OCTOBER 2002
THE FRENCH QUARTER
In the short time that I had been gone from New Orleans, this had all happened somehow. The Sugarlick was open, and it was filled with loud, glorious women in red lipstick and tattoos. Unapologetic, excessive, hard-drinking, tough-talking broads radiating sex and glamor. After my internment in that bleak, frozen wasteland for college where no one smiled, and everything was low-key, and people wore corduroy, and the world was as dreary as leftover oatmeal, this place made me feel like I had come alive again. I met Chantal one night by sitting next to her at the bar and one thing led to another, and soon we were drinking Jameson together, while a cute guy I had seen around now seemed to know my name and kept buying me drinks. “Yeah, I can’t compete with the girls at the Flim Flam Club,” Chantal was saying. “They are like superstar Ziegfeld quality, but I could probably pull something together in this dump. There’s always room for more tits and ass in this town.”
“That sounds amazing,” I said enviously. “I wish I could do something like that.”
She looked at me, confused. “Why not? You could totally do burlesque. You’ve got that thing.”
“A killer figure?” the cute guy interrupted. He kept saying very complimentary things but in a very dismissive tone. I had no idea if he was flirting with me or making fun of me but either way, I liked the attention.
“Yes, Jonah, obviously.” Chantal waved her cup for emphasis. “But I meant an attitude. You kind of look like you’re not really giving anything away. Not bitchy exactly, which don’t get me wrong, I mean as a compliment, just...” she paused “...distant. Add that to naked titties and men go crazy.”
“It’s true,” he said. “And you should come by Deadman’s Cove sometime. I bartend there most nights,” he added, looking purposefully into my eyes and then pointedly wandering off to talk to some other girl across the room.
“Actually, fuck the men,” Chantal leaned in to whisper to me and her breath was whiskey-sweet and warm. “You should do it because burlesque is awesome and all the girls in my troupe will also be awesome and you should hang out with us. It’s such a feeling of power, when you get up there and you own your shit. It’s different from how you imagine.”
I said I would think about it, but really, I knew if it meant I would get to hang around with Chantal and her friends, I would totally do it. I would get to come to this bar as a performer, no more anxious moments on the threshold wondering if I would know anyone, the nervous few minutes until I started drinking or found an acquaintance. I would have a place in this nightlife world that had already been exerting such a strong pull on me. I already wanted to be here every night. I wanted to stay this confident, brassy girl I became when the sun went down and I started drinking.
My first costume was emerald green and as I glued silky layers of fringe and trim to my dress, I felt the same nervous tingling of holidays approaching. My mom loved hot glue and Carnival costumes and was always ready to figure out ways to make our silly elaborate ideas come to life—a mermaid stuck in a net, an Egyptian goddess made from cardboard and gold spray paint. This had the same sparkling distraction as the weeks leading up to Carnival, and it was so easy not to think about my recent failures as I planned and stitched and invented. I found a whole new set of skills as my ideas got more elaborate and I cobbled together ways to make them work. Wire structures for feather headpieces, snaps and Velcro for tear-away panels, it was like a part of my brain sitting dormant my whole life had suddenly blossomed with this unexpected talent I was now discovering. Gaby had been pretty busy since I had come back, and selling underwear had left me with an uncomfortable amount of time to think. Working on my act filled up all the space in my life with a kind of thrilling anticipation and wonderful textures that shimmered and sparkled and covered every surface of my small apartment. I was going to dance as a snake shedding my skin, tulle embroidered with sequin scales. Burlesque was funny and odd and sexy and over-the-top and ridiculous, and all at once I had a place for all these feelings that I didn’t know what else to do with.
The night of my debut I almost bailed, but then Elsa, another girl who had recently joined our troupe, gave me a shot called a mind-eraser. I loved the poetry of that. “Break a leg, hottie,” she said and gave my butt a pinch, and suddenly I was desperate not to let her down. I threw myself onstage expecting the worst, but the strangest sensation came over me once my music started. A feeling of invincibility. I knew exactly how the next three and a half minutes were going to happen and more than that, I felt this bold new awareness that I was going to own them. A strange, fierce pleasure ran down my arms and into my fingertips and there in the spotlight, poised on my high heels, in my armor bright and iridescent as a beetle’s wings, I felt blissfully, confidently in control. I was the fullest expression of myself, no apologies, no second-guessing, and the audience felt it too. They believed this person who I was pretending to be, and in their gaze it became true. So, I began to move, and as I filled up the space, just my body and the music and the beautiful layers I had built myself, I knew incontrovertibly that I was special for as long as I was on that stage. They loved me. And I loved them back with all my overflowing, intemperate heart.
Elsa grabbed me in a bear hug when I came off the stage. “I knew it, you’re a natural. Sugarlick Ladies, ride or die. Oh fuck.” She noticed and tried to disentangle where our costumes had caught together, my tassel stuck in the sharp curve of one of her hook and eyes. I ripped the tasseled pastie off my nipple and tucked it inside her corset where I hoped it wouldn’t be noticed, and she ran onstage for her act. I covered my free nipple with my hand in the dark of the wings, naked except for my G-string and laughed silently but uncontrollably, drunk on success and friendship and cheap champagne.