Jacqueline Novak on her lyrical, epic deconstruction of the blow job inGet on Your Knees.
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The lady has lost her head.
Shes the ideal woman of the Ptolemaic period, described as demure yet alluring.
Perhaps because her upper torso has been lopped off.
I cant tell what shes thinking, Jacqueline Novak tuts dryly in front of the broken figure.
Its nice that these statuesdotend to have a lower belly of some sort.
Its not a complete washboard, which I do find comforting.
It is an attempt to neutralize the form, she says, meaning the female body.Herbody.
Which is kind of an irritating thing to feel like one has to do.
Novak would prefer to be the opposite of poor Tagerem: just a floating head and nothing else.
Or maybe a ghost.
Now it has been extended for one final run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, through October 6.
While I could figure it out on my own, did this informationneedto be included?
And thats especially true if youre a woman, and a woman working in comedy, at that.
It was this sense of constant loss; you could never go back.
Fuck it, she says.
ItsThe Odysseymeets a French semioticians wet dream.
She takes particular interest in deconstructing the penis itself.
And if you say its not strong, Ill kill you!
It is the most hysterical part of the male body.
Someone in an interview was like, Oh, whats your blow-job technique?
I was like, Id rather not answer that.
Did you see the show?
Because I dont really have any opinions on blow jobs.
Its an idea Im exploring more than anything else.
Sometimes I think my heterosexuality is a sham, she goes on.
I just slowly socialized myself to the idea of the male body.
I mean, I intuitively had crushes on boys in an abstract-gender way, versus bodily.
When she was four years old, a little boy classmate asked her if she had a penis.
I said, No, I have a vagina, she remembers.
And then he goes, Does your mom have a vagina?
I said, Yes, but hers has feathers.
So I was young enough to have sort of a general feather perception.
You know, like not pubic hair.
Her teachers were amused, so when her mother came by, they recounted the story.
When my mom walked out of the office, she flapped her wings, Novak laughs.
She gave a clear textbook answer: that it triggers when the body sheds its uterine lining.
They were like, No!
Its when you bleed out of your vagina!
The curse of real knowledge, she says, shaking her head.
I was the fool.
