by Sabrina York
Hurt flashed in his eyes. “So you’ve moved on, then.” He raised an eyebrow. “To this.”
“What’s wrong with this?” Now the glare was real. “It’s an honest-to-god living, and it’s the closest to a sold-out crowd I’ll ever see.”
“This isn’t you, Lani—”
I cut him off and wrenched my arm away. “And how the hell do you think you know who I am anymore?”
He gripped my arm again. I noticed Brennan, one of the bouncers, watching us carefully, but I didn’t have it in me to call him down on Ben. Instead, I flexed my muscles and gave Ben my coldest look. His grip on me softened, and he looked down, defeated. “You’re right. I don’t know who you are anymore. But I never wanted to stop knowing you in the first place.”
I retreated back to the dressing room, and this time he didn’t attempt to stop me.
I vowed I’d ignore him next set. Seeing him was a painful reminder of who I was now, and who I had been. I wanted to punch him, rather than face the disapproval in his blue-gray eyes.
I stepped out when I heard Derek call Tori, the dancer before me in the rotation, to the stage. I hurried to the DJ booth, relieved Ben had gone back to his group. I refused to look and see if they were still here, milling among the crowd.
“Sorry about earlier. Old boyfriend spooked me.” I flashed Derek my coyest smile. He was generally pretty restrained, but I knew that with a little tip and a bright smile, he’d do almost anything for one of us.
He raised his eyebrows. “Good to see you do know people outside here. You work so much, sometimes it’s hard to tell.” I shrugged self-deprecatingly and slid a twenty across to him.
“Think you can give me something fun next set? I think I’ll die if I don’t hear an orchestra in some form or another. Or maybe a good ballad or some classic rock.”
He eyed the crowd, then slid my money back to me. “Sure thing. Maybe it’ll brighten your night some. It’s slow enough, I think we can do Nothing Else Matters. That sound good?” Derek knew my playlist like the back of his hand. Metallica was usually a little upbeat for me, but something about that song…it resonated. I smiled. “What do you want to pair it with?”
I thought about that while I thanked him for refusing the tip. He was already rearranging his playlist to add the first track. “I’m not quite sure. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
He shrugged. “Want me to pick for you? If it helps, I already had you down for that Halestorm number you like, and the Black Keys.”
“Halestorm sounds good. You sure two ballads won’t kill your crowd’s buzz?”
“Not if you’re the one dancing to it.”
I flushed. “Alright then. I’ll try not to disappoint you, pull out all the stops. Thanks for the favor.” He nodded and deleted one of the songs from his playlist.
I didn’t bother going back on the floor or risking running into Ben outside the dressing room. I planted myself near Derek to wait my turn. I’d done that when I was a newbie, too numb to be scared, but too scared to be outgoing. I felt calmer standing near him, even though it attracted looks from another dancer, Lolita. Were they still dating?
Most of the club seemed to be refilling their drinks when I made it to the stage. The tip rail was empty, and hardly anyone faced me. Worked for me. I was just waiting out the clock, anyways. I didn’t bother playing around it, just stripped off my dress at the edge of the stage. That fabric would make me slide on several of my pole tricks, and I didn’t know if I wanted to save them for later in the set.
Besides. Ben would lose interest the moment he saw a room full of men staring at my breasts, willingly shown, and there was no point in putting that moment off.
I stepped onto the tip rail counter and idly looped my fingers around the heavy pipe that ran along the ceiling, over the tip rail. Speculation was that it was there especially for the dancers to steady themselves. It certainly suited the purpose, and its weight reminded me of the steel ballet barres I’d grown up with. It didn’t serve any kind of plumbing or ventilating purpose that I could tell.
I tried to tune out its resemblance to the acrobatic props I’d grown up with. That dancer was dead.
My music came on, and I gave up watching for anyone to approach. Maybe there were still people at the table I was avoiding, but I didn’t have it in me to care. I focused on the little familiar tells in my movements from ballet: the articulate toe-ball-heel fluidity to my steps and pointed toes, the control in each straight posture or arch of my spine. Most days, I hardly had to do anything to attract attention on stage, because of all the subtleties that no customer or dancer could pinpoint, but that still told everyone I was worth watching. It wasn’t something I felt, but I’d had it described to me often enough to trust it was there.
The floor pulled at my feet. Its resistance made me feel grounded, unable to see a future when my feet might leave it.
I used the full range of my mostly-bare feet to shift my hips in sinuous motions that would have made a belly dancer proud. As the music kicked into full swing, I launched myself toward the pole, catching it in one hand, feeling my own weight pull my hips around it in an elegant spin that left my legs extended as far as they could. I didn’t have my old flexibility, but I could still out-bend most of the girls here, or at any of the clubs I’d danced at. The pole tore at my skin, but I’d developed calluses long before. It took only a tiny bit of grip to slow my downward momentum. After holding my pose for several seconds to scattered applause, I brought my legs together and touched my toes down, releasing the pole to carry my weight into a spin on the balls of my feet.
I seized the pole as I’d once braced myself against Ben’s hand, and took my weight onto my arms to spin upright. I didn’t wait for my rotation to stop before I climbed the pole, hooking it between my calves to inch-worm my way up it. I tried to avoid doing this sort of leg-heavy trick too much, for my knee’s sake, but an extravagant ballad required an extravagant dance. I certainly felt more relaxed than I had since Marina stormed up to Kitty. The pain of the pole sticking to my flesh had once brought tears to my eyes and a cramp to my injured leg, but right now, the sting was welcome.
I cycled through every pole trick I knew, using the most eyecatching maneuvers with each swell of the music. I focused on every detail I could find: the lines of my pointed toes, the stretch of my leg muscles. When I first started here, Lia and I messed around on the pole, and she showed me a basic stag invert. It had become one of my standard moves, in part because it reminded me of the fish lifts that were some of my favorites. In principle, it wasn’t hard—just holding onto the pole long enough to pull your hips over your hands and hook a leg around the pole. It took a good bit more arm strength than I’d had as a ballerina, but I’d had time to develop it. I’d feel it at the end of the night, but over the years, I’d come to associate a sense of completion with post-performance pain. It made me feel real.
Since my play-date with Lia, I’d tested every variation I could find: holding my knee tight to my chest and releasing the pole with my calf, balanced precariously by only the skin of my hip, switching legs when in the position, bringing the other leg up to inch-worm up the pole in the reverse of my earlier climb. I wasn’t the most avid pole dancer here, since most days I couldn’t be bothered to risk injury to practice, and I’d never win any competitions or perform with Cirque du Soleil, but the level of skill required for the tricks I knew was still high enough that it was good for an ego boost. Only a handful of girls were stronger poledancers, or showcased their own skills with any regularity.
I’d had plenty of time to practice when I could pay attention to the mirror lining the wall behind the stage, learn what every pose and transition looked like from a distance. I didn’t even need to look anymore to know how the muscles in my torso stretched in that stag, highlighting my hipbones, or that my legs were in a near-perfect split holding one of the variations. That feeling of power was familiar and comforting, even if so many other aspects of exotic dancing fe
lt alien.
Your average stripper’s dance vocabulary is erratic—largely word of mouth or vague descriptives. ‘tick tock’ legs, the Superman pose, ‘inchworming’ up, etc. I didn’t mind that flexibility, but it made it difficult to group moves together according to how they could be used, the way you could with ballet steps. In my free time, I tried to find ways to classify my new skills with my old terminology. I might describe my legs being in ‘broken fourth’ during a spin, my arms and working leg in arabesque elonge at the peak of the stag invert. It made no sense to anyone other than me, but it made the new steps feel familiar.
The moments where I could let myself—and my resentment—go onstage and focus on the performance were what kept me here. I was a middling earner at best, and with a few connections or favors, might find a low-end office job that would pay about the same. But giving up the club would mean giving up the stage—and performing—for good, and I couldn’t handle that.
At some point, I looked out at the club at the bottom of an upside-down pole trick, and saw Ben staring at me. He’d stepped forward, not quite up to the rail, but close in to where I could see enough of his rapt expression to feel self-conscious. I shut my eyes and transitioned out of the trick, though it made the skin on my hip scream with pain.
Several other men had approached the rail and left offerings. I swept them off, nodded thanks at the men who were still close by, and stepped onto the tip rail counter. I barely needed the top rail to adjust my balance, but its presence was another friendly hug. I hooked a foot into it in a parody of my old barre stretches, held the position and shifted, showing off my crisp flexibility to scattered applause. I touched it down behind me, leading me into a stationary spin, one I’d first learned in a jazz dance class. I stepped out of the spin, my back to my audience, and twined my hips around the music’s rhythm. I leapt toward the pole again, drawing a more audible gasp this time, and climbed to the top. I acknowledged the applause with my hands as I curled my torso lower, despite the screaming of my midsection.
I’d hooked one shoulder in front of the pole before I heard Derek’s voice and realized that my set had ended. Momentarily at a loss, I extended my front foot while keeping hold of the pole with my back one. I bowed forward, an aerial interpretation of the ballet reverance, the traditional way all classes and performances ended, a performer’s thanks to her audience and teachers.
I gathered up the money on the stage as Krissy stepped to the side of the stage. She waited for me to finish and gave me a short hug, more for our audience’s benefit than anyone else’s, except maybe hers. I was never sure how much of Krissy’s brazen come-ons were her, and how much were her playing to the younger crowd that loved her. I left a few bills at the side of the stage for her patience with my slow retreat. It wasn’t my intention to split the crowd’s attention away from her.
All of the anxiety I’d released onstage crashed back into me. I willed my breath to slow down and paused to re-dress myself as I waited for my dizziness to fade. Derek smiled at me and made an exaggerated tipping-his-hat motion, made all the more comical by his unusual lack of hat. I made myself smile back and nod.
I wanted to be back in the dressing room. Having a solid rapport with the set calmed me somewhat, but I knew all of that would unravel again if I had to see Ben. As much as I didn’t want to face his disappointment or blame, I knew I’d feel far worse if I had to watch him hooting during James’ bachelor-taunting, like any other happy animal here. I wanted him to move on, but I didn’t want him to move on in front of me. After all, why should my night be wrecked while his was fun?
Another man touched my arm as I turned away from the stage and booth, to offer me a bill. I accepted it with a shallow curtsy and wink, and as he veered toward the tip rail and sat down, Ben stepped out from behind him. Before I could protest, he folded me in a hug, and that tore it. The edges of my vision went gray, and I sniffled.
All my life, people have jokingly called me ‘the slaughterhouse.’ I don’t know if it’s a genetic abnormality or what, but every time I get too excited, or angry, or anxious, I pop a bloody nose. Not just a tiny ‘coke is glamorous’ stylized trickle, but a gushing gore-hydrant. And to my horror, this unhappy dam was now spouting all over his shirt.
He laughed, being well aware of the problem, and steered me to a seat so I could pinch my nose and tilt my head back. He began to hurry off for tissue, but was stopped by the bouncer. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Derek put his walky-talky down. I supposed it did look very odd, both of us covered in blood, with no one having seen what happened.
I waved Brennan closer and tried to reassure him, despite my pinched nose. “Just a nosebleed, I get them sometimes. Nothing he did.” It took a few tries to make him understand, but eventually got the message. He eyed Ben with more than a bit of hostility, but nodded and backed off. Ben’s eyes followed him anxiously.
A second later, Kitty showed up, Kleenex in tow. I took it from her and used part of it to wipe up the blood staining my chin and mouth, before adjusting my hands to press it to my nose. “Just go. You’re obviously in no shape to work, and I’ve had enough of this.” She turned to Ben. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. She complained about not feeling well earlier, but did not seem to feel ill enough to warrant going home.” I rolled my eyes at the half-truth.
He shrugged. “It’s no problem. And it’ll probably make it all look that much cooler to everyone who didn’t make it to the party tonight.” He patted my hand and walked away, still talking to Kitty. I sighed. That was that, I guess. I could run the fuck away, and tonight would be over. Ben would be out of my life again. Likely for good this time, since he’d never been, to my knowledge, a strip club kinda guy. And I didn’t particularly want him to be, either. At least not when I was working.
After a few minutes, the bleeding stopped enough that I could retreat to the dressing room to finish cleaning my face and pack. Since my makeup was ruined anyways, I removed it before I changed. My dress would need to be washed, and I didn’t really want to put the bloody garment in the bag with my clean ones. Kitty popped in with a plastic bag for me to throw my gruesome dress in.
I felt lightheaded. A few minutes in, Krissy dodged into the dressing room to laugh at me. I tried to chuckle with her, though the breath bubbled in my throat and tasted metallic. I knew I shouldn’t hurry to leave; I still had to drive home, but the drive could be difficult in this shape. I’d made fairly decent money for as antisocial as I’d been, but not enough to justify the expensive cab ride home.
Finally, when I felt as good as I was likely to get, I left my tipouts and took off. Derek was too busy to give me more than a nod, and Kitty was decidedly cold. She’d had a pretty shitty night, almost as shitty as mine, really.
I stepped out into the parking lot, and the cold night air revived me a bit. I hurried out to my car and unlocked the door. Footsteps sounded behind me. I turned around. “There you are,” Ben said. “I was watching for you to finish getting dressed, but had a hard time getting away from the guys. You’re in no shape to drive. My car’s not here anyways, so I can just catch a cab home after I drop you off.” I wanted to protest—I felt much better already, and I already resented him for drawing this out. Beneath that, I resented myself for being glad he was. But all of that emotion came to bear on him, in my acidic tone.
“You’ve got a party to get back to, and I’m fine. It’s just a little blood.” He looked at his shirt. “Okay, it’s a lot of blood, but not enough to be life-threatening.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s not my party anyways. Jamie’s friends are making him have it, and he’s only going along with it to humor them. No one cares that I’m skipping out early. There’s nothing wrong with accepting help, Lani.” I glared at him and took a breath to speak. “If you won’t let me drive you, at least let me get you a cab.”
“It defeats the point of earning money if it’s all gone before you get home.”
“Then at least let me pay for your cab.” I pro
bably should have taken him up on that, but I didn’t honestly want to wait a half hour or more for it to get here, and then twenty more minutes for the drive home, before I could thoroughly rinse the blood from my face and soak my sore legs. “Please.” For a moment, I thought he was about to take my hand, but he seemed to know that was a bad idea. He sighed and watched me, waiting for my answer.
“Fine.” I handed him my car keys and walked around to the passenger side. He followed me to open my door. I flashed him a hostile stare before I realized that I hadn’t been expecting to need it unlocked, and he would have had to come around to unlock it anyways. My car was ancient, with no bells or frills like all-door unlock buttons; I’d had it since my teens. He knew it well, since we’d contemplated losing our virginity together in it, before deciding against that.
I tried to hide a smile at the memory—the wait had been worth it. Instead of awkward back-seat sex, we waited until he was old enough to rent us a motel room, right before we were both recruited to the same ballet. At the time, it felt like the most grown-up thing he’d done, followed by the most grown-up thing we’d done together, followed by the beginning of our lives together. Funny how shit works out.
I sat down and waited for him to return to the driver’s seat. He stared at me a minute as he sat. “Are you sure you’re alright? Do you want to come to my place? I don’t want to get you home, only to have you fall and hit your head on the bedframe. You look really pale.” I pulled my legs onto the seat and rested my head on my arms. This was just too much for me to deal with right now. I shut my eyes and wished he’d be gone when I opened them. “Nothing? Well, you have ten seconds until it’s my place by default, because we can’t sit in the parking lot forever.”