Dont Judge Me Ch 15

Since we were just mingling, I took the opportunity to actually talk with Angelo, beyond just small talk. I talked about music, and he knew most of my favorite artists and songs. Movies, he knew almost every movie I love, including some of the real chick ones. Books, he knew at least half of the classics that I love. He even knew what it's like to live with a cat. To get outside the areas he knew about, I had to veer all the way into talking about Guerlain, Dior, Sisley, and La Mer.

Once I got onto topics where he knew precious little, do you know what he did? He asked questions. And listened to the answers. Like, as if he was interested! As if he was learning. He didn't pretend to know. He didn't change the subject to something he knew more about. He didn't try to form and push his own opinion about it. He just took an interest, and encourage me to tell him more.

If this was supposed to be "the boyfriend experience", it wasn't like any boyfriend I'd ever known.

Presently, Miss Havisham announced that the show would be ready in just a few minutes. This gave everyone (ok, it gave us girls...) time to visit the bathroom and freshen up. Then we all filed into an adjoining room, and once again, as had happened a number of times in this extraordinary building, I was stunned at what I found in the next room. A complete, if small, professional theatre.

The theatre would easily have sat something like 150 people, I guessed. It was a well appointed, professional theatre space, with plush seats in neat rows, which were even numbered and everything! The stage was a modest size, with a heavy red velvet curtain sporting golden tassels promising a hidden world of make-believe.

We all found seats, Angelo and I sat together, of course, and I chose the row behind Miss Havisham and Miss Buchanan, who sat right up front. Miss Buchanan had Rhett on one side and Miss Havisham on the other. Next to Rhett was Darcy, and finally Josie. The empty seats all arrayed behind our tiny group and were easily forgotten.

The house lights dimmed, a hush fell. A sultry woman's voice began the introduction from somewhere offstage, "Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to this special, one-night-only command performance of our own interpretation of..."

It clicked. This was Crystal's voice! But she was in show mode, and her voice sounded so different. So deep, sensual, and sexy!

"BURLESQUE!", Crystal reached her crescendo. The follow spot sprang to life, aimed at the center of the curtains, and the velvet blankets began rapidly to open. There, revealed dramatically by the receding curtains and stark light of the spot, was a resplendent Crystal, in her red corset outfit with the little tease tassels, a sparkling tiara, eye-wateringly high heels, fishnet stockings all the way up to the high cut of her outfit. Her arms were thrown wide open above her head, one knee was forward, her skin was glistening with glitter. She was a showgirl, and she was shining like a beacon!

The spot opened out as the stage lights came up to reveal the other five girls behind, all in g-string, corset, one-piece, silver-sequined leo's with, top hats and waist coat tails. They all wore the same punishingly high heels and fishnets. They were a scene of superlative glamour and glitz.

I cheered, along with the others, and we made much more clamor than such a small audience might be expected to make. We were wolf-whistling and calling out the girls' names, and shouting encouragements. I listened to Angelo, and the other guys, and they were all joining in, but there was no yucky stuff that men, all too often, get to in these situations. You know what I mean, the "Show's ya tits" nonsense. There was none of that. They were swept up in the fun of it, and were celebrating the girls along with the rest of us.

The music started up, with the bawdy bass drum driving the girls through their routine as they flirted and flounced, strutted and seduced, five nymphs in silver sequins, and then Crystal, bedazzling in her red costume and glittering tiara as the center piece. They hit all the classics, from high kicks, to the line-up leaning on one-another's backs tapping a foot, a smack here, a peek under the tails there, suggestively cupping each other's breasts, a scandalized gasp, a naughty little quick run about the stage in those perilous heels, and all punctuated by the big bass boom and a prominent waa waa trumpet.

In the audience we were laughing, cheering, whistling, and clapping all the way through. When the music reached it's conclusion, the girls finally arranged around Crystal looking like a magnificent blooming flower, with long, sexy legs as the petals, and Crystal's enticing body as the stamen, we were on our feet.

And that was just the first number! There were several more, including a classic cancan. Well, not quite classic. The classic would have featured lacy bloomers, but in this case the girls were showing off their g-strings, so their legs went forever, up under those full skirts when they did the high kicks. Did I wish I was up there? Maybe. Don't judge me.

There was a brief interlude between the acts so that the girls could get changed. I was stunned at how quickly they managed to go from costume to costume. It must have been super chaotic backstage! But it gave me a chance to take in the landscape a little. We all excitedly remarked to each other how wonderful each dance was, and I was interested in how each person was reacting, so I was scanning over everyone's minds.

The boys, impeccable as always, gave a strong hint of arousal (they're only human), but overlaid with a real desire to enjoy and celebrate the talent of the dancers and the spectacle of the show. Miss Havisham was unreadable. Miss Buchanan was just getting more and more sexually energized, as if she needed any encouragement at all! But Josie was kind of interesting. Her mind felt more like how I might have expected the guys to feel - mostly lustful, erotically charged, and only a veneer of socially acceptable celebration of the culture, the art, the skill, and the showmanship. Very interesting...

The piece de resistance was the finale.

When the curtain opened on Crystal, it wasn't clear if she was wearing anything at all, standing alone in the centre of the stage. She held two arrays of large feathers, which she was holding strategically to conceal her body. She stood there in silence for several long seconds to allow the audience to appreciate that she may well be quite naked behind the feathers.

I gasped. I had not expected to be treated to a feather dance!

In silence, she started walking furtively around the stage, as if looking for some unspecified danger. She had bare feet, enhancing the expectation that perhaps she might not be wearing anything at all.

As she walked, she shifted the feathers. She moved them to be covering her chest from the left, and her loins from the right, with her midriff visible in between. She suddenly turned to the side, deftly flicking the feathers one in front and one behind her, but making it plainly clear from the side that she had no clothes at all behind them, her unbroken nakedness visible from her ankles all the way to her slender neck.

She crouched to the floor, her knees to her chest, side-on to the audience, and placed both sets of feathers down in front of her, clearly, by now, fully naked, but not actually showing any intimate parts of her body to the audience. It was a spectacular tease, and we all gasped and applauded at each new risque pose.

Josie, meanwhile, was starting to build quite the head of steam. You wouldn't know from looking at her, though. She clapped politely at the appropriate times, but inside she was seething with desire.

Suddenly, a person-sized, ridiculous looking bird burst onto the stage. It was one of the girls in a costume like a sporting team mascot, and it was supposed to be some large black bird of prey. At that moment, a male voice sang out, "Oooooooooooooooohh", and Crystal picked up the feathers in a flurry, again managing to cover herself, but only just, as she stood up and acted fearful of the large bird, its wings extended as though it were the one singing.

"Allouette, gentille allouette," the bird began singing the well known French folk song, and we all clapped and laughed, delighted. Crystal fluttered her feathers in response to the song's first line.

"Allouette, je te plumerai," the bird continued, and she shrank within a cocoon of feathers, as though intimidated.

The lyrics are referring to a lark, an "allouette". The first two lines are, "Lark, lovely lark, Lark, I will pluck your feathers."

"Je te plumerai le tete, je te plumerai le tete" the bird continued (I will pluck the feathers from your head). Crystal held one array of feathers in front of her body carefully to conceal her intimate parts, and raised the other array up her back until the feathers were visible above her head, and managed to convey fear and fragility. Suddenly, one of the feathers behind her lifted up and separated from the bunch, and floated toward the black bird! With some adjustment of my eyes, I could see that one of the girls was wearing a complete black-out cat suit to make her invisible against the black background. She was carrying the feather across the stage, behind the black bird and off to stage left.

"Et la tete, et la tete" (and the head, and the head)

"Allouette, allouette"

"Oooooooooooooooohh,"

"Allouette, gentille allouette, allouette, je te plumerai", the song continued.

Crystal now had one complete array of large, 2 foot-long feathers, and one with a missing feather, right in the middle. She danced as the music went on, skillfully concealing herself, but now with a tantalizing gap in her cover!

"Je te plumerai les ailes, je te plumerai les ailes," The song continued (I will pluck the feathers from your wings). Crystal turned side-on to the audience, and held the feathers up on each side vertically from her hips, which were then visible, naughtily showing the side of her bottom cheek, the feathers spreading out upwards, front and back, providing cover for her breasts and giving the appearance of wings. She half crouched as though perching, which had the effect of pushing her naked bottom prominently behind her, but in the audience all we could see was the side view of it, long legs, sensually bending and leading all the way to her clearly naked hip, before the small of her back disappeared behind the feather 'wings'. Again, an invisible hand plucked a feather and carried it prominently off the stage behind the silly looking black bird.

"Et les ailes, et les ailes,"

"Et la tete, et la tete,"

"Allouette, allouette,"

"Oooooooooooooooohh,"

"Allouette, gentille allouette, allouette, je te plumerai"

The folk song goes on in much this vein, adding a body part in each verse. The girls had adapted the song to suit the dance, using wings instead of beak, for example, presumably because arranging a beak feather might be more difficult (is there ever such a thing anyway?). They made other slight adjustments as well, but overall, the pattern of the song provided the format for an ever diminishing set of coverings for Crystal to employ in ever more frantic protection of her most delicate areas.

At the end of each verse, the song repeats each of the body parts already plucked, building that list each time. For each of the body parts, Crystal had to assume the same pose she had used when being plucked the first time. The rapid shift through all those poses became a dangerous game of peek-a-boo, with her eviscerated crop of feathers having rapidly to adjust to each pose, every more possibly failing, and exposing her nakedness to the glaring spotlight and the audience. Heck yes, I wanted to be her right now!

As the song progressed, I found I was literally on the edge of my seat, gasping and then laughing in relief each time she succeeded, not sure at each turn how she would be able to continue the tease and protect her dignity. I was continually amazed at her skill and dexterity, and her seductive wit, by which she extended that tease further and further until she was left with a single feather in each hand. Each feather had a significant plume, and one feather was sufficient, barely, to lay across her loins, and another across her breasts, to conceal only the very most sought-after, most intimate points. The remainder of her body was laid bare for the audience to feast on, richly eating but never satisfied despite such a vast, rich meal, while that tiny vestige of modesty remained untasted by their hungry eyes.

Her maneuvers through the list of poses in the final verse were flawless, but only, I started to realize, because the human eye can't keep up with the swirling feathers over the smooth curves of her body as she snaps from one pose to the next, pauses there for that line of the song, then snaps to the next. She would shift the feathers as she changed posture, and in fact, it seemed certain she was actually exposed for the briefest moment, but it was impossible to catch that moment as the watcher without a freeze-frame video. It was tantalizing and delightfully frustrating.

At the end of the last verse the song began to slow as it reached the end of the list of poses, giving Crystal extra time to quiver in mock fear, adjust, come agonizingly close to revealing herself but at the last moment recover, all while the large black bird moved around behind her as she struggled, with just two feathers, to remain covered. The threat loomed as the bird took up a menacing posture behind her, while she fought with the fluffy, dainty little feathers to keep herself protected.

The song reached its conclusion with a final, "Je te plumerai", at which moment both of Crystal's hands flew to her face as though she were gasping in shock, the two final feathers sticking out vainly from each side of her face, but at the same moment, or just a quarter of a beat later, long enough to register the emergency that she may now be fully exposed, but not quite long enough to focus the eyes on the uncovered parts, the bird's large, unwieldy black wings suddenly wrapped around her naked midriff to cover her, if barely, down to the tops of her long legs, forming a short (very short) miniskirt of sorts. It took half a second to realize that her elbows, because her arms were folded to bring her hands to her face, also hid her breasts, and once again she had won the game and the audience had missed out on that tastiest of morsels.

I couldn't believe she had done it. She had kept her nakedness covered this whole time, though the feathers-meets-seven-veils ordeal, and culminating in a literally breathtaking last-moment daredevil stunt that made my heart leap in anticipation. I mean, I literally found I was holding my breath for the last verse, so cleverly had she maintained the tension, and the crisis of maintaining her cover.

They stood there for several seconds, the victorious bird embracing the now completely naked Crystal, who wore a look of scandalized incredulity, of defeat and submission, of the inevitability of the captive, dependent as she was on the birds wings to cover her.

Then the lights dropped to almost black and the curtain started to close, but in the dim half light, even as they eyes were trying desperately to adjust to the darkness from the sharp, bright spotlight that had been searching every millimeter of Crystal's form to expose, if it were possible, any humiliating breach in her deft management of those feathers, one could see that Crystal broke away from the bird to run fully nude across the stage to escape, her hands outstretched, completely unprotected, but frustratingly under a cover of just enough darkness that she couldn't be clearly seen by human eyes which took time to adjust to sudden changes in levels of light. Only then did the lights drop fully down to black, and the curtains completed their closure.

And we all went berserk!

We hollered and screamed, shouted and whistled. It was spontaneous. I had never seen a show so engaging and tantalizing. I had never felt so much from a dance, so viscerally drawn to the exhibitionist crisis of the fragile little allouette, as she is mercilessly plucked of her feathers under the glare of a watching audience, a plaything, progressively stripped until finally completely dependent on her tormentor.

After perhaps a minute, our applause turned into calls for more, and an encore! We shouted and screamed for probably another full minute, before the curtain opened once again, and there were the four chorus girls. We screamed for them. They bowed to us, then turned all the way around and bowed low facing away from us, and lifted their coat tails, giving us a cheeky view of their fishnetted, bifurcated bottoms, before turning again towards us and bowing again. We screamed and shouted and applauded.

Then the bird swaggered onto stage. We screamed for the bird, clapping in delight as it threw all the plucked feathers into the air at once, and posed victorious over them.

We kept clapping, waiting. We kept calling her name until it was a chant, "Crystal, Crystal..."

Eventually, under the pressure of sustained chanting and screaming, the bird moved to the edge of the stage and turned towards the stage wings. When it turned back, Crystal was back in its clutches, in a repeat of the final position of the last number, it's wings around Crystal's midsection, barely providing the most skimpy of skirts, her breasts concealed only by her own arms, and she, otherwise, still completely naked. We were in a frenzy as they shuffled precariously to center stage.

Crystal used only a single arm to cover her breasts so that she could blow us a kiss with the other hand. It was the most outrageous tease. Then she waved vigorously, ensuring her breasts wobbled around conspicuously. We screamed for her. I so wanted to be her. It was delicious.

I checked in on Josie, and she wasn't managing well. Her arousal was immobilizing her. She was being overpowered by it. But there was more. It was attraction, not just arousal. She was drawn, attracted, to Crystal. It was a crush. A deeply sexual crush. She was sinking into her own world of lustful daydreaming.

Crystal took a deep bow. The bird's wings adjusted to reach forwards and shield from just below her chin, so that as she bent down horizontal the audience could not see her breasts when her arms extended out both sides. Only the wingtips reached all the way around her to provide a tiny little modesty shield from the front, so she was only barely, only just concealed within the fold of those wings, where she was very obviously naked. As she stood, she restored one arm as cover for her breasts, just as the wings moved down to cover her midsection again, and continued waving and blowing kisses to an apoplectic audience squealing, calling her name, and shouting.

Only after the bird finally delivered Crystal off stage, using only one wing on the audience side as the most fragile of covers for her, and waving the other in the air at the audience, did we start to calm down.

Once we had settled and the house lights came up, and we started moving back to the exists, I pulled Miss Havisham close and whispered, "Hey, I wonder... would you mind seating Josie next to Crystal at dinner?"

She shot a glance at me with a raised eyebrow. I made a faux innocent facial expression, and she chuckled. "Very well, my little mischief maker, have it your way. I do wonder what you're up to, but sure. I can do that."

Dinner was going to be fun.

Don't judge me.