Dr. Sketchy, that is. Every other Sunday, apparently you can bring a drawing pad to some bar and a lovely lady will pose burlesquely for you. Today I helped Sugar out at Great Scott. Full album here.

Wheeeeeeeeeee.

You expect people to hoot and holler at these things. It’s the middle of a Sunday afternoon and they’ve holed themselves into a dark dive bar in one of the crappiest suburbs of Boston to draw a lady in pasties and sparkle boots. They probably want to get crunk, right? But this crowd was serious. “Do you guys want to do any contests?” Sugar offered. ” We vote on the best propaganda poster? No? You can win free beer. Tickets to this documentary on happy endings. No?”

No. These were mostly art students, full of debt and destroyed-in-a-year dreams. They just wanted to draw again. “How long are the next set of poses?” they kept asking. They organized crumbling utensils and furrowed their brows. In three hours, not one person got up to leave.

There was an old man sitting in the corner who didn’t draw at all; he just watched one minute, two minute, five minute, ten minute, twenty minute poses — the entire time. During each break he hobbled over to chat with me and tell me Latin jokes, even though I told him I’d never taken Latin. “See, that joke would be much funnier to you, if you knew the Latin.” His tobacco pipe was a finely carved naked woman. Before he showed it to me, he asked if I was ready for it. “Over a hundred years old. The model probably doesn’t look like this any more. I don’t smoke very often, but when I do it’s the most wonderful thing. And anything that improves upon that experience, I’m for it.”

Faint of heart, beware: after the jump it gets a little spicier.

Why, hello. If you’re in the area and you like boobs, you are cordially invited to stop by Central Square on June 27th. And/or! Do join us July 1st at the House of Blues for Richard Cheeeeeeese!

If you’re not in the area but you’re nearish and you like boobs, you should take the Acela Express and crash on our couch and let us make you eggs and coffee in the morning. And finally, if you’re absolutely godforsaken nowhere near the area, we’d like to ask that you move closer: because frankly this missing you is getting ridiculous.

When I was sixteen years old and just beginning to go to parties, I could not for the life of me comprehend the moping wallflowers. We’d be hanging out in someone’s parents’ ritzy living room and Prodigy or whatever would start tinning through the boombox, and suddenly a boundary would be formed: the people who wanted to dance, versus the people who wanted to lean– or talk, or stand, or make out, or whatever it is that people do when music is playing and they don’t know what to do with their arms.

“So, wait. Do you like music?” I would ask them, tiny lasers of condescension searing from my eyeballs. Pew, pew, pewpew! “Because I thought you liked music. But I find it really hard to believe that you like music, if you don’t want to dance to it.”

They would look at me helplessly and shrug.

This is not to say that I was a good dancer, or that I was cool, or that I had any right to be condescending to anyone. I’m sorry. I had pant legs which could have each made their own secretary skirt, and this was in 1999 (read: fad over). I was dancing to “Smack My Bitch Up” with one other girl I’d convinced to join me from theater AV on your parents’ oriental rug, while everyone else was splashing in the pool, or watching some sexy movie on the big screen in the rumpus room. I was wriggling in my gigantic pants and snaking my hands to the ceiling like some kind of druggie wannabe. I shouldn’t have been a jerk about it.

But honestly, I didn’t understand: did you like music, or didn’t you?

Lately I’ve been feeling those same sixteen-year-old feelings again. It is summertime in Boston, and I am traipsing up staircases in The Dance Complex to practice with walking canes which Sugar has dolled up to look like gigantic joints for our “Gin and Juice” number with Richard Cheese on July 1st. (I can’t get over his cover of Creep, which is arguably better than the original, if you hate to cry). It is probably going to be the most wonderful thing in the entire world. I texted Brendan on my way to rehearsal: “Is it just me, or are these the best days of our lives?” He responded: “We are the few lucky souls that know that we will remember these days forever. Starting right now.”

There is such joy in this. I am still not a good dancer, but I don’t understand: how can you say you love dancing, if you don’t take your clothes off while doing it?

Here is how it would be:

I would look like a nice girl. I would be in flats, jeans, hair in a ponytail. I would have makeup on but not too much makeup on. I would be able to explain our act to you in detail, maybe we would rehearse it. I would tell you all about the kooky van ride here: the bag of Harvest Cheddar Sunchips and peanut M&Ms I’d had for lunch/dinner (no water! Why do I always refuse to buy water), the fact that the more I get to know these people, the more I tend to forget that these are stage names — and the singalong to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” that made me feel like a total poser.

The rest of the van had just belted out the entire first half of the song, punctuating octave shifts with diva hands. I was swaying in the backseat like an anthropologist, trying to memorize the song as it played and smiling hesitantly. This is fun, right guys? Somebody whooo! Somebody whoooo!

Sugar had turned to face me, and was slowly beginning to look more and more perplexed. “Wait a minute,” she said, then. “. . . Have you never heard this song before?”

“Uh, well . . . I don’t think so, actually. But . . . maybe. Who’s this by, again?”

“Oh my God! You haven’t been to enough gay bars.”

“You’ve never heard this song before?” Miss Gingerita cried.

I was haggard, thirsty, unwashed; jacked on salt and neon candy coatings. And it would begin with this confessional. I really want to belong here, but I’m afraid that I don’t. (Everything I have written about confidence has been fiction. I am a ruse. You’re about to find out. What on earth am I doing on a stage in New York City?)

Let’s just put that on the table, human to human. I think that would be really helpful, actually: recalibrate expectations. Yes. Before our act.

Backstage, I looked like a crazy person. I was talking to myself without making any noise, mouthing some nonexistent chorus. I was throwing my hands in the air, leaning over imaginary chairs, a little kick to the side. I was straightening my stockings, over and over and over again — looking back, restraightening. That was the middle of my leg, right? “They’re straight, they’re straight! Christ!” the Emcee laughed, his giant zoot suit shaking. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to die. I briefly considered escaping through the kitchen and pushing the wheeled laundry carts at anyone who tried to get in my way.

The lights went out. The chairs were set, they called my name. And as soon as the music began, I realized: oh right, this is going to be fun.