment. 

Fancy Feast  25:38  
Yeah. 

Karen Yates  25:38  
Like, what really struck me is that the fat phobia strikes such a nerve. It hits such a nerve with people, that almost seems to transcend the nerve about sex. It seems to almost go beyond that. Was that your experience of it, that that there was something almost like, Ah, I can't deal with this.

Fancy Feast  26:06  
Yeah, it's, it feels hard to separate out these different pieces, because I've only ever performed as a fat person, because I've only ever been a fat person. So I don't know what it's like to do sexualized performance without also being fat while doing it. So I'm not so I'm not sure I know that people do really freak out about fat people all the time in general. And it does seem to be a place where there's even less thought, there's even less information, there's even less acceptance, at least that's that's been my that's been my experience. It seems to be, just be this issue where people who otherwise seem like relatively rational and cool and with it will just, like, say, a bunch of, like, really out of pocket shit that comes from nowhere. Yes, I'm sorry. I don't know if I answered your question, though there was, there was another piece to it.

Karen Yates  26:57  
Yeah, I was just, I mean, I'm just, I was just really struck with the the the audience reaction, and then people attempting to converse with you about it, and it was horrible. I mean, they're trying to, like, be nice, but in their niceness that it's, it's incredibly insulting and, and, yeah, yeah.

Fancy Feast  27:22  
It's, it's been really interesting to then tour with the book, because I'm making all of that very explicit and clear. But that doesn't stop it from continuing to happen. Of course, like I'm not, I can't write this as like a talisman against that kind of threat. But I was okay. So I was doing this event, this book event, at a JCC in La Jolla, California, where the sort of average age of the audience member was like 72, 73, so it was like mostly a senior crowd, and I was reading from the book. And then also I did two striptease numbers, and then there was a and I didn't talk about my body at all. I didn't read passages from the book where I talk about fatphobia or fatness like that. Just wasn't in my presentation, but it was almost 100% of the questions, and I think part of it is that, like there people don't feel like they have a safe space to ask these questions, some of which are like ignorant and unwelcome. But I think there is this way that that they see what I'm doing, or the way that I'm putting myself out there as an open door to then have curiosity, but because we are starting from so far behind the way that the questions are asked, or the thoughts that people are having are are unintentionally quite, quite painful, quite offensive.

Karen Yates  28:50  
Did you? Were you able to in the questioning push against it?

Fancy Feast  28:55  
Oh, yeah, yeah, fuck that. So I was getting questions of, like, I mean, there's sort of the general question like, "how do you get how do you have your confidence?" You know which, which betrays, like, what they believe I should be feeling and thinking and doing with my body. There was a question about, like, Okay, well, beauty standards have changed. And like, in the 1500s your body would have been seen as appealing. But like, now it's not. And so like, do you think it's gonna shift again? And if it does, like, would that change to what you do? Like, you know the point, I think, where I got to after just like, seeing seeing red for a second, was about how women's bodies are subject to trend, like, it's it's so like, desirability does shift over time, and there are different things that are seen as, like, culturally desirable or desirable based on on some economic conditions or whatever. But women's bodies go in and out of fashion, and men's bodies don't like men have fashion trends. As women's bodies go in and out and and then that speaks to the the objectification. It speaks to like how we don't even consider women to be human. They're not people.

Karen Yates  30:12  
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Karen Yates  30:33  
[to Fancy Feast] There was wonderful line later that I wanted to read, uh, wasn't a line, it was a paragraph, uh, around body positivity, which I would love to talk with you about. "I have learned as a function of my continued existence and this abject joy I experienced that being beautiful is not the most important thing in the world, and so being ugly is not the worst thing I can be. The best phrase a wretched, commodified vocabulary can come up with to describe this is body positive, which I'm not. I realize the phrase has been offered in my life as a consolation prize, an individual bomb, for living in a society that hates fat people. I do not owe the world positivity when it seeks to punish and destroy people who look like I do, the onus is not on me to be relentlessly cheerful about this journey. Moving toward pleasure is only useful if it moves us toward liberation." Wow, wow. I have always pushed against body positivity. I mean, I use the term, but at the same time, I'm like, This is so fucked up. The this, the the situation is exactly the same. You can't just throw a label on it and say body positive. What is your experience of the word and all of the the fat positive or the body positive movement

Fancy Feast  32:05  
I haven't seen, I haven't seen it over time work toward anything other than, you know, selling handbags or like, you know, it's, it's been so co opted and corrupted by and watered down by by corporate interest that I that I think it's basically not functional as a as a sort of political rallying cry. It doesn't mean anything. I think it is...It is the difference between a wish for equality and a wish for equity, that, that it presumes that like if we just sort of ask everyone to love themselves, then that will help people not be discriminated against at their doctors or find clothing in stores or get health care or housing or whatever. The thing is, it doesn't actually, it doesn't actually serve a political purpose. It serves a palliative comfort to other people. But it's like, oh, well, just love yourself. You're fine. I'm not going to help you and fuck you. You're gross. But like, love yourself. I think it's, I think it's dismissive and and mean, I think, I think fat liberation does something really different, like, there's a reason why things are not being sold under the label of fat liberation, and it's because there's something much more dangerous about that than about positivity. 

Karen Yates  33:35  
Oh, talk about fat liberation. I want to hear something about that.

Fancy Feast  33:39  
Um, it's, it's a much more radical stance to take, and it really, it is a it's a political movement that does that subjectifies The fat experience, where fat people are speaking on their own behalf and advocating for themselves, and where we would all be forced to then confront social and societal fat phobia and to undo it, which we don't want to do, because it, it doesn't sell as much like it's, you know, it's much more profitable for us to hate ourselves.

Karen Yates  34:18  
There was a-- and I'm sure you saw it--what, two or three weeks ago, a writer who has a very big platform, was on the front page in the New York Times, it seemed, talking about how she doesn't...she lets her kids eat whatever they want. She is fat, and this, this, you know, essay, and her work, you know, causes firestorms because people are like, my head is going to explode because you eat whatever you want, and you let your kids eat whatever they want. And I thought, wow, this is really interesting, that, because even I was triggered, I was like, Yeah, this is... but I was watching my triggeredness. I mean, like. I'm really triggered about this, you know, and I think this is exactly what you're pointing to. Like,

Fancy Feast  35:10  
Yeah, there's no way that people are going to behave normally with the headline like that in the New York Times or whatever. They know what they're doing. Yeah, it's, I think, I think we find all of these different ways to reinvent and internalize fascism, and I think of this as another one that it's like we are so interested in policing other people's choices, including the things that go in and out of their bodies and the bodies of their children, and we are preoccupied with that forsaking autonomy or humanity, it's like, more important that we police it.

Karen Yates  35:46  
Yeah, I mean, I want to talk, because I said I had wanted to talk a little bit about the Seven Deadly Dins event that you worked at, which was basically at someone's home?

Fancy Feast  35:57  
It was in a private venue space. 

Karen Yates  36:00  
Okay. And so you were asked, all the performers were asked, to embody one of the seven deadly sins. And as you said so eloquently, of course, I was given gluttony, right? So in the first half, you were to embody the more positive aspects, like fertility or voluptuousness or and then in the second half, you're supposed to the the negatives. And you came out. They you were given this large cake, and you began eating it. And talk about what happened next.

Fancy Feast  36:33  
Um, so my, my job with the the cake, they were, they were like, just go around with it. Get other people to eat it, you know, feed your guests like it was supposed to just be a sort of interactive prop that I was using to just sort of bring the audience in, or bring the attendees in. And it had the opposite effect. It was completely chilling. People wanted to stay as far away from me as possible. And it's like a sin themed party. People are completely debauched and doing all sorts of drugs and having all sorts of sex, but then the cake is, like, the thing that no one's touching and as everyone's freaked out and and, like, being so, like, um, oh no, oh, I can't, like, there's just this. Everyone's like, tiptoeing around me and so, so eating it myself was a sort of act of desperation, because I was like, I have to have to do something with this. I can't just, like, stand around with a cake all evening. And so I started, I like, lay down, and started eating it myself and play acting my enjoyment of it, like, really exaggerating the pleasure that I was taking from eating it, and that got a lot of attention. And it was very confusing. I couldn't, I couldn't really read, like, what was going on for people at first, but people started moving toward me in this, in this really voracious way, and then they were feeding me or asking to, like, eat cake off of my body. Like it just it. It was this transformative experience where it was like, I don't know if the word actually made it into the book, but I called it a form of Transubstantiation, that it was sort of like, Yeah, this is my body and this is my blood. Like there was something really, like, quasi religious happening around, around the cake. It was, it was a lot. 

Karen Yates  38:28  
It was! It, I mean, because it, yeah, I just, you know, in reading it as you were, you know, tantalizing them with the cake. And it was like, Oh no, I can't I'm gluten free. Oh no, I'm watching my weight. Oh no! And then this kind of strange, like they were overcome by their own wildness, their own needs and desires, and that was really interesting to me. And, yeah, I don't know. Do you have anything more to say about it.

Fancy Feast  39:03  
It was so speaking of that of that shadow or that frontier, it felt like a moment where the door was open to a certain kind of permission, and it didn't have to be communicated explicitly or verbally, that just this. There's something about this act that was transgressive, that that allowed people to take a step in toward this thing that has felt so forbidden to them, and that was that is, in some ways, like the goal of a lot of my work, but in this case, it I also felt not totally in control of it, because It wasn't something that I was anticipating would happen. So it, it was one of the few moments where I've, like, truly been overwhelmed in performance, and I had to, I had to dip out of there as soon as I realized I'd like, eaten enough of the cake.

Karen Yates  39:57  
All right, done. You're done with this. Yeah.

Fancy Feast  39:59  
Thank you, everyone.

Karen Yates  40:00  
And scene! So let's talk a little bit about your work in the pandemic, you know, because now we're moving more into the transgressive and even less less of an audience. Your work as a phone sex operator, and which is even more, you know, trying to find the word it, there's, there's really no audience. It's you and the person on the on the telephone, and you're laughing, your cat is jumping on you, 

Fancy Feast  40:32  
[to cat] Hi baby. 

Karen Yates  40:35  
It the it sounded very intense. And, yeah, how long did you do it for?

Fancy Feast  40:42  
Let's see, I still have a couple of regulars. So I, you know, by appointment only these days, because, you know, Freelancer life is crazy. But I started in earnest right before Christmas of 2020, and I would say, like I was most active for about a year and a half, and then it's it's tapered off considerably since then, as things have have opened back up, and stage performance has really started again.

Karen Yates  41:10  
Did you did you leave it because? Or did you tapered? Were you the one tapering off? Or was it just society opening back up that tapered it off?

Fancy Feast  41:18  
Um, it was a it was a combination of a few factors. I I had been missing my income from stage performance, and so when venues opened back up, that was a the revenue stream was open again. And that's, that's where I find a lot of joy. So I wanted to really focus on that. Like, if you're doing phone sex work, you're on call, and you're you're at home, and that was great for the pandemic. But then once things opened back up, I wanted to, like, be with my loved ones and community and stuff like that. So that was part of it. Also, like, based on some of the events that I write about in the book, I had fallen in love with one of my callers, and then once that resolved in the way that it did. I lost the taste for the work in a considerable way, because I was pining, you know, I was heartbroken. And then also, beyond that, I started, I started dating more. I had been single through the pandemic and putting myself out there and dating people while also doing phone sex work, while also being a therapist, while also being a burlesque performer, was a lot, and I realized I wanted to to focus on interaction with people where there wasn't a transactional element associated with it. So to give myself over to falling in love in real life, which I which I did.

Karen Yates  42:41  
Yeah, you ended the your, you know, love affair with one of your clients. You ended it very obliquely, with a fantasy, a fantasy end, which I'm assuming you will not tell us here how it really ended. 

Fancy Feast  42:57  
Oh, I'm fine to tell it, okay, I don't know if that, if that is going to erase some of the magic of it. Well, okay, so, so I everything up until the sort of fantasy element, whatever is, is as I remember it, and then, and then he got overwhelmed and and blocked me from all platforms, sort of just another, another, like, can't take it. And then I had to reach out to him, because I was as I was writing the book. It's like a whole story of the two of us is going to be published, and I want to make sure I don't get sued for libel. And so I, I sent him that and loved it. And we, oh, that's right, that I think I wrote about that, we got back in touch, and then it fizzled out again. And in fact, I went back into my emails to try to find documentation, like written records that he had approved of the of the manuscript. And he's a very tech savvy guy. It was not in my inbox anymore, like those messages are erased.

Karen Yates  44:02  
Yeah. Wow,

Fancy Feast  44:04  
Creepy. I mean, it was, it was so scary to have. I mean, that's like, one of my big spheres as a writer is, like, your story gets taken away from you, you know, losing that kind of thing.

Karen Yates  44:13  
Yeah, wow. I didn't even know that could be done. 

Fancy Feast  44:16  
Me neither. Yeah, really, I changed my passwords. That's very weird.

Karen Yates  44:20  
Yeah, one thing, one thing I wanted to ask you is, because now we're talking about like, you know, getting, getting so far into just one on one, when, when the burlesque community is so much more supportive, you can you talk a little bit about the burlesque community and what, what it's like to have that sort of support? Because it does a fair amount in your book too. 

Fancy Feast  44:43  
Yes, because Burlesque is not really, it's not sponsored. We don't have venture capital money. It's really like a group of artists that are all in New York, at least, all independent contractors. And so we end up working together in a bunch of different configurations as a result of that, like we are hiring one another, we're choosing who to be with backstage, or we are forced to be backstage one another. And so it really, it really behooves us to be kind and collaborative. Um, and I would say the vast, vast majority of the burlesque scene is like that is, is really lovely. And there's also an intergenerational kind of support that happens with the legends of Burlesque performers who have been who are big in the 30s, 40s, 50s. A lot of them made some poor financial decisions, and so are being supported by by younger burlesque performers. A lot of them are being like, visited in the hospital, not not just by their family, but also by the, you know, the younger generation of of art strippers, um, and and burlesque people have are some, some people in the burlesque scene are now like my very closest friends and allies and collaborators, and they've gotten me out of jams, and I've gotten them out of jams. So it's just, it's wonderful to to know that there's a certain there are venues I can go. I don't have to know anybody walking in. I don't have to come in with anybody. But I know I'm going to be in a really, like, warm and familiar room, which I feel like in New York, which can be so Anonymous is, is a really powerful thing. Yeah,

Speaker 1  46:24  
That's wonderful. You're a therapist now. And how is that like, how have you? How does your work in performance, and all of the various sex sex, I'm not gonna say you've worked in the sex industry in many different ways. And like, how does that inform your your work as a therapist?

Fancy Feast  46:47  
Absolutely. Um, now that I'm a therapist, it's so funny when clients start talking about sex and check in with me to make sure, like, I'm okay talking about this kind of stuff. I'm like, Oh, my sweet summer child, my little angel. Go, of course. And I've also, like, hung out a specific shingle to to working with sex workers and people in the sex industry, because it's like, Come on, I'm not gonna, not gonna be weird about any of that stuff. I have so much like, lived experience. It is the my stage work came first, and there's, there's, I've spent so much more time doing that, and I've only spent the past five years as a clinician. So So being a therapist feels like a much newer part of me. It is very much supported by my performance work, in the sense that when I'm a therapist, of course, of course, I'm in the room, of course, I'm working with my clients, but I'm not. I'm not making myself the subject of the hour. It really is about them. I am a tool, I am supportive, I am a collaborator, but I'm not. It's not about me, and that could feel like ego death, if that's all I did. And so I really like that. There's this part of my life where it is about me, and it is about me deciding what I want to say and do about myself and the two. The two really together, feel like a very sort of satisfying way to build a life. And then I'm sure, like some of the values and stuff that I bring to the work are the same, but, but they don't feel directly informed. I have had a couple clients who a couple like, a month in, realize that they've seen me perform. So we have to, we deal with that clinically. I have, I figured out my protocol. You know.

Karen Yates  48:31  
What is your protocol? 

Karen Yates  48:32  
Well, I don't decide that it's a therapeutic impasse. That's up to the client to decide, if it feels too close, and the whole goal is to have somebody to talk to who's like, way outside of their own world, their own communities. Then I'm not a good fit, and then I would facilitate a referral. Like, if it just feels weird for some clients, it feels really comforting and good, because they're like, Oh, I know that you're not going to judge me around this aspect of my life, or the way that I perform, gender or sexuality or whatever, and it can actually be quite therapeutically useful for them to have that information. I never lead with it. I never, I never bring that into the room. But I work with it. It's not, it's not a deal breaker for me. I think of it kind of like being, I mean, I'm working with mostly queer people, and it's like being with their the therapist in a small town, like people are going to have, like, some some knowledge of you, or somebody that you know and, and that's just the reality of it. 

Karen Yates  49:31  
Yeah, I know that there is one, there's one therapist out there who works quite a lot in porn, as a performer. So it's interesting, like, where these intersections occur and how they get dealt with, and they can get dealt with. You know what I mean, very easily. 

Fancy Feast  49:49  
Absolutely. 

Karen Yates  49:50  
I don't think it's like, I think in the old days it'd be like, Oh, my God, hair on fire. But fortunately, we're not living in those times anymore.

Fancy Feast  49:57  
No, certainly not. And I've chosen. I've chosen also to be out at work among my coworkers and supervisors and things like that. There was only it was only during my graduate school training where there was one internship where I chose to sort of be in the closet about that stuff, because it could be a liability to my clients, who are most of whom were incarcerated. But beyond that, I'm like, I'm just going to lead with this. And if somebody doesn't want to hire me because they know this, me because they know this about me, it's not a good place for me to work, right? Yeah.

Karen Yates  50:26  
So now that the book is written, I've often found with folks that after the book is written, you know, more insights come or, you know, maybe it's gotten processed inside of you in a different way. How have you, yeah, how is life since post-book?

Fancy Feast  50:46  
Possibly the worst it's been in my [garbled], which I was like, I was told that people are like, oh, there's, you know, writing your first book, like, whatever, such a joy. But then sometimes the book release can feel a little a little bit like a letdown, or there's something, you know, whatever it what an understatement it has been. It like the reception to the book has been excellent, but all of the circumstances around my personal life have completely gone kablooey, so, so very, very painful endings of relationships that I had hoped would be lifelong, and some of it was actually is related to to the book, or to being an author and having having certain kinds of prominence that like don't feel comfortable like dealing with sort of people's sense of threat around my professional achievements. So that's been, that's been rough, and dealing with stuff with my family, also around the book, and having that be public in a different way and like, so that's all kind of falling apart. And then this was, like, the big, this is the last plan that I had in place for my adulthood. I was like, I'm gonna move to New York, I'm going to be an artist, and I'm going to write a book. I did that, and then my life fell apart. So I'm currently in an existential morass. That's where you're finding me, like everything, I've run out of track, and so now it's a matter of figuring out what the next iteration of myself is going to be as I'm also engaging in a lot of rewriting, so to speak, of of what I thought was going to be my identity and my values and my life. So, uh oh, that's where you're finding me. Uh-oh!

Karen Yates  52:38  
Well, I it, it the book was even for, I mean, I'm just coming back to like, people like, it was such a great read! Yeah, I'm like, I didn't find it that. I found it really intense. So it makes sense that you did write an intense book. And it does make sense that something deep inside is going to get shifted with it coming out, with you making sense of it as it comes out. And then, yeah, there's, it does make sense that there is something inside that or or a space inside for change?

Fancy Feast  53:14  
Yes, it would be so nice if change was soft and gentle and not sort of volcanic and iterative and painful, but I don't get to decide that so. But yes, I think that's right, like this is not going to be. None of this is going to be. I'm not. I'm not writing "Madeline." You know? 

Karen Yates  53:43  
You know a lot of those kids books were pretty, pretty, uh, heart wrenching,

Fancy Feast  53:47  
yes, oh God, rereading Roald Dahl, I'm like, Oh, this man, okay,

Fancy Feast  53:51  
Yeah, totally, totally, oh, your cat has come back to comfort you. That is, yes. That's a very kind read of what she's trying to do.

Karen Yates  54:04  
Fancy. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation, so thought provoking. And your book, I highly recommend it to folks a really how can I describe it? Beyond thought provoking. It's it is a lot to mull over about the state of sexuality in America, how we view people of different sizes and and more. So. Thank you. The name of the memoir is naked by Fancy Feast. 

Fancy Feast  54:37  
Thank you so much for having me. 

Karen Yates  54:39  
Well, that's it. Folks, have a very pleasurable week. Wild & Sublime is supported in part by our sublime supporter, Full Color Life therapy. Therapy for all of you at full color lifetherapy.com thank you for listening. Know someone who's liked this episode, send it to them. You. And follow us on Facebook, Tiktok and Instagram at Wild and sublime, and sign up for newsletters@wildandsublime.com Got feedback or an inquiry? Contact us at info@wildinsublime.com and we'd love a review or a rating on your podcast player. I'd like to thank our design guru Jean Francois Gervais, music by David Ben Porat. This episode was produced and edited at the Lincoln Lodge podcast studio as part of the Lincoln Lodge Podcast Network.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai