My first clue should have been that my eternally laid-back boyfriend was uncomfortable with it. “You look weirded out,” I said. “Are you weirded out? What’s wrong? Let’s talk it through.”
“I’m not . . . weirded out,” he said carefully. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I think. Something seems off about it to me, but I haven’t figured out what yet.” He paused, and I crossed my arms, eyes narrowing. “But obviously, if you really want to do it, you should do it.”
“Well, I’ve already told them I’m going to do it.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t seem weirded out when I brought it up before.”
“I guess I wasn’t sure that you were serious.”
What I knew about the party: there would be a magician, and a hypnotist, and a belly dancer. It was a benefit for something or another. And they needed models to walk around wearing nothing but booty shorts, heels, and body paint. Unpaid. (I’m a real sucker for unpaid. It says to me, “intrinsically valuable.” “Resume-building.” “Spiritually rewarding.”)
I had just joined the burlesque troupe a few days earlier, and still caught up in the sweet frenzy of our holiday show, I envisioned two scenarios:
1.) This was taking place in a dimly lit museum, after hours. The artist was young, beautiful, insane. We’d walk around with his schizophrenia swirled around our belly buttons and shoulder blades in dashes of blood-crimson, sunshine-yellow, deep cobalt. The patrons would casually glance down their noses, reaching for another flute of champagne from traveling trays, delicately fried meats wrapped around tiny fruits stabbed through with toothpicks. “Isn’t that interesting,” they would say. “You know, I preferred his earlier work.”
2.) This would be madness, a drunken, surreal circus. In an explosion of glitter and rhinestones, the magician would pull a headless body out of a hat. The hypnotist would have us all thinking we were floating down the Nile. Once painted, I would become a shapeshifter: blending into walls, appearing out of thin air onto the dance floor, dancing like a lizard. When the belly-dancer emerged, we would all howl at the moon.
I would return home in the wee hours of the morning shivering, uncertain of who I was, whisper in my lover’s ear that I knew what it felt like to be a tree.
The magician picked us up a little late, and we got stuck in traffic. I was completely fine with this, in the way I am completely fine with anything when I’ve just dyed my hair.
He told us about the endless hours he works, the crazy parties he throws in his apartment (stripper pole!) (drugs!), and I dreamily leaned my head against the window, watching the sun set over the city. “I know so little about what goes on in these buildings,” I thought.
“Here we are!” he said. “I’ll just drop you girls off here, and go find a parking spot.”
We clambered out of the magician’s car, over velveteen suits and french-tipped wands, and stood there for a moment with our plastic bags on the sidewalk, looking up at the bar.
As soon as I saw the place, I realized exactly what I was in for. There was a rotating glass sculpture in the middle of the main room, lit in icy blue. The dance floor was surrounded with white leather booths, throw pillows. Pearl bead curtains hung from the walls. It was the kind of place where all the men wear Aqua Di Gio and all the women fake their nails/orgasms.
“Hiiiii!” the event coordinator beamed, embracing both of us in a fragile, space-respecting hug. “Let me show you into the VIP room — that’s where our makeup and body paint artists are.”
