“Confidence,” Olivia added. It had been a whole forty seconds since her last pearl of wisdom.
“Pizazz,” Tabitha continued. “I only dance fifteen hours a week, but the rest of the time, I’m always using what I learn at the clubs. When I’m out in the world, I’m using the same skills I use when I’m on stage. It doesn’t matter if I’m at the supermarket, the dentist’s office, or church.”
Church?!
“Church?” Yvette beat me to the punch. “What kind of church do you go to?”
“Catholic, sweetie pie,” Tabitha said as though using exotic dancing skills while accepting Holy Communion was the most normal thing in the world.
Yvette pressed, “What are you doing at church that you learned in a strip club? Not to be disrespectful or anything, I’m just curious what they let straight women get away with these days while my lesbian ass is kept in the closet.”
“It’s not so much what I do, it’s how I feel, how I carry myself,” Tabitha explained.
“What are you doing, strutting down the aisle or making sexy eyes at the priest or something?”
“Of course not, silly!”
“You kneeling at the altar all suggestive and stuff?”
“You are too cute!” Tabitha sparked. She pointed to the diamond-encrusted cross dangling from her neck. “Here’s the way I see it. This cross was a gift to me from another dancer, who, like me, is highly, highly spiritual. She said something I will never forget to this day.”
Especially since it was said yesterday.
“Kitten said that the cross represents the spiritual and the sensual and where the two sticks intersect is where the powers meet.”
Leave it to Kitten.
“That middle part is a square, which if you think about it is kind of powerful because there are only two forces that meet to create a four-sided shape, so it’s kind of like the spirituality and the sensuality double when they’re together.”
Gorgeous bodies are wasted on imbeciles.
“Some people are missionaries and they go to poor places giving out food, and that is such a beautiful thing to do. Dancers are kind of like sexual missionaries.”
No pun intended, I’m quite sure.
“I’m giving positive sexual energy to the world and I make people really, really happy. This class is about so much more than stripping. It’s about life and giving and sharing your gifts.” Part of me thought Tabitha was an adorable but ridiculous child blessed with a killer body, who was desperately trying to force a spiritual message from hustling money from horny guys. Another part reluctantly admitted that she may be onto something. The whole intersection of the spirituality and the sensuality creating a double whammy of super-duper Jesus power was a bit much, but the idea that a person could be wholesome and pure and good, and simultaneously very in touch with her sexuality was something I hadn’t considered.
“Life is a striptease,” added Olivia, who really needed to shut up very soon.
“I thought it was a cabaret,” shot Kelly, the least tolerant of Olivia.
Tabitha acted as if she hadn’t heard a word. I was reminded of the scene in
Legally Blonde
where Elle taught her hairdresser the “bend and snap.” Tabitha’s signature move was the “ignore and proceed,” which she undoubtedly had to use when lecherous men wanted more than a lap dance from her. Bubbling with enthusiasm, Tabitha handed us each an agenda for the class. “We’re going to start off with the entrance and walk, then move on to hip rolls, booty shaking, crawling, sliding, and pole work. Everybody ready to turn up the heat and hustle some bucks?!”
What would Jesus do?
“Let’s do it!” shouted Olivia.
Tabitha walked to her CD player, but before putting on a hard-driving rap tune, Tabitha lined us up in front of the mirror like a chorus line. “What you need to know about men at strip clubs is that they will suck your soul dry if you let them. Most of them don’t mean to, it’s just the nature of the business. They’re there to take pleasure and you’re there to give it, but if you’re not very, very guarded they’ll take something precious from you.” She paused to let that sink in, forgetting that with the exception of Vicki, none of us had any intention of dancing professionally. “Another thing is that for every lap dance you sell, five guys are going to turn you down, and that feels like shit. It doesn’t matter how pretty or sexy you are, most of them are just too cheap to spring for a dance. It’s not you, it’s them. It’s that simple. You cannot take it personally, or it will drain you. I have a little ritual I do before I dance,” she perked. “I sing Christina Aguilera’s ‘Beautiful’ to myself in the changing room before I go on. I watch myself in the mirror and belt it out. ‘Words can’t bring me down!’” she began to sing. “Then I think about what I’m going to buy for myself with the money I make from them and I turn the guys into that thing before I go on stage, so I’m never really looking at men, I’m looking at furniture, diamond earrings, whatever! It may sound a bit cold, but these guys are there to take, take, take, and if you don’t protect yourself, you’ll find yourself, well, taken. Okay then!” Tabitha beckoned us with a sweeping motion of both arms. “Who’s feeling sexy?”
I didn’t. I felt foolish and embarrassed to be staring at my own reflection in a line of wannabe sexpots. “A lot of you are probably feeling pretty crazy for being here right now, like, why did I sign up for this class. Am I right or am I right?” A round of nervous laughter was comforting. “No matter how you’re feeling—whether you are bloated from your period, or you just had a big fight with your boyfriend, oh, or girlfriend, or you’ve got a big pimple on your butt—no matter what you feel inside, you have got to come out with an attitude that you are the hottest thing on the planet and these guys are lucky to be looking at you. If you can pull that off, I don’t care how old you are or what you look like, you are going to be smokin’ when you dance.”
“That is so true,” said Olivia. “It’s all about the attitude.” Vicki shot me a look as if to say, “There’s one in every crowd, isn’t there?” I refrained from looking behind me to see if she was really gesturing to one of the pretty girls.
By the second hour the class had become a sisterhood of booty-shaking hoochie mamas. During the first exercise, the “step, roll, drag” walk, Violet brought us together when she collapsed in tears during the very first exercise. Each of us had made flirtatious eye contact with our reflections in the mirror when we saw Violet fall to the ground and burst into tears. “I can’t do this,” she cried. Immediately, the women scampered to huddle around her. Stripping was a learned skill, but crisis management was second nature for women. Bettie Page, Reno Cher, and Mrs. Viagra draped their arms around Violet and told her how brave she was, and how she
could
strut her sexy little ass toward herself in the mirror. I could hear Mike’s voice in my mind—
“Leave it to a bunch of chicks to take something sexy and make it into some big emotional drama.”
When Violet sobbed on the ballet studio floor, I couldn’t understand why she was distraught at the sight of her strutting self. But twenty minutes later, I too was terrified by the vulnerability of my own image desperately trying to be something I wasn’t—sexy. There’s something exquisitely fragile in the attempt. In the desire. Any one of these women could have broken me with a word. When Violet got off the floor and wiped her nose with her shirtsleeve, it was as though we’d all been initiated into a secret sorority. We weren’t really sure why, but we now had a vested interest in the other’s success.
With every dance move I did, it was as if a layer of old wallpaper was being peeled off. The hip roll was like tearing sheets of Grammy’s elegant floral pattern from the dining room. The crawling move felt like a metal spatula removing another layer, a gold finished pattern under the flowers. Twirling provocatively around a pole was like tearing wood paneling off of the commune walls with my bare hands. Underneath was a pink velvet wall covering as gaudy as a brothel’s. I would never actually decorate my house with such tacky paper, but a small part of me reveled in the hard sexuality of it. Loathe as I am to admit it, there was a piece of me that loved the cheap and tawdry side of sex—a part of me that longed to create one room in my tremendous home that looked as though a mud flap silhouette lived there.
Even Olivia ingratiated herself to the group when she helped a few of us with our hip rolls. She placed her hands on my hips, moved them as though they were suspending a hoola hoop, and assured me that it took her hours to get the hang of it. Vicki immediately mastered every move, but took herself way too seriously, seducing her own image in the mirror with pursed lips and squinting eyes. When she ran her hands through her hair, then ran them down her Danskin-clad breasts and crotch, I shuddered at the lack of subtlety. “Too much?” she asked me with the tinge of insecurity that won me over.
“Well ...” I hesitated. “You’re a beautiful woman. You don’t need to try so hard at it I think you could definitely pull it off sexier if you took it down two or three notches.”
For our final exam, each student had to perform one number for the class. Tabitha dimmed the lights, moved the port-a-pole to the center of the room, poured everyone a glass of wine, and gave us each a fistful of Monopoly money. I was the last dancer, which meant I had the chance to sip two glasses of wine and witness that, even after taking the class, only Vicki deserved real money for exotic dancing. Despite a hip roll that was as sexy as churning butter, the “Vicious and Voluptuous Violet” was the class favorite. The group burst into wild applause when Violet stumbled on her five-inch CFM heels and momentarily lost her balance. In her best trucker voice, Olivia shouted, “I likes me a good clumsy woman.”
Vicki hooted in a husky drawl, “Womens is all sexy when they wobbly.”
When Tabitha motioned that it was my turn, my giddiness sobered into terror. I pointed to my watch to let her know we were already five minutes over time. “Time to dance, sweetie pie,” she whispered. “Next we have a real work of art for you. We won’t have to wonder what you’re smiling about when you see the magnificent and mysterious Mona Lisa.” Tabitha zipped out before pressing the Play button on her CD. I recognized Mary J. Blige’s voice urging, “so just dance for me,” and silently coached myself. “You are the hottest thing on planet earth, and these diamond rings are lucky to be looking at you,” I repeated in my mind. I began with a modest hip roll then twirled around the pole a few times before sliding my arched back down it as though my hands were chained together over my head. The stripping sorority began cheering and calling me over to tip me with pink dollars in the elastic of my sweatpants. Soon, the wine buzz returned and I let loose. Mona Lisa stopped at all the right breaks and mugged the famous enigmatic grin while placing my hands mischievously over my shirted breasts. I tossed my head to make my high ponytail whip around like a helicopter propeller. Sliding my hands from my thighs to my knees, I bent at the waist and pretended my butt cheeks were washing a windshield, as Tabitha had instructed earlier. As I heard the song winding down, I decided to be the only one in the class who used the slave-like crawling move we were taught. I did a few more small teasing moves before gently slipping into my submissive pose. Well, it was supposed to be a gentle slip but I ended up losing control and slamming my knees against the wooden floors. “Shit!” I screamed, realizing I had landed on the same spot where I’d removed my skin during the soccer game. “My knee, my knee is bleeding!” I cried. The Monopoly money fell to the floor, and this time it was me in the center of the maternal huddle. “Are you okay, sweetie pie?” Tabitha rushed over.
The tired mother reached into her purse for Blue’s Clues Band-Aids.
Bettie Page rubbed her hand across my back and told me to count to ten.
Vicki told me I looked pretty sexy until I screamed in agony.
On our wedding night, Adam carried me over the threshold of the honeymoon suite of the Hotel Del Coronado. He set me onto the king-sized pink velvet bedspread where a silver bucket of ice chilled a bottle of champagne. We laughed for no particular reason, just giddy to be alone together. “Would you forgive me if I tore these buttons from your gown?” Adam asked.
“Oh, don’t,” I begged, though I was thrilled he was so eager to undress me. “I want to save the gown for our daughter to wear at her wedding.”
“You torment me, Mona. There’ve got to be a hundred little buttons down the back of that thing.”
“This
thing
is a work of art, Adam! And there are exactly 142 pearl buttons for your beefy fingers to unfasten if you want me,” I teased.
“You are a work of art.” Adam sat me on the edge of the bed and brushed the loose hair from my
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
bun away from my neck. My breathing became labored as my body slipped into a bath of warmth and intensity. “One button,” he said as I felt the bodice of my gown loosen ever so slightly. “Two,” he said, popping the second button loose. Three, four, and five felt as though my body was being freed. First the touch of the air on my skin, then Adam’s fingers delicately, surgically separating the button loops from the pearls. Each time his finger grasped another button and pressed it through the loop, I felt myself swell and split with desirous, desperate invitation. It was divine torture.
Then the phone rang. “Who would call us on our wedding night?” I whined.
“Let it ring,” he whispered as he began slipping the sleeve from my shoulder.
Then it rang a second time. “Ignore it, Mona.”
I slid back into my wedding night, the perfect balance of anticipation and satisfaction.
After a few seconds, the answering machine beeped like a siren. “Hey, Mona Lisa,” Mike’s voice blared through the room. “Did you have a good time last night, hot stuff?”
Why the hell is Mike Dougherty calling me on my wedding night?! How dare he call demanding the intimate details of my first night with Adam while it’s still going on no less. And why in God’s good name would he leave a message like that on the answering machine when he knows Adam is with me?! Wait a second. There’s no answering machine at the ...