She grew comfortable with Mina, the bartender, who poured her whiskey with a shaking head muttering, “such a shame to see one as pretty as you go down this road,” and Lucy, the waitress. She exchanged passing cordialities with Abe Jackson, who commented on her first name’s ethnic origins each time they were reintroduced (he had never been any good with names or faces). Claudia scared the shit out of her.

Since her encounters with Julie and Princess Sunday night, she had tried to keep her distance from the other dancers. Still, in between her sets she would watch them from her seat at the bar. She was learning moves from the more experienced girls, but she was also entranced by the effortless movement, the rhythm of the other girls.

Julie Han could touch her head to her ass. She had an impeccable sense of timing and fluidity, and worked the pole like an artist, climbing, spinning, flipping, all with no apparent effort. She came on stage dressed in elaborate, Asian fetish wear. The first night, she was a geisha. The second, a sexy ninja. When Annie May came off the stage, she spoke in a fake Japanese accent that made men stutter.

Princess moved more stiffly. Her eyes were never there when she danced. They looked out past the audience, past the doors of The Caribou and beyond, her lips often moving silently in sync with the lyrics of the songs. When she sat with a customer, handing him her card and smiling, her gaze traveled through him as if he were transparent. Still, she was very popular. Her body and face made her living.

And Samantha. When Samantha danced, the club stopped. The waitresses fought to keep their eyes ahead and focused on their customers or their trays of drinks. Even the prudish, uneasy girl out with her boyfriend trying to prove she was one of the guys couldn’t help but gaze obliquely at the pale, snakelike woman who danced under the name, “Carmilla,” whose body bent like fire in flickering chiaroscuro beneath the lights. The black tattoos contrasting against her white pelvis, back, and chest seemed to be involved in their own elaborate dance as she writhed, intensely hypnotic in the center of the club. Though she was not as conventionally beautiful as Princess (or Michelle, for that matter), she possessed a presence, a spark, and no one seemed to be immune.

Michelle spent her down time that week in innumerable deep and profound conversations with Mina the bartender which she would invariably forget by the next morning. She began drinking nearly immediately after arriving, and stopped when she collapsed into her bed, still in her makeup, waking a few hours later to vomit and take an aspirin with a full glass of water. She was living her life like a goldfish, she told Mina at two in the morning, existing solely for the moment without concept of the future or past. Of course, humans can only live like goldfish for so long.

After seeing Michelle in the same black lingerie outfit for three consecutive nights, Samantha gently pressured her into getting a few new costumes. She suggested she take Michelle shopping on Thursday, seeing as how, coincidentally, they both had the night off. At three PM, Michelle knocked on Sam’s door to take up the offer. She knocked several times after polite increments, but no motion was audible from the other side. The ballerina started to walk back to her place, content to eat cookies, drink vodka, and look at old photo albums for the rest of the day, but she heard the door to apartment 118C open just as she reached her own.

If one of the men in the audience of The Caribou had seen Samantha as she stood, hunched and haggard, slouching in the doorway, the effect might have been similar to Dorothy, Toto, et al pulling back the curtain and finding a curmudgeonly schmoe working levers controlling the movements of the magical Wizard of Oz. She still looked young – quite young – still attractive, but worn, disaffected, and very tired. Her pale skin had turned from alabaster to sallow, anemic, and deep blue half moons cradled her eyes. Her black hair was mussed and tangled, haphazardly hanging around her face and neck.

“What is it?” asked the woman, face slack as if it contained not a single muscle.

“Oh, hi, Sam,” said Michelle, turning toward her. “I… thought we could go shopping, like you said. Remember?”

Samantha paused for a second, staring at nothing. “Come back in an hour,” she said, and shut the door.

Michelle went back to her apartment, turned on the TV, turned off the TV, opened the refrigerator, closed the refrigerator, opened the pantry, closed the pantry, opened the refrigerator again, extracted a carton of chocolate soy milk, poured herself a glass, drank it too fast, went to the bathroom, peed, washed her glass, collapsed on the sofa, and turned on the TV. Somewhere in all of this, an hour managed to pass, and Michelle found herself back at Samantha’s door.

“Sorry,” said Sam, clean and made up, but still foggy. “I’m not a morning person.” Michelle thought to mention that she originally came knocking well into the mid-afternoon, but instead simply followed her neighbor out of their building and onto the street.

Sam led the ballerina silently through the grid of streets, head lowered, appearing to watch the cracks in the sidewalk, barely glancing up to check for traffic when they would cross a street. Michelle didn’t say anything, didn’t try to make small talk about the weather or comments about the clientele of The Caribou the previous evening, she just followed, occasionally glancing around to take in the areas of the city to which she had never been. After thirty minutes, the women stood on a dirty corner looking up at a half burned out neon sign that should have read Shelley’s Fetish Shop, but because of its advanced age could only manage hell y’s F ish ho. Michelle would later learn that within the city, Shelley’s Fetish Shop was a landmark among exotic dancers, and was colloquially referred to as “the Fish Ho,” or “Ho Hell,” to the more disenfranchised.

This store was vastly different from the mall lingerie shops where she had gone in high school and college, and where, out of force of habit and naïveté, she had purchased her first and currently only stripping outfit of her own. The walls and racks of the Fish Ho contained nearly every toy and costume imaginable, and many beyond Michelle’s realm of imagination. She might have been quite proud, in fact, never to have had a mental picture of a butt-plug shaped like Jesus Christ had one not been hanging at eye-level as she walked by, the image accosting her and searing itself into her memory for years to come.

“So, what do you want to be?” asked Sam, yawning, browsing through a rack of tiny schoolgirl uniforms. “This look is so cliché,” she said as she brushed her hand over the clothes, “but you might be able to pull it off. You have that innocent look about you.”

Michelle blushed. “I don’t think that would look good on me.”

“You’re probably right. Hey, let’s see if they have any ballerina outfits. That might be fun.”

Michelle didn’t know how “fun” wearing a cheap facsimile of the symbol of her dream while in the act of selling herself short of it would be, but she followed her neighbor down the aisles until she stopped, holding up a painfully kitschy, perverse imitation of a ballerina’s leotard and tutu. Sam looked between the costume and the girl. “You know, pink doesn’t really work for you, does it? Your face is too pink. You’d look all red.”

Michelle breathed a sigh of relief, though she barbed for an instant at the red remark, looking down at her arm to judge the quality of her skin’s inherent pinkness. “I think you’re right,” she said.

They wandered the store for forty minutes. Everything made Michelle uncomfortable, and she could picture herself wearing almost none of the commercialized costume versions of nearly every fetish invented (she did not see any incrementally inflatable fat-suits, however, so Richard would have been out of luck). Finally, she found a black vinyl bikini that managed to seem tasteful and a cute baby blue outfit with a cartoon tiger on the shirt that looked like a young teenager’s pajamas.

“That’ll do for a start,” Sam said as Michelle presented her choices. “You can always come back once you figure out more what your image is going to be.”

Her words incited a pang of ominous dejection in Michelle. She didn’t know how long Sam expected her to be doing this, and now that she thought about it, she didn’t even know how long she expected herself to be doing it. Walking to the checkout, she glanced at the rack at the very back of the store which held treacherously tall looking shoes.

“Hey, Sam, don’t I need some shoes?” she asked. “Some modern ones?”

“Oh. Oh, of course. How could I forget?” Sam smiled wearily. They forewent the cashier for a wall in the back. Most of the platforms on the fronts of the shoes were at least four inches, while the heels themselves reached into manic territories. For someone who hadn’t mastered basic high heels until her junior year in college, these looked absolutely perilous. Sam fitted her with a pair of over-the-top silver platforms and she took her first tentative steps, wobbling like a new colt.

At the register, Michelle’s bill was nearly eighty dollars.

“You have to spend money to make money,” Sam said as she noticed Michelle reluctantly handing over her credit card. “That’s what my mom used to say. Of course, she was completely broke when she died. And in substantial dept, now that I think of it.”

“I’m not even making that much money,” Michelle said. “I was making almost as much bartending.”

“Well, you’re inexperienced still,” she said as they walked out of the store. “How many dances do you do per night?”

“Um, the normal amount, I guess. Whenever John puts me on.”

“And… you are doing private dances, aren’t you? That’s where all the money is.”

Michelle was submerged in a wave of nauseous embarrassment. Of course she knew about lap dances. She’d heard of them in countless movies and TV shows, she’d seen girls lead customers back into the rooms, she’d even read Princess’s all-purpose private dance invitation. Of course she knew about lap dances, but for some reason (self-preservation mechanism) her mind hadn’t let her realize that these dances, these nebulous abstract concepts, were things she’d ever have to do.

“Well, no. Not yet. I, uh, I don’t really know how, I guess.” She looked down at her feet.

Sam smiled wide, her tired eyes lighting up momentarily. “Oh! Well, why didn’t you tell me? No problem. It takes a lot of girls awhile to get up the nerve. Me, I didn’t do them for months after I first started dancing. I could have made thousands more than I did that first year.” Then softly, seriously, “You know, I could give you one, if you want.” Michelle glowed red. Sam laughed. On the street, in the dim light of dusk, her pallor seemed less sickly, more alive. “It’s so easy to freak you kids out,” she said.

When they arrived back at their building and Michelle dropped her new acquisitions off on her sofa, Sam asked if she might want to get a bite. She could think of no reason to refuse.

The sushi restaurant was crowded, musty, and dark. The two dancers sat at the bar in between a corpulent, bald Hispanic man and an anorectic woman with enormous hair who sipped water with lemon. Michelle ate a California roll, miso soup, and seaweed salad. Sam ate sashimi and drank red wine.

These days, Michelle woke up every morning with a headache that only really went away when she started drinking again. She had been looking forward to Thursday as a day when she could take a break from alcohol, but suddenly Sam was finished with her wine and offered to buy a bottle of sake to share.

“I, um, don’t know about that,” said Michelle, trying to sound polite.

“Why not?” asked her neighbor, chewing the raw flesh. “It’s our night off.”

Michelle acquiesced, and soon she was fighting down the warm, bitter liquor.

“Never tried sake?” Sam ventured, noticing the face Michelle made every time she took a sip.

“Uh, no.”

A tiny laugh puffed out of Sam’s nose. “It’s an acquired taste.”

After awhile, the bitter taste started to dissipate into smooth sweetness, but that was most likely because as she drank more, she started to associate the taste with feeling more free and relaxed. Somehow in an hour, one bottle of sake turned into two, and that turned into the two women deciding to go out to a club after dinner.

Michelle was in a haze already as they walked through the cold streets. The day had been bearable, but now that the sun was down, even her down-filled coat was doing little to protect her from the chill. Fortunately, the sake was still warming her from the inside.

Just as Michelle’s fingers began to go numb they were inside a dubious nightclub. The lights were dim and the air was humid from the large number of young bodies thrusting rhythmically on the expansive dance floor. The darkness was occasionally interrupted by one of the colored spotlights that made spastic rounds across the club floor, sporadically illuminating an odd face, chest, or ass as the unsuspecting patron danced with all of his or her might.

Sam bought Michelle a shot and a beer, and she continued drinking wine. In ten minutes, the shot, the beer, and the wine had disappeared, and Samantha was practically dragging her timid, inebriated partner onto the dance floor, shouting that it was time for the ballerina to learn how to move.

“No! I can’t! I rear – really can’t dance at all! You’ve seen me!” The words in the last sentence were slurred into a single nonsensical one. “Youvsnme!”

“Everyone can dance!” Sam shouted above the pulsing music. “It’s innate! Everyone has a natural rhythm. Music’s engrained into us. Haven’t you ever heard of string theory?”

Michelle tried to pull her wrist out of the woman’s grip, but the cold, bony hand seemed to grow even tighter as she twisted, and the next thing she knew they were in the tempestuous middle of a sea of heaving, rotating bodies.

Sam spun around and faced her, crossing her arms and cocking her hip. “Now,” she said, “show me how you dance.”

Michelle was just drunk enough to be confident, and just sober enough to do what she was told. She began to shake her pelvis back and forth in imitation of the dancing she saw all around, her neighbor standing still under the darkness in the midst of a pulsating wave of sweaty young adults, slapped infrequently and suddenly with a red, blue, or orange spotlight.

Through all the loud drum machine beats, synthesizer noise, and shouted background conversation, Michelle could hear the piercing laugh of her friend tearing through her. Head hung, she started back toward the bar, then stopped. She felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to look at Samantha, who placed her other hand on Michelle’s other shoulder and began to move.

Michelle let herself sway with her. Nothing too fancy at first, just stepping side to side at arm’s length like two seventh-graders at their first school dance. The style of dance didn’t exactly fit with the music, and no one could have mistaken what they were doing as sexy, but Sam was starting at the beginning.

“I thought you were a dancer,” Sam said as she tried to guide her in time with the song.

“I was,” Michelle said. She was looking down at her feet, concentrating too hard on her steps. “I mean, I am. I’m graceful, you know? I mean, I can move and count, I’ve just never been able to do this type of dancing. The kind where you make it up.” She stepped on Sam’s foot.

“Ow!”

“Sorry! Are you okay?”

Sam laughed it off. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s not the worst I’ve had happen dancing.”

They danced in this manner for awhile, Michelle trying her hardest to emulate the movements of her capable partner, her capable partner trying her hardest to lead Michelle. After Sam felt the crush of Michelle’s foot for the second time, she stopped.

“Sorry,” Michelle said.

Sam crossed her arms again and looked at her friend. “You’re not terrible,” she said, but she may have been lying. “You just need to loosen up.”

“Yeah,” said Michelle. “That’s why I drink when I dance at The Caribou.”

“That’s how it starts,” Sam said. “Before you know it you’re a full fledged alcoholic, or a meth-head, or a coke addict, or injecting heroin in between your toes or into your eyeballs.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to get by,” said Michelle. She didn’t know what she meant by that, but if it had been a movie, it was what she imaged her character would have said.

“Are you drunk?” asked Sam. Michelle was not, but she was approaching the territory. She shook her head no.

“All right,” said Sam, taking Michelle’s wrist in her hand and leading her back to the bar. “But I don’t condone this on the job.”

At the bar, Sam bought two shots and chanted some arcane drinking rhyme before taking hers. Michelle followed, only without any cool recitation.

After another round of shots the crowd of dancers became an undulating blur, and Michelle heard the bass line of the music vibrating inside her head like a timpani drum. The world was suddenly much less intimidating.

She was drinking. They were at the bar – no, they were on the dance floor where she had humiliated herself. Her drink was gone. How many drinks did she have? Yes, they were on the dance floor. Did they walk? Did Sam lead her? Yes, must have. They were there, on the dance floor. Sam was saying something, placing her hands back on Michelle’s shoulders. Her words cut their way through air. “Let’s try this again.”

The colors, the lights, the moving people all bled into one another like they were composed of wet paint, her drawing a turpentine brush across them with every movement. She looked down, around them, anywhere but into the eyes of her partner. This ill-conceived dancing thing would all be over soon, and then she could go home and pass out.

Then she faltered, almost losing her footing, catching herself and accidentally looking up, meeting the eyes of her neighbor. They were black in the non-light of the nightclub, the whites around them stark and reflective, catching what there was to catch of the moving spotlights which, for the moment, evaded them both as they danced. Michelle froze for an instant. A pulse began to invade her core, spreading through her limbs and into her brain. She closed her eyes. She was the music as it filled her ears and made its way out through each of her extremities. It was happening. She was dancing.

“That’s it!” she heard her neighbor say, but not even the knowledge that she was succeeding could interfere. She threw her arms out and let them snake and turn on their own. It was unbelievably easy.

She felt Sam’s hands leave her shoulders and find her waist. She opened her eyes. The world spun and shook in every color. Occasionally she would recognize a shape as a human face, but mostly it was just incoherent visual cacophony. When she finally looked again at Sam, the mystery of dance was revealed and she understood the mechanics and chemistry of it in no way which could be verbally communicated. She just knew.

But then it was over. Something happened, some interruption, and it changed. All metaphysics melted away, and it was just dancing again. Michelle looked to her left to see who had invaded their connection.
Two young men. The thin man hung back behind the larger one with his hands in his pockets. The big, frat-boy type tried to dance in between the two women, doing some sort of bread-baking motion with his arms. He bumped into Sam causing her to stumble.

“Hey,” she said. “Watch it.”

The man forced a painfully artificial chuckle. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know my own strength. Ha ha.” He inched his way farther in between them. “So, this isn’t like a lesbian thing, is it? Cause if you’re looking for a man to fill the gap, I’m, like, open-minded.”

“Ew,” Michelle said, “no way.” She halfheartedly thrust her arm toward the man.

“Whoa, whoa, sorry,” he said stepping backwards, holding his hands up, palms forward in mock surrender. “No offense babe. I didn’t mean anything. You’re too hot to be a dyke anyway.”

Michelle turned to Samantha, but she wasn’t there. She scanned the immediate area and saw her neighbor in conversation with the thin, slouching man who had come with the man who was now standing too close, much too close to the ballerina and leaning in, cheap beer saturating his breath. He put his sweaty, cologne-soaked arm awkwardly around her shoulders. “So,” he said, “do you hang out?”

The night became progressively blurrier. She caught the names of the frat bro (Matt) and his companion (Paul), who (she gleaned from Paul’s conversation with Sam and Matt’s conversation at her) were cousins. Paul was showing his out-of-town relative around the city while he was there on business.

Matt was tall, loud, overbearing, and ostensibly well-off, judging from the rounds of drinks he kept buying for everyone. Paul was scrawny, with a silly, snorting sort of laugh and an endearingly big geeky smile. Sam seemed to find him penetratingly interesting, holding his gaze intensely as they spoke and barely touching the round after round of drinks Matt kept pushing in front of her.

Michelle was not so enamored with her male pursuer, and though every date-rape awareness poster she had read in college would have told her not to, she kept pounding down drink after drink, relying on some loose faith that should anything unsavory present itself in the behavior of the gentleman, Samantha would somehow protect her.

“Yeah, so I’ve been really into philanthropy lately,” Matt was saying, looking at no one in particular, waving his glass of scotch in the air. “So far I’ve donated to Princeton – that’s my alma matter –” he made a show of his charming theatrical habit of winking and elbowing at Michelle, “and the League for Internet Freedom of Speech, so like, I’m looking for somewhere else to invest my copious hard-earned dollars.” Michelle nodded sleepily.

“So,” he said, leaning in close, much too close, “what charities do you think would do the most good per capita per dollar spent?”

Michelle was only hearing about every other word now. But she caught the word charities and the question mark at the end. “Um,” she said, “the way they treat animals I think is pretty horrible. For food. Maybe you could donate to some animal rights stuff or something. Or a women’s shelter. Lots of women are abused. I dunno.”

The man’s forehead wrinkled as he frowned. “Hey, babe, that’s no fun.” He forced out another horrible fake laugh. “I was thinking like something really unique, like something no one else has a vested interest in, you know? Something like an independent record label.” Every second his smile began to look more and more like that of an evil clown – too big, too pointed, with teeth too white and facial lines too deep and perfect – and Michelle wanted the evening to be over. She swallowed the last of drink number… whatever. The bottom of the glass coming into soft-focus turned out to be the last thing she remembered before waking up on Samantha’s couch with a headache like an ice-pick wound, wondering where her clothes had gone.

Filed under: Michelle, Samantha, Uncategorized, alcohol, clothes, dancing by Jade