AllFreeNovel
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Sure there is. The broken, unloved little girl writhing her body on stage for the male attention she never got from her daddy. Beautiful, vulnerable but dumb, or at least naive, looking for a rescue from the handsome, preferably rich, prince, the one who will take her away from her craven life of sin. He’ll forgive her for being such a wretch, of course, because now—though she’s desired by all—she’ll only have eyes for him.
But that’s just a male fantasy. Most of the girls I know who dance or strip onstage or online are just using the assets they were given to make a living. They’re not broken or lost, not just. Maybe they’re making bad choices. But who isn’t? If there were a similar market for male dancers, every man alive with a good body would be onstage.
“I guess that’s stupid,” he says. “To think there is a type of girl who dances. Sorry.”
There’s a hum in the room, conversation, clinking glasses. Over the speakers, more Christmas carols. David Bowie is crooning with Bing Crosby, that ghostly version of “The Little Drummer Boy.”
“People make a lot of assumptions,” I say. “It’s normal.”
From the kitchen the clattering of something being dropped to the floor. Outside, a big pickup truck roars into the lot.
“Is that a wedding ring?” I nod toward the gold band.
He looks down at his left hand. “It is. But we’ve been done for a while now. I just haven’t taken it off yet.”
I nod. Doesn’t matter. Not really. I’m leaving in a couple days, and I have no plans to sleep with him. This is—what? A distraction from the train wreck I’ve made of my life. I keep thinking about Christmas dinner with my parents, my smart, gorgeous sister and her happy family, our aunts and uncles, cousins all gathered together. The fun, chaotic mess of it all, with the tree always too big for our small living room, the turkey always overdone. The kids, joyful over gifts, then rumbling later like rival gang members. I’ll have to tell them that I dropped out. That I have no idea what comes next. They’ll help me. Of course they will. But they’ll be so disappointed.
“What does that mean? Done?” I ask.
He shakes his head, lifts his shoulders in a helpless gesture. “Married too young, before we really knew who we’d become. Stopped loving each other that way. But we’re still friends.”
Probably happens a lot.
“Kids?”
“No.”
He’s lonely. I can see that now. Probably that’s what drew me to him. I am too. Have been since I left campus and moved into the crappy apartment I share with Angela. It’s lonely to be lost in your life, not sure what comes next when everyone around you seems to be on their path, good or bad.
I find myself telling him how I dropped out of school, have to tell my parents over the holidays. I don’t say how lost I feel but I sense that he understands, and that’s a comfort.
“Not everybody takes the straight road in life. Some of us have switchbacks, detours, blockages. I have a feeling you are going to find your way,” he says.
“You don’t even know me.”
He smiles and there’s that flutter in my belly I feel when he looks at me. “Let’s just call it a vibe.”
The food comes and he wolfs down a huge gooey cheeseburger. We talk—he tells me what it was like to grow up here—boring mostly. How he’s only been as far as New York City but hopes to travel someday, how he smokes too much weed and wants to cut back. How he’s an insomniac. We laugh, a lot, and it feels like we’ve been friends forever. When he reaches for my hand, I don’t pull it away.
Suddenly, I wish I wasn’t leaving.
“I’ve got a place up north, deep in the woods. I go there sometimes to clear my head. There’s a lake, good fishing. It’s just a cabin, been in my family for three generations. In the middle of the lake there’s this platform. In the summer, you swim out to it, then just lie there, the sky above, trees all around you. The whole place is alive with birdsong. In the winter, it’s just silence, snow. Beautiful, too, in a different way.”
“Sounds magical.”
“I’ll take you there someday maybe.”
“Maybe.”
Maybe. Who knows?
“My family used to have Christmas up there. But not anymore. Everyone has kids, in-laws, their own thing going on.”
The mention of Christmas, my empty plate, the sky outside shifting from black to gray as the sun starts to rise. It’s time to head back to reality. I have to pack up my car, head home, figure out my life. I have a stack of gifts for my niece and nephew, my cousin’s kids.
When I was a kid, my mom, sister, and I used to turn our letters to Santa into an art project. We wrote our lists, drew pictures, made crafts—popsicle-stick reindeer or handprint Christmas trees, clay ornaments. Sometimes our letters went out in little boxes containing our offerings to St. Nick.It’s as joyful to give as it is to receive, my mother told us. And we agreed, though secretly we thought it was much better to receive.
And I was always amazed by how Santa got everything right, every year. Not the crazy stuff like the Vespa or the pony, but pretty much everything else. I don’t remember when I stopped believing in Santa and realized it was my parents. Christmas never stopped feeling magical to me. Even now.
