spandex & lucite shoes: part 41, in which we find our heroine's days numbered

My stripmemoirs slowly, slowly wind to a close. This version of them does, anyway. Though who knows what the future holds, for strippers never die, they just move on to another stage. Want to see what came before? Here's the previous post in the series. And here, too, is the first, should you want to see where it all began.

My final days at FlashDancers lingered. CeCe, my strip self, languished as if afflicted by a terminal illness, which, if you consider my knowing full well and with certitude that the CeCe days were numbered, the metaphor of terminal illness is less morbid and more mordant. Almost cheeky, in its nose-thumbing in the general direction of death. Fitting, anyway.

My final days lingered and I languished. I found myself suddenly unable to remember what it was I used to do when I did well. I found myself stuttering in word and deed, unable to get out full phrases, complete sentences, whole thoughts. Like a stroke victim, I found myself suffering from a strange aphasia. I could recollect how I used to be able to do this—this whole strip game, this approaching strangers, this idle conversation, this empty flirting, this minor seduction—but I could not now for the life of me actually do it.

I would see a table of men. I would see their eyes dart around the room in happy expectation. I would see a gaze flicker and land on me. I would see a slender smile before the smile’s owner was distracted by a buddy’s ogling nudges and words. I would see it all and I would recognize it for what it was: the invitation to cash. I would walk toward the table, compelled by strippery instinct, I would get close, closer, closest…and then I would turn and walk away.

It seemed an act of unimaginable difficulty to speak to these men, to present myself, once more, as CeCe, to offer them a chance to purchase my magic, to do it, to do it again, to do it once more, over and over, and to do it each time as if it were something new, something special, something worth paying for.

I had, I found, hit the wall. I had hit it hard. I had hit it and I had been splattered like a jar of pasta sauce on its impenetrable surface. I had hit it and I had lost it. The wall had been hit, and there was no getting around it, or over it. It was just suddenly there, like the monolith in 2001, and I knew it and I counted my days.

I counted other things too. When I am stressed, when I don’t know what else to do with my nattering mind, I count. I count steps. I count bricks. I count and count and count. Sometimes I make calculations, of ceiling tiles, for example. Then, back in the subterranean strip club, back in the land of flash, I counted beats, I counted men with red ties, or blue hats, or bald heads. I counted how often the DJ said “champagne room.” I counted how many times Annie from Deer Park changed her dress. I counted the money in my garter. That didn’t take long, for I wasn’t making much of it.

I tried and I tried to reinvoke the glamour of my past CeCe self. I would painstakingly recall my ancient and arcane money-making rituals and I would faithfully replicate them. I would get up at noon. I would drink a non-fat latte. I would go to the gym. I would tan and when I would tan, I would lie in the booth and I would recollect all the dead people I knew and I would thank them by name.

Thank you, Grandma, I would say, for having tea with me. And thank you, Grandpa, for taking me camping. Thank you, Will, for letting me and Spencer live with you. And so on. And I’d imagine them each in their separate glory, backlit and white-bordered. And when I was done calling them each by name, I would ask them for help. Please, I would say, help me make $600 tonight. And then I would thank them again.

And as I performed this gratitude invocation ending in supplication, I would turn and twist in the bed, always being careful to tan each side equally. I would have divided the time into equal parts and I would attend to each side as carefully as if I were roasting a suckling pig for a banquet. To which no one would come.

The ritual would continue. I noted what I ate and what I wore when I had good nights, and what I ate and what I wore when I did not. I kept strict mental track of it all. The magic lavender tummy dress. The risky brown halter. The pernicious aqua tube dress. Some dresses I could trust, but to trust them too often was to wear their luster to dullness. Other dresses were risky. I never knew if they would be magic, or if they would leave me cold, limp and despondent as last night’s fast food.

It was exhausting. It was a lot of work, all that counting, recollecting, recreating, and reinterpreting. It was tough to keep it all straight, and I don’t think I did a very good job, for each night, I seemed to make less money. Less and less. Smaller and slimmer the wad of cash. Thinner and bleaker the final days. Tick tick tick.

And yet, at the same time, I glimpsed the wonderful possibility beyond the walls of Flash. Sure, I had been in graduate school for the past two years, but this year, I would be teaching. My own classes, with my own students, and my own time and space to stand and walk and talk and have an effect on these people, possibly good, possibly bad, but also potentially for the rest of their lives. And it was very exciting, those final depressing lean nights at Flash. It was very exciting indeed to contemplate.

In tarot cards, the “death” card signifies change. That last, long, malingering summer at Flash, my CeCe self hovered somewhere between life and death on its spandex and rhinestone gurney. I tried to revive my interest, I tried to step lively, I tried and I tried, and in my way was the certain knowledge that this was the end, and I wanted to be so very okay with it.

Comments

[Richard M Allen]

I have commented on the catharsis I find in your writings and feel grateful for the opportunity to participate in your evolution in a voueristic fashion. Your writing causes me to look at my past and forgive myself for mistakes I made in my evolution. You are scrumptious and I love you to pieces.
Rich in Sacramento

[The Minstrel Boy]

i have a friend, a close friend, who came to the same crossroad. it wasn't that she was quitting the dance business, it was quitting her. time, gravity, nagging knee problems, the whole thing was looming large. my daughter who danced managed to bull her way through college and into a teaching post before the inevitable ending came. she left on her own terms, in her own time. be sure to trumpet loudly any publication of your memior please. put me down for a (hopefully) signed copy.

[The Fury]

Wow that was heartbreaking. Alas, we all know that you are 300 times sexier than you'd like to admit. So apparently the wall you hit had "Bored with this shit" written all over it.

[Alana]

Well, you probably knew I'd totally relate to this.

Peace,
A

[furtive]

Damn you write good, CG. Here's hoping you get all the glittery papery stuff (and gooey wet stuff) that you deserve x