Six #2
me do my own special—an unheard-of bit of good fortune for an unknown like me.
“Netflix!” Layna cried.
Shade heaved a great sigh. Gucci, Zhang Xiu, and Salma Hayek looked similarly mournful. Only Layna didn’t know how this snakebit
tale would end. I wanted so badly for it not to be my story.
“But then, the morning of the fourth day, I had all these alerts from The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter. Mickey Larynx had been wanking it in hotel hot tubs full of unsuspecting people. The tour was canceled. Mickey Larynx was canceled. And I lost forty-seven cities’ worth of pay. ”
I paused to take a fortifying gulp of beer.
“After he was busted?” I continued. “My manager never returned my calls. The Netflix execs definitely never returned my calls.”
“Oh my god,” Layna said. “What a disaster!”
I’d tried to bounce back professionally. But when I did my first show at Dynasty Typewriter, it seemed the whole audience
had come to heckle me about being a Mickey Larynx enabler. Memes of the two girls in the front row with a handmade sign that
read WOMEN LIKE TILLY TURNER ARE THE REASON MEN LIKE MICKEY LARYNX GET AWAY WITH IT haunted my nightmares—and all my social media pages—for months.
Then the worst thing ever happened: my mom died. Three weeks later, my appendix threatened to burst like a water balloon.
Cue the emergency appendectomy to the tune of sixteen grand and a massive babysitting bill to boot. I’d assumed I could sell
my mom’s duplex to keep myself afloat. But an estate lawyer explained my mother had taken out three mortgages on the property.
That’s how she’d been able to send me all that cash over the years. The duplex was almost underwater. But paying those three
mortgages every month would be way cheaper than my LA rent. That’s when I just gave up. It was time to let go of my childish
hopes and dreams. Time to finally grow the hell up.
“Then a duplex came available here in Boise,” I said, skipping over the fact that it had belonged to my mom, because if I
talked too much about her, I would cry.
Emmylou had known how desperate I was for health insurance. She’d helped me land a job as an assistant manager at the Capitol
Grill, which provided a middling salary and amazing benefits. In a slow-motion collapse, I’d dragged everything that wouldn’t
fit into my minivan to the curb and drove the twins to Idaho.
Still, how to explain that being in Los Angeles had made me feel like I was living my destiny?
Los Angeles had blue skies, beaches, comedy clubs, and an understanding that if artists don’t make their art, they are as good as dead in their souls.
Back in my hometown, I felt diminished. In winter, an inversion capping the Treasure Valley kept the earth and sky the color of dirty snow, and my insides felt just as grayscale.
The whole table was staring at me with the sort of profound kindness that could make me burst into tears. Salma Hayek opened
her mouth, but I held up my hand.
“Please, please don’t say anything nice or I will lose it,” I warned. I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my sweatshirt and took
another swig of beer. “Sorry to dump on y’all. I’m like: Hi, I’m Tilly Turner. I’m dead inside.”
“But your pole persona isn’t dead,” Salma insisted. “She’s just being born. None of those bad things happened to her. She’s
all sassy and new. There’s a fresh part of you, deep down, that can still enjoy things. That’s what pole is all about.”
I was just drunk enough to be swayed by the promise of a fresh start, even if it was just dancing badly around a pole with
this bunch of friendly misfits.
“Ladies, I think pole is just what the doctor ordered for this cuckolded soon-to-be ex-wife.” Layna thumped her chest. “I
mean, there I was watching The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City on my iPad while I cooked the bastard beef stew. And guess what popped up on the screen? A very slutty text from my husband.
To some other woman.”
Shade made a horrified face and fanned himself. “What did you do?”
“The only thing I could do. I took all his clothes into the front yard. Suits. Ties. Designer sneakers. I doused it in his
collection of rare scotch and set it all on fire.”
Shade gave a low appreciative whistle. “Damn.”
Layna’s only daughter was off at college so she had room to go appropriately berserk.
Moms with young kids at home could never really burn it all to the ground.
There were always tears to be wiped, arguments to be brokered, lunches and Target runs to be made.
But Layna would clearly rise from the ashes of a fire she set herself.
“Your pole name could be Phoenix,” I said.
“You’re a genius,” Layna said. “I mean, really.”
“Tilly, now you’re the only one without a pole name,” Salma Hayek said. It was stupid how seen this made me feel. Wonderfully,
improbably, a Nina Simone song blasted from the speakers. It had undergone a techno remix, but miraculously had not been ruined
by the refresh.
“It’s a new life for me,” Nina Simone sang. “And I’m feeling good.”
My tipsy mind skipped through associations. I’d first heard Simone’s music when I’d watched Point of No Return. The main character, Maggie, was obsessed with Nina Simone. In the film, Maggie left her ruined life behind to become a female
assassin. The movie was based on a French film, La Femme Nikita.
“Nikita,” I said. “My pole name is Nikita.”
I knew it with a certainty then—I was going to blow off some steam.
Up close, I could understand more of Cheyenne’s appeal. The Maleficent horns suited her pointy little face and her fishnet
top showed cleavage for days.
“Five vodka gimlets,” I said, leaning against the bar.
Cheyenne slid the first drink my way. “You’re with the Pole Virgins?”
I nodded and took a glug of the gimlet.
“When you’re ready for pole shoes, you gotta buy some of mine. Cheyenne’s Sentient Strippers.”
“Okay,” I said. “Will do.”
“They’re the best. I just gotta figure out the marketing piece.”
“You will,” I said. The alcohol made me believe it too.
“And in the club, don’t be a woo girl,” she said.
“What’s a woo girl?” I asked.
“You know from that old episode? Of that sitcom? A woo girl takes up space at the rail yelling ‘Woo’ and not tipping for shit. When you ask if she wants a lap dance, she says, ‘I respect what you do but I’m just here to drink.’ Then she gets hammered and wants onstage to show off some shitty moves she just learned at her pole dancing class. ”
“I for sure am not going to do that,” I said, and then, because I was tipsy, added, “Do you like it? Working here?”
“Being a Hucklebunny?” She seemed to consider it. “When I’m working the floor, I’m a therapist, a boundary setter, an athlete,
a fantasy, a figment of my customers’ imagination. It’s hard.” She shrugged. “But I keep a positive mindset. There’s always
money on the floor, and I know how to get it. But pole dancing? That’s different. Emotional pain? It doesn’t have a chance
when I’m on the pole.”
Cheyenne gestured toward a leggy dancer dangling upside down in full splits. The dancer made the impossible look effortless,
her skin smooth and undimpled and gleaming in the purple LED lights.
Spinning in my beginner’s L-sit, I had felt agonizing inner thigh pain, but also—for the first time in a year—elation. The
oppressive despair of my everyday life floated to the floor. The grit and sadness had drifted away too, along with the overwhelm
of being a single mom with not enough in the tank—or the bank.