It all started with my “sweatsedo”. My burlesque career really started before that with some community theater and a couple of dance acts in some pole dancing shows but the “sweatsedo” feels like a great place to start.
Let me start with a little bit of background on me. I am a retired Army CID agent. I did 20 years in the Army, mostly as a special agent in the Criminal Investigation Division, which means I wore a shirt and tie and worked a lot of rapes. I ended up becoming a forensic science officer and specialized in death and sexual assault investigations and got really burned o,t after a few tours in Iraq and endless suicide investigations.
I once made a joke on social media that I thought it would be funny to wear a tracksuit to a wedding and when asked about it, to be all matter of fact, I said, “Well of course I’m wearing a tracksuit. This is a wedding, right?”
My old Army friend, Scott, contacted me when he was getting married and asked me to be his best man. He insisted I get a tracksuit and shared the “sweatsedo” website with me. There were some more low key tracksuits on there that I suggested to him because they were the cheapest and he was paying for it but he suggested I go with something fancier. I ended up getting this beautiful purple velour tracksuit with gold fleur de lis down the sides of the sleeves and pant legs. It also says “SWEATSEDO” in big letters across the front. During our discussion about getting a wedding tracksuit, I also joked around about how I would turn the pants into tearaways so I could strip out of it if necessary, mostly as a joke at the time.
Olympia, Washington has this incredible artist, Elizabeth Lord, who has an annual variety show called “Lord Franzannian’s Royal Olympian Spectacular Vaudeville Show.” Our paths crossed doing community theater and I saw that she was holding open auditions. I showed up with my tracksuit in hand and an idea.
I’m a huge hip hop head going back to the late 80’s when, as far as I’m concerned, it was some of the best music going. I’m also a karaoke guy and have sung “Going Back to Cali” a bunch of times and at some point while singing it, I got an idea. It has that chorus, “I’m going back to Cali, Cali, Cali. I’m going back to Cali……hm, I don’t think so.” It was a perfect tease line for a burlesque act. I could play with lowering my zipper during the first part of the chorus and then raise it back up during the “I don’t think so.” I also envisioned a handful of props (which is common; early burlesque performers use lots of props!!!). The biggest and most important prop was the suntan lotion, which is mentioned in the final verse of the song. I cleaned out a bottle of suntan lotion and replaced it with plain yogurt. I would finish the act by doing some mock fellatio with the bottle and then squeeze and blast it into my face for the money shot. I would lick it off my face and fingers while dancing and everyone would go nuts.
At the audition, I played the song and just explained my ideas. Luckily, there was a burlesque performer, Wednesday Du Monde, at the audition who heard my idea and offered to help by sewing snap tape into the pants. She also made me two pairs of pasties, one purple and one gold, and took a plain black g-string and sewed some fantastic purple and gold fabric to the outside of them for me. I used the karaoke track of the song and sang/rapped the verses when I did the act. I did the show and brought the house down with the act. I’m a huge Missy Misdemeanor Elliott fan so at the time, I performed as Mister Meanor.
There was another burlesque performer in that show, Zsa Zsa Bordeaux, who did an incredible burlesque duo with Wednesday Du Monde dressed as a sexy Ernie and Bert stripping to a Sesame Street song. She was part of Rock Candy Burlesque, one of the two burlesque troupes in town, and other performers from the troupe that I did not know attended the show and saw the act. After doing the show, another burlesque troupe (Twin City Tease, now the Hub City Shimmy) from a city south of us booked me to do that act on this amazing theater stage in Centralia, WA. When I was booked, I made the decision to change my name to Bananas Foster as it’s an insanely delicious dessert and as nothing I’ll ever do on a burlesque stage would be “mean” and so my original name did not work. I also submitted video of the act and was booked in the Oregon Burlesque Festival which, looking back, was a really big deal as they are highly competitive and hard to get into, generally speaking.
Members of the aforementioned Rock Candy Burlesque were speaking with me during this timeframe and I had another idea that I pitched to them and they booked me as a featured guest performer.
It worked out perfectly as they were doing a show with the word “Time” in the title and my act was to do a strip tease as Doc Brown from the Back to the Future movies. I got a lab coat and some yellow scrub like pants that could pass for a nuclear suit. I already had a ridiculous Afro so I used spray to further whiten it and put on a pair of long yellow rubber gloves that were filled with glitter and nuclear symbol pasties. The act started with Huey Lewis and the News “Back in Time” for about a minute of high energy dancing and then changed to “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauder where it became a sensual and self-choreographed contemporary dance piece. My final reveal was a shiny pleather g-string that a friend helped turn into a flux capacitor with those cheap plastic glow-stick bracelets and when they brought the lights down at the end, shined bright on the stage.
Rock Candy Burlesque was awesome and booked me just based on me explaining my idea and gave me notes on my act during a dress rehearsal. The show went great and I met guest performers and not long after, they asked me to become a member.
I was so excited, being fully invited into the burlesque world. We did regular meetings and did big shows about every three or four months where we would come up with new acts.
We also began producing a monthly show called Tassel Tuesday where many of us did new or old acts and we opened up applications for in-town and out-of-town performers to submit acts. We encouraged other types of acts to submit and perform as well so it was a full on variety show but it would usually be mostly burlesque from month to month. Performers from Seattle and Portland would roll into town every month and do acts. It was a lot of work and also a lot of fun. We would put together group acts for our big shows and group choreography. One of the members, May B. Naughty, an amazing costumer and maybe the sweetest human being I’ve ever met, would help with my costumes. I would explain an idea and what I wanted to do and she would find the fabrics either in Good Will bins or on an annual trip to Mexico at discount prices. She would only charge me for the supplies and never the labor.
Being a cisgender heterosexual male over 40 in a burlesque troupe with seven, and at times eight, other women was an incredibly enriching experience for me. I had spent the majority of my life, up until then, working with other males in law enforcement in the military. The first several years, I always felt like a guest performer and not a full member of the troupe but over time, I felt completely submerged. They were my creative artist sisters and I loved all their witchy woman magic. I was applauded by other troupe members for never taking up too much space in the backstage area and always being respectful. I always changed off to the side in the green room and looked away when other performers changed. We had incredibly beautiful and creative performers both in our troupe and as guest performers every month and I got to share the stage with them.
Near the end, things got more and more challenging. We always tried to get a consensus on decisions but with eight people, all artists, it could get absolutely maddening. There was also some drama between troupe members that led to members leaving. It all started off feeling like a very loving and inclusive community but once inside, there was some ugliness.
The pandemic hit right around the time I was thinking about leaving the troupe. It led to the closure of the Rhythm & Rye, an amazing live music venue where we had many shows, and eventually the dissolution of our burlesque troupe altogether.
Identity politics were at an all time high during all of this and I watched one of our members get cancelled on social media and within burlesque and I was done. Members of my own community turned on other members for incredibly petty reasons and I was happy to put that aspect in my rear- view mirror.
I don’t perform as Bananas Foster anymore. I did 15 or more different burlesque acts over a six-year period. I also sang a few songs in shows including an original one I did with an old punk rock friend from my teenage years. I performed in shows from Seattle to Portland and spots in-between. It was amazing having a stage where you could create acts and then perform them and get paid. I did community theater in Olympia, WA and almost never made a dime but in burlesque (and vaudeville), you could actually get paid to perform as an artist. I became way better as a listener and team member after spending a lot of time being a talker and a leader. I turned 50 during the pandemic and still have some regret that I never got to take the stage at 50. I feel like there might be a time at some point in the future where I change my mind and submit to a festival or return to the vaudeville stage but for now, I’m retired from burlesque or at least as a member of a burlesque troupe.
As far as performing goes, there is no greater rush than standing near naked in front of a packed house of an audience, all screaming and clapping for you. I definitely miss that feeling. I still have the Sweatsedo.
Bobby Brown is a retired US Army CID agent and current Washington State employee, originally from North Tonawanda, NY. He lives in Olympia, WA with his wife, daughter and pugs. In his free time, he is a karaoke host, actor, MC and bon vivant.
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