The Corpse Wore Pasties Read Online Free PDF Page A

actors. It wasn’t a set, either. I was talking with two genuine officers of the genuine NYPD, and this was a genuine back room of the genuine Ninth Precinct, conveniently located just a few genuine blocks away from Topkapi. Which meant we didn’t have far to go when the friendly policeman asked me, very nicely, if I’d like to take a little ride with him in his genuine squad car.
    And so here we were.
    “Burlesque show, actually,” I answered. I was still wearing my tux, which offered an elegant and whimsical counterpoint to the gritty modern realism of my surroundings.
    “Oh, yeah?” said Bronx. She attempted a bemused expression.
    “And what kinda thing goes on in your, uh, ‘burlesque’ show?” said Brooklyn. Those weren’t the officers’ names, by the way. Those were their accents. The names were unmemorable, but the accents stuck with you.
    I said, “Burlesque.”
    Brooklyn: “What’s that, like comedy?”
    Bronx: “Comedy, or something?”
    Me: “Among other things, yes.”
    Since I seemed to be the only person the police had invited on this field trip to the precinct, I figured I was currently in a final round of auditions myself. For the role of main suspect. I had plenty of lines, which I usually like, but I wasn’t all that thrilled about the direction the plot seemed to be taking.
    Bronx: “Among what other things?”
    Brooklyn: “Stripping?”
    Me: “Dancing, performance art, that sort of thing.”
    Bronx: “Performance art, eh?”
    Brooklyn: “Anybody ever, you know, take off their clothes during this ‘performance art,’ or what?”
    Me: “Yes. You’ve got me. I confess: People performing in a burlesque show usually take off their clothes.”
    Brooklyn: “So, then, they strip.”
    Bronx: “Me, I’d call it stripping.”
    Brooklyn: “They take off their clothes, they’re stripping.”
    Bronx: “Lemme go get my dictionary, look up stripping, see what it says.”
    This was shaping up to be a fine comedy routine, but I’d heard it all before. I decided to derail it by getting garrulous.
    “You can call it stripping if you want,” I said. “I don’t have a problem with that, it’s just not entirely accurate...”
    The ‘stripping vs. burlesque’ conversation happens often enough that I, like most professional ecdysiasts, have a standard speech with which to respond. People assume that we don’t want to be called “strippers” because we’re artsy snobs who refuse to be associated with such a gauche occupation. That’s just not the case. We’re linguistic snobs who refuse to be associated with words used incorrectly. It’s a matter of accuracy, not pretension. In fact, quite a few burlesque performers were (or are) in the stripping business as well. They’ll be the first to tell you: stripping isn’t burlesque, and burlesque isn’t stripping. For one thing, I hear stripping is a lot more work.
    “...you see, officers, stripping and burlesque are indeed both forms of performance in which one takes off one’s clothes. But they’re not the same thing, any more than writing, say, a police report and a lurid pulp novel are the same thing. Sure, they both involve the act of composing text on a page, but the final result—”
    “Okay, okay,” said Brooklyn.
    “It’s about intent, as well,” I continued. “The audience for burlesque—”
    “I said okay.”
    Bronx chimed in. “So you’re running your little strip show,” she said, “oh, I’m sorry, your burlesque show...”
    “And you’re in the show too, are you?” said Brooklyn. “As what, the emcee?”
    “Often,” I said. “But more frequently as a performer.”
    “Oh, yeah?” said Brooklyn.
    “Oh, yeah?” echoed Bronx.
    “So you, uh, strip, too?” Brooklyn chuckled.
    “Any chance I get.”
    “Oh, I gotta go see me that show,” said Bronx.
    “Absolutely,” I said. “I think you’d enjoy it.” I wasn’t lying—people who walk in skeptical usually leave with a smile on their