I sipped a Fly Line lager, because everything in Idaho is named after fly fishing. I wanted a cocktail, but at least with a beer, I’d be good to drive in an hour. Life as a single mom involves constant risk assessments. The plan, if I died tragically and unexpectedly, had been for my mom to take my kids. But it was my mom who had died tragically and unexpectedly of an aneurysm, and now there was no plan.
Zhang Xiu was explaining that while she’d first wanted her pole name to be Cupcake or Bubbles, she realized taking the name of a minor warlord of the Eastern Han dynasty would better suit her fierceness. Strands of silver streaked her jet-black hair. At first glance, I’d written her off as soft and uninteresting, the way I did sometimes with women in their fifties—probably because of internalized misogyny. But once she’d shot up the pole like a comic-book assassin, I knew better.
“I want my pole name to be I Don’t Play I Slay,” the lone guy said.Did he slather himself in expensive serums every night or was that glowy skin a birthright? When assessing a twentysomething, it was tricky to tell nature from nurture.
“Is that a name?” I asked. “Or song lyrics by that one judge fromRuPaul’s Drag Race?”
“Throw shade for me. Shade for me, shade!” he sang, clearly pleased I’d gotten the old reference. He brought a finger to his lips. “I actually like that.” He shifted to the enthusiastic demeanor of a trivia night emcee. “I. Am. Shade!”
Everyone cheered.
The girl with silvery-blue hair and bright star-shaped pimple stickers said her pole name would be Gucci. “First purse I’m buying when I’m no longer a broke grad student,” she said.
I’d bet a Ben Franklin she was studying some obscure sub-branch of the humanities that would leave her with no real job prospects, but her hopefulness made me like her.
Salma Hayek offered to buy a round. “We’ll have to come back some night when Cheyenne’s dancing. She’s a dream on the pole.”
“Who’s Cheyenne?” Shade said.
“The wifey bartender!” Salma said, pointing. “The real bartender is out sick. Cheyenne goes to noon open studio at Pole Kisses sometimes. Subs classes too! She just launched her own pole shoe company: Cheyenne’s Sentient Strippers! I barely know her, but do you think it’s too soon to propose?”
“Whoa, there, cowgirl!” Shade pulled on a set of pretend reins. “Maybe try talking to her first?”
Salma squared her shoulders and headed to the bar, the rest of us egging her on.
All I could see of Cheyenne was a pair of Maleficent-style horns perched atop bright pink hair and a slightly rodent-like face. It was hard to imagine what about her so dazzled the radiant Salma Hayek.
Gucci applauded wildly for a pole trick and hurried to the rail to tip the dancer. When she returned, she said, “I’m taking pole because I love strip clubs. You just have to bring your own Big Strip Club Energy with you. As soon as the dancers realize what I’m here for they start pulling out their best pole tricks.”
A Miami ten in gold butt floss and matching thigh-high boots led the dorky guy with the paisley scarf into the VIP room.
“In the real world, that woman wouldn’t give him a light,” I said.
“What happens in the VIP room?” Layna asked.
Shade’s eyes went wide. “What do youthinkhappens in the VIP room?”
“Strip clubs do have a dark side, but there’s light shining out of that darkness.” Gucci had leaned in close so only I could hear her. She ran a hand through her blue hair, which looked purple under the LEDs. “That’s the other reason I’m taking pole classes. To get in touch with my sexuality. In a positive way.”
“Go on,” I said. “I’m listening.” My own grief had made me able to recognize it in others.
“My uncle. He was a bad guy. He did bad things. To me. When I was a kid.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
She shrugged. “He died of a heart attack. I was his next of kin. His only kin. So I donated him.”
“Like to a medical school?” I imagined med students giggling over his corpse as it bobbed in a tank of formaldehyde. It seemed fitting.
“Better,” Gucci said. “To forensics researchers. They left him out in a designated field and checked his decomp progress on the hour.”
“Oh my god,” I said, clapping my hand over my mouth. “You let him rot in a field?”
Gucci looked momentarily stricken. “I shouldn’t have said anything. My boundaries are so porous.”
“No. No, it’s perfect. So rare. For someone to get exactly what they deserve. It’s like you made your awful uncle do a selfless good deed. For science.”
“Exactly!” Gucci said, her hand on my arm. “Thank you for not judging me.”
