Up on the Pole
Up on the pole, Michelle was magical. Suspended above us she had complete control. She had short blond hair that dangled in the red glow of the lights. She was floating, weightless. She looked down on us and we were captivated by such precision, such grace. There above us, she opened her arms wide like an upside down crucifix, inviting us to see everything about her. And we threw money on the stage thinking that was enough.
Earlier, it was summer and she was just my neighbor who lived with her boyfriend in a ground floor apartment. She was a receptionist, her boyfriend a day laborer. Above them was my friend Brian, and above Brian, was me. Me in a studio apartment where I didn’t own a bed but did own a large television and couch.
During bar hours the men pissed standing between needles and vomit; the women hovered an inch above the toilet seat. Our neighborhood bar. A bar with a sign on the wall declaring that customers were forbidden to spit on the floor, forbidden from bumming drinks, forbidden from selling drugs, forbidden from prostitution. There was a sign for the employees saying, Do Not Let Hookers Use the Bathroom, That’s Where the Needles Are Coming From. A bar that never cut you off, never stopped you from drinking, sometimes even after the front doors were locked for the night. We loved this bar.
There were two nights I remember most in this bar, one good and one bad, but I often reverse the labels. The first night, Brian had an hour to kill before his AA meeting. Michelle and her boyfriend were already there. The night air was perfect for patio drinking, and the four of us sat outside. Brian left for his meeting and came back a little while later with a better understanding of Jesus.
We closed the bar and three of us ended up at my studio. The boyfriend couldn’t make it up the stairs, and soon Brian was in his apartment below us, sick off Crown Royal. I had never seen a pierced clitoris so Michelle showed me hers. Because I had no bed, she bent over the arm of my couch. Afterward, we drank a beer in silence as she held my hand.
The second night at that bar, it was just Brian and me. Everyone was buying him shots, because he was a brand new father. He thought it was great, this fake announcement, this fake baby. All night we raised our glasses to the new baby, to the spectacle of life. The summer was ending and I didn’t want it to. I wanted this joy every night, the slapping of backs, the camaraderie felt when you shout for the bartender to “put this round on my tab!”
After the bar, alone in my apartment, the proud new father sleeping a floor below me, there was a knock on my door. There stood Michelle, her nose and bottom lip busted, her neck scraped where the boyfriend had punched her with a fistful of car keys. “I have nowhere else to go,” she said. Inside, I held her hand around the shower curtain while she washed off the blood. I felt so guilty for seeing her naked that I gave her one of my favorite T-shirts and she curled up on my couch to fell asleep. The next morning, she walked back down to her apartment and her boyfriend. I didn’t say a word.
Classes started and there were less nights at the bar. When I did walk down there, I didn’t stay very long. There was a stench like wet cigarettes I hadn’t noticed before. The old men sitting alone started to depress me. Brian had other neighbors to drink with, and Michelle had midnight-moved with her boyfriend soon after the night at my apartment. Eventually I stopped going there all together.
It was a year later, stopping in for lunch at a strip club off University when I saw Michelle again. Up on that pole, that pole that looked a 100 feet high, she was upside down and breathtaking. Her legs were crossed around the pole; her piercings glinted in the red light. She spread her arms for us and we cheered and clapped, never wanting her to come down, never wanting this moment to end. She closed her eyes and relaxed her legs. Slowly, ever so slowly, we watched. We watched as she inched her way down, eyes still closed, arms still open.
