I Made A Friend This One Weird Time

When I was still teaching Composition and Rhetoric, one of the ways I forced my students to think about research topics was to ask them a series of questions, which subversively pulled from the deep recesses of their brains some ideas about the cultural and societal issues that they care most about. It was always imperative that I helped them find a topic that wouldn’t become dull or overwhelming when I slapped that 15 page research paper assignment on them. The exercise served to help them think about issues they could spend an entire semester researching without losing their minds.

If you were President/Dictator etc. for one day, what laws would you enact or repeal?

If you were given a million dollars to create your own charitable foundation, what would it be and why?

And my favorite question, the one that most quietly reveals their priorities is this:

If there is some cataclysmic event, an apocalyptic happening that brought the society to which you’ve grown accustomed to a screaming halt, what would be the FIRST ITEM you would try to forage for? What store would you be looting?

The answers to that question are particularly revealing. My student with Type 1 Diabetes said she’d hit every pharmacy she could find to secure insulin. Some students head straight to the sporting goods store for guns and survival gear. Some hoard food, some make massive clothing hauls, some hit jewelry stores under the assumption that perhaps gold and silver would be of use in trade at some future point.

Back in 2010, I was asking these questions aloud during a Friday class, allowing the students a few minutes in between to fully articulate their answers. When I got to my favorite question about the cataclysmic event, a student in the front row with light brown hair and icy blue eyes, a Jennifer Lawrence look-somewhat-alike, shot her hand up Hermione Granger-style and asked: “Are there zombies?”

“Really?” I asked

“Yeah, my answer is different if there are.”

I tried as best as I could to conceal my annoyance, which isn’t always easy for me, but it’s most easy when I’m teaching.

“I guess if you want there to be zombies, then there are zombies. . . I don’t know. No, no zombies. Well, I don’t care . . . just answer the question however you want to.” This was before I began watching The Walking Dead. For the record, I have since decided it was a completely valid question.

I was probably getting ready to start my period, which, as a feminist, I realize is a shitty excuse, but as a fucking human, a completely authentic one. I went home at 2:00 pm and poured an over-sized glass of wine. My boyfriend, now husband, came over and I bitched for a straight hour about how annoyed I was.

“Come-the-fuck-on, are there zombies? What the fuck is this chick talking about?” I complained between gulps and not-quite-yet-husband poured me another glass. One of the reasons I knew he was the person I was supposed to marry is because when I’m a crazy, neurotic mess, he’s always calm, quiet, and focused.

“Did she just want to make a thing about what we were doing?” My vexation only exacerbated by the fact that I had to work in three hours. I had no time for a nap; the super-juggle of day job and night job paradigm, which only served to fuel my already irritated attitude.

No matter how bad I felt, no matter what daily exasperations entered into my world, no matter the hardships and problems of the real me, there was always something liberating about having the opportunity to change my identity and get paid for it. If I had a day like this day, difficult students or difficult situations, difficult children or difficult bills to pay, all of that strips away when I put on my fake eyelashes. When I tease and shellac my hair into a beauty queen coif, when I pull the strings on my corset so tight I feel like Scarlett O’Hara gripping a bed post, all of the outside goes away. The strip club is like a space ship. You enter and you are worlds away from the mundane hum-drum of regular life. That’s probably part of the appeal for customers, come to think of it. Not just the hot, topless girls who actually engage with patrons, but that otherworldly tone that permeates the club. No one feels like they’re in Kansas anymore.

I’d nearly forgotten my disgruntling afternoon when I plopped into a chair at the bar to bullshit with Mike, the manager, for a handful of minutes before I fully entered into the metamorphosis of Jackee the Caterpillar to Betty the Butterfly. I wasn’t paying close attention to the new girl he was talking to, new girls being a constant staple at the strip club. It seems cold, but I often didn’t bother to interact with new employees outside of introducing myself and allowing for the occasional small talk. Part of it was that my work time was so characterized by my motivation to make as much money in the shortest amount of time, and so I was often unobservant to the goings on of the employees around me.

The other reason for my initial distance was that the job, being a stripper, is far more difficult than pop culture would like you to believe, and even some of the most gorgeous, well-endowed in the chest, perfect-butted women cannot grasp that the job is not about being the prettiest. A myriad of factors enter into the success of a good exotic dancer, and general overall attractiveness is but a small sliver. This results in alarmingly high turnover. Girls come and work one night and never return. Some stay a week. Some stay for a collection of months, but give up. There were always new girls and at a certain point, they all started to look the same to me.

The new girl with whom Mike was chatting turned to walk away, lingering for the few seconds that I needed to sense some familiarity in her face. Who was that girl? I know that face. She looks like . . . but that couldn’t possibly be . . . no, I’m just still irritated about this afternoon and her face is in my brain.

After I was painted and coiffed and appropriately cinched in the right places, I climbed into the DJ booth to chat up my buddy, DJ Keller, and complain about my day to ears that understood. The new girl with the familiar face, who had chosen to call herself Bella, was on stage. I relayed the annoying afternoon, knowing that Keller would commiserate with me, and I casually mentioned that the girl on stage looked like the girl who’d annoyed me with the zombie business.

“OH. Bing, she does go to Stephens.”

My stomach sank. Of all the possible students, current and former, of all the predicaments I tend to find myself in, how in the actual fuck was I going to handle this one. I hadn’t been here the day she was hired, and though my rank may have influenced the choice to employ her, she was too pretty to not get a job at the club if she really wanted it.

“Keller, what the fuck am I gonna do? This is one of my current students. This is not good.”

I spent the first half of the night avoiding her, constantly ruminating on how I could possibly handle this situation, fretting over any unfortunate implications this might have for my other job, my real job. Sometime around midnight, after a few shots of whiskey courage, I found myself alone with her in the tiny area between the dressing room and the DJ booth, a small island of seclusion and respite for dancers to sneak a cigarette or take a quick break from exasperating customers.

“So this doesn’t have to be weird,” I said.

“Totally agree.” She responded. Nothing about zombies or how we’d survive, nothing about how we might handle this come Monday in class. It was an immediate mutual understanding. We just would keep the arenas separate and never speak of this again.

We managed to avoid one another for a few weeks, operating on the knowledge of mutually assured destruction should one of us get outta line. At work, we are cordial and largely avoid each other. At school, she comes to class and I teach it but there is little to no unnecessary interaction between us. But then one day we were almost alone in the VIP, me having just finished a dance and Bella just beginning one. I walked toward the exit when Bella’s customer shouted over to me . . .

“Hey, hey you! Can I get the next dance with both of you guys?”

Bella and Betty locked eyes, exchanging a glance that said so many wordless things: Oh God, do we have to? Oh fuck, yes we do. Oh sonofabitch, the customer is always right, Oh fucking fuckaduck, this has to happen. Oh shit we’re getting paid, but this is gonna be weird on Monday morning.

I hate it when worlds collide.

We did it. We smiled. We pretended to make out behind the curtains of our hair. We grabbed each other’s boobs and syrup-sweet talked this guy out of a tip. And when he was gone, and silence hung between us, Bella and I quietly dressing, she broke through the thick muted air:

“Well, that was fucking weird.”

And we laughed. And laughed harder. Laughed hard enough for a passerby to stop and peek in at us, thinking he was missing some stripper comedy show. And all the weird, awkward awful melted away.

Why am I telling you this? What is the moral to this stripper tale? I’ve always asserted that the strip club is a microcosm of the world at large. These stories that are essentially campfire fare, little anecdotes for curious friends and strangers who want to know all about the glamourous life of an exotic dancer, these tales are still applicable to life. I fell in complete platonic love with Bella. I count her among the best friends I made during that long, long period of my life when I was living as two people in one body. The story of us, of Bella and Betty, reminds me that your friends may not always start as your friends. Sometimes the people who annoy you with questions about zombies end up being some of the smartest, funniest, kindest people you meet. It serves as a reminder to unhinge your ego when it comes to petty irritants, because sometimes—perhaps even often—the people you love come in unexpected packages.