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   CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 06:31:59 JST CJ Bellwether

   when i was 22, on a friday, my intersex girlfriend who wanted to be a boyfriend took me to a pop up shop and we bought my first 3 dresses for about £5 each, halternecks, stretchy fabric, perfectly forgiving for a frame, while spending the day together before our evening show performing with Punchdrunk.

   At the end of the night myself and another performer now both in my dresses were on stage, fairies, having initiated a huge stage invasion of 60 audience members jumping along to LCD Soundsystem.

   We finish the party and as we did those days so came the game of who is taking all of the cast home so we can party til tomorrow nights show, so we all decamped to an after party. Suddenly a beautiful girl called Semicolon is showing off her amazing wardrobe of 80s dresses and offered me a corseted metallic cyan puff ball sleeve party dress saying this would look so amazing on you. The party dies down around 10am and im laying on a floor in the dress just considering how the last 24 hours have gone from me finally opening up about this inner desire to a partner to being on stage, to being in my dream 80s dress and makeup.

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     Sleepy time tea bear (sleepytimeteabear@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 06:35:13 JST Sleepy time tea bear

     in reply to

     @siege this is so wonderful

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 06:42:34 JST CJ Bellwether

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     I dutifully return the dress as i change back as evening rolls around time comes to head back to run the show again. No damage, eyes beaming but quietly hoping she'd let me keep this treasure.

     It doesnt happen of course, you cant just take another girls prized dress like that, so i just make a promise that im going to reach for this level myself.

     We decamp back to the show in taxis about 8 of us all higgledy-piggledy, we perform, we finish our work and again as we're changing out of costume into these dresses, rushing against the DJ before he can get round to playing the same LCD Soundsystem song, the 'guy' in my dress says to me, hey wheres that guy who got in the taxi with us to Semicolons? Mark? you sat on his lap for an hour. He was great, we should get him.

     We run downstairs to find Mark to bring him into our predecided trio of shambly fairies only to find a scene of utter chaos.

     Mark is already running around the audience passing out long strips of toilet paper to everyone. "We're going to do morris dancing!" he says eyes ablaze.

     Of course we are. 75 audience members suddenly on stage all waving 150 long strips of toilet paper in hand to the music while another 200 audience do it back to us.

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:01:29 JST CJ Bellwether

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     We decamp to another after party, its now sunday morning, all three of us an agreed trio. Three times a week we're on stage in dresses waving toilet paper making this giant happening occur and as we become this chaotic fixture it means we end up backing dancers for all these larger named DJs like Basement Jaxx coming in for solo gigs without any stage presence and when we would finish this new duo breaking out The Correspondents would take over.

     And this energy of fairies, not quite the bordered off on-stage off-stage world of drag, something else, it pulls in other performers who have this queerness inside they're wrestling with. The magnetism and openness builds a group who see a space to express themselves.

     We're working festivals, clowning, we're taken on tour by a british indie-electro band, were on dutch tv as the band joking call themselves our backing band, we're closing the east coast dance tent stage on the saturday night at glastonbury still doing this electro morris dancing routine only we're NOT because Mark, off his face on the way to the stage, has given our stack of 48 rolls of toilet paper to a pretty girl who said she'd run out. So im just in a dress in front of thousands of people dancing for an hour and a half until its all shut down.

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:11:46 JST CJ Bellwether

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     and within two years, we're running this under the radar, secret after-after party venue behind a poorly constructed bookcase of a speakeasy disguised as a fake speakeasy just down the road of where i live now. 3 nights a week, 9pm to 9am-ish.

     A venue GQ UK listed in the top 10 best party venues in London stating "we cant tell you where it is or what goes on there."

     And all through it theres still this whole ecosphere of the fairies are in charge down in this basement bar. If you're okay with that then you can play, so it becomes self selecting as this horde of on the verge of queer people and the people who want to date them builds up.

     And it runs perfectly as this little festival in london oasis for a cupful of years before we're raided by armed police at 4.01am, certain we're a drug den having surveilled us for months.

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:16:00 JST CJ Bellwether

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     i dont know what the moral is, probably if you want to wear a dress, tell your partner, go buy some dresses, wear them to parties. If your partner isnt into that, meet people while you're in a dress, who are into that.

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:17:05 JST CJ Bellwether

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     • gardenpeach

     @gardenpeach it turns out to be a really easy prop to hand people, easy to tidy up, cheap, accessible in every venue

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     gardenpeach (gardenpeach@mas.to)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:17:06 JST gardenpeach

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     @siege American here, I have family who do Morris dancing, but with sticks not hankies, so my initial image of that part was like... the toilet rolls on the end of sticks I guess? Making it even funnier.

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:19:35 JST CJ Bellwether

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     • gardenpeach

     @gardenpeach i will tell you what, the best thing we ever learnt to do with it was attach it to the end of a leaf blower and have it unroll the entire roll while its still attached so it becomes this huge waving white tongue over the audience

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     gardenpeach (gardenpeach@mas.to)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:19:36 JST gardenpeach

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     @siege amazing. And I bet really aethereal under black light too

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:26:59 JST CJ Bellwether

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     • Russ Garrett

     @russss dalston, lots of taxidermy upstairs, grimy basement, airplane seats for chairs, toilet had two gold toilets next to each other in a single stall.

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     Russ Garrett (russss@chaos.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:27:01 JST Russ Garrett

     in reply to

     @siege now I'm wondering if I may have visited this secret bar!

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:29:39 JST CJ Bellwether

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     • Russ Garrett

     @russss Oh hey Russ.

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     Russ Garrett (russss@chaos.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:29:40 JST Russ Garrett

     in reply to

     @siege on Dalston Lane near the bridge over the railway?

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:31:46 JST CJ Bellwether

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     • Russ Garrett

     @russss the original Fox and Cutlass. Yeah there would have been some shenanigans. Lots of double rum and gingers.

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     Russ Garrett (russss@chaos.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:31:47 JST Russ Garrett

     in reply to

     @siege I only vaguely remember that night but I do remember getting home at 6am wearing lipstick

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Mar-2024 07:46:49 JST CJ Bellwether

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     why im thinking about all this, and why im framing it all this way, is because we were recreating the same journey that fairy balls had gone through before the strata of drag as female impersonator performance really crystalized.

     At a time when drag had since long locked down to being only gay men and a requirement of denouncing it as anything about identity, way before it would begin to consider other possibilities, the street fairies appeared prototrans dykes, and that magnetism of queer-underneath openness was just undeniable in how it brought people in, all over a few £5 dresses.