show don't tell

When I was stripping, at some point pre-C and post-Will, in that brief window of time when I was newly single, when I and the legendary Spencer had moved into this tiny monastic room in an East Village apartment, below the window of which said room drug dealers called out to one another ceaselessly and restlessly, like pigeons, like doves, during that semi-sweet spot of singletime, I dated a model.

This woman who made strip costumes at Flash also made leather pants and vests, club clothes, fantasywear, these Shakira-esque animal hide delectables decades before Shakira was born, or if born had barely shimmied out from between her mother’s strong legs. This woman who made these leather tidbits, Debby, asked me to be in her fashion show that she was doing at Limelight, a club here in Gotham.

I said I would. I was thinner than I’d ever been before, I think it is quite possible that I was manic, but I didn’t know it, the mania in my bi-polar parfait being more like a topping than the ice cream, my particular flavor of ice cream being double-dark depression. At any rate, I’d lost a bunch of weight, pretty much without trying.

I would look at my half-consumed bagel and latte and lose interest. And then I would be filled instead with glee and wonder at my lack of hunger. It was a weird diet, but it was effective, this eating ennui, that putative mania.

At any rate, I was smokin’, in the parlance of the day. And my boobs were brand squeaky new. And somehow, for some unknown reason, in my early thirties, my face suddenly grew into itself.

I had cheekbones, and they were good.

So I was asked to do this modeling gig. Of course I said yes. It was everything I’d never thought I’d ever have access to—free validation for my apparent undeniable beauty, the adoration of an inexplicably hip crowd, the big backstage pass to utter coolness—rolled up into one giant ego-stroking comeshot.

Frankly, it was fun. Anyone who tells you that modeling is such grueling work should spend a day as fry cook, a window washer, a diner waitress, a low-end stripper. The night went by in a whirlwind of leather fringe and black eyeliner, and I closed the show with this big, strapping Iowa farm boy model.

At the end of the runway, this long phallic extension of the Limelight stage, I dropped to my knees in front of him, simulating fellatio.

The crowd, understandably, inevitably, prerequisitely, went wild. There in the club Limelight, the former church that had taken a tumble into wildlife, it was only rock ‘n roll, and they liked it.

The Iowa farmboy, all shoulders and blond hair and cornflower blue eyes, looked down at me between his knees, surprised for a moment, and then he bent down, scooped me up in his boa-constrictor-thick arms, put me over his shoulder and carried me off the stage.

And into my bed.

I had never been picked up like that before, literally or perhaps even figuratively. I’d always been a bit too big, my package a tad too unwieldy to be casually hefted, except by those of Paul Bunyonesque stature and that had never happened. This moment was so profound, so resonating, that today the somatic shock remains and reverberates; I remember this scooping, in short.

Therefore, while I wasn’t particularly attracted to the Iowa farmboy, I fucked him. I wasn’t not attracted, I just didn’t feel any kind of oooh-wah about him, and perhaps it was the crunchy bits of my bi-polar parfait goading me on into action, but, Reader, I fucked him.

I wish I could say it was memorable; it wasn’t.

The scooping off the stage, that was memorable. The sex was not. But this part is: my indifference made my Iowa farmboy deeply enamored of me.

We hung out a couple of times, the I.f. and I, but within a day or two I knew well that this man was not compelling. And so I dropped him like fourth period French.

I stopped calling him. I didn’t return his calls. Indeed, I pretty much ceased to think about him at all.

And he called. And he called. And he called. And he called.

He called and he called until my roommate finally said to me that I needed to tell this boy I wasn’t interested because he was driving her crazy. I didn’t call. I just couldn’t, for I didn’t know what to say.

Hi, I.f., sorry, but you don’t interest me. Hi, I.f., it was fun or something like it, but not enough. Hi, I.f., you’re a really great guy and I’m sure you’ll make someone a lovely…whatever…

I was at a loss for words and so I didn’t give him any.

Eventually, he stopped phoning.

I breathed a sigh of relief and learned the invaluable lesson that nothing makes a human as interested as complete and total disdain. It is not, however, a lesson I’ve used to my advantage because that just feels manipulative and because I don’t have a whole lot of self-restraint.

About six or seven years after the runway show, a couple of girls I was stripping with approached me in the dressing room of the club. It was the last year of my strippage, and frankly, I was getting a bit shopworn, a bit bare around the edges, a bit testy and a bit crispy, to mixmistress the metaphors.

“We saw pictures of you,” they said. “From a fashion show at Limelight.”

Oh, right, I said. I was supposed to get copies of them, but never did.

“You were so gorgeous!” they squealed.

And then they looked at me with the slight cognitive dissonance of the very young gazing at the unfathomably older—at 36, I was about fifteen years their senior, my face and body a palimpsest to them, the overlapping texts of the then and the now.

There’s one picture I remember the photographer taking. I was sitting backstage on some metal stairs, my legs spread and my elbows on my knees. My hair hung in a blond curtain on either side of my face and I was smoking a cigarette. I remember the position of my body, the ineffable cool of my beauty and my disdain.

I remember looking at the camera with a rock ‘n roll smirk. You can’t touch me, it said.

Click.

Comments

[Karl Elvis]

"...my particular flavor of ice cream being double-dark depression"

God that's a great line. And a pretty good story also. *smooch*

[Anakalia]

Smokin'

[mind]

honesty. i really like it

[Introspectre]

Fab as always. And yes, a mans ability to throw my 5'10" body over his shoulder would get him laid, too.

As far as disdain working, ha, that's been my dating motto for years. Even darling Jack, my freshly married studmuffin, had to wait and wait. I talked to him online at least a month before even letting him IM me. Then he had to beg and beg to get my phonenumber (he gave me his repeatedly).

All that said, I fucked him within two hours of meeting him finally. And now we're married.

(cackles softly to self...)

[Used Hack]

Oh, I've been that guy. :)

Luckily, most of the young ladies I managed to carry away like that weren't that cool. Makes for a long fall.

[alwaysarousedgirl]

You need to write a book. Oh wait...

I love to come here and see what new treat you have for us.

[Goose]

I've been scooped a couple of times too and it is an amazing feeling. Usually came right out of the blue and each time I was startled into arousal even if I didn't really like the guy.
Lovely images, and every person should get to be beautiful like that sometime.
I wish I could see the pics too.

[Karl Elvis]

I've been sccoped up once or twice, and let me tell you, it's disconcerting to meet someone strong enough to lift me. B^)

[Demon Queen]

I'm imagining that picture of you.
All blond cool and rock and roll hot.
Not hard to imagine at all.

[x]

I love this piece. Why do I love it? I'm not sure. But you hit it, right on, bull's-eye, the cognitive dissonance.

Just sayin'.

[ravenna]

I can see you right now with all that beautiful icy cool rock chick disdain and yet that secret fiery heart beating beneath it. You rule, CG! And the scooping? *shivers* Oh yeah baby, a girl's gotta get herself scooped up and carried off to bed like that at least once. My first time, he scooped me up in his arms (the man I still belong to) and then over his shoulder and all my cool disdain (ha, what there was of it) just instantly liquified into a wet pantyful of melted ice cream, two scoops, French vanilla I think, please just dip that big spoon of yours right *here* big fella and take another scoop of my heart please...

So guys, bottom line: How to pick up chicks? Just *pick her up* dude, she'll thank you for it.

[Joey]

I've only dreamed of being thrown over a man's shoulder... and now you've gone and made me crave it.

[chelsea girl]

Yeah, it was pretty much a millefeuille of experiences...

You know, to employ a food metaphor.

Kissykiss,
cg