Strip (19 page)

“Three fingers in my bum!?”

“In your bum? No. Up your ass, yes.”

“Close to amazing,” is most likely what I said. He was so close and we were so slow that I could watch his pupils dilate. I inhaled his breath.

“That's your prostate,” he whispered.

“It's like I have two penises—one on the inside the other on the outside.”

“If that's how it feels, you're a bottom.” He pushed harder, rocking my pelvis. And each time, our eyes stayed locked.

I barely knew what was happening with me, inside me, inside my head, my heart. I didn't want to think. About Daniel. My new self. I hated myself for thinking this.

We sat like naked children facing each other, Kent's penis pressed against my leg. It was absurd, him in rapture like this, all the while talking me through it. Why Kent? Why no embarrassment? Why so easy?

I broke the rhythm.

“Here, I'm going to withdraw. My fingers are starting to fall asleep. You are so tight. And that's not a bad thing.”

“For
you
.”

After that we lay on the floor and held each other, falling in and out of sleep, slowly exploring each other with our hands. It was so good to press against a body. His body. He was one of the most sensitive men I've ever touched. Even when we kissed he seemed to be in some kind of rapture. I dreamt of the North Saskatchewan River that runs through the city where I was born, like it did into my bathing trunks as a kid. I loosened them a little and then a little more until they accidentally fell away with a kick and my shrivelled dink puckered in the icy currents. There was no beach, just a grassy bank, and no one came there to swim. There was a man, standing in the grass with his fly open. The red sun burned across the valley. I woke not knowing if it was a dream or a memory. We kept holding each other. An urge flooded me, which Kent sensed and satisfied, and then the closer he got to climaxing, the harder I had to hold onto him as his body trembled and convulsed. He bit, squeezed, dug in—whatever he had to do to keep from flying through the roof.

 

I left early for
the studio. There were reports of a blizzard already shutting down Montreal and making its way to us, causing havoc on the highway, jackknifed transports, whiteouts, hundreds of cars in the ditches. At the ballet studio, despite my morning-after inner grin, everyone was silent. This was no victory morning; the sounds of Sunday afternoon's applause did not echo. The scent of incompetence was still fresh. Madame Talegdi was losing support; she had lost our trust. Layers of discontent and blame crowded the studio. Bertrand refused to talk to Maryse. He said she couldn't dance, was all over the place, sliding
en pointe, trop sauvage
. He called her anorexic—which she was—and too weak to do anything. She wouldn't speak to me, nor would Chantal.

The sky grew eerily dark in the west, as if our foul moods fed the tempest. The radiators clanged and Madame shouted and clapped out the beat, since Hortense was ill. We all stood frozen at attention, shoulders around our ears and not looking at Madame, even Jean-Marc. She finally had her own version of a fit. She stopped the class, slammed her hands on the barre and then stomped out of the room.

Then it was Louise's turn. She coldly started her own barre while the others stretched and continued their warm-ups. When I joined Louise, she turned and stomped across the studio to the kitchen and slammed the door behind her. She had always been warm—her big eyes, her endearing shoves. But having designs on a gay man, if you're a woman, can be a challenge. In the Company, more than once a female best friend ended up in tears because her “just friends” gay male buddy had snubbed her when she got too close. I felt it from Rachelle, and even from the girls at the club: possibilities reflected in their gaze. And in the linoleum kitchen off the studio, after I opened the slammed-in-my-face door, Louise lunged—her hips square against mine, with nowhere for the family jewels to go. Louise's physique, her being, in fact everything about her, was lovely. You don't need to be made of stone to appreciate a mountain. Forcing herself against me, she spoke in a loud whisper, “Who do you think you are?”

“What do you want?”

“I don't believe this. After all the flirting, and you're playing hard to get? I know exactly what you do.”

“Chorus boy?”

“You strip for women.”

“They pay me, that's all. You know what I am.”

“But you're not interested in me?”

“Is
chêre amie
not good enough?”

Louise relaxed her hold, but she squeezed my arms with affection and perhaps a measure of sensuousness. Maybe she saw me treading water until someone threw me a life vest, or until I drifted into a current that would carry me far away.

“What are you doing here?”

“
Je fais rien
. This has all gone wrong.”

The following weeks Madame played Bertrand off Louise by giving Louise the attention and ignoring Bertrand. But all he cared about was dance, and his too-honest face gave away everything he felt for Madame. I could also tell that he saw from my weak dancing that, pretty as I was, I was no longer competition for Jean-Marc.

 

With the blizzard, I
felt like Christmas had arrived. Everything was coated in frosting and the Old Town looked even more like a fairy tale. But major roads were cleared and work was still on. At the club, in the strippers' dressing room Suzette wouldn't stop. “
Il danse. Le Grand Blond danse, vraiment. Il est danseur. B'en je n'ai jamais imagine.
Hey, what the hell are you doing in a dump like this?” The girls all seemed so impressed; if I had been keeping a pregnancy a secret, they couldn't have been more pleased. But it didn't matter. The idea of becoming a fine dancer was fading for the moment. I just wanted sanity and simplicity.

That night I decided on the songs for my official strip, with “Gloria” as my first song. It was about someone living in a world where no one calls, no matter how important you feel or how many people you think want you. And I danced to it, full out until my eyes stung, my heart pounded and my throat burned from the stale, smoke-laden air. Me, the star of my own little world.

Then Toto's “Africa,” which made me think of the kind of freedom I had never known, while I caught my breath, got grounded and started taking most of my clothes off. It was perfect timing for undoing buttons, zippers, ties and belts. After that, Suzette ran up to the stage, waving me over. “Did you pick your t'rd song?”

“Not yet.”

“Can I?”

“As long as it's not ‘In the Summer Time.'”

She laughed and dropped the coins in the machine and looked at me as she punched the buttons, like she knew exactly which buttons to push.

The music started slow with a guitar strumming and then notes on what sounded like and electric organ and a woman singing in a whispery voice, “
Je t'aime
,” while a man replied, “
Moi non plus
.” The song put me right in the bedroom it was so sensuous and sexy. As for the words, it could have been me singing to Daniel,
Je t'aime
, and Daniel replying,
Moi non plus
. But it took me to better places in my imagination—a loft in Paris—and then, being naked on the stage seemed more reverential than simply eyes staring at me in the dark. It gave me a greater understanding of the effect my sexual body could have and what I was capable of. The emotion coupled so easily with what I was doing. I had never given myself to the emotion onstage. I had never found it, and now it was so simple. My body was the song.

Suzette was waiting for me after the spell was broken. “Just remember, you have to like your songs, because you'll have to listen to them a thousand times.”

“Thank you for that one.”

“It used to be mine, but I don't know, it got too personal. I want you to have it.”

When I went back downstairs, Guy, Steve's Guy, was in the dressing room. The girls loved him. Unlike the buff muscle-head who had done us a big favour with his uptight visit between bench presses the week before, Guy was everyone's friend. Guy had a face like a lion—big-boned, big-muscled; the only thing fake was his perfect tan. Even though he didn't have much to say, he had a huge, open, I-won't-hurt-you smile. He even tried to speak English. He got a kick out of me watching him get naked and getting a load of his goods. That's what men do at urinals, in showers, change rooms and anywhere we can have a look and compare. It was circumcised, and if only one word described it that would be
heavy
, with one pronounced blue vein along the shaft. I stared because he clipped something on, around the base of the shaft. I thought it was a decoration or an ornament, but it was a leather band that held everything up and out.

And later when Guy was dancing up on his box, this thing did the job.
Don't stare at Guy
, I told myself. Staring was bad for business—I was supposed to be interested in the female clientele (though they like it if you stare at their dates).

I was a better dancer, but he had the moves. Really, you only need to dance so well… dance any better and it's the law of diminishing returns: people wonder what the hell you're doing. He didn't spin around or do anything fancy; he just worked it. And he had that Lou Rawls heavy balls energy. He had personality, too, which you can never have too much of. As a club favourite, he didn't have to drum up any business. He just kept his regulars happy going from table to table and making some good money. Although the business went to him, my tips were always great on a night he worked.

Steve took advantage of the fact that his boyfriend was busy, and made his move when Guy was up on the stage for his three dances. I was on my way downstairs for our first feathers show of the night, our 9:30, when Steve caught up and nudged me into the wall on the landing. He took my hand and led me down to the bathroom. I figured he was going to ask me to smoke with him or try something more daring, which I would have declined, already deciding I would tell him it didn't react well with me. But he shut the door, pushed me up against the wall and started kissing me with his cigarette-and-mint-gum flavoured lips and tongue. He pushed his palm into my crotch and yes, I responded. It was the first real reaction I'd had since I started working there; too many things on my mind: when to dance, when to sleep, who to please. Even the calm bartender-granddaddy of the place, Hubert, without a mean bone in his body, had me on edge on busy nights, like he was surveying the horizon for inadequate phalluses. The noise stopped for me for maybe a minute—Steve had a secure grip on me. He stroked through my pants. He spit out his gum, got down on his knees and unzipped me, then himself. He squeezed himself with one hand, me with the other. “Nice.”

There was that feeling of giving over that finally comes with knowing that you are on your way into some guy's mouth. He pulled on my balls until they hurt, before he pressed me to the back of his throat. Then he got into a slow rhythm that matched my own and I got closer to exploding each time he went deeper. I was on the verge and the top of his head was bobbing up and down, slurping—the noises he made fed the feeling—eyes peering up, me so hard I felt as if I could barely fit in his mouth. I was on my toes, calves cramping, and I held on tight. I was in some kind of eyes-rolled-back-in-my-head-this-is-ecstasy kind of place. I didn't care if anyone banged down the door; I was beyond the point of no return. And he loved it. He knew how to hold me, when to pull back, let go, and how to make the most of the explosion. Now, here in the stairwell thinking of him hungry for it, still makes me hard. How could I have ever let guilt get in the way of something so good?

“You 'ave to wear this now—” he said, “a cock ring like Guy has.”

“This?” I held out my wrist with the bracelet Kent had given me. Sweat covered my arms, dripped off my nose.

“Yes. Put it on.” I unsnapped it and looped it around everything, the way Guy had. “Now it will stay nice and big, like my boyfriend's.” The strap had a row of snaps all along it. “Dat's how you keep busy all night. I can't believe no one told you” We both looked at it.

“I guess I needed the demo.” I couldn't believe it took this long to figure it out. Now I was one of the guys. I had to tuck strategically to get it all into the
g
-string and even then I could barely zip up my pants.

“You jerk off if I'm not here.” He leaned over the sink and rinsed his face. My quest to find true love had been temporarily delayed. Of course Patrice was right there outside the door, drooping flower on his fedora—
trés blasé
—and it was obvious. I hoped it wouldn't tarnish our rides home.

After that it was a fast change into tits-and-ass attire and upstairs for some walk-walk-walk-turn and repeat. Steve was back in his booth waving. I looked at the others, then back at Steve and he was pointing for me to look down at my crotch. Was he trying to tell everyone in the whole place what had just happened by pointing to his own? But it was Suzette's dramatic glance at my crotch—I thought she was marvelling at the bulge—that gave it away. There was a wet spot on my pants; the pipes weren't empty when I dressed and it had soaked through my spandex pants and was glowing under the black lights like radioactive goo.

Later I danced for some English exchange girls from Laval University—blouses buttoned to the throat, hair perfect, house wine. I wanted to show my new toy off to the room—co-workers included. Off came the vest, down came the pants, I unclipped the
g
-string, felt myself flop out. Now, I was friendly competition for Guy, thanks to his boyfriend. But when I searched for amazed stares at the wonder between my legs, the exchange students didn't care; they wanted to have a talk after I was dressed. It may have looked like I was going to be getting a few more dances, since spontaneous conversations usually meant just that, but the conversation turned awkward.