Shameless

by Nina Lemay

“I’m attracted to you,” he says. His voice still holds a hint of breathlessness. “But then again, you already knew that.”

  “But I’m—” I’m attracted to you too. This much should be obvious.

  “I know,” he says softly. He lets go of my wrist and instead takes my hand between his hot, hot palms. He brings it to his lips. “But this isn’t right.”

  “I won’t say anything to anyone,” I murmur. “If you really think I’ll file a complaint—”

  He groans under his breath. “That’s not it. I trust you not to ruin my life… is that dumb of me?”

  I shake my head.

  “Thank you.”

  “Then… what is it?”

  “It’s everything. It’s because I’m your teacher, an authority figure. And yes, it’s because of how we met too. Maybe each of these things alone I could manage, but all together, it’s just too much. Do you understand?”

  I only shake my head no.

  “It didn’t start right, ‘Annah.”

  “So what?” I say in a hushed, furious whisper. “Who cares how it started? We’re both adults, and we both—”

  “We may want it now, but we’ll both regret it. We didn’t start out as equals. It didn’t start well, and it’s not going to end well.”

  “What do you care about how it ends?” I have a hard time keeping the anguish out of my voice. “You’re about to do what every guy fantasizes about, and you’re just—”

  He cringes, and I bite my tongue so hard I nearly give myself an impromptu tongue piercing.

  God, I’m such an idiot. Or is he right and I am hopelessly ruined?

  “That’s just it, ‘Annah. I don’t want us to be that. I don’t want to be that guy.”

  The silence lingers. The only sound is the rustle of clothes and creak of leather when I awkwardly scramble back into the passenger seat.

  “I’m going to take you home now,” he says. “Please don’t try to tell me you’ll walk.”

  And I don’t. I give him the street name, and the intersection. The car crawls along the residential street and idles on the corner.

  I swallow the watermelon-sized lump in my throat. “Thanks,” I say. “For the ride.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  I want to say something else. I’ll see you in class next week. Or maybe even I had a really nice time or some other such platitude. Right now platitude sounds good.

  Without a word, I open the door and get out of the car. I linger for just a moment longer than necessary before slamming the door closed.

  And he calls my name.

  “Yes?” I lean close to the window as he rolls it down. I peer in, but he’s shrouded in shadow.

  “The camera. Don’t forget.”

  He holds it out, the leather case with the dangling strap. My chest constricts. I snatch it out of his hand and run for the lobby of my building.

  He doesn’t know this, but I wait inside the door, watching through the murky, cracked glass as the car drives away until the last reflection of headlights has vanished.

  It’s Saturday night and I have no idea what to do with myself, so I decide to show my face at work. I’m behind on my weekly goal because of all the shit that was going down, and I bet my boss is pissed that I didn’t show last night like I was supposed to.

  But, as it turns out, no one gives a shit. I get a vaguely disapproving look from the boss as I sprint past him to the changing room, and that’s it. Upstairs, the room is so full I have to change in a corner. Girls sit in front of mirrors, curling their hair and rolling joints and gluing on false lashes. Sparkly eyeshadow and crumbs of hash litter the counter amidst tubes of lipstick, travel-size bottles of hand sanitizer, and tampons. The smell of hairspray and weed and twenty different kinds of cheap perfume wafts up my nostrils, with an undercurrent of that weird metallic stripper-smell I’ve become so familiar with that it makes me paranoid. I wash my hair every night after work and keep sniffing the sleeves of my hoodie all day: can they smell it on me?

  Maryse is there, along with two of the girls from the other night. They barely look up from their phones and their mirrors. Maryse gives me a nod of acknowledgment, which is about as much as I hoped for anyway. Not that I expected them to worry about what had become of me after Thursday night—they probably decided I’d taken off without saying bye and that was that. No one wanted to ask themselves too many questions. It’s always better that way, something you learn after a few months stripping. Keep your nose out of everyone else’s business.

  I don’t really hold it against them. I’d do the same. Probably.

  I put on my simplest go-to bra and panties set, even though everyone else is going the extra mile for the Saturday night crowd: a few more strokes of glitter on the eyelids, a few more slicks of lipgloss, the glow-in-the-dark G-string and the padded bra. It’s not that everyone else hasn’t realized guys don’t give a shit. I think this is a charade kept up mostly for themselves and for each other, kind of like my ex-roommate and her friends who spend an hour putting on makeup before they go out.

  Female friendship remains a strange and baffling thing to me. I’m thinking I might give up on the idea altogether.

  I slip my feet into my six-inch crystal-heeled shoes and do up the straps that bind them to my ankles, making sure they don’t go flying and hit someone in the face when I do a pole spin. The longest part of getting ready is still the wig: the net over my natural hair which keeps trying to escape from the sides and over the forehead; then, when it’s all tucked in till I look like a cancer patient or a fast-food worker, on goes the wig, center the part just so, comb the bangs and sweep them to the side to cover the entire fake hairline. Three bobby pins on each side to hold the sucker in place.

  My face, framed by bouncy blond curls, stares back at me, slightly bewildered. It’s so blatantly fake, you’d think everyone could see it the second I walk onto the floor. But most guys are, as always, oblivious.

  I head downstairs, wobbling a little while my ankles adjust to the lift of the shoes, and wondering what music I feel like dancing to tonight.

  Something retro. Something sad.

  At least it’s Saturday, the floor is already half full. At least I’ll be too busy to keep thinking about last night over and over like a stuck record in my head. Lean over, give my fake smile, shake my fake hair. Act like the guy is the coolest person to ever walk into this place. Would you like a private dance, honey?

  One thing that nobody tells you about stripping is that it’s boring as hell. It’s not this glamorous endless party like in music videos, but it’s also not the slimy, grimy, drug-soaked cesspool of lost souls like in movies. It’s somewhere in the grey in-between, where the only thing that keeps you from falling asleep on your feet is the vinyl strap of your sandal cutting into your baby toe. Where you tilt your head up, showing your neck sensuously to hide a yawn that overtook you mid-lap dance.

  And of course, the guys are oblivious to these things. You must get so turned on doing this all night. You’re so lucky.

  Honey, you have no idea. Smile, ruffle their hair. And go back to grinding.

  It’s the reason strip clubs never go out of business, no matter how deep down the shitter the economy is and despite the deluge of internet porn accessed for free on your smartphone wherever you are. Strip clubs are this perfect fantasy world where the overburdened male psyche can finally, finally get some rest from all that tiresome gender equality. Pretending that women are people gets exhausting.

  I’m not so delusional as to say stripping is feminist. It’s not a Rihanna video where it’s all a big burlesque fairy tale strewn with glitter and dollar bills, where empowered confident women with postgrad degrees take charge of their sexuality and make mad money. Other women gain nothing from me shaking my ass. All I do is confirm what these men think already: that each and every one of them, no matter how old or ugly or smelly or repulsive, is entitled to a skinny, conventionally pretty woman young enough to be his daughter. That all the h
air-curling and makeup and fake tans and breast implants really are for them, and that we aim to please. Welcome back to Cabaret Le Secret, where women know their place.

  Of course, if you think that I’ll give up easy money for something as ephemeral as moral principles, you don’t know me very well.

  And he—Emmanuel—he didn’t want to be that guy.

  He didn’t want to be the guy who brags to his friends, I nailed the stripper-chick, bro! All you have to do is get to her daddy issues and she’ll spread her legs, just like that. Or, I could tell she wanted it so I pushed her face into my crotch. And then she called the bouncer and I got a fat lip, fucking bitch.

  He didn’t want to be that guy.

  I vacillate between anger and soul-crushing sadness. No, he doesn’t get extra points for being a decent human being. I was right there, what did he think he was proving, rejecting me. Me! There’s a hundred guys in this club who would give their left testicle to be where he was.

  And then I feel like an asshat and kick myself.

  I take a taxi home at three-thirty AM, bone-tired, with my ears ringing from the Saturday-night eardrum-busting volume levels. My throat hurts from having to yell over the music all night and when I glance at myself in the rearview mirror I can see that my makeup has caked into the creases on my face from all the talking and smiling and making seductive grimaces. Lipstick had bled into the tiny cracks around my mouth; my face looks like a tired mask. Unable to wait another second, I pull the pins out of my aching scalp one by one and pry off the wig. My hair falls out in flat, sweaty coils.

  Aren’t I a prize.

  I always make the cab stop a block from my place. It’s a dumb superstition I can’t let go of. If someone did follow me, I’m only making myself an easier target—but at the same time, I don’t like the idea of a random cabbie knowing where I live. The one night when one of them tried to buy a blowjob from me only confirmed it.

  But tonight the walk feels good. It’s nice to have my feet flat on the ground again, and the evening is unusually quiet because of the chill and the faint drizzle of rain. I tilt my face up and let the rain cool my skin; at this point I don’t have to care about my makeup running. Let it run. I picture the cool mist washing all the tired gunk out of my pores until my skin can breathe. I comb my fingers though my hair, rubbing my raw and itchy scalp.

  When I get to my front door, I feel almost like a human being. A little bit of the ache even goes out of my ankles and knees and quad muscles. I’m still tired, but unlikely to keel over and fall asleep the minute I glimpse my bed.

  Maybe I’ll even stay up a little and draw.

  I unlock the front door. The light bulb overhead is dead again. I’d told the super three days ago but no one here ever fixes anything.

  Something in the corner of the lobby moves. I jump and spin around, nearly dropping my keys, but the figure raises his head and scrambles to get up.

  I’m not sure if it’s better or worse than what I thought it was. It’s Emmanuel. He’s wearing an old leather jacket over a t-shirt carelessly tucked into jeans, and his hair is still a bit damp from the rain.

  “’Annah,” he says, but doesn’t dare take another step, probably at seeing my reaction. I must have a look of utter terror on my face.

  “This was so dumb,” he mutters. “Calisse. I’m sorry, this was a bad idea. I’ll just go.” He glances around the dank, dark lobby. “Is it always like this? The front door wasn’t even locked and the light switch does nothing. Are you safe here?”

  I can only gape at him. “Apparently not.”

  It sinks in and he looks anguished. “Fuck. I know how this looks, but I had to talk to you—”

  “I have a class with you on Monday,” I point out with all the coldness I can muster.

  “Before then. And outside of class.”

  “So your solution was to spy on me where I live?”

  “’Annah—”

  “See? This is why I didn’t want you to take me to my door.”

  “I know,” he repeats. “It’s unacceptable.”

  “I think we’ve established that already,” I say. “Why are you here?”

  “I don’t have your phone number. I only have your university email and I guessed you check it about as often as I do mine. And I needed to see you.”

  His words hang between us in the stale air.

  “You’ve decided to be that guy after all?” I regret the remark as soon as it slips from my lips.

  “What?”

  At first I think he’s forgotten. But then he runs his hands over his hair. “I don’t know,” he says. The raw honesty in his voice makes my heart clench. “Maybe I do. Am I that guy? Is that how you see me? Because if that’s so, I’ll leave right now and I won’t come back.”

  I stare him down for a long, long time. In the weak light filtering from the streetlamp outside, shadows lurk under his eyes.

  “You shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”

  He says nothing and lowers his head so the shadow creeps over his entire face. I can only see the outline of his jaw, painted blue by the streetlamp light.

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  And I realize I can’t answer that, not without lying either to him or to myself. Not that I’ve ever had a problem with lying. But I instinctively know it’s one of those times—those rare times when a lie will royally fuck things up. Do you swear upon the holy bible to tell the truth and nothing but the truth kind of times.

  Except there’s nothing remotely holy about it.

  “I just got back from work,” I say. “I’m exhausted. I need a shower. And then I’d like to sleep.”

  He sighs softly, then starts to turn and I know he’s about to push the door open and go.

  “If you’d just wait for me,” I blurt, before I can think properly. “For twenty minutes. I’ll jump in the shower and change. And then we can go talk.”

  A tremor courses through him, but he quickly suppresses it. “There’s a shower at my place,” he says.

  “Wow. That’s a bit presumptuous.”

  “You’ve already used it. And you’ve already slept over.”

  “Who says I’ll be sleeping over?”

  “If not, I can drive you back.”

  “Really now?”

  “I had, like, five RedBulls,” he admits. He lets out a small embarrassed chuckle. “I’m parked around the corner.”

  Every cell in my body knows this is not a good idea. I should tell him to leave. And tomorrow, when I’m rested enough to make rational decisions, we can talk about whatever it is he wants to talk about. But the problem is, seeing him here jolted me awake way better than five RedBulls or all the coke my coworkers did this past night put together. My heart is thrumming happily, my head feels light as a balloon. I’m so awake it’s like I can see in HD.

  So we go. The drive takes less time than I thought: without the traffic, we zip from one light to the next and they all seem to turn green the second we get close. In less than twenty minutes we’re at the condo building. I follow him into the lobby, sparkling clean and brightly lit in contrast to mine, and the elevator whisks us to the ninth floor.

  By now I’m seriously torn between excitement and regret. My palms get sweaty and I have to wipe them on my pants; in the elevator mirror, I glimpse myself, with raccoon-eye mascara and clowny smudged lipstick bleeding in the corner of my mouth like someone socked me, with hair that manages to be flat and tangled at the same time. Self-conscious, I discreetly wipe under my eyes.

  “I really need to shower. I smell like hand sanitizer and body spray,” I say. He chuckles.

  “The vanilla one? Hey, I liked that body spray.”

  This was meant to make me feel better, but instead I choke as my mind flits back to that first time we met. He realizes his blunder and clears his throat. “I have clean towels and a bathrobe you can use.”

  Yeah, I think. Of course you do. And your all-natural lavender soap and your towels that feel li
ke spun clouds. And you probably date the kind of women who wear Chanel perfume and not Vanilla Peach Sparkle.

  Embarrassed, I shuffle to the bathroom the second he lets me through the door. Finally locked in, I strip down and contemplate my reflection. My bra left a red mark. My ribs are like a science fiction landscape. There’s a bit of razor burn on my thigh.

  I wonder what he finds in all this. I think I’ve already managed to utterly smash the whole perfect-woman fantasy when I was passed out in his car, so what does he possibly want with me?

  I also try to picture what he looks like naked. Maybe there’s something wrong with him. Like his dick does a weird curve thing or he has a hairy back or something.

  At the same time, I know that’s bullshit. Just a mind trick to make myself feel okay about this. Like the thing with imagining the audience in their underwear (which doesn’t work very well when you’re buck naked on stage).

  And I am not going to have sex with him tonight. Or maybe not ever. Except I’m naked in his bathroom and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m showering for him, like some virgin auctioned off into marriage in the Middle Ages.

  I’m not building a strong case here, am I.

  The shower is piping hot and I stand under it for what feels like an hour, reveling in the pitch-perfect stream that massages without being too much, at just the right pressure, and the fact that the hot water never seems to run out. My own hot water tank is right there in the bathroom, behind a peeling wood panel, and it contains just enough to either wash my hair or shave my legs, but never both.

  Great. Now I’m about to sleep with someone because he has a nicer shower?

  I push the thought away as I lather the shampoo through my hair and follow up with conditioner. Any man who owns this many products just can’t be good news.

  By the time I’m done scrubbing myself with silky olive-oil body soap, the bathroom has filled up with so much steam I can barely see. A fan goes off with a soft hum as I tiptoe across the heated floor and press my ear to the door. When I can’t make out a single sound, I open the door just a crack and peek out into the hall.