by Vi Lily
And if I can’t have Alex in my life, then I want to dance.
Honestly, though, even if I had Alex in my life, now that I have my dream back in sight, I still want to dance. It’s what’s always made me happy.
It’s never failed me either.
Not when my father ignored me, or my mother acted like I was an embarrassment. Back then, when my parents were around, the only thing I looked forward to was my dance classes. They were my salvation in a time when I was drowning in self-doubt, feeling unloved and unwanted.
Ms. Paine, my dance teacher back then, made sure to tell me that I was wonderful. That I could be an amazing dancer someday.
Maybe she was just trying to make a little girl feel better about herself, to help her feel like she fit in somewhere in a world where that square peg better damned well round off its corners so that it would fit into the round hole.
That was a possibility, but I don’t think so. Deep down inside, I am sure that I’m a good dancer. I don’t think all those awards, all that applause I’d received, were gained just because adults were trying to make a little girl feel good.
Dance contests didn’t give participation awards.
No, I’m sure that dance is in my future and I’m determined to make that a reality. No matter what. Regardless of the men who want me, the men who don’t want me, the men who want to use me and abuse me…
I’m going to be a dancer.
Chapter 10
ARI
S URPRISINGLY, LIFE never turns out like you think. Just kidding. There’s no surprise in that. At. Freaking. All.
It’s been three months since I moved to McLeod to attend the Georges School of Dance. It isn’t quite what I thought. The instructors are hard on the students. Brutal, even. Where I was once the star pupil, now I’m nothing more than a cockroach to be squashed under the en pointe toe of Madame Bennet.
That’s just my ballet class, though. In my Acro class, I’m the star. Same as in my Contemporary and Hip-Hop classes. Those instructors adore me, shower me with attention, praise me and say I’m “on my way to stardom.”
If only Madame Bennet felt the same.
I’m just points away from failing my ballet class, but I don’t know what to do about it. Ballet isn’t my forte. Give me contemporary or hip-hop any day. But, if I fail one class, I fail them all, and I’m out of the program for the fall semester.
They won’t kick me out of the school, but I would be demoted out of the progressive professional program and into the regular “we’re just doing this for fun” class.
I need this program; it’s one step on the hill to getting into my dream school — Tisch at New York University. Tisch is really tough to get into, but the progressive program at Georges is geared toward pushing students into a professional career, and it’s a serious padding on a college application.
A year in the Georges program and I’d be on my way to getting accepted at my dream school.
Of course, I have to get through my GED classes first. I started taking them at Tino’s insistence and honestly, it would have been a lot easier to stay in school. I always thought that GED students were the “dummies,” but dang, was I ever wrong.
It’s kicking my butt.
I’m still living on the money Tino put into my bank account, but it’s dwindling in a hurry. If I can pass my ballet class, Mr. Petrie, my Acro instructor, promised me a position with his dance company. It doesn’t pay a lot, but it’ll buy me groceries and cover the rent for a few months. He’s helping me apply for scholarships, too, and grants.
He’s been my savior. Another male to the rescue of the damsel in distress. There are good guys left in the world.
It’s Thursday, the day before my final in Madame Bennet’s ballet class, and I’m sitting on the floor under the barre, leaning against the mirrored wall, stretching sore muscles and wondering what in the world I’m doing here.
I’m an imposter. A fake. The last place in the world I should be is in a world-class dance studio, wearing scuffed Rubin pointes, waiting for a former ballerina who danced Dulcinea in Don Quixote for the San Francisco Ballet to tell me that I suck.
Yeah, not looking forward to this.
Thankfully, Madame Bennet tests us individually and not before an audience, so at least there won’t be others to witness my downfall. My shame will be my own. The embarrassment on me.
“Come,” the former ballerina calls to me from the doorway of studio where my downfall will happen. I cringe, her voice sounds as ominous as a death knell as it rings through my soul.
Okay, I might be feeling a little melodramatic.
Dutifully, and definitely reluctantly, I stand, then force my feet to trudge into the studio, the location of my demise.
“Stand there,” the grim reaper announces as she points her bony finger to a spot on the floor marked with an X, made possible thanks to red duct tape. I do as she asks, dread filling me as I touch my toes to the outside edges of the mark on the floor, moving my feet into first position.
Madame Bennet sits at a chair behind a small desk in the corner of the studio. It’s rather dark in here, ominous. There’s a spotlight above me, shedding light on my shame. I suck in a shaky breath; I seriously need to quit being so negative.
“Miss Kane,” she says with that condescending nasally voice of hers, “it seems to me that you have yet to prove you deserve to be in our progressive program.”
Her words make me want to melt into the cracks between the shiny black floor tiles under my feet, but I manage not to squirm. Just barely. I’m not sure what to say, what it is she wants to hear, but I know that this is a do or die situation. I truly have nothing to lose. So, with that in mind, I speak what’s in my heart.
“I don’t have any aspirations to be a ballerina such as yourself,” I tell her, my voice barely above a murmur. “I want to be a contemporary dancer.”
“A street dancer,” she spits with venom. “A rat who throws its body around in random, jerky movements to the beat of a garbage can.”
I wonder what Mr. Petrie and the other instructors would have to say about her comment, but I have no desire to fight her venom. I nod.
“Yes. A street rat who dances,” I say with a small smile. “That assessment would have made my mother smile in agreement.”
She doesn’t say anything, so I continue. I’m not sure if she cares to hear my story, but, again, I have nothing to lose.
“I grew up incredibly privileged, with no want or care in the world. But that was all taken from me years ago when my parents disappeared and my abusive brother was left to ‘care’ for me,” I say, complete with sarcasm and air quotes.
“Even then, I wanted nothing more than to dance, but the dances of the ‘street rats’ as you call them tell my story more than any beautiful ballet ever could, because my story isn’t one of beauty. It’s one of pain, even when I was living the privileged life. But it’s also one of redemption.”
Again, I might be acting a little melodramatic, but I said my peace. Madame Bennet can do with it what she wants, take from it what she will.
“Very well,” she finally says after a lengthy pause and I can sense her dark eyes staring at me, trying to figure me out. “Let me see what story you can tell through ballet.”
Our final test in all our classes is completely interpretive. There are no carefully choreographed steps to follow. It is hard as hell to come up with a dance for each style, especially when we’ve been busting our butts over the summer semester.
Thankfully, the other instructors don’t expect spectacular shows for the final test; they just want to see that we’ve mastered all the moves, all the techniques, that we’ve been taught over the past few months.
But not Ms. Bennet. She wants a San Francisco Ballet performance from a first level student who isn’t even planning on majoring in ballet.
I’d rather be a dancing street rat.
I call out to whoever is manning the soundboard and ask them to play my track. I
take several deep breaths while waiting for the music to start, and I am pretty sure Ms. Bennet is going to hate my choice of music.
When I hear the strains of “Warrior” by Demi Lovato, my body starts to move automatically. I used the same song for all my tests, because it means the most to me, tells my story the best.
I know my movements are a little stiff, my body going through the motions without much emotion, unlike my other classes where I poured my soul into it. But like I told Ms. Bennet, ballet is not in my future plans, so I hope she takes that into consideration. My form is correct, my positions perfect.
It’s just my heart that hasn’t joined the performance.
When the song is over, I move back to first position and stare at the floor. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. In my other tests, the instructors all applauded for me. Now, there’s dead silence. I’m not even sure if Ms. Bennet is still in the studio. But then I hear a small sigh.
“That will be all.” And with that, I know my dream has been tossed out like a street rat.
Despite Ms. Bennet’s career-destroying failing of me, I’ve survived. And I’m now a professional dancer, so she can kiss my little white booty.
My sequin thong-covered white booty, that is. After stuffing a twenty in there.
Okay, so maybe “exotic” isn’t exactly the type of dancing career I’d envisioned for myself, but it pays the bills. Really well, actually. And I honestly don’t mind the job. Thankfully, the state has a law that seriously limits a dancer’s contact with customers, so lap dances aren’t on the menu, cuz ewww.
After my ballet failure at Georges, I went into a severe depression, even worse than when Steve died. It was all I could do to force myself to leave my apartment to get groceries.
Tino called me constantly; he was the only person in the world who knew where I was and what I was doing. I’d sworn him to secrecy as soon as I’d moved in with him, and I didn’t lift that promise when I moved out. I knew I could trust him.
He’s the only one in the world that I can.
At first, I faked it with him, saying that I everything was great, that I was fine. But he could tell something was wrong and he threatened to come get me and drag me back to the cabin. I told him then that I’d moved and wouldn’t tell him where.
It was a lie. I was still in the small studio apartment down the street from Georges, where I could see the real dancers coming and going. It was like picking at a scab.
On the second week of my self-imposed imprisonment in the prison for losers who can’t make it as dancers, I ventured out to the store because I was in serious need of feminine products.
Tampons in hand, I was standing in line at the register when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and saw a familiar face that made tears fill my eyes.
“Ariel?”
“Rutger,” I’d breathed and turned to hug the young man who’d been more of a brother to me than my own had been. I hadn’t seen him in years and I was surprised he recognized me. I told him as much and he’d laughed.
“That hair color isn’t something that comes in a bottle,” he told me. “And when you turned and I saw your eyes, I knew it was you.”
Rutger insisted on taking me to lunch, and for some stupid reason I poured out my stupid sob story all over the club sandwiches we ordered. I left out the part about Alex, because it just makes me look too pathetic, the love-sick teen pining away for the guy who probably hasn’t even given her a second thought.
He listened without comment, but the emotions crossing his face told their own story.
After I was done, he shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “First, I woulda come and stolen you away if I’d known it was so bad. Second, I hope you beat that jackass brother to death, cuz if you didn’t, I’m going to.”
I laughed. “You’ll have to get arrested for a felony to do that. I looked up the news online one day to see if there was any news about a body being found or whatever and saw that after he got out of the hospital, they arrested him for drug trafficking.”
Rutger was happy to hear that. He then asked me what I was doing now, and that was when the tears started. After he’d heard my story of dance failure, he’d offered me a job dancing in his strip club.
Technically, it’s more of a burlesque type place than a seedy strip club. In fact, Rutger named it “Bugsy’s Stripeasy,” a play on “strip club” and “speakeasy.” Of course, I don’t have any experience with either type of place, but that’s what the other dancers told me.
There’s more emphasis on the show itself, rather than just a dancer taking off her clothes. We have super fancy costumes that eventually come off, but we never strip down to less than what a string bikini would cover.
Best of all, there’s a strict no touching rule. Customers can tip their favorite girls by putting the money into empty booze bottles with our names bedazzled in tacky plastic “crystals.”
My stage name is “Vixxie,” a cross between vixen and pixie. I kind of hate it, but Rutger thought he was being so clever, so whatev.
I wear a pale blond page cut wig on stage, mostly because of what Rutger said about my hair. It is an unusual color and recognizable. Not that I expect anyone I know to come to McLeod and seeing me… but there is always a chance.
Most of the time, I expect Tino to charge into the city, pounding on doors until he finds me. I doubt he’d look at a titty bar though. But, there’s always the chance he could just visit the place while out looking for me. You never know.
Tino would have a fit if he knew I was working at Bugsy’s. The last time we talked was a few weeks ago and I told him I was waitressing. It’s a lie, but not really, because I do help cover for the wait staff from time to time, which is far worse than dancing, because the customers are pretty good at covert groping.
But we have seriously good bouncers, so all it takes is a tilt of the head toward one of the gropey grabbers and that douche is outta there.
Tonight is party night. Saturdays are big for bachelor parties, birthdays, et cetera. Since it’s the weekend before Halloween, there are lots of customers in costume. And there are a lot of customers, because Rutger decided to hold an auction tonight. A girl auction.
I told him, “No thank you,” when he told me about it. There was just too much of a reminder of the other auction I’d nearly been a part of. But then Rutger explained that this auction was for charity, with all the money going to the new domestic violence shelter in town, and that it has been made very clear to any participants that absolutely no sex is involved in this auction. The customer who wins just gets to take the girl on a date—dinner, movies, the normal thing.
That is also something I do not want to do, but since it’s for such a good cause, and one that’s near and dear to me… I’ll put on my big girl thong and deal.
Until then, though, I plan on rocking the tips. Party nights are usually pretty good for that, because the partyers usually have hired transportation, so the booze flows freely and aroused drunk men are usually pretty generous.
It’s kinda funny that I can dance in the club while taking most of my clothes off, and I can serve copious amounts of alcohol while waitressing, but I’m not old enough to drink. Which is actually a good thing, considering how many of the dancers are high or drunk most of the time.
I plan on avoiding personal substance abuse. It’s cost me too much already.
I’m scheduled for the third dance and the fourteenth, and then I’m supposed to help with the floor because we really never have enough wait staff for the party nights.
The first ten dances usually suck, tip-wise, because there isn’t enough intoxication going on yet for the guys to be generous. All the dancers are on stage for at least ten minutes, and there’s a half hour in between dancers, with other acts coming out, like the twin girls who juggle — while their own large jugs jiggle, and it’s a very popular act, by the way — and the magician who performs her act while wearing a body suit that makes it look like she’s c
ompletely nude.
But it’s the dancers who light the customers on fire.
It took me a few weeks to figure out how to dance provocatively. I mean, it definitely isn’t my forte, but once I channeled my inner Gypsy Rose Lee, I became one of the most popular girls.
Go me.
I don’t plan on stripping for the rest of my life. I’m proud to say that, despite the depression that hit me hard, I still kept up my GED studies. I’ll be getting it just in six weeks, five months earlier than I would have graduated if I’d stayed in school.
After I get my GED, I’m really not sure what I’m going to do. I’m saving every penny I can right now, and thanks to the seriously good pay and tips at Bugsy’s, I have nearly five thousand put away.
I’ve thought about college, but there really isn’t anything I want to take. Same with trade school. I mean, I guess I could be a welder or a pastry chef or something, but neither one really interests me.
All I’ve ever wanted to do is dance.
Since Tisch is out, I have considered other universities with dance programs. My second choice would be the University of Oklahoma. They have an amazing dance program too, but I’ll have to pay for it on my own, since grants and scholarships will most likely be out of the question. Another reason to save as much as I can.
Honestly, a month ago I never would have pulled my head out of my nether region long enough to formulate a Plan B. But since I’ve gotten popular with the customers, I have to say that the applause and cheers and, yeah, even the whistles and catcalls, are addicting.
And I want more. I want a stage. A real stage, not one with a pole on each end.
It’s my turn for my first dance and I strut out onto the stage in the ridiculously high spiked heels that go with my costume. Since we’re celebrating Halloween tonight, I picked seventies Cher, so instead of my short blond wig, I’m wearing a long black one, and the gold harem outfit she made famous. Well, not the outfit, obviously. This one is designed for easy removal.
