Tour Whore, October 14, 2012

The Tour Whore FAQ
by Cameryn Moore

As I’m nearing the end of this year’s tour, it seems a good time to get some questions answered. Some of it is kind of a summary from previous columns; some is fresh, just for you. I know y’all are responsible enough to hang onto this for next year and come up with other questions.

Where are you from?
My car, the Toyota Corolla over there. Most recently from Boston; I gave up my lease there in April and have been travelling ever since. My winter clothes and my cat are in Montreal, so that’s obviously where I’m going when this tour is up in five weeks. The rest of my shit is in a storage pod somewhere in central Massachusetts. I was born and raised near Portland, OR, and spent 10 years in and around San Francisco. I identify most strongly with the East Coast, but I am rapidly becoming a citizen of the world. I am having a sampler made for the ceiling of the Deerinator: HOME IS WHERE THE KEYS FIT.

Where do you sleep?
NOT IN MY CAR, that’s for sure. Billets, my friends, billets make the Tour Whore possible. I suppose, when I make it big and producers are falling all over themselves to pay for hotel rooms where the mini-bar is free and the towels are big enough to actually wrap around me (bath sheets are where it’s at!) and they will fucking cover as much room service as I want, then I would be happy to have that option. But much like the lottery winner who swears that he will keep working at his humble job where he’s been for 27 years, I am pretty sure that I would keep billeting, at least some of the time. Maybe I won’t. I will be happy when that’s a choice I get to confront!

Why did you get started touring?
It seemed like a fun idea at the time. I kept touring because it turned out to be a pretty awesome experience, and I saw how many people wanted to have real discussion and performance around sex and then it become a full-out mission. I think it is possible to be a good zealot. I’m one.

How do you come up with your stuff?
That, of course, is a highly contextual question. At a bar after a show, it’s usually someone who has just seen my show and can’t believe that I created an hour of stuff. Mostly, I think about what people are asking me, and I think about what I really want to say. When you’re a big talker like me, it’s not actually that hard to talk for an hour. It’s the writing, the string of meaning holding the little beads of happening, that takes time and care.

I mean the Sidewalk Smut. 
Oh. Well, when I’m doing a custom piece, I’m working off the three-minute intake interview. The stuff up on the wall comes out of my own head. There is a bottomless well of dirty shit in my head.

You must be doing all right.
Though in print this looks like a statement—actually a giant assumption—in conversation, with a certain inflection and an inquisitive tilt of the head, this is most definitely a question: How much money do you make? When they add either a smirk or a wistful up-turn of the inner eyebrows, there’s an added subtext of “Nice work if you can get it.” The answer is, enough to get by with help from food stamps in the States and the occasional gift or looooong-term loan from a couple of sugar daddies. To the subtext I say, I didn’t get this work. I made it. If you’re wistful about it, I will add, and you can make it for yourself, if you want to. If you’re smirking, fuck you.

It must be hard.
Also a question, in disguise as sympathy: “how can you possibly get laid out there?” It takes some effort, let me tell you. See also:

It must be fun!
Loosely translates as the envious “you must be getting laid so much out there!” Not as much as you might think, and definitely not as much as I want.

Wait, you’re wearing a wedding band. You’re married?
Yes.

What does your husband think?
We’ve been living separately for over six years now, because of work, so my touring is actually not that disruptive to my domestic life. It might be, once we rejoin households in late 2013 or early 2014. [PAUSE] What does your partner think about your situation? [PAUSE] Oh, I don’t know, you know, whatever your situation is.

Who books your gigs?
I do. See last week’s column.

Don’t you get tired?
Yes. Sometimes. My left calf muscle and lower left hamstring is aching something fierce—the Deerinator is a stick shift, and Austin can be pretty stop-and-go—and I am breaking in a new pair of replacement boots, so the bottoms of my feet hurt. In general I could probably do with an hour more of sleep on average per night. And I do find the prevailing level of ignorance and prejudice and societal bullshit around sex to be both confounding and exhausting. But on the whole, NO FUCKING WAY I LOVE THIS SHIT ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! I am building a life around following my bliss. Why would I keep doing it if I didn’t love it?

What’s next?
Coffee. And then global domination.


camerynmoore.com