5. CHAPTER FOUR #2
Arrow’s staff-member-sisterhood arrived about an hour after I did.
Three girls dressed in loose pajama pants and oversized T-shirts giggled through the door, immediately smiling my way.
Arrow introduced them to me as Saffron, Cherry, and Indigo.
(I later learned their government names are Maria, Cheryl, and Kim, but forced my brain to immediately forget this intel as I would otherwise inevitably fumble and refer to one using her parent-issued nomenclature.) The first thing I discovered was that these girls are super body-positive.
After exchanging brief pleasantries, they headed straight for the locker bank.
No one even flinched when they began to strip off their outer layers, as if this is something one just does at work, like a chef peeling an onion.
Except for me.
My jaw involuntarily hit the floor when Cherry dropped her Gymshark joggers to reveal a pair of high-waisted, leather hot shorts that exposed 90% of her posterior and appeared to be lodged in between her cheeks like a permanent wedgie.
Indigo’s torso was wrapped in unseasonal Christmas lights with a battery pack tucked into her bra, and Saffron – a diminutive firecracker at 4’11” – wore a leopard-print, one piece situation with a V so deep, it went all the way down to her belly button and left very little of her top shelf to the imagination.
They made Arrow’s outfit look demure by comparison.
“Not nice to stare,” Saffron admonished me, half bent over, strapping on a shoe that gave her the additional inches to bring her up to my height of 5’6". She hit a switch on the underside of the shoe and the platform lit up.
I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry. I’m just not used to –”
“She’s kidding,” Cherry interjected. “Don’t even listen to her.”
Saffron stood up straight. “I’m fucking with you.
” She smiled, smoothing her hands down the sides of her body, adjusting the fabric of the outfit she had on to make sure it was properly in place.
“Hand me that tape?” she went on, pointing at a Ziploc bag in the open locker.
I grabbed it and passed it to her. “Gotta keep the hammers in the tool box, you know what I’m saying?
” She proceeded to remove strip after strip of double sided tape to affix the leopard fabric to her skin.
Indigo flipped on her lights. “You guys don’t think these’ll burn me, do you?”
“Nah,” Saffron said. “I’ve done Christmas photos with those. They get a little warm, but nothing crazy. Just be careful not to slam into the pole. If you break one, you could get all scratched up.”
Indigo nodded. “Maybe I’ll tape them in place, too.”
“Can’t hurt,” Cherry added.
“So, Summer,” Saffron wondered aloud, “You gonna dance with us?”
“Not wearing that,” Cherry laughed, gesturing toward my outfit with a nod.
I looked down at the not-quite-couture situation I was sporting.
Admittedly, the tank top looked, well… ratchet, but I sort of thought that tracked with the kind of party we were throwing.
I didn’t realize there were legit costumes we could be wearing.
Also, Jenna did not mention anything about me having to –
“She’s only here to babysit,” Arrow interjected, laughing. “Besides, I doubt she could dance.”
“Damn, Arrow. That’s cold,” Cherry said.
“No, she’s probably right,” I interjected. “I don’t think I could do all that upside-down business you were doing when I got here. ”
“My moves are advanced,” Arrow replied, rubbing a fingerful of Icy Hot on the back of her shoulder, atop a tattoo of a glass heart shattered by – you guessed it – an arrow. “We don’t teach that at parties. We just like to show off.”
“It impresses the clients,” Indigo added, pressing a piece of tape to her ribcage.
“You could learn,” Cherry said. “But you’d have to upgrade your look. Although, I’m obsessed with your hair color. Where did you get that done?”
I touched my ruby locks. “4Cs. I was a cosmetology final.”
“Super cute.”
“Anyway, we all started from scratch. We could teach you how to pole.” Saffron offered.
“I took dance as a kid,” I offered.
Arrow rolled her eyes. “Totally different.”
“You should try it. We work out on Mondays and Tuesdays, when there are less likely going to be parties,” Cherry said. “We do all our own choreo. It’s great exercise.”
“Plus, it’s fun,” Indigo added. “You might like it.”
“I could never wear what you guys are wearing, though,” I admitted. “I thought this was scandalous.” I gesture at my current getup.
“You’re a grown ass woman,” Arrow said with a smirk. “No shame in flaunting it.”
A few minutes later, the hot-mess-express came roaring into the station just shy of the party’s designated 8:00 p.m. start time. 27 girls barreled out of a huge white party bus, already lit from whatever pre-game cocktails they’d enjoyed. Arrow rolled her eyes. “Ugh. I hate early birds. ”
Arrow pushed up her boobs in her bra before swinging open the door. “Hey, ladies!” she waved, welcoming them in with her fakest smile. “Who’s ready to get fucked up?”
“Woo!” the one dressed in a short, tight, white lace getup who I could only assume was some lucky man’s bride-to-be screamed out, punching a fist high in the air.
Arrow brought the girls into the studio, Cherry cranked up the music, Saffron climbed one of the poles and began spinning up by the ceiling, and Indigo launched into a headstand from the floor which resulted with her wrapping her legs around a different pole.
Arrow showed the partygoers where they could put their personal belongings.
I was grateful to not have to worry about collecting car keys because that would have been akin to herding feral cats; there was no semblance of order whatsoever among these women.
Instead, I tried to gauge the vibe of the room, but felt so overwhelmed that I was tempted to just start handing out bottles of water.
(As it turns out, Arrow may have chosen the wrong girl for the job, seeing as how my idea of a party vibe involves a mug of hot cocoa and a nice crossword puzzle.)
“You okay?” Cherry asked me.
I nodded, grabbing her by the hand and pulling her in close so I could whisper-yell. “What color shots would you start with?”
“I’d go middle of the road. This group seems okay so far.” She pulled back to look at me. “Relax, bae. This is nothing.”
I took a breath and grabbed the raspberry Smirnoff Jell-o shots.
I counted ten trays of 32 shots each, two of which were the “lemon drops” (aka glorified Gatorade).
I put on my best attempt at a cool-party-girl face, which may have come out doppelgangering as a constipation face, and held the plastic platter out in front of my stomach, heading for the ladies who were already dancing in a weird junior-high-school-type circle.
“Hey, girlfriends!” I screeched at the group, bopping my way on my clunky shoes into the middle of their proverbial “Ring Around the Rosy” formation.
Carrying a cafeteria tray of shots through the strobe-lit-darkness, I was desperately trying to make sure none of them fell while DMX barked at me through the speakers, God rest his soul.
“OhmyGod, shots!” someone hollered, and I was bombarded by the greedy crowd, as if I was an untended bag of chips at a seagull-laden beach.
Swarmed. Pummeled. Stunned, I stood there, amidst the slurping of mouths on plastic, which would probably have sounded like a dick-sucking contest were it not for DMX not-so-gently assaulting my ears with his repeated use of expletives.
Tiny cups flew back onto my tray and excited obscenities came at me from all sides as the ladies resumed their sad attempts at sticking out their mostly flat hindquarters in the name of dance.
Thankfully, Arrow put an end to the mass hysteria by momentarily lowering the music and explaining that the group should split up, no more than four per pole, so they could be led through a series of moves by her team.
There would be four basic maneuvers taught, she explained.
“We’ll begin with a dip turn, followed by a fireman spin, a back knee hook, and a fan kick.
We’ll also practice some floor work and then we’ll put together a short piece of choreo using both the pole and a chair.
But first, we need to stretch. Everybody spread out. ”
She commanded the room, and I was in awe.
It was oddly reminiscent of watching an elementary school teacher direct a classroom of sweaty, post-recess children.
Saffron, Cherry and Indigo headed to stations throughout the dance floor.
Each of them was responsible for covering two poles, so Arrow modeled a move, and they did it with her before coaching their respective partygoers on how to execute it.
The whole thing was conducted with precision: Arrow made it clear when I was to bring around more shots to keep the mood level, she gave the girls time to practice, and the place hummed with the nervous laughter of satisfied customers.
They practiced “walking sexy” for each other, spun, slipped, and slid around the poles, learned how to crawl across the floor and how to fake a split off the pole.
Generally speaking, the girls were terrible at it, but they were having fun, which was obviously all that mattered.
When the trays of shots were halfway gone, my colleagues performed a little number they’d be teaching to the room.
An amalgamation of all the moves they’d taught in isolation with some simple transitions both on the pole and on the ground, somehow they made this 90-second situation look extremely hot.
The ladies cheered, excited to learn a “whole pole dance,” and continued gratefully accepting my shots as they practiced and ultimately performed for each other in small groups.