#It may not be fishnets but it's certainly a fun Friday look!

[satans-knitwear]

✖️✖️✨✖️✖️

impossible not to feel a little bit 👀🔥😎 in this set.

Treat me ~ Tip Me ~ More of me

[pussypoppinhippo]

Show me How you Burlesque|| Ballum

Summary: When a burst pipe threatens the Friday night Drag show at the Prince Albert the Vic offer to host instead. The show stars Walford’s own Diana Dee Izzuez but just which one of the residents of the square is behind the glamorous performer? 

A/N: I haven’t written anything like this in maybe ten years but this struck me tonight, beware of spelling mistakes and saucy dancing below.

Spotify Playlist for this fic: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7jVrM8LP1qwd0OvO3vqcgo?si=DtdQVAY4RkKo2ZBmbv6r4A

It was a little past seven at night on a semi busy Friday in the Vic when Tina, somewhat dripping wet despite the wonderful summer weather, came bursting through the pub doors. No one really batted an eyelid at the sight, Linda who was stationed behind the bar wasn’t all that taken aback when the soaking wet woman accosted her talking a mile a minute about drag queens, burst water pipes and a plea to move some sort of theme night into the local pub.

At a table just by the door Jay, Lola and Whitney were chatting waiting for Calum to bring the next round of drinks over from the bar, Whitney and Calum had broken up a year prior just before their wedding day after a blow up argument about the lads clear disinterest in their impending marriage. They’d only really started speaking properly again after Easter and tonight was the first real night in the pub they’d embarked on as friends.

“Apparently some sort of pipe disasters driven everyone out of the Prince Albert” Calum nodded his head over to Tina who was now drying off with a towel Mick had fetched her “ they’re moving their drag show here, starts at eight and apparently they’ve got this local performing as the main act”. Placing the drinks down on the table he took his seat next to Jay “Tina says we can stay for free if we fancy it” he added.

“A local act?” questioned Lola “I wonder if it’s that ...deedee? Ben was talking about the other week there you remember that?” she nudged Jay with an eyebrow raised.

The ginger rolled his eyes affectionately at the mention of his brothers latest nightlife obsession “ Di I think he said, apparently she’s from Walford and if I remember quite rightly he said she was pretty enough to make him consider the other side”.

Calum swallowed at the mention of the handsome mechanic, they’d started dating in secret in November and while Ben wasn’t best pleased with being kept a secret he’d understood that halfway’s father moving to Walford had made his impending coming out much more difficult.

“I say we stay! it sounds like a good laugh doesn’t it?” Whitney piped up with a grin, “ What do you think Cal?”. Nodding he gave her a smile as he reached down to send his boyfriend a cheeky text about missing out on the fun. “Speaking of Ben where is he tonight?” she asked taking a sip of her drink.

“He said Something about some hot totty” Jay snorted with a head shake “ same old Ben ain’t it? though I’m sure he’ll be sad to have missed out on all this” he motioned to the filling pub and the makeshift stage that Mick and Tina were creating toward one end of it.

They fell back into relatively normal conversation about life as they enjoyed their drink, managing to grab another round just before Kathy announced the show would be starting in five minutes time. Checking his phone Calum noted the text from his lover with a smile

‘ Sounds like I’m missing out don’t get stolen away by Walford's blue eyed temptress now ;) x’

He didn’t have time to reply to it as Kathy Introduced the nights entertainment.

“ Please give a warm Walford welcome to the Incomparable Walford vixen Miss Diana Dee Izzuez” she grinned as the first few notes of ‘Welcome to Burlesque” filled the air.

The figure that stepped onto the makeshift stage was like a vision from a Hollywood film, while the person was not particularly tall the glittery red high heels made the fishnet stocking encased legs that peeked from the slit in an equally sparkling floor length gown look long and the dress with its corseted top hugged the figure of the person it encased in all the right places. Long flowing wavy black hair framed a perfectly painted face with lips that could have been painted in blood and as they parted Calum thought he quite possibly could have died as the voice of an angel fell from them.

“Show a little more, show a little less

Add a little smoke, welcome to Burlesque”

It was seductive every move graceful and every word of the song perfectly sung as the queen on staged greeted her audience with an at ease smirk. Everyone in the pub was captivated, the Prince Albert faithful watched on with an admiration for someone they loved and the Vic’s usual punters looked on in an almost awe at the masterful mystery before them. It was only as the second verse began that a vague sort of recognition rang in Calum’s head, he’d heard that voice before he was almost certain but he couldn’t quite place where.

The seductress on stage waved an elbow length black glove encased hand at someone in the crowd as her eyes scanned the rest of them passing over the table at the back of the room with a disgruntled Phil, an interested Sharon, a captivated Louise and a fed up looking Keanu in mild interest before landing on the friends sat near the door with a smirk.

“If you wanna a little extra, well, you know where I am

Something better in the dark, just playing with your mind

There's nothing in the days, that's just for the bump and grind

Show a little more

Show a little less

Add a little smoke

Welcome to …….Burlesque.”

The song finished up and Diana took her applause with a graceful smile and leant down to accept a drink from someone.

“Y’know she does look sort of familiar” Lola popped up eyes narrowing as she studied the figure on stage “y’reckon we know her?” she asked the group who were also studying the drag queen with interest.

“Maybe it’s kush?” added whitney “ I can’t really tell the lighting here is awful”.

The ginger snorted “ can’t be we all know after New Years karaoke Kush’s tone deaf, what do you think mate?” he nudged Calum unaware that the penny had just dropped for the former army officer, Diana Dee Izzuez was sporting a rather prominent hickey just above a classic pearl necklace, a hickey that the man knew matched perfectly with one he’d given Ben mere hours before in the Arches and that singing voice one that reminded him so much of Ben singing in a hotel shower after a sneaked weekend away a month or so back.

“Uh I…no idea mate” he stumbled out trying to hide his surprise with a sip of his drink as he tried to make sense of the fact that the beautiful performer on stage could in fact be his rough around the edges boyfriend.

“Welcome Ladies, Gentlemen and those who are somewhere in between, my name is Diana Dee Izzuez but you my friends can call me Di” the queen purred voice husky with a musical lilt that had Calum second guessing if his suspicions about this being Ben were right.

“I’m going to sing a few songs and do a touch of dancing for you tonight, if you enjoy my performance there are tip jars on the bar we’re collecting money in aid of AKT who help support LGBT+ homeless youth” Di smiled before taking a sip of her red wine and setting it down on the side of the stage. Clicking her fingers above her head the next songs started up the plucky piano recognisable to anyone who enjoyed a Broadway show almost immediately.

"The name on everybody's lips

Is gonna be Roxie

The lady raking in the chips

Is gonna be Roxie”

Highways mouth went dry as he watched Di swing her hips seductively on stage, every word was sung with that same devilish smirk that he could pinpoint as the one Ben used along side witty one liners, that was most definitely his boyfriend. Her hips swayed as she clicked her fingers to the beat teasingly kicking her leg out from the slit in the dress so the audience could catch a peak of the lacey black garter and matching suspenders underneath.

“From just some dumb mechanics son

I'm gonna be Roxie

Who says that murder's not an art?”

While the change in lyrics may have went over almost everyone in the pubs head it had Sharon and Louises eyes widening in recognition although Ben hadn’t made it that subtle he’d coupled the line with a little kiss blown toward the table.

His boyfriend certainly caught it and it had confirmed what he’d been thinking, Walford’s blue eyed vixen was none other than Ben Mitchell. On stage the performance went on Di was shimming along to the beat, the little break in the music was filled with a slow seductive turn and a pretty impressive high kick showing off more of the lace hidden underneath the eye catching dress. Taking a step off the stage the crowd practically parted  as Di didn’t miss a beat heels clicking in time with the music as she purred the lyrics.

Think of those autographs

I'll sign,

'Good luck to ya, '

Roxie!

She leaned over signing a piece of paper that was offered toward her with a flourish, she made her way toward the back of the crowd interacting with people as she went. Di never wavered once while singing leaning over to kiss a miserable looking Keanu’s cheek as she breezed past the Mitchell table and worked back toward the stage leaving the woman at it stifling giggles. Reaching the group of friends at the front she shot Calum a wink.

“the audience loves me!

And I love them

And they love me for loving them

And I love them for loving me

And we love each other

And that's because none of us

Got enough love in our childhoods

And that's showbiz

Kid”

Di had leant toward them as she’d sung the lines and the last few  had definitely been aimed toward Calum who was trying his best not to turn beet red. He was definitely going to have to have a long talk with Ben after this and perhaps he’d suggest those heels make an appearance at their next weekend away. She climbed back onto the stage finishing the song with a flourish and a smile before smoothing her hands over her curves then bending down to pick up her wine.

“Y’know those pearls…. they looks a bit like the ones you showed me with the one pink pearl in the centre” Jay arched an eyebrow at Calum who hadn’t quite managed to get his blush under control.

“No…no don’t think so mate” the taller man spluttered trying to avoid eye contact, he’d noticed it as well that  the pearl necklace Di was wearing was identical to the one he’d bought Whit for their wedding day but had never given her, the one he was sure was supposed to be nestled in his bedside drawer back at the flat.

“Wait ...do you know who she is Cal?” Whit questioned as everyone at the table turned toward him, looking at him expectantly she leaned in a little more “have you figured it out?”

Shaking his head he was just about to blurt out an excuse when a voice from the stage interrupted.

“ For this next song I’m going to need a handsome volunteer” Diana pretended to scan the audience her eyes almost immediately landing on Calum who was trying to lean away from his ex almost wife who had leant in to try and get information out of him, the little flash of jealousy in Di’s eyes was gone almost as soon as it appeared.

“hmmmm you” she purred pointing to Highway “ give that tall glass of water a round of applause as he makes his way up here oh and barkeep?”. She waved a hand toward Mick with a dazzling smile “ two of your finest whisky please for me and my friend here”.

While she’d been speaking Kathy had slipped a chair onto the stage, of course she knew exactly who Di was, Ben had approached her about the drag nights after he’d done a few gigs at other clubs but she wasn’t quite sure why exactly instead of the usual anonymous handsome punter he’d picked Calum for this bit.

Making his way onto the stage after some pushing from the others Cal allowed himself to be pushed down into the chair eyes taking in just how gorgeous the other was up close in drag.

“ be good for me lover boy” Di purred in his ear as the music for the next song started up leaving Calum blushing to stand behind the chair.

“The demon queen of high school has decreed it

She says Monday, 8am I will be deleted

They'll hunt me down in study hall

Stuff and mount me on the wall

Thirty hours to live, how shall I spend them?”

Up close like this the taller man could smell the perfume Diana wore, the musky floral scent was definitely expensive and the note of something very strictly Ben peeking through it was definitely making it that much more alluring. Diana's hand slid down Calums chest as she sang undoing the top button of his white button up with gloved hands. Her hips still swinging she danced around the man in the chair using him as a prop to help enhance her performance. Every word of the song was sung with such passion the lanky man was sucked in, so enchanted he wasn’t expecting the lap full of Di that he ended up with.

"Shh…

Sorry but I really had to wake you

See, I decided I must ride you ‘til I break you

'Cause Heather says I gots to go

You're my last meal on death row”

She guided his hands to her hips and faced the audience as she seated herself in his lap the pleased smirk of blood red lips saying it all the watching audience. Calum’s eyes drifted toward his group of friends who were giggling, grinning and wiggling their eyebrows at him as he received what could best be described as a lap dance from the other. He was most definitely past blushing and was now an almost permanent shade of pink that perhaps could only be matched by the shade of red Phil Mitchell had turned when his wife had explained exactly who the tart on stage was really.The Dance continued just as raunchy as Di rolled her hips and halfway hands wandered ever so slightly to run over the curve of waist the corset was giving the beautiful babe in his lap.

Get your ass in gear

Make this whole town disappear

"Okay, okay!"

Slap me, pull my hair

Touch me

There and there and there

And no more talking!

Whoa!

Love this dead girl walking!

A slap to the man's thigh and then hand tugging halfways hair in time with the song sent the crowd cheering and they only got wilder as Diana stood in front of him and ripped the skirt from her dress revealing lace boy short style panties that at that moment only Calum could see had the word ‘saucy’ stoned in red gems on the back and that matching lace suspender set that held up fishnet stockings. Hitting the note at the end of the song the place practically erupted as Di took a bow and then the whisky offered on a tray by Mick handing one to Calum before cheersing him. Downing it the undertaker stood up moving to make his way off stage but not making it very far as he was caught by Miss Diana who spun him around and promptly kissed him on the lips. Despite the moment of panic it brought immediately Calum found he didn’t actually care and pulled the other closer to deepen the kiss ever so slightly appreciating that with Ben in such high heels he didn’t have to bend into the kiss so much.

Parting to wolf whistles from the crowd Halfway slipped off of the stage and back to his table where he was greeted by raised eyebrows.

“SO you don’t her then?” questioned Jay as he crossed his arms.

“ never kissed me like that cal” Whitney added reaching over to wipe a spot of red lipstick that had transferred over to the corner of his mouth.

“ So c’mon spill, who is the mysterious Diana Dee Izzuez” prompted Lola as they all leaned in toward the other so they would be able to hear his answer over the beginnings of Britney's Toxic.

The door near the back of the pub slammed followed by a muffled “Phil!” and Calum could only chuckle his eyes were drawn back to the dancing figure on the stage who had gone from Hollywood glam to sex kitten.

“ Well I’d say he’s a talented man with daddy issues” he grinned, glancing over to the others at the table “but I think you’d know him better as Ben Mitchell and he’s my boyfriend”.

[theydonotmove]

What I find so essential, celebratory and let’s-throw-a-parade-gay about him is his ability to love whatever is aesthetically pleasurable that he comes across. Take a look at his poem, “Today,” included, along with the other poems in this essay, in the 2008 collection Selected Poems: Oh! Kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas! You really are beautiful! Pearls, Harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! All The stuff they’ve always talked about Still makes a poem a surprise! These things are with us every day Even on beachheads and biers. They Do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks His work is filled with unexpected tastes and nearly absent of any sort of hierarchy. Kangaroos? Lovely. Long terrible b-films? Satisfying. Rachmaninoff? Sublime. Drinking coke with a cute guy? The best. O’Hara presides over a democracy of affection. And have you ever seen so many exclamation points from a grown man? It’s like listening to a kindergarten teacher! He’s just so enthusiastic that he can’t help but cram the poem with one jubilant thing after another. This is ecstasy, like the build up to an orgasm frothed into mania. But the sequins, sodas, and jujubes are also solid—“They’re strong as rocks.” These are foundations for our lives. Critics have called this aspect of O’Hara’s sensibility camp, hit the print button, and called it a day. But that’s not quite what’s at work here. When I think of camp within the gay community—say, reenacting scenes from Mommy Dearest or a certain love of Cher riding a Navy cannon in black fishnets and a sneer—there’s an element of performance in the opinion: it feels like a socially learned behavior rather than an incidental personal taste. If you look at Halperin’s How to be Gay, it’s clear that some scholars believe that mainstream entertainments, for example—the book cites Mildred Pierce—are passed among members of the gay community as primers, or instructive texts on how to behave (and in Halperin’s class at University of Michigan, they are). It’s not so much innate that we love Mildred Pierce as something we learn, which is to say it may be separate from what we actually like. Camp also gives us a protective barrier of irony from our pleasure in lowbrow likes. The irony distances us, and says “Hey, I know this is terrible. But it’s also fun!” O’Hara collapses that ironic distance and it’s all sincerity. He’s so sincere, that as much as I admire him (and I really admire him!), I’d feel embarrassed to have written some of his poems. Not because it’s shameful, but because it’s just too, *too* much. But he means it. And this is where camp becomes a problem. Camp, at its heart, is about taste. And taste, as we know, is a sort of fingerprint of thought—and of attraction. Critics evaluating O’Hara, as Marjorie Perloff pointed out in her excellent study Frank O’Hara: Poet Among Painters, labeled his work as “late Victorian camp” or “streamers of crepe paper fluttering before an electric fan” or “mental chatter and drift.” Invariably, these feel like codes to the knowing reader, that his work was just plain *gay*. Camp is often a derogatory term. We like it, but we feel like we shouldn’t. Just as the foodie loathes his enjoyment of Chicken McNuggets, we can’t just say we like something, but rather we can have the barrier of camp to say, “I love this and I know it’s awful.” There’s shame in the attraction, just as when we were young gaylings the world around us often reinforced that our feelings are shameful. O’Hara’s poems are an antidote to this feeling of shame over the tastes we find natural and immovable. James Schuyler, perhaps the most sublime poet of the small thing made infinite, in one of his many catty, bright, loving letters to his dear friend O’Hara put it best: Your passion always makes me feel like a cloud the wind detaches (at last) from a mountain so I can finally go sailing over all those valleys with their crazy farms and towns. I always start bouncing up and down in my chair when I read a poem of yours like “Radio,” where you seem to say, “I know you won’t think this is much of a subject for a poem but I just can’t help it: I feel like this,” so that in the end you seem to be the only one who knows what the subject of a poem is. The pleasures of a poem like “Radio,” good enough to make Schuyler ride his chair, come primarily from our empathy with O’Hara since we all know how awful it is to want some small satisfaction after a week of drudgery—the radio plays nothing but rubbish when all we want to hear is something great—and the comic distance between O’Hara’s invocation of the grand emotions and subjects of poetry (longing for “immortal energy” when one is “mortally tired”) when, in fact, it’s a fifteen line poem where Frank is bitching at his radio for playing such crap. But these small things are everything. It’s true that we feel just as strongly, however irrational it may be, about the minute pleasures of our lives as we do about the supposedly great things. Our emotional responses don’t always differentiate between the two even if our minds tell us that we should. One look at a Black Friday stampede at Target shows us this, and O’Hara says as much in “Today.” What I think I learn from his poetry—if anything as auspicious as learning happens from contact with verse—is how to like. What we prefer, what we enjoy, and what we desire are as singular as a fingerprint and in O’Hara’s work having a coke with the man he loves is as sublime as a masterpiece by Leonardo or Michaelangelo. I don’t think there’s a love poem that means more to me—and notice here that I don’t make any claims as to whether or not it’s the love poem that should mean the most to you—than O’Hara’s love poem for Vincent Warren “Having a Coke With You.” The pleasure he takes in sharing a soda with Warren is arbitrary, intuitive, and surprising: HAVING A COKE WITH YOU is even more fun that going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne or being sick to my stomach on the Traversera de Gracia in Barcelona partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary Of course it’s going to be better than being sick to his stomach in Barcelona, but what has love of yogurt or orange tulips go to do with it? (Sure, they match the color of Warren’s charming shirt, but they are a part of the landscape and not even something the object of O’Hara’s love is responsible for). It’d be like telling my boyfriend that I fell in love with him because of the mural at the bar we met at. But, come to think of it, why not? And look how long the lines get, as though the form of the poem itself can barely contain what Frank is feeling, and there’s so much he’d like to say that it strains to be held between the two edges of the page. Eventually, this conversational, upfront tone isn’t enough and he reaches for an actual metaphor, something surreal. O’Hara needs a new sort of language, something absent in his everyday experience, to capture what happens between his body and Vincent’s: it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles. [...] ...these are poems of immediacy, poems of taking the world as it exists, in that moment. It feels like the past and future falls away and all that remains is now. When O’Hara thinks he’s wrong, he corrects himself: “I am ill today but I am not / too ill. I am not ill at all.” He’s agile, and like a jazz musician he’s not so much playing the music as playing the changes. In “My Heart,” he declares, “I want to be / at least as alive as the vulgar.” What I love about O’Hara is the way that he is camp, because it’s not too camp. It is not camp at all. What his poems declare, to quote his friend Schuyler, is “I just can’t help it, I feel like this.” Certainly other poets have expressed this democracy of taste, this unbridled attraction before him—particularly Whitman, in his own nineteenth-century queer way. As O’Hara once commented to his roommate and sometimes lover, Joe Lesueur, homosexuality wasn’t just about sex, it was about his love of the freedoms that went with it... Our lives won’t be all kangaroos and blond ballet dancers. And difference can be painful, it can be felt like a disfigurement, and it’s easy to envy, at times, the ease of life for people in the majority. As O’Hara laments “you were made in the image of god / I was not / I was made in the image of a sissy truck-driver.” But there’s joy in loving what you love, a purity in expressing it exactly in its unchecked, effusive and messy truth, and O’Hara felt no shame in putting that feeling out there with an exclamation!

“Frank O’Hara’s Lessons for Being Gay”