Shameless

by Nina Lemay

  “No.” It’s my turn to gulp. “It was the best. That’s precisely the problem.”

  Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday.

  How horrible is that, to be twenty years old and wish you could just fast-forward your life?

  Thursday night. The club is packed.

  I do my stage set and a guy is throwing bills at me, fives and tens. I lower myself down from the pole, onto my knees, and crawl over to him. Remembering the last time, I swish my fake hair out of the way, gracefully flipping it over my shoulder, and lean in. I shimmy my shoulders, squeeze my boobs in his face, prop myself up on my elbows so he’s facing my smooth flank to tuck a twenty into my G-string. I gather up the rest of the money and fold it behind the strap of my sandal, making sure to run my hand seductively up my leg, all the way to my crotch.

  Then I get up, dizzy with the head rush. My song is drawing to a close, I can feel the fade in the vibration of the chords through the metal stage. The room is a carousel of flashing lights and mirrors and glitter, of distorted faces. I sway on my heels, which feel as high as the Eiffel tower right now, and grab on to the pole, forgetting to make it look intentional or sexy.

  I see myself reflected in the mirror across from the stage, floating above the upturned heads of my spectators like some kind of neon goddess. My work-smile fades and my eyes widen like they’re about to devour my face.

  He’s in the crowd.

  My first thought is no, it can’t be him. Not like this hasn’t happened before, two, three times every night I’ve worked since the long weekend—I see a guy in the crowd, short dark hair, the right height, the familiar posture, the angle of a jaw that’s just so. Then he moves and the mirage shimmers, fades. It’s just another guy.

  But this time it’s him.

  I walk across the stage, and it’s still him. I come down onto the floor, still him. He’s looking at me. He’s the only one here who doesn’t even spare a glance at my body—his gaze is riveted on my face the whole time.

  Someone calls out to me, wanting to take me to the back for a dance, and I hold up my hand: will be with you in a second. I walk up to him: in my six-inch shoes we’re finally face to face. He holds my gaze; maybe the darkness under his eyes is a play of light and shadow, or maybe sleepless nights.

  “What do you want?” I say. I have to practically yell over the music so whatever coldness I want to infuse into my words gets lost.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “I don’t have time to talk. I’m working.”

  “I can wait for you.”

  “There’s no point in waiting for me. I’ll still be working in an hour, or in two hours. And then I’m going to go home.”

  Before he can say anything else, I add:

  “…and if you wait for me in front of my place again, I’ll call the police and say you’re stalking me.”

  I see the emotions flit cross his face. Anguish, pain, despair. All of my own, mirrored in his eyes.

  “Just give me five minutes, Hannah. Please.”

  “Don’t call me that here!” I snap. My hands clench into fists. “Here, I’m Alicia. It’s Alicia to everyone and it’s Alicia to you.”

  “Fine,” he says. His throat moves. “Alicia. Can I talk to you?”

  I raise my chin. His image is starting to blur with the tears that fill my eyes, and I don’t dare blink so they don’t roll down my cheeks, giving me away. “My time isn’t free. You know what it costs.”

  He closes his eyes. I can see he’s clenching his jaw as the tendons in his neck pop. “Do I have to take you to the back?”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  He thinks about it. I watch his internal war play out behind his eyes. “Then so be it.”

  I storm to the back, my heels clacking on the floor. I don’t look over my shoulder to see if he’s following, and I’m glad he can’t see my face. I make my way past all the other booths with their curtains drawn, most of them busy, until I’m all the way in the back, by the last booth at the end of the row. Only when I yank back the curtain I remember that this is exactly where we were all these weeks ago. Before I knew he was my teacher. Before I knew him.

  Without a word, Emmanuel moves past me, inside. If he remembers too, he doesn’t say anything. I follow, letting the curtain drop behind me.

  We stand there, chest to chest.

  “Sit,” I bark.

  “I’m not here to get a dance,” he groans. “Ha—Alicia.”

  “You sit,” I repeat.

  He does.

  “The rules are as follows.” I go over the old routine. My voice is perfectly emotionless, a robot, an automaton. “And it’s twenty dollars, that’s for each song. You understand?”

  He only gives a barely perceptible nod. “Please…”

  “Say you understand.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good.”

  I stand over him, my legs wide, straddling the arms of the chair. And I start to sway in rhythm with the music.

  “Please stop,” he whispers.

  “This is why people come here, Emmanuel,” I hiss, leaning closer to his ear so my fake blond curls brush his shoulder. “So this is what I’m going to do.”

  “I just wanted to say I was sorry,” he says. He reaches out to touch me and I catch his wrist in midair. He resists, and I realize as if for the first time how much stronger than me he really is.

  “Don’t touch me,” I snap. “If you try to touch me again, I’ll have the bouncer throw you out.”

  We face each other for a silent second. Then he pulls back, freeing his wrist from my grasp.

  I start to move again, slipping back into the sway of the soft music pouring from the speaker overhead. Something old-school and cheesy, like Phil Collins. What all these older guys like because it reminds them of their glory days. I put my foot up on the back of the chair, by his ear.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he says. He’s trembling a little, I can tell, but he’s still looking me in the eye.

  “It’s what I do.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I turn around and bend over, wiggling my ass as close to his face as the rules will allow, peeking between my legs. He won’t move an inch.

  “Can you just listen to me? Please?”

  “I am listening.”

  “Then stop doing what you’re doing,” he says hoarsely.

  “This is a lap dance, Emmanuel. So I’m lap-dancing. I’m not keeping you from speaking, so speak.”

  He draws in a breath, then runs his hands over his face and sinks them into his hair.

  “You’re right. I don’t know why I do this. I don’t know why I’m here.”

  “This is one song,” I say coldly.

  “Whatever,” he snaps. “God, is this what you think? Is money the problem here?”

  “I just want to get paid,” I say. “For my work that I do. That’s all. Seems fair, no?”

  To my shock and dismay, he reaches into his pocket and comes out with his wallet. He peels off five twenty-dollar bills and hands them to me.

  “If that’s the problem, there. It’s solved. For a little while.”

  Even though it feels like my heart is about to tear in half, I force myself to reach out with my trembling hand and take the bills from him. I don’t let my gaze waver from his, not even for a second.

  “I should just go. You don’t want to see me,” he says.

  I say nothing. Everything I could say would be a lie.

  “I just thought I’d say I’m sorry,” he goes on. “For this whole thing. But I realize none of it really matters. I’m sorry I ran into you here and not somewhere else, but then again, you hear this a hundred times a night. I’m sorry I pursued you, but that’s just me being a typical asshole who thinks that a lap dance meant something. I’m sorry I got you out of that after-hours, but I’m not, because something bad could have happened and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. So all my apologies are just a self-serving lie.”<
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  My throat blocks. The dim red lights lining the booth walls blur into a cold crimson inferno and the tears are about to overflow any moment now, so I spin around so fast the room reels before my eyes.

  “You’re right. I never should have come here. I never should have stayed over after that party. And I want to say that I’m letting go. I won’t bother you anymore.”

  I keep swaying, the rhythm the only tether holding me to the world. I lower myself onto his lap and fling my head backwards.

  “Say you don’t want me,” I mutter through clenched teeth.

  “What?”

  His entire body goes rigid beneath me, his muscles trembling with superhuman effort.

  “Say you don’t want me anymore. Without lying.”

  “I—”

  “Say it.”

  I grind on his lap, slowly at first, then fast and aggressive. My hands push into the booth walls, my shoes slip on the floor and the burn in my thigh muscles makes me grit my teeth, but I don’t stop or slow down.

  “Hannah, please…”

  “Look me in the eye, and say you don’t want me anymore. Not me or my body or any part of me. Say it.”

  I feel him grow hard through his pant leg. His cock presses into the back of my thigh, and I feel its heat, a languorous, sweet memory. Soreness and bliss.

  I tilt my head up to keep the tears from overflowing. The ceiling is a kaleidoscope pattern of blurring lights.

  “Hannah, stop. I’m begging you.”

  “Say it!”

  “I don’t want you anymore.”

  His whisper jolts me. I leap to my feet and turn around. Plastic blond strands stick to my tear-damp cheeks. I’m looming over him, a Diana, a coltish, long-legged goddess over my hapless human admirer. And when I see the trails of tears shiny down his cheeks, disappearing in his stubble, my world grinds to a halt.

  “It’s a lie too. Of course it is. But I can’t do anything else, it seems, so a lie will have to be good enough.”

  I draw air into my lungs.

  “You realize how fucked up this whole thing is?” I say. It’s a relief to speak in my normal voice. “How fucked up it was from the very beginning?”

  “I don’t care. I can’t stop thinking about you. This is torture.”

  “It’s what I get paid to do.”

  “I know that! But I also know it was different with us. Tell me it was, and I’m not just one of those delusional assholes.”

  “It was,” I say softly. “Past tense. We wanted different things.”

  “No, we didn’t!” His voice is low and intense. “Don’t you see? We wanted the same thing. The only problem—the only problem is this!” He gestures around, to mean the booth, the club, maybe the world. “You convinced yourself that you don’t deserve anything better than this shitty job. That’s the problem.”

  I stand over him, gazing down into his face. “You aren’t here to say you’re sorry,” I say. “Whether it’s true or not. You’re not here to apologize. You’re here to rub it in my face. To try and convince me to do something I already told you I wouldn’t do.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “I miss you, Hannah. That’s why I’m here.”

  “You think I don’t fucking miss you?” I explode. “You think I just took the bus from Quebec City and moved on with my life like nothing ever happened, shaking my ass for money, painting my little paintings. You think because I work this job I don’t have feelings?”

  “I never said that.”

  “Well, if that’s what you think, I was right. We don’t want the same things. And you’re so mired in your stereotypes and what you think is universal truth that you’re willing to let go of what makes you happy.”

  “That’s not the point,” he mutters. “Don’t you understand?”

  “Oh, I understand perfectly. You don’t want to date a stripper and oh, look at that, I’m a stripper. So that solves the whole moral dilemma right there, doesn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t,” he says flatly.

  “Then what is the problem?”

  “Listen, Hannah.” He puts his hands on my waist and I don’t even notice that he’s technically breaking the rules. It’s so natural, like they belong there. “I miss you terribly. I want to be with you. And right now it’s all that matters to me, but… I need to think about the future. You were right when you said there was no point starting something that would just end the same way, a month or two from now.”

  “What makes you think I don’t have a future?”

  He sighs, takes his hands away—I miss their warmth, their firmness, before the memory fades from my skin—and rubs his eyes.

  “You’re just assuming that I—”

  “Nothing to do with that.”

  “Then what is it? Stop beating around the bush. Stop being vague. Just say what you mean, for once. Please. I deserve this much.”

  He looks up at me, the rims of his eyes red and raw—maybe it’s just all the red light.

  “Ten years ago, I dated this girl named Vanessa.” He pauses, like it’s an effort just to get the words out. “I’d just moved from my hometown to Montreal, all the nightlife, the clubs, the parties, yeah, we went a little crazy. I’m sure you know what that’s like.”

  “Maybe not as much as you think.” I cross my arms on my chest.

  “All the partying, it was starting to add up. We were both in school, at UQAM. Working part-time to make ends meet, just barely—I didn’t want to ask my parents for money, and they were still kinda pissed at me for moving to Montreal instead of going to study close to home in Quebec City. Maybe they suspected what was happening.” He chuckles bitterly. “So one day Vanessa just went and auditioned at one of the biggest clubs in the city. Without telling me.”

  “So is that what it’s about? Your two-faced ex-girlfriend?”

  “Let me finish. I found out, and I was so pissed off I almost broke up with her. But she rolled out all the good arguments, all the excuses, we could live in a normal apartment without roommates, just the two of us. We could buy everything we wanted, at five hundred bucks even on a slow night we’d never run out. She bought me a new computer, a new TV. So eventually I said okay. Even though she didn’t give me much of a choice. And for a while, it worked. After school I’d drop by the club to watch her dance and after a while I was barely jealous anymore. She paid most of the rent and I kinda felt like shit about it, but she kept telling me it was all right.”

  He pauses. He’s staring off into space with vacant eyes. “And it was, until it wasn’t. One day I’m out on the landing to get the mail and the landlord comes up to me and starts yelling at me. At first I don’t even understand why—it turns out our rent hasn’t been paid in three months. Whatever she did with the cash I gave her is anyone’s guess. I confront her, there’s tears and yelling and I finally get her to admit she’s been doing coke every single night she worked, and most of the nights in between. Well, that’s not anything we hadn’t done before. But that was all, she swore.”

  “It wasn’t all. She was starting to look like hell and then one night there was a guy yelling under the windows of our apartment till five in the morning. He’d followed Vanessa from work. I wanted to call the cops and she freaked out. That night she admitted she’s been doing speed and that guy had sold some to her and she owed him money.”

  I realize I’m barely breathing when my head starts to spin. I force myself to breathe.

  “I don’t need to tell you the whole story. She said she’d get clean, but then she’d have to quit her job. She said she could dance and not use, but every time she went back she’d come home with glazed eyes. She did rehab, came back, said she needed money for a deposit on a new apartment, went to work, and, you know. In the end, she disappeared for three days. I was worried sick, called every hospital—and then she calls me, from some guy’s phone like nothing happened, making up some shit excuse while I can hear in her voice she’s high as a ki
te. So I packed all my stuff and left. Went to stay at a friend’s, found my own place the next day, a little shithole of a studio, but I had to take what I could get. I changed my phone number. Never got in touch with her again. I don’t even know what happened to her. Maybe that makes me an asshole, but I had done all I could. She had to choose, and she made her choice—and it wasn’t me.”

  My gaze drops onto his hands, which are still resting on his thighs. His fingers drum nervously on his jeans. Even in the dim red light the letters stand out starkly.

  “So that’s why I’m not a fan of strip clubs, and I didn’t want that dance the night we met. And that’s why I can’t put my trust in you, no matter how much I want to.”

  And I say the most trite, cliché thing imaginable. The one thing he expects to hear. “I’m not like that.”

  “I know you’re not.”

  Slowly, I crouch to be at his face level. I peer into his sad eyes.

  “I thought you at least deserved to know why,” he whispers.

  “I’m not your ex-girlfriend. I don’t even do drugs.” I think back to the after-hours and my face grows warm. “And I have no intention to start.”

  He reaches out and puts his finger to my lips. “Hannah, please. I know all that.”

  “Then why?” the question escapes from me in a rush of pure anguish. “Why can’t we just do this? Just be?”

  “I can’t. Not knowing how it might end.”

  “You never know how anything might end!” my voice cracks with tears. “That’s the whole point. You think I was counting on you turning up at school? You think I’d planned on starting a fucked-up affair with my teacher? You never know the outcome of anything. Not for sure.”

  I want to kiss him so badly I’m aching. His face is so close to mine, all I need to do is lean in.

  “Can we? Please? Can we just do this and not worry and not think about the future? Can’t we just have this… for a little while?”

  He doesn’t say a word.

  “Don’t you think it’s worth it?”

  The corner of his mouth inches up. “When you’re my age, jeune femme, you won’t be thinking this way.”