Reinventing Mona

by Jennifer Coburn

  Gorgeous bodies are wasted on imbeciles.

  “Some people are missionaries and they go to poor places giving out food, and that is such a beautiful thing to do. Dancers are kind of like sexual missionaries.”

  No pun intended, I’m quite sure.

  “I’m giving positive sexual energy to the world and I make people really, really happy. This class is about so much more than stripping. It’s about life and giving and sharing your gifts.” Part of me thought Tabitha was an adorable but ridiculous child blessed with a killer body, who was desperately trying to force a spiritual message from hustling money from horny guys. Another part reluctantly admitted that she may be onto something. The whole intersection of the spirituality and the sensuality creating a double whammy of super-duper Jesus power was a bit much, but the idea that a person could be wholesome and pure and good, and simultaneously very in touch with her sexuality was something I hadn’t considered.

  “Life is a striptease,” added Olivia, who really needed to shut up very soon.

  “I thought it was a cabaret,” shot Kelly, the least tolerant of Olivia.

  Tabitha acted as if she hadn’t heard a word. I was reminded of the scene in Legally Blonde where Elle taught her hairdresser the “bend and snap.” Tabitha’s signature move was the “ignore and proceed,” which she undoubtedly had to use when lecherous men wanted more than a lap dance from her. Bubbling with enthusiasm, Tabitha handed us each an agenda for the class. “We’re going to start off with the entrance and walk, then move on to hip rolls, booty shaking, crawling, sliding, and pole work. Everybody ready to turn up the heat and hustle some bucks?!”

  What would Jesus do?

  “Let’s do it!” shouted Olivia.

  Tabitha walked to her CD player, but before putting on a hard-driving rap tune, Tabitha lined us up in front of the mirror like a chorus line. “What you need to know about men at strip clubs is that they will suck your soul dry if you let them. Most of them don’t mean to, it’s just the nature of the business. They’re there to take pleasure and you’re there to give it, but if you’re not very, very guarded they’ll take something precious from you.” She paused to let that sink in, forgetting that with the exception of Vicki, none of us had any intention of dancing professionally. “Another thing is that for every lap dance you sell, five guys are going to turn you down, and that feels like shit. It doesn’t matter how pretty or sexy you are, most of them are just too cheap to spring for a dance. It’s not you, it’s them. It’s that simple. You cannot take it personally, or it will drain you. I have a little ritual I do before I dance,” she perked. “I sing Christina Aguilera’s ‘Beautiful’ to myself in the changing room before I go on. I watch myself in the mirror and belt it out. ‘Words can’t bring me down!’” she began to sing. “Then I think about what I’m going to buy for myself with the money I make from them and I turn the guys into that thing before I go on stage, so I’m never really looking at men, I’m looking at furniture, diamond earrings, whatever! It may sound a bit cold, but these guys are there to take, take, take, and if you don’t protect yourself, you’ll find yourself, well, taken. Okay then!” Tabitha beckoned us with a sweeping motion of both arms. “Who’s feeling sexy?”

  I didn’t. I felt foolish and embarrassed to be staring at my own reflection in a line of wannabe sexpots. “A lot of you are probably feeling pretty crazy for being here right now, like, why did I sign up for this class. Am I right or am I right?” A round of nervous laughter was comforting. “No matter how you’re feeling—whether you are bloated from your period, or you just had a big fight with your boyfriend, oh, or girlfriend, or you’ve got a big pimple on your butt—no matter what you feel inside, you have got to come out with an attitude that you are the hottest thing on the planet and these guys are lucky to be looking at you. If you can pull that off, I don’t care how old you are or what you look like, you are going to be smokin’ when you dance.”

  “That is so true,” said Olivia. “It’s all about the attitude.” Vicki shot me a look as if to say, “There’s one in every crowd, isn’t there?” I refrained from looking behind me to see if she was really gesturing to one of the pretty girls.

  By the second hour the class had become a sisterhood of booty-shaking hoochie mamas. During the first exercise, the “step, roll, drag” walk, Violet brought us together when she collapsed in tears during the very first exercise. Each of us had made flirtatious eye contact with our reflections in the mirror when we saw Violet fall to the ground and burst into tears. “I can’t do this,” she cried. Immediately, the women scampered to huddle around her. Stripping was a learned skill, but crisis management was second nature for women. Bettie Page, Reno Cher, and Mrs. Viagra draped their arms around Violet and told her how brave she was, and how she could strut her sexy little ass toward herself in the mirror. I could hear Mike’s voice in my mind—“Leave it to a bunch of chicks to take something sexy and make it into some big emotional drama.”

  When Violet sobbed on the ballet studio floor, I couldn’t understand why she was distraught at the sight of her strutting self. But twenty minutes later, I too was terrified by the vulnerability of my own image desperately trying to be something I wasn’t—sexy. There’s something exquisitely fragile in the attempt. In the desire. Any one of these women could have broken me with a word. When Violet got off the floor and wiped her nose with her shirtsleeve, it was as though we’d all been initiated into a secret sorority. We weren’t really sure why, but we now had a vested interest in the other’s success.

  With every dance move I did, it was as if a layer of old wallpaper was being peeled off. The hip roll was like tearing sheets of Grammy’s elegant floral pattern from the dining room. The crawling move felt like a metal spatula removing another layer, a gold finished pattern under the flowers. Twirling provocatively around a pole was like tearing wood paneling off of the commune walls with my bare hands. Underneath was a pink velvet wall covering as gaudy as a brothel’s. I would never actually decorate my house with such tacky paper, but a small part of me reveled in the hard sexuality of it. Loathe as I am to admit it, there was a piece of me that loved the cheap and tawdry side of sex—a part of me that longed to create one room in my tremendous home that looked as though a mud flap silhouette lived there.

  Even Olivia ingratiated herself to the group when she helped a few of us with our hip rolls. She placed her hands on my hips, moved them as though they were suspending a hoola hoop, and assured me that it took her hours to get the hang of it. Vicki immediately mastered every move, but took herself way too seriously, seducing her own image in the mirror with pursed lips and squinting eyes. When she ran her hands through her hair, then ran them down her Danskin-clad breasts and crotch, I shuddered at the lack of subtlety. “Too much?” she asked me with the tinge of insecurity that won me over.

  “Well ...” I hesitated. “You’re a beautiful woman. You don’t need to try so hard at it I think you could definitely pull it off sexier if you took it down two or three notches.”

  For our final exam, each student had to perform one number for the class. Tabitha dimmed the lights, moved the port-a-pole to the center of the room, poured everyone a glass of wine, and gave us each a fistful of Monopoly money. I was the last dancer, which meant I had the chance to sip two glasses of wine and witness that, even after taking the class, only Vicki deserved real money for exotic dancing. Despite a hip roll that was as sexy as churning butter, the “Vicious and Voluptuous Violet” was the class favorite. The group burst into wild applause when Violet stumbled on her five-inch CFM heels and momentarily lost her balance. In her best trucker voice, Olivia shouted, “I likes me a good clumsy woman.”

  Vicki hooted in a husky drawl, “Womens is all sexy when they wobbly.”

  When Tabitha motioned that it was my turn, my giddiness sobered into terror. I pointed to my watch to let her know we were already five minutes over time. “Time to dance, sweetie pie,” she whispered. “Next we have a real work of art for you
. We won’t have to wonder what you’re smiling about when you see the magnificent and mysterious Mona Lisa.” Tabitha zipped out before pressing the Play button on her CD. I recognized Mary J. Blige’s voice urging, “so just dance for me,” and silently coached myself. “You are the hottest thing on planet earth, and these diamond rings are lucky to be looking at you,” I repeated in my mind. I began with a modest hip roll then twirled around the pole a few times before sliding my arched back down it as though my hands were chained together over my head. The stripping sorority began cheering and calling me over to tip me with pink dollars in the elastic of my sweatpants. Soon, the wine buzz returned and I let loose. Mona Lisa stopped at all the right breaks and mugged the famous enigmatic grin while placing my hands mischievously over my shirted breasts. I tossed my head to make my high ponytail whip around like a helicopter propeller. Sliding my hands from my thighs to my knees, I bent at the waist and pretended my butt cheeks were washing a windshield, as Tabitha had instructed earlier. As I heard the song winding down, I decided to be the only one in the class who used the slave-like crawling move we were taught. I did a few more small teasing moves before gently slipping into my submissive pose. Well, it was supposed to be a gentle slip but I ended up losing control and slamming my knees against the wooden floors. “Shit!” I screamed, realizing I had landed on the same spot where I’d removed my skin during the soccer game. “My knee, my knee is bleeding!” I cried. The Monopoly money fell to the floor, and this time it was me in the center of the maternal huddle. “Are you okay, sweetie pie?” Tabitha rushed over.

  The tired mother reached into her purse for Blue’s Clues Band-Aids.

  Bettie Page rubbed her hand across my back and told me to count to ten.

  Vicki told me I looked pretty sexy until I screamed in agony.

  Chapter 15

  On our wedding night, Adam carried me over the threshold of the honeymoon suite of the Hotel Del Coronado. He set me onto the king-sized pink velvet bedspread where a silver bucket of ice chilled a bottle of champagne. We laughed for no particular reason, just giddy to be alone together. “Would you forgive me if I tore these buttons from your gown?” Adam asked.

  “Oh, don’t,” I begged, though I was thrilled he was so eager to undress me. “I want to save the gown for our daughter to wear at her wedding.”

  “You torment me, Mona. There’ve got to be a hundred little buttons down the back of that thing.”

  “This thing is a work of art, Adam! And there are exactly 142 pearl buttons for your beefy fingers to unfasten if you want me,” I teased.

  “You are a work of art.” Adam sat me on the edge of the bed and brushed the loose hair from my Breakfast at Tiffany’s bun away from my neck. My breathing became labored as my body slipped into a bath of warmth and intensity. “One button,” he said as I felt the bodice of my gown loosen ever so slightly. “Two,” he said, popping the second button loose. Three, four, and five felt as though my body was being freed. First the touch of the air on my skin, then Adam’s fingers delicately, surgically separating the button loops from the pearls. Each time his finger grasped another button and pressed it through the loop, I felt myself swell and split with desirous, desperate invitation. It was divine torture.

  Then the phone rang. “Who would call us on our wedding night?” I whined.

  “Let it ring,” he whispered as he began slipping the sleeve from my shoulder.

  Then it rang a second time. “Ignore it, Mona.”

  I slid back into my wedding night, the perfect balance of anticipation and satisfaction.

  After a few seconds, the answering machine beeped like a siren. “Hey, Mona Lisa,” Mike’s voice blared through the room. “Did you have a good time last night, hot stuff?”

  Why the hell is Mike Dougherty calling me on my wedding night?! How dare he call demanding the intimate details of my first night with Adam while it’s still going on no less. And why in God’s good name would he leave a message like that on the answering machine when he knows Adam is with me?! Wait a second. There’s no answering machine at the ...

  “Shit!” My eyes shot open. “I can’t even have a romantic night with Adam in my dreams.” I picked up the phone, furious with Mike for interrupting my dream. “Do you mind?!” I shouted into the phone. “I was trying to sleep!”

  “Whoa,” he said like such a dumb guy, he actually sounded like someone doing an impression of a dumb guy. “I’m sorry, did I accidentally dial my ex-wife?”

  “I didn’t know you have an ex-wife,” I said with less of an edge, but still annoyed. “You never write about her.”

  “Yeah, well I’ve got an ex-wife who would sue the shit out of me for whispering her name in a confessional,” Mike said.

  “Well I can see why. You are completely rude and self-centered!”

  “How the hell was I supposed to know you were still sleeping? It is almost nine o’clock. Some of us who have jobs have been up for hours,” he snapped back. “I wanted your take on last night.”

  “Oh yeah, right. You are so interested in how I did in the class, right? Soooo concerned with how I handled it because you, you’re just so caring. You just want to hear about all of the hot naked women I saw last night.” I mocked his request with a dumb guy voice. “Take notes. Tell me everything.”

  “Is this what you’re like in the morning? Here’s a free one for you, don’t let your boy see your charming morning personality. You need some serious coffee or Valium, or something.”

  I sat up in bed and threw my blankets off of my body. “I do not need some coffee or Valium or anything. You were completely rude to me the other night.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mike asked.

  “I called you and you completely dismissed me like I was some sort of intrusion on your life. Like ‘So sorry, this is not a good time for me right now. I’ll call you when it’s convenient for me. Me, the center of the universe.’” I was pacing the house madly, thankful to be barefoot, lest he hear the angry staccato of shoe heels in the background.

  “You are whacked!” Mike shot. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I was busy. I told you it wasn’t a good time to talk and that I’d call you back. Now I’m calling you back. Where’s the problem?”

  His question was like a slap in the face. Not the slap of an abuser. But the kind of slap a buddy gives you when you’re freaking out. The kind of slap where you snap back to your good senses and say, “Thanks, man. I needed that.” I couldn’t say that to Mike, though. I’d painted myself into a corner and now seemed like the hysterical women he writes about in his column. I had to find an excuse he’d understand.

  “Hey, I’m sorry, Dog. I was just having a sex dream and you called right when I was about to, well you know. You can’t blame a girl for being a bit cranky after that.”

  “Oh,” he digested. “Okay.”

  “Okay, like okay, you’re over it? Or okay like, ‘Okay, whatever. You’re whacked but I don’t want to get into it’?”

  “Is there a difference?” Mike asked.

  “The difference is that one is like, ‘Oh, okay, I can understand where you’re coming from and we’re fine now’ and the second is like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t really give a shit either, so I’ll say okay so we can change the topic and move on to things that I actually care about like whether the women in strip class wore G-strings or went totally nude.’”

  “Uh, the first one,” he answered.

  “The first what?”

  “The first thing you said. The one about I get what you’re saying and it’s all good.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Okay, the second one,” Mike panicked.

  “Do you have any idea what I’m even talking about?!”

  Mike began to laugh. “Look, I hear you, but I gotta be honest, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” At that point, I laughed, too. “Mona, I’m a pretty simple guy. All this ‘what did you mean by this, what
did you mean by that’ is really wasted on me. If I say okay, it just means okay. Maybe this would be a good time for me to clue you in on guy truth number two: We’re really not all that complicated. If we say we’re hungry, it’s ‘cause we’re hungry. If we say we’re tired, we’re tired. We don’t do the whole subtext thing the way women do.”

  “What’s the first truth?” I asked.

  “The what?”

  “Mike, do you have a thirty-second memory? The first guy truth. You said the second was that you people are dog-shit simple. What’s the first?”

  “Oh, yeah. That we’re thinking about sex most of the time.”

  “Well, then you should appreciate that I didn’t like having my sex dream interrupted.” I sank into my chaise lounge and kicked my leg onto the wooden armrest.

  “Nah. So what was this sex dream about anyway?”

  “Never mind. So who was over last night when I called?”

  “Never mind. Hey, Vicki told me you got into it last night. Said you were kinda hot, Mona Lisa.”

  My spirit free-fell at the thought of Mike and Vicki talking about me in stripping class. Certainly they had a few laughs at my expense. I wondered if Vicki offered an imitation of how ridiculous I looked. I wondered if he told her how much I was paying him. I wondered how the hell Mike even knew Vicki!

  “How the hell do you even know Vicki?” I demanded.

  “Shit, am I in trouble again?”

  To an observer, it would appear as though I was doing nothing. I sat motionless, saying nothing. The nothingness, though, was the center of an isometric pull of equal competing forces. Part of me was furious, humiliated, and betrayed by the fact that Mike sent a mole to report on my performance at stripping class. I wanted to tear through the phone line, grab the skin on his face, and bang his head on a wall—repeatedly. Another part didn’t want to seem as though every little thing set me off. I had already spent my drama on the “what does okay mean?” ordeal. I didn’t want him to think that every interaction with me was going to be wrought with conflict.