Once upon a time in the Bible Belt south,
you paint a fire engine lipstick onto your small schoolgirl mouth
not a real schoolgirl, not anymore. You drop out of
grad school. Decide to be the whore Dad calls you anyway.
To get off of his fingers, his payroll in the most expedient way.
Take off plaid skirts for money, kneesocks and braids
for men you call Daddy, like him, twice your age
but different, no touching. You’re paid a proper enough wage
to have your own home. Some nights you sleep there alone —
except for a kitten who thinks it’s a child,
a rescue who makes you a little less wild.
You feel for a while you’re subverting their game.
Spread legged mimicked masturbation with a safe fake French name.
Though you’ve never been to France; afraid, more and more, of grocery stores.
It’s only ten minutes from where you dance to your yellow front door.
Men are always trying to follow you there. Once security shuts your car door,
you’re alone, 3am, aware, of every car on the road. Take lots of turns.
Stop sleeping with strangers. Still one night your house intentionally burns
along with your kitten — while you are topless on stage.
The officers and firemen are quick to engage.
One asks about the vibrator found on the bed —
“You leave it there?” “In that drawer.”
“Humiliating her,” somebody says.
But it seems so less important than the kitten that’s dead.
A fur covered face fills the space in your champagne bubbled head.
You don’t even remember the way it’s disclosed,
your occupation — you danced tonight without any clothes.
4 am, covered in glitter, stage makeup, cotton candy body spray
perhaps that is why everyone knows you’re a stripper.
One will say
How many men might want to do this to you?
It’s not really a question of if, a rhetorical —
so many who resent what little power you found
in their misogynistic sexual patriarchal games.
More than one might want to punish a stripper —
though you’re not to blame, they might explain.
A fireman just knows there is likely
accelerant
before there is flame.
Author’s note: This is a true story from The Stakes, a book I’ve written about fire being used against women as a tool of misogyny. This is the story that happened to me when I looked the picture above and worked as a stripper in a small southern Bible Belt town. It wasn’t safe for me, but I didn’t realize how much until this happened. It’s why I was drawn to the stories of women who were punished like me with flame.
