A pilot on a cold cold morn’
Frank’s hair is incredibly soft. Not sure I've ever touched hair that soft and silky.
It is long and grey, well, silver really and his eyes are blue steel and so gentle it hurts a little to look at them. Frank is past sixty I guess. Maybe he’s even seventy. Hard to tell. He’s a rock’n’roll kind of guy. Heavy metal maybe. He probably owns a motorbike and used to play in a band.
Frank's hands lay timidly in mine as I dance for him. He wears fat heavy silver on his fingers and wrists. I actually had to talk him into this whole private dance thing. Even though Frank is a strip-club regular he is usually the guy at the bar, not the guy in the backrooms. But now he is here in one of the western-themed booths - swinging doors and wooden benches, instead of velvet curtains and plushy sofas - getting dances from a stripper. Now Frank is a backroomboy and he feels a little awkward and worried about it. Worried someone sees him, that word goes around that even Frank succumbs to human touch.
He agrees to another dance. “I’ve never done this before”, he says, “it's beautiful”. He sits straight, his arms motionless beside his still body, his hands resting in mine but only because I put them there. He is soft and so fragile. All his leather and metal can’t disguise the fact and in this minute I may love him a little.
These moments are the most precious. When in spite of the booming bass, thick air, and grubby banknotes two strangers touch and connect.
Outside a small town night is bouncing to life and I try to cover Frank with woo-girly-hands-in-the-hair as we push through the crowd, so that his friends won't see him coming from where he’s just been, doing what he just did, being who he is too. He shall remain the tough guy at the bar, unfazed by warm skin and smiles.
As I am back on stage for my next set I can't see Frank anymore, not anywhere. Moments are so fleeting, they pass as quickly as they come and often not even the memory remains. Other moments linger a little longer until they too are nothing but flimsy silhouettes that also fade away. But every so often a moment manages to hold on and the memory survives and something stays.
#
Somebody is throwing money at me. The seats at the tip rail are fully taken and I am looking at young people, old people, sober people, drunk people. People who are escaping in the company of others. Lose themselves in pleasure. Collectively craving that feminine energy, sexual, sensual, raw. Like greedy babies on breastmilk, feeding right off the source.
At the edge of the stage, golden chrome-grips hang from the ceiling. They are for holding on to when balancing 6-inch heels on that slippery rail, gstringthing on eye-level with drunk dudes and their dollars. I pull myself up and slow-motion-move my legs above the crowd’s heads. My body is glowing in the ultra-violet and I feel weightless and free, gliding through the air like a fish in the deep dark sea. The air is heavy and thick. Heavy with sin, heavy with booze, heavy with sleaze, heavy with lust. Heavy with life.
'A pilot on a cold, cold morn’, one-hundred fifty-five people on board…' - “A real hero” begins playing. That familiar melancholy, sweet sadness in sparkling pastels. I close my eyes and let it come, slowly but steadily pouring over me and into me, flushing through my veins into every last cell. Drenching me in goodness, lifting me higher. That pure golden bliss.
'A pilot on a cold, cold morn’, one-hundred fifty-five people on board, all safe and all rescued, from the slowly sinking ship'.
Tonight I am a pilot. Disguised as a naked girl.