The busboy placed his mouth on mine like a resuscitator-
telling me in French he needed
sexual practice-pretending it’s for my own good
next moment he’d jab me with the lower spoon
like I am pudding in a straightjacket,
his teeth hanging there
so filled with lust
no? then to Baby Dolls to see the strippers
as he leaned down in his thoughts, I heard
Why don’t you try it? Why don’t you?
we pushed through the crowd
the long painted fingernails
dragging over the g-string’s cleft
the dark brown legs lifting
to swivel
no, no it’s all a mess
it can’t have me
no sir, it can’t have me
but this time I
not prudish, no, not unliberated
fumed to feel my clothes come off
snagged in mass fantasy,
my feet step up, took
my long-reserved place among those girls
on the cluttered stage
among the swinging and shaking
of hips and ass
lifting my pudding white legs in a giant “V”
flicking my tongue
towards my shoes easy
so very easy and all
the glittering and cracked-up and work-glazed
eyes out there faded
into one soundless chanting breath-
leaving me insulated in a vacuum
gyrating into a mirror
and a sound nearby, my own breathing
like another woman’s in a stethoscope,
a ghost of myself,
the tortured good girl
told me I’d found the root of all discomforts
the way they’d all wished me, Mum, Dad, the schools,
employers, lovers and strangers
since ever I could or could not remember–
I disappeared around the stripping pole then
under the flashing twirl of a disco-ball
and swiveling spotlights,
outside of the cheers and the dollar-bills
the fingers pushing and the hollers
and felt something relieved fall down nearby
as though shot in the head
and watched it lay entranced and loving
though bloody in its own death.