Dancing

Today, the grosbeaks show their red chests and the red-winged blackbirds fly past in a whirl of color. A perfect show. The birds make me think of stripping, all bright colors and performance, some kind of flash on my costume. A blue checked bo peep outfit, lace frills and bloomer-style panties over a blue satin g-string. I worked on a boat that took us out into the bay to where the city was just a string of winter lights, almost Christmas. Far enough into the open water where the captain could man the bar while we could take off everything. Where the law no longer controlled, could not prohibit alcohol and nudity together in one venue. I’d drink sugar free redbull, the sticky-sweet fuel of so many of my sex work jobs. Like carbonated cough syrup.

I bought out so many cans of whipped cream that the liquor store near my house ran dry of them. The men wanted whipped cream on our nipples and twenties on their faces that we picked up with our cunts. Am I allowed to say that on this website? How much truth am I allowed to tell here? What I loved the most about bachelor parties was watching the men watching us. They were so careful, not there for themselves, but putting on as much of a show as the dancers, the things they said carefully choreographed, cheering for each other more than for us, pumping each other up like it was all new. Like they’d never seen a naked woman perform before, and maybe they hadn’t.

The trick was to take all of their money and avoid getting puked on, while they took shots and more shots of the cheap booze the captain kept on board. They didn’t care what they drank. I felt a kind of affinity with the ones who went outside the cabin, stood on the boat’s deck to look out at the dark water and the shimmering city. It could be any city, anywhere. Taking a moment away from the chaos of the party to breath the salt and dark, the gentle or rough rocking of the deck, to feel the light danger of being off land, the strangeness of the ground beneath you moving.

In San Francisco, we were used to the earth moving. Once, I was shooting a scene in a dungeon, a woman was tied in an elaborate suspension tie in front of me, and I circled her in my latex and six inch heels, careful of the creek that ran right through the building’s basement - nature caring little for our constructions. We finished the scene not even realizing that an earthquake had shaken us - we were so involved in each other’s voices and bodies. Not realizing until the crew told us that the ground beneath us had literally shifted.

At the bachelor parties, the men watched each other watching us, and they performed a masculinity that was both false and charming in its falseness. You could see their ego and their insecurity at once. They wanted to be like the men they’d seen in movies, confident and careless with money. But they also wanted some kind of security in the truth of the moment - do you like this? Do you really like this? But only a few were brave enough to speak to us directly, in front off their friends, without prompting. Probably, I was lucky for those times. I’ve been at parties that were less interesting, where the men were more self-assured and did not care enough to pretend or put on a show for each other. My favorite were the ones who were more nervous than eager. I loved how easily dazzled they were. The club regulars were different, they wanted something but would not necessarily say what it was they wanted. The parties that were birthdays or couples - I found these less fun and more work.

A thing I wish for everyone: that you may someday find yourself naked surrounded by a group of people showering you with cash. That you may feel for a single moment that the exertion of your body is translatable, tangible in dollars. Dollars that mean everything, that are your very survival. That you may feel your rent compiling around you in crumpled bills that you will later rub flat against a table edge, pull from your boot and pile in a heap to count out. That you might sell something as flimsy as your g-string for more than it is worth to you. That you may smile in genuine pleasure at the man who pays for it. Who feels the need to hide in the bathroom to make the transaction, he is that afraid of his friends learning he wants to keep this strip of musky black lace. That you may know exactly how much to ask for - enough that you think they will say no, but they say yes anyway.