Once my body was relaxed, I had to deal with my brain.
It was still running at its normal pace, and it was all over the place. Some deep thoughts, some as shallow as the Epsom-salt-infused water I was floating in:
Why do we have ear wax?
What’re those weird colored lights you see when your eyes are closed?3
I wonder if people masturbate in these things. Should I masturbate? Would it make the experience better? Am I even in the mood? I don’t think I am. Am I rejecting my own advances right now?
What does salt water do to a vagina? Will mine look younger after this?
When does your brain ever rest? Even when you’re asleep, it’s busy making dreams. That seems like a bummer of a job.
My job’s kind of a bummer right now. Should I have just left when I stepped down as host? What do I bring to the show anymore?
What will I have to be proud of if I leave?
Am I even proud of my work anymore?
If I don’t have kids, what am I leaving the world?
I need to get grape tomatoes if I’m gonna make that salad for Marie’s dinner.
Why do we have organs in our body that can just be taken out without any consequences?
At one point, I think about thirty minutes in, my brain started quieting down, largely because the only input it was getting was the sound of my own heart and breathing. It makes sense that hearing and feeling the rhythm that’s been with me my whole life had a calming effect.
About an hour in, my brain shut up and I went into a state of just…quiet.
This was new.
It was, shockingly, kind of lovely and not at all what I’d imagined when I thought about what spending ninety minutes with myself would be like.
Many people say that they have creative epiphanies in the tanks, or they hallucinate (those might be phosphenes), or they rise to a new level of consciousness. I didn’t have an epiphany, but I did feel more grounded when I walked out of that tank.
I’m not sure why I didn’t epiphanize. It could be that when someone starts off as a nervous wreck, it’s hard to get to a state of euphoria in ninety minutes. I might need longer to get there than your average person.
More than anything else, though, floating disconnected me from my screwed-up idea of my body and connected me to my actual body, which I generally avoid thinking about or touching or looking at in a mirror, mostly because I’ve spent my life treating it like I have a spare one somewhere.
I dream of being at peace with my weight every single day, so it’s not surprising that the first time I’d found peace in a long time was while I was weightless.
The question was, how could I get to that serene place on dry land? Maybe my Okay Fine Whatever Project could help me get there. Taking a step outside my comfort zone hadn’t hurt me so far, but I was just beginning. The mental jury was still out.
Recently, my friend Jennifer from high school posted an old picture of me on Facebook. It was taken on that humiliating day with French Club. I was sitting in a lounge chair in my new white bathing suit that had little ruffles at the hips, raising my arm to block my freckled face from the sun, and smiling broadly at the camera.
When I saw the picture, I wished so much that I could go back in time and talk to my sixteen-year-old self and say, “Hey, I just came back to let you know that in the future, a thing called Facebook will be invented and it will mostly be effective at making people feel bad about their lives and electing terrible presidents, but the one good thing that will come of it is that you will see this day for what it was and see yourself for what you were: beautiful and happy.”
I’d also tell her that she was never going to win a best actress Oscar so she should just let that one go and get on with her life.
1 I put that in quotes because actually labeling myself a creative person feels a little douche-y. Most people are creative as hell whether they know it or not; think of the acting job you did the last time you called in sick or faked an orgasm. I’ve opened office refrigerators and found warning Post-its on tuna-salad sandwiches that were as chilling as a Stephen King novel. Those were some creative sandwich-protectors.
2 Also known as the limbic system, which Psychology Today claims handles the six Fs: fight, flight, feeding, fear, freezing-up, and fornication.
3 Those are phosphenes, which are colored patterns or stars created by the retina, which still produces electrical charges even when it’s supposed to be resting (when you’re in complete darkness). I guess our retinas are easily bored.
Casa Diablo
In Which a Stripper’s Vagina and a Blind Chihuahua Cause Me to Send a Monumental Text
My friend Rich needed someone to help him entertain his uncle.
That’s how I got a vagina in my face.
Rich is what I call a “wide-net flirter.” Wide-net flirters work their charms on anything with a pulse for two reasons: One, they never know when their scattershot advances will magically find purchase with a big-league hottie, and two, even if they’re not attracted to the objects of their random affection, they almost always get attention in return.
Rich and I had been hanging out for about a year and a half with a large group of friends. He had flirted with me from the very beginning, which was shocking to me because I weighed two hundred and forty pounds and being flirted with was a real anomaly. In my experience, when you weigh two hundred and forty pounds, most men actively avoid your gaze just in case you’re the type of girl who mistakes eye contact for attraction. Relative invisibility—just part of the fun of being fat.1
Rich was a short man with a big personality—he was charismatic and smart with bright, impish brown eyes and a nice, juicy sense of humor. At parties he’d smile at me a lot, wait a noticeably long time to break eye contact, and usually find a way to inject a little sexual innuendo into every conversation, even when it was a bit of a stretch: “Yeah, Iran should withdraw their troops. I always retreat before my advances result in a long-term engagement.”
Because it’d been a long time since anyone flirted with me, I made the mistake of taking Rich seriously and imagined that, at some point, our flirtation would lead somewhere. And it did lead somewhere: a trip to Casa Diablo, the world’s first vegan strip club.
When he asked me to go, it seemed like the perfect outing for my project. I’d heard that the strippers at Casa Diablo were pretty aggressive, and the phrase aggressive strippers made me wince just enough to put this idea at about a 7 on the Uneasiness Scale. Plus, I liked spending time with Rich and thought this would be a great way to show him what a super-fun, no-sexual-hang-ups kinda lady I was, so I joined him.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t totally subjugating myself to a man’s whims on the off chance that it might lead to a make-out session. I’ve done that in the past, sure, but not this time. I had been to, and somewhat uncomfortably enjoyed, strip clubs before. I believe that what strippers do on the pole is unquestionably an art form and should be under consideration as an Olympic sport. It would bring in an entirely new demographic, and TV ratings would skyrocket. Other suggestions for Olympic sports: Butt-Plug Shotput, Stiletto Balance Beam, and General Thong Tolerance. I’m just spitballing here.
Case Diablo stood alone on a hill on Highway 30 in Portland, an industrial road right across from a train yard on the Willamette River. The building looked like it used to be a faux Western saloon, with a wooden facade and a huge porch that ran the length of the building. Prior to being a strip club, it was a nautically themed vegan restaurant called Pirates’ Tavern Grub and Grog. I’d eaten there years before, when a friend went to review it. It looked different now.
A middle-aged, slightly rough-around-the-edges woman sat at a table at the entrance with a cash box in front of her.
“It’s five bucks to get in,” she said. “For an extra two dollars, you can see my tits.”
I wanted the whole experience so I splurged for the bonus boobs.
She took my money, then unceremoniously flo
pped out her left breast before making change for other customers. I’m not sure what I thought two dollars would get me, but it was more than that.
“Thanks!” I crooned sweetly as I entered. Because manners are important.
The club still looked a bit like a diner, with booths lining one wall in the front, but it was dark, and we were surrounded by bare-breasted and heavily tatted women walking adeptly on seven-inch heels while balancing trays of french fries and cocktails.
There were no longer tables in the center of the long space; they’d been replaced by a stage that extended almost the full length of the club. It was split into thirds lengthwise, and each section had its own pole you could sit close to at the rack (the front-row seat) if you were brave enough. It was theater-in-the-round but with butts and vaginas and stuff.
If you wanted to sit at the rack, you had to put a two-dollar bill in front of you for every song, so we went to get our stack of twos from one of the bartenders, all of whom were also topless. In the same way I find Halloween disconcerting (Is it fun or appalling that my urgent-care nurse has a witch’s nose on right now?), I found it strange to have a topless woman doing things like making change and flipping a cocktail shaker. It was like the old Playgirl centerfolds where the photographer had apparently caught the oiled-up hunk fixing an old Chevy or fishing with his “tackle out,” so to speak—the scene was supposed to be sexy just because the guy happened to be naked. But for me, nude oil changes and typing drink orders into a tablet aren’t sexy. Sex acts are sexy.
I knew my reaction was unusual, especially since every one of the women in Casa Diablo was stunning. The majority of them were in the SuicideGirls vein—elaborate, artistic tattoos, Bettie Page haircuts, and perfectly toned, healthy bodies. All of which sent me into a complex mental cat’s cradle of assertions and rationalizations.
ME: Jesus, they’re gorgeous.
FEMINIST BUZZKILL ME: You don’t get to decide they’re gorgeous. What’s gorgeous anyway? Muscular and tiny? Fuck you.
ME: Well, I live in our culture, so yes, I’ve been socialized to think that. And gorgeous isn’t a bad thing.
FBM: You’re objectifying them.
ME: But they should be able to do whatever they want with their bodies.
FBM: Right, but they’re being judged by everyone here, so the power dynamic that should tip in their favor tips the other way. In most of these people’s minds, they’re sluts.
ME: Yeah, but the actual power dynamic is that men leave their homes and sit literally dumbstruck, dropping hundreds of dollars, while women they’re not allowed to touch shake their hips a bit in front of them and maybe get on their laps. If aliens landed and saw this dynamic, they’d think women were worshipped as gods. Which they kind of are.
FBM: Gods who make eighty cents on the dollar, you mean?
ME: Jesus, you are horrible to hang out with.
It is exhausting for me to go out with me.
My internal dialogue was interrupted by the screeching announcer’s voice over the loudspeaker.
“And now, coming to the stage, a girl whose pussy will make you purr! Give it up for the best tail in the house—Miss Kitty!”
Jesus Christ.
Rich and I sat down at the front end of the rack and slapped one of our two-dollar bills on the table. Kitty came out in a bra and underwear, as strippers are wont to do, and was less enthused about dancing than about making the pole her shiny metal bitch. At one point she climbed to the ceiling on the pole (not an easy feat when you’re slathered in glitter lotion and wearing seven-inch heels), scissored her straightened legs around it, and hung there, her body perfectly perpendicular to the pole. Then she spun, still in that position, all the way down to the stage. I was mesmerized. I also wondered if OSHA spent a lot of time here checking poles for structural integrity.
At such moments, most audience members are imagining what it would be like to be that pole and have that much power wrapped around them. But I was thinking about whether the cleaner they used on the pole between dancers might cause a rash.
My imagination falls short with anything involving strip clubs. This seems to run in my family. My brother, Scott, once told me about a trip he’d taken to Mexico with a friend of his who wanted to visit a prostitute. Scott agreed at first but couldn’t go through with it.
“I couldn’t suspend my disbelief,” he said.
I had the same problem with porn. When I did watch it—I have been single for the majority of my adult life and have often needed assistance with fantasizing—I discovered that it was really difficult for me to be turned on if the actors were bad and the women weren’t actually aroused. Not a lot of Yale Drama grads in porn, and most women don’t have orgasms from penetration alone, so it was hard for me to find effective porn (#firstworldproblems).
So I wasn’t turned on yet at the strip club, but I did learn something useful for my next bachelorette party: bejeweled anal plugs are a thing.
At one point, the second stripper, whose vaguely morning-show-esque face caused us to dub her “Kelly Ripa’s Alternate Timeline,” was spinning around the pole, ass akimbo, and I saw something shiny between her…cheeks. It looked like a two-inch-wide diamond. So if you were thinking that innovations in the lucrative world of taking off one’s clothes had ceased, you were dead wrong.
I knew I was being rude to Kelly, but I just had to do a cursory internet search on my phone and it brought up Swarovski Crystal Jeweled Butt Plugs, which, the website boasted, “make anal play even more fun by adding glamour and bling.” (I thought anal play was already glamorous enough. I stood corrected.)
My inability to suspend my disbelief reared its ugly head once again when Scarlett, the third dancer, approached me. She was completely naked save for her almost-full-body floral tattoos,2 and she came to sit at the edge of the rack in front of me. She wrapped her legs around my arms, and her hands explored my body. All I could feel was a wave of red washing over my face and neck.
“Cute outfit,” she whispered sweetly into my ear, her breasts three inches from my face.
It was like I was sort of at a strip club but also sort of at brunch.
“Thanks?” I replied, thinking I should return the compliment. Cute vagina?
I decided not to say anything and just smiled, glanced over at Rich, and “laughed.” (Ohmigod, could I be more fun or easygoing? No!) In retrospect, I think my expression probably looked more like a grimace.
Next, Scarlett lay down on her back, wrapped her legs around my neck, and pulled my face closer and closer to the aforementioned cute, hairless vagina until it was inches away. I’d never seen another vagina in person, at least from this angle and proximity.
Like the snowflakes of the genital world, no two vaginas are alike. Hers had tiny labia majora (the outer lips) and larger labia minora (the inside, more Georgia O’Keeffe–style lips). She had minor majoras and major minoras, is what I’m saying.
This might not be relevant to the story. Apologies.
Before I even had time to register all the details of her Lady Snowflake, she was grinding on my lap with her hands running through my hair and my face between her breasts.
Score! Right?
Here’s what went through my head: I just washed this skirt, and now there’s stranger vagina all over it.
I generally like having naked genitals grinding on me, but it’s usually prefaced by some drinks, a lot of flirting, and a conversation in which I can get a feel for someone’s political affiliation. Also, the genitals I enjoy are usually penis-and-ball-shaped, but why get technical?
Rich laughed the whole time, which was an appropriate response given the fact that I was fake-laughing.
What am I doing? Why can’t I just apologize to Scarlett for not fully appreciating her vagina and get up and leave?
Like many women, I’ve spent a lot of time in my life enduring subtly uncomfortable situations in order to avoid overtly uncomfortable situations.
Scarlett would’ve probably b
een mildly offended, and Rich would’ve realized that I wasn’t the breezy, up-for-anything gal-about-town I was pretending to be, but at least it would’ve been over more quickly.
Thankfully, “Pour Some Sugar on Me” ended and Scarlett left to crawl around the stage picking up her tips, taking her vagina with her.
Buzzkill Me screamed, See? She’s literally crawling on the stage for her money! while postmodern, third-wave-feminist, pro-porn me shook her head and held up a white flag.
I thought about why I was there.
I’m shattering my comfort zone, right? I have a column to write. This will make a great story.
I was full of shit.
I was subjugating myself to Rich’s whims. And at a strip club, no less, where subjugating women was the whole point.
By the time we finally left, I felt far dirtier for pretending to be chill than I did for watching naked women gyrate all night.
At the Casa Diablo point in my bizarre friendship-with-no-discernible-benefits relationship with Rich, I’d lost over sixty pounds and was no longer the two-hundred-forty-pound unhappy person I’d been when we first met.
A few months prior, I’d had a gallbladder attack and had it removed. I was told to eat a strict low-fat diet, which I did for fear of the consequences if I didn’t. (Fun body fact: Your gallbladder sends additional bile to your stomach to help you digest when you eat a lot of fat, so if you don’t have a gallbladder, your body can sometimes say WTF? in really gross ways if you eat fries.) Turned out that one of the few things that could motivate me to lose weight was a constant, nagging fear of death that began when I spent a few hours in the hospital waiting room pre-surgery thinking I was having a heart attack. Not recommended, but effective as hell.
So, more than sixty pounds down, I was feeling pretty good about myself. And yet I was still having difficulty imagining that there were other men besides Rich who might be attracted to me. Once you internalize fat-shaming, even when you lose weight, your brain’s muscle memory keeps snapping back to “I am unlovable.” I was a healthy size 16 who worked out like a fiend, but my brain was still a size 24 with high blood pressure.
Okay Fine Whatever Page 4