Comfort Zone

Maybe my lack of a comfort zone is my comfort zone.  

Maybe restlessness is nature's way of getting you out of the way of a speeding bullet, pointed right at you, aimed at your destruction.  You shift out of the way, it whizzes by, your life is spared, but you're none the wiser.  All you know is, 

"I feel so restless."

***

Today I walked into a club, as a contract dancer, for the first time in several months.  When I quit my last dancing gig, I left a place that nobody with any dignity would stay in, if put in my shoes.  Today, I walked into what I hope is a far better place.  So far, so good.

So much is the same: same dingy gym lockers, same muted friendliness from 10% of dancers, and nearly hostile suspicion from the other 90%.  Same weary man/woman posting the order, and in my case, laying some ground rules.  This lady, the bitter former dancer, is going to be a lot of fun to deal with, I can already tell.

Some of the 'same things' are good, though.  Same confident rush on-stage.  Same ability to slip right into character, to shed my real self and wear a pared-down, glowing, shape-shifting one for as long as I'm (insert fake name) in a sheer gown, wandering from table to table, with hopefully more table than wandering.  

Maybe, aside from the dull routines, smelly/creepy men, and the hint of menace that you never really shrug off unless you're a naive idiot, I still like it because it's real.  

Sitting wherever you are, having just read that, you might take issue with me calling a strip club a "real" environment.  I beg to differ.  In there, I offer conversation, attention, a break from whatever the hell you would be doing or worrying about, and for a relatively small amount of money.  You say it's, in fact, a considerable amount of money?  Maybe so, but try buying an escort of my caliber for the night, plus the guilt of full-blown sex on the purchase, and then let me know how expensive lap dances and a few drinks are?    

There is no bullshit of the real kind.  Bullshit of the verbal kind flies all day and all night, but the real bullshit- the empty promises, the fake feelings, the deception- all that is nowhere to be found.  Time for money.  Compensation for a service in demand.  It's real, when so much of the world is not.  My mind can make sense of it.

I know how to navigate this world, I'm wired for it.  No, I didn't grow up in the club, but I did grow up having to keep my wits about me.  I grew up knowing that money was what mattered; it was the difference between eating and not, between having an apartment, and not.  I still get hurt, but I know better how to avoid it in this world.  

There's no comfort zone there, but I don't expect one either.  I landed in a comfort zone a few months ago, and have been restless ever since.  

I don't know the resolution to this, but that's true of life, for everyone.

***

I was there with somebody else, following his lead through a living room strewn about with leftover food, spare drinks, some trash, and lazy boys gazing at the television.  We disappeared into a bedroom to do what we do, no different than any other boy and girl on any other day; just another way to pass the night and see how how good it can get. 

Walking out with my head held high, past the same skunked out boys that hadn't moved a muscle in half an hour, he asked me who I was.  I said, "you first."  

He was Joey, I was irrelevant.  I'd been there with his brother, I was off limits, but I smiled.  He looked down at another part of me, told to shut the fuck up by his brother, but he smiled back anyway.  That's all he was able to say, and that's all the time I had.  Another boy in the wrong place, while I was with the wrong guy.  

Thanks for this, Jackie.  The wire would tie our hearts together, cutting the flesh with every ill movement, you're damn right about that.