Liberation

Larry lost The Mambo Club to Bruno, an out-of-towner who called me a dish.

He had the old neon sign removed, put up his own ~ The Piranha Lounge. "The" and "Lounge" were a harmless blue and "Piranha" was a thick, vicious red.

Nicki, his girlfriend, lived with him but they weren't even married. Her red hair was full of breezes like her hollow eyes. Everything about her was easy ~ the way she talked, the way she sipped highballs, lit cigarettes, fingered the naked pages of Bruno's magazines.

He told her to break me in while he remodeled. I would've given anything to be just like her but hated her kind of dancing and costumes. The backsides were completely cut out. And when her top came off, white circles the size of communion wafers covered the tips of her breasts.

She hula-hooped her hips, pouted her lips. The guys would start hollering but soon got real quiet, like any noise would strangle every remaining ounce of air from their hollow mouths.

She tried showing me how to do it, but I couldn't forget about being half- naked. My knees abandoned me. I smiled like a ballerina with blistered lips and missing teeth.

She said "I felt just like you did at first" and could tell I didn't believe her. She slammed her drink down, told me to grow the fuck up, "they ain't coming to watch you *dance*, you know?" Up at Bruno's apartment, she made me my first pitcher of Harvey Wallbangers and showed some adult movies she starred in. I felt like an idiot for being so embarrassed. If she could do that, I could be a go-go dancer.

She said you get used to it. I~d been at the bar long enough to figure she was probably right.

Her and Bruno went in the bedroom. When I heard her screaming more I hurried downstairs into the Sunday night silence of the empty bar.

Alone, I loved being fucked-up, being fed-up and glad, so full of shit that nothing mattered ~

*free.*

I wanted music so loud I couldn't hear inside my head. Like Nicki said, if you can't beat it, fuck it. How could relief be wrong?

I walked onto the hollow stage and became a real woman like Nicki. I slipped out of my clothes and into one of her G-strings covered with blue sequins the color of true blood, before it's exposed to the air.

I pulled its stiff strap slowly inside me and danced like my body was a charm to tempt men into killing me: an unhappy woman's final victory.

It was easy until the bar was full, until I lost my shirt in a room full of eyes that tattooed my skin with invisible holes.

I wanted the men to grab me so I could feel on the outside what I felt on the inside.

Maybe then I would've known it was real. Maybe then I would've stopped.

copyright 1994 kathy jo kramer