Lauren Takes Leave (20 page)

In the living room, I spot that giant pole where Leslie’s
overstuffed couch used to be. Several guests are gathering around a really
skinny woman with fake boobs barely encased in a shrunken black T-shirt. The
rest of the outfit is comprised of tight, black boy short–style underwear, and
chunky silver platforms. I’m hoping she’s the instructor.

“Where does she
find
these people?” I wonder aloud.
But without Kat beside me, there is no witty repartee in response.

The hottie blows a whistle and the group gets quiet. “Hi,
girls! My name is Lola, and I’m from the Copa, Copacabana,” she sings,
imitating that Barry Manilow song.

Which answers that question, I guess.

Lola starts showing us some basic pole-dancing moves. She
hooks her leg around the pole and then tosses her hair back theatrically.

I’m pretty sure I could do that.

Then she ups the ante a bit with slightly more complicated
twists, turning her body around the pole while gyrating her hips. She dances
around that thing ten, twenty times. Her moves are mesmerizingly sexy,
especially with this heavy beat in the background, with some guy singing,
“Come, my lady, come, come, my lady…”

Her legs are really long and perfectly toned. And she’s so
flexible! I suddenly understand why men like to watch this.
I
like to
watch this! I feel both dizzy and embarrassed. I have to look away.

“Get in touch with your inner diva,” Lola says. “Find your
sexy.”

This is misogynistic garbage, I remind myself, created
by
men
for
men who want to objectify women.

Stop being such a buzzkill, Lauren
, I scold myself.
You’re only upset because you lack the balls to get up and do something like
this.

But then another voice arrives to weigh in.
Where’s
your sexy at, girl?

A third voice joins the party in my head, asking,
Why
are you thinking in bad grammar? And where is Kat when you need her? She could
get up there and then push you to do it, too. You’d get to be all shy and coy
and like, “No, no, not me,” and then she’d be like, “Yes, Lauren, you!” so
you’d do it, secretly stoked. And then, if you look stupid or come off too
slutty, you could blame it all on Kat and walk away clean.

There are too many people in my head right now.

A few brave souls come up and spin while the rest of us
cheer them on. One woman even manages to hoist herself up and spin right down
like she’s in Cirque du Soleil.

She doesn’t seem objectified.

She smiles and high-fives Lola at the end of her turn.
“That was a blast!” she tells us. “I’m totally getting a pole for my office.”

I wonder what she does for a living.

I grab another drink from a passing waiter and watch the
entertainment for a while, as three more women try the pole. It does look like
fun.

Maybe even more fun than washing one’s bottom in Leslie’s
bidet.

I mean, I’m not
completely
uncoordinated. I was a
gymnast in middle school, for goodness’ sake.
I can totally handle this
.

“Okay people.” I stand, swaying slightly. “I’ve got some
dance moves, and I’m prepared to use ’em!”

There are cheers all around.

Next thing I know, I’m up at the pole and pelvic-thrusting
to the beat. “That’s it,” Lola coaches, “Now try to spin, one hand here, the
other here.” I follow her instructions, and…I do it! I actually spin around the
pole. My hands are slippery from nerves, but that only seems to make my
movements work better, faster.

I mean, not to brag, but I look
hot.
I can tell
from the silence that has overtaken the room. The group is so jealous of my
awesome moves, it has been rendered speechless.

After a few more turns, it’s just so natural.

“Honey, let someone else have a chance,” I hear Lola say,
but I’m not ready to let go quite yet.

Leslie catcalls to me from where she has joined the group
on the sofa. “Hey, bitch, it’s my turn now!”

I wave to her, like,
just give me one more minute
.

“Plus, you suck,” Leslie adds, standing up and coming
toward the pole. A chill settles over the group.

Shut up
, Leslie, I think. All night, she’s been the
killjoy to my good time, ruining her own party by yelling profanities and
making me—and probably everyone—feel like shit.

I’m totally not giving up the pole now, partially to prove
to her that I’m good at this, but mostly just to spite her.

For my next go-round, I have to pull an Emeril and kick it
up a notch. I need something exceptional, something to make the crowd go wild.

Something that Leslie will always remember.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much in my bag of tricks.
Think
Striptease
, Lauren. Find your inner Demi and let her loose on Leslie.

Suddenly, I’ve got an idea. I look her way and wink,
thinking,
Try to top this, bitch.

Then I hook my left leg around the pole like I saw Lola do
in her demo. An anticipatory “Whoo” comes from the onlookers.
Yeah, ladies,
dat’s right.
The feisty black-girl rapper in my mind is speaking to me, and
she’s gonna help me spin.

And right before I black out, I think:
Leslie is going
down.

There is just so much blood.

I’m not sure where it’s coming from or how it ended up on
my hands, since I don’t see a cut anywhere on me and I don’t seem to be
hurting. I check my head, my legs, my arms. No signs of injury anywhere.

My legs are splayed at an awkward angle, though, so I try
to move them. The spiky heel of one of my awesome Louboutin shoes seems to be
caught in a net. A black net, like the kind to catch fish in. Yes, that’s right—the
word for that is fishnet!

The best way to get my shoe free from this fishnet seems
to be by tearing a hole in it, which I do.

Ah. My black stiletto comes loose. I check to see if it’s
damaged, but it seems fine.

Right now my life is like a movie I’m watching on
pay-per-view, except that the volume’s on mute. Then someone comes into the
living room and clicks the remote, bringing the sound back in full force. Noise
is all around me.

“You bitch!” someone yells.

“Back off, get off her!” someone else says, not too kindly.

All these people bark directions my way. “Get off” and
“move” seem to be the two most prevalent comments, so I figure I’ll follow
those commands and see if the noise stops.

I crawl away and something frees underneath me. The mass
that I was resting on turns out to be a person, which strikes me at this very
moment as sort of funny and also quite weird. How did
that
happen?

Then the person moves a little. And then the person
speaks.

“Fucking bitchwhoreasshole!” It’s Leslie, her voice
muffled by the Oriental carpeting.

She really is rather awful, isn’t she?

She sits up and turns toward me, clutching her cheek.

Ah! There’s the source of all that blood.

I must have kicked her in the face with the heel of my
shoe as I got airborne around the pole. Which is, you know, sobering news.

“I am so…so very…very sorry!” I say, reaching my hand out
toward Leslie and standing up unsteadily, my wayward shoe tucked under my left
arm like a football.

“Don’t you fucking dare come near me, you fucking
bitchwhoreasshole!”

What have I done? I am stunned into inaction as I survey
the horror of the scene that’s unfolding all around me.

I catch another glimpse of Leslie’s beaten-up, pulpy cheek,
and I’m afraid of retribution both immediate and calculated. In this instant, a
crowd of drunken women in lingerie could turn on me, like something out of
Michael Jackson’s
Thriller
video, and scratch me with their manicured
fingernails, throwing their fruity drinks in my face. And tomorrow? What if
this story leaks to the community and everyone at school finds out? I’ll be
known as That Teacher at the Sex-Toy Party Who Bashed in the Hostess’s Face with
the Heel of Her Louboutins. That’s not the kind of title that inspires
confidence in parents, right? I can picture them whispering about me on the
sidelines of soccer fields throughout the county, saying,
I don’t care how
talented she is with iambic pentameter, j
ust
keep your kids away from
that delinquent, pole-dancing drunk with lifetime tenure
.

Luckily, people ignore me as they tend to Leslie’s wound.
Gauze and towels and bandages of all shapes and sizes appear from the hall
closet. A bag of frozen peas is passed in front of me.

“For the swelling!” handholding Pam instructs. “Put the
bag of peas on your face, Lez. You don’t want to end up purple and swollen.”

“Let me help!” I plead. I’d really like to be useful in
some way, instead of feeling rooted to the floor like another pole in the
living room. Plus, maybe taking some positive action now will help soften their
gossipy blows about me later. People might say,
She really screwed up, but
then she came to Leslie’s rescue like Florence Nightingale.
Or,
Lauren
may be uncoordinated, but she has a gift for healing. I’m definitely going to
request her as my daughter’s sixth-grade English teacher, and I suggest you do
the same.

But it’s like I’ve become invisible. No one pays any
attention to me, or even seems to hear me. The sacred womanly wall of the
Silent Treatment has been invoked, and it is impenetrable.

I’m dead to them, cast out of the tribe.

This absolute exclusion feels even worse than being
screamed at. So I try again.

“I said I was sorry! It was an accident, people!” I yell
to no one in particular.

“There are no accidents, only major fuckups,” Kat says,
materializing next to me and looking totally freaked out. Her hair is standing
up funny, and she’s missing one of her large hoop earrings.

“Thank God you’re here!” I hug her. “To rescue me! I’ve
got to get out—”

Kat cuts me off and grabs my wrist, giving a furtive glance
toward the stairs. “Me, too. Like,
yesterday
.”

“Okay. Let me just say good-bye to Lola…” I start.

“
No!
” Kat snaps, whisper-screaming at me. “There is
no time for good-byes, Lauren. We’ve got to get out of here
now
!”

Her eyes are glassy, her skin pale and clammy. She looks possessed.
For a split second I think,
Kat’s been bitten by a vampire
! Then I
remember that my life is not a part of the
Twilight
series.

“But I really have to pee again!”

“Squat outside,” Kat says.

“Fine.” I grab my purse and make my way to the front hall,
Kat still dragging me by the wrist.

Word of Leslie’s fate has spread quickly. Women are
pouring into the living room from all parts of the house, including the master
suite, proving that juicy gossip trumps vintage John Holmes videos.

There is whispering and mumbling and a sidelong glance or
two my way. I’m nervous to stay, anticipating a barrage of insults, but I worry
that leaving Leslie like this will only make it worse for me in the long run,
like leaving the scene of a car crash and turning it into a hit-and-run.

I pull back from Kat. “I think I should just check on her
one more time; it looked really bad…”

“Duck!” Kat yells.

I do, and narrowly miss getting hit by one of Leslie’s
lace-up boots. “Thanks for coming,
bitc
haaas!”

“Alrighty, then,” I say. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

“I’ve been trying to tell you that for the past three
minutes! We need to leave
town
!” Kat says, clicking her high-heeled way
across the marble foyer. I limp behind her.

“Ooh!” I say. Propped on a chair by the front door is a
pile of small, pink Chinese takeout cartons.
Sexy-to-Go
is inscribed on
hangtags in black ink. I grab two.

Like Kat, I can never resist party favors.

“Here, take this,” I say, stuffing one of the favors in
Kat’s bag. “Did you see what happened?” We’re hiding out under some evergreens,
hidden from view of Leslie’s house by a few huge bushes.

Kat’s busy on her phone, tapping at keys, but she won’t
tell me what she’s doing. She looks up long enough to answer.

“Um, which part? The completely embarrassing pole-dancing
part? Or the tear-a-gash-in-the-hostess’s-face part?”

“The…” I stop. “Wait a second. I’ve got talent! Moves!”

“And that’s why you see so many men with bloody faces
coming out of stripper bars. Because of the ‘talented’ pole dancers with their
‘moves.’”

She returns to tapping her fingers on the small, glowing
screen.

“You mean…Leslie was
right
?” I pause to consider
this. What if, in general, I stink at things that I
think
I excel at?
It’s disturbing to contemplate that I might actually be delusional, and that I
walk through this world posing confidently as others laugh. “I’m like the
Elaine of pole dancing?” I ask.

“Worse. You’re like the Elaine-meets-Tonya-Harding’s-boyfriend
of pole dancing.” She shrugs, like it’s a fact and all she’s doing is sharing
old news.

Figures. In trying to let loose, I come undone.

True, I may have temporarily misplaced my sexy, but pole
dancing at Leslie’s is not how I’m going to find it.

That is clear to me now.

“It wasn’t nice of me. To hurt her and then leave like
that. Even if she wasn’t being…gracious. Who does that?” I ask the trees, the
sky, the grass, since Kat’s lost to her phone. “Who am I?”

Then, I remember the pressure in my bladder and go in
search of a private spot behind a spruce. I squat as per Kat’s instructions,
trying really hard not to pee on my new shoes.

“Charming,” Kat says, upon my return. “Plus, they totally
saw you.” She points to some teenagers leaning out a second-story window at the
house next door and laughing.