Bridget 1

Gibbons

Metamorphosis of a Power Bottom

I’m sitting in my car, still unsure of what just happened. In the parking lot of a

closed McDonalds, it is one in the morning. There are cars whizzing by on a now slick

Woodward. I’m feeling tired, overheated. Numb. I had to pull over—I couldn’t even see

the road through my tears. I pick at the skin on my hand, take a breath. I hope that no one

was watching: I’m a little uncomfortable with being that girl. After a while, I pull out my

notepad, consider the trajectory of my night at The Dirty Show.

The best part of the night was spent with Doxie, the body painter. Doxie was

blonde, petite, and her personality didn’t seem to fit inside of her. She had these eager

blue eyes that saw everything, and if it weren’t for her laugh lines, the decades of laughter

spanning her face, I would have never guessed that she was old enough to be my mother.

She was easy. Inviting. She had warm hands, a warm hug, an even warmer smile.

“Wow!” Doxie sounded shocked when I turned to place my dress, folded, onto

the chair behind me. “What’s that?”

“What?” I reached for my back. “Oh, that’s a hat,” I said smiling thinly. I always

forgot about the tattoo on my shoulder.

“But is it a stick and poke?”

“Yeah, my friend did it for me. Just randomly.”

She raised her eyebrows, beaming like I’d just told her the name of my crush. “I

would not have pinned you as the type.”

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I shrugged. I don’t seem like the type, never have. I don’t seem like the type to

do something like this in a cold, dark corner of the world’s “largest and most important

erotic art show,” or so the website claims. No, I don’t even seem like the type to be at an

event like this, and I damn sure don’t seem like the type to come alone. I can’t stand that

tension, when people size me up and decide that I’m a prude—yet admittedly, there’s a

sort of high that comes from surprising them. She lay a clipboard on the table and flicked

open the neon pink that I picked out earlier. She swirled the tube, asked me where I was

from, and squirted the paint directly in the middle of the clipboard. So nonchalantly.

I hesitated. “The Southfield area.”

Living in Detroit, you never really can get past the geographic anxiety. That’s

always what it gets to, the unavoidable so, where ya from? as if they can glean some sort

of intimate knowledge about the cleanliness of my soul by asking me where I grew up.

Somehow every time, every single time this question throws me through a loop: how do I

answer honestly when the honest answer makes people see you in a completely different

light? Every single time I have to stop myself from offering a …but I grew up in Redford

too.

When I pulled into the Russell Center parking lot, I felt it there, too: in the all-too-

suburban-Detroiter fashion, I took my exit off the freeway, I pulled up, I paid for the

safety of the lot, and I went on my merry way into the trendy and refurbished Stamping

Plant. Graffiti, yes, but in this context, it was artsy, not dilapidated. Ruin porn.

I walked into the check-in room and my stomach was in my throat. I always felt

defensive when I was around new people. The woman at the entrance asked me to open

my coat, my bag, then sent me a few feet away to the woman who checked me for
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weapons. I noted a man in a beige trench coat and heavy black eyeliner, and he looked

like he could’ve been the lead singer in Fall Out Boy. He blew past me and embraced a

woman flaunting nothing but fishnets and a corset. They both had wedding bands. He

leaned into her and stage-whispered, I’m assuming for the benefit of everyone around

them: “The freaks are out tonight,” and then bit her ear. She growled, threw her head

back and laughed. I felt like I was peaking in through a window, but I guess that was their

point.

When I made it past the pat down, I slipped into the main room. It looked some

sort of steam-punk ballroom: it was a busy space, the industrial concrete floors, the red-

curtained burlesque stage to my left--busy with chatter and flippant art and entrancing

UV lights, each trying to monopolize my attention. “In The Air Tonight” was echoing

from the main stage, shaking the room. Intimidating. But more so thrilling. Where to

begin? Why not with some exploring? I turned right, perusing the varying chiaroscuro of

penetration paintings. One was in the style of an early-renaissance lamentation, and it

depicted a naked woman, fresh off a cross, being flogged with a pink whip. Her followers

were nude. I passed a gigantic penis statue that curled up like a sideways chaise lounge.

People were sitting on it, taking pictures. There was too much blurring past me: fishnets;

glitter; “Any SIZE QUEENS in the house”; average looking people, dressed for dinner at

The Cheesecake Factory; “wow, I wonder how he did that”; a woman, gleefully on a

leash. A leash, like a dog, like someone’s bitch, like someone whose control has been

taken from them, and she was ecstatic.

When the couple caught me starting, they smiled and I fled, embarrassed. I passed

a man dancing in a cage wearing nothing but a gas mask and whitey-tighties. I smiled at
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him and he shook his ass for me. I was so happy for him. I finessed my way through the

crowd that was packed around one booth in particular: it was a woman wrapped in a rope

and suspended like she was prey. Dinner. A snack. Everyone loves a good hunt. Her feet

were just off the ground, her eyes were closed, and there was a man playing predator,

expertly coiling the tail of the rope around her. Tightening it. The woman was tired and

heavy and plain, like she’d just barely made it because she was running late from some

bullshit 12-hour shift. I imagined her rushing from her car to the bathroom, throwing her

shapeless strawberry hair into a low ponytail, yanking up her ill-fitting lace bodysuit,

rubbing her neck with relief, fresh energy. She looked like this was just what she needed,

like she wasn’t just accepting her fate, but reveling in it. I stared at her placid face and

felt kinship.

I moved onto the next booth, a flogging station. I watched a woman that was

spilling out of her red corset whip a man who looked like he wore too much cologne. His

jeans were down and he was leaning his elbows on the massage table in front of him, ass

up as an offering. To whom? This woman. She was so confident. Powerful. In a fit of

jealousy I sized her up and then in the same breath, I quickly swallowed my pitiful

thoughts. A few feet away from them another, smaller man in an executioner’s mask was

disinfecting his own whip. He was shirtless. “No, baby, you do you,” a tipsy woman in

tight cheetah print told the guy she was hanging off of as they swerved into my line of

vision. The crowd was clapping—the man must have been taking a real beating. When

he’d finally had enough, he raised his right hand like he was taking a pledge, slowly

began to pull his pants back up. The lady in the corset looked directly at me. I paused,

tilted my head. And then I smiled, said no thank you.

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I made my way to the next booth—the older woman running the register told me

that they were doing imprints of stomachs and chests. The customer would go behind a

curtain, strip down, get their body painted by an artist who would then slowly lean into

them with a black canvas. I hesitated. But then I put my name down for the 11:30 slot and

made my way back to the burlesque stage. I finally found an empty seat next to a couple

holding hands and giggling. The host was captivating: he was in a flesh-toned, bedazzled

bodysuit that shimmered in the spotlight. He was telling some joke with his hands, and it

ended with him shrugging, calling himself a gay Satanist because he was sure that Hell

would be fabulous. “I mean if there’s glitter, I’m there.” I missed the joke but laughed

with the rest of the audience anyways.

And so began the performances. Each performance was progressively smoother:

the first, a woman whose name I missed, she was in leggings doing handstands on a chair

to EDM; the next, Eva La Feva, walking back and forth, taking off bits of a pantsuit to

jazz; third was Minnie Tonka in an all leather 80’s mini-skirt getup, just standing there,

sliding her hands up her body to wordless heavy metal. They were each strangely

enchanting—less bizarre than anticipated, but still engrossing. Then came the last

performance of the set, the woman the crowd had seemed to have waiting for! The couple

next to me was whispering excitedly, and I could hear others speculating, too. “I’ve

never seen her do that,” the man in front of me whispered to his partner as a hula-hoop

suspended by a pole from the ceiling descended. Our host began to excitedly list this

next performer’s accolades, her collected titles, her honors amassed by dominating the

burlesque world. He nearly squealed when finally, after such a long wait, he could

announce: “please show some love for THE Miss Roxi D Lite!” The crowd was out of
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their mind, one woman in the front even stood, and then, as if everyone were seeing the

same cue card, silence. The stage light flipped on and some guy beefy enough to be a

bodyguard made his way to the center of the stage. Draped over his shoulder was a

woman in a black corset. She had black pin-up hair, long red heels, fishnets, too. She was

bound by red rope head to toe, and in her red-lipped mouth was a ball gag. He placed

Roxi directly below the hula-hoop. For a moment, she stayed there. She looked top-

heavy, slumped over like a dying flower. There was a slow come-hither whistle over the

speakers, and then smooth, traditional western burlesque music came on. She shot up

straight and began to slowly shift out of the rope in time to the beat. When the rope was

off, the music stopped. I could sense the confusion in the crowd. Was this it? Was this not

the Roxi D Lite they came to see? She flipped her hair, turned toward the exit of the

stage, sauntered away. Someone started clapping. Suddenly a faster tempo jazz song

came on and she swayed down towards the crowd. A lap dance, then another, she sipped

on their drink, she threw back her head and spit it in the air, she climbed back up the

stairs on all fours. When she made it back up, she hoisted herself up and into the hula-

hoop effortlessly. She spun and swirled and flipped, she was hanging by her knees off the

bottom, she flipped up to the top and sat cross-legged, leaning away from the pole she

was clasping. The hoop was spinning and spinning and spinning. In all honesty, my eyes

got lost in the magic of her elegant swoops, her flips, and though I’m not quite sure how

it happened, she somehow ended up standing tall and proud and cool in the middle of the

stage, almost entirely nude, bowing to the electric crowd: a standing ovation; “well

done”; “I’ve never seen anything like that”; roaring applause. So seamless, graceful.
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Nude ballet mid-air. It didn’t even feel sexual—it was alchemy, but in a language foreign

to me.

I’m not clear on how I made it here, back to the painting booth, but I do know that

when Doxie is kneeling in front of me, rubbing my chest with paint, I feel a similar

mystification. How does she soothe me? My limbs soften. I’m not sure if it’s her black

Russian cap or if it’s the way she slurs a story about her gig at Burning Man that does the

trick. She’s so open and warm, and I’m comfortable with her. Or at least as comfortable

as I can be with a stranger. My stomach jiggles when she flicks paint onto it. I couldn’t

give less of a fuck. She’s seeing my secret dark hairs. Oh no, call the police! God, if only

I could feel this way forever! After thirty minutes or so, I’m ready: my stomach is wet

and cold and rainbow when she picks up the black canvas and slowly presses it against

my torso by hugging me. She’s so warm. I figure that makes me cold, but cold is fine. I

decide that cold is a good look on me. Natural. And then it’s over. I’m cleaned and I’m

dressed and I’m told by the lady at the front that I need to wait for it to dry. I decide to

kill some time by walking around, wandering around the art. I see ink vagina prints on a

page torn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and I linger here. I read and reread the word

enervating slowly in my head as I run my tongue against my teeth. It’s too lovely of a

word. It’s the story of Salmacis, the nymph that rejected her virginity and began stalking

Hermaphroditus in her lake. He, who in a last second attempted to deflect his own pain

called upon the gods to contaminate that same pool of water so that it would weaken each

and every man who entered thereafter, was raped. They were forever and inseparably

merged as one. I cringe.

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I move on. I’m entranced by a sculpture with golden snakes as hair. The gender is

unclear and the sculpture is smiling. I decide that I’ll track it down when I’m rich—I’m

smitten. I venture into the flogging booth, decide to give it a try. I laugh, blush, depart.

I make my way back to my painting, to my car, to the freeway. I fidget with the

radio. I tap my wheel. I begin to deflate. Something is eating away at me and I’m not sure

why. I should feel giddy, elated—it was one of the bolder things I’ve done. I should feel

accomplished or excited or something. Different. I can’t find a station I like, and so I give

up and turn it off. The freeway is empty. Even the muddied snow has vanished.

I decide to take the long way home, like I always do when I feel like garbage. I.

I’m down, yeah, but. Is that? I’m…angry? Angry—the heat in my head, my limbs, my

clenched teeth—and I’m so angry with myself, my stupid self, there’s a fire in my throat

and I know that I don’t even have any reason for it, and that makes me so much…Angrier

because, because, because it’s such a stupid thought to have like every other fucking

thought that crosses my mind, that I could just drive off, me and my stupid ass car and

my boring ass self, drive it off this broken ass overpass, which is even dumber because I

just had a really, I mean really good time. I felt good... Do the weird things. That’s what

it’s all about, where you’re meant to be. She spoke with this urgency, like she was giving

life-saving wisdom or something as I was slipping back into my dress. I wonder if that’s

what she told everyone who came to her that night. I’ll fucking bet I’m the only one.

Why did I even go? Tofu. I’m tofu. Bland, absorbent, I fucking shook her hand, who does

that? I shook her hand and with that stupid, fake smile and in that small, choked voice of

mine I told her I’ll try.