"Take off your coat," May said.

I glanced over at the other two girls. One applied thick shiny lip-gloss to her full lips. The other one was doing up the hooks on a white lace bra with half cups. I was sweating profusely but the last thing I wanted to do was take off my coat in front of those girls. May had dressed me, like she did when we went club hopping. And when she was done I'd felt glamorous and chic. But what worked for a sexually mixed gender-bending disco would not work for this Wall Street strip club. I'd made a huge mistake coming down there with May. I didn't have a stripper's body. My tits were just nipples, miniature marshmallows. And I was wearing the wrong clothes. "May, I changed my mind. I think I'm just going to go home," I said.

"You can't leave now! We just got here. Come on, it's going to be fine. You look adorable. We'll just stay for a couple of hours and then we'll go, okay?" The other girls, now dressed, left the room. I reluctantly took off my leather coat. "There, now don't you feel better? God it's stifling in here. Who were those girls? Did you ever see such udders? You know they've all had them done, they're too perky...they don't sag or bounce." May looked at her watch. "C'mon let's go, we don't want those slags to empty the boys' wallets before we get there, now do we?"

She held out a long gloved hand to me which I took and followed her out the door and up the wooden steps to the stage. A disco ball sprinkled scattershot light over the undulating dancers and a few suited Wall Streeters with bored stares drinking at the bar.

Madonna's "You Can Dance" played loudly over the stereo. I saw my reflection in the opposite mirror. Oh god. I looked just like Rosanna Arquette in 'Desperately Seeking Susan' when she takes that pathetic job as a magician's assistant in a shoddy downtown theater. On my feet I had ice blue strappy platforms with clear glass heels and silver glitter polish on my toenails. I wore a sleeveless empire-waisted, A-line silver lame dress from the 60's that stopped just below my ass and underneath that, a sequined blue bikini and a silver garter. A white feather boa was draped around my neck. May had helped me apply silver false eyelashes, sparkly eye dust and for the finishing touch, a platinum blond curly haired wig that stopped just above my shoulders.

I stood there, frozen in place. May had begun her 60's burlesque act, coyly looking over her shoulder she dragged her boa along the floor. The other girls gyrated slickly and the men reached over the bar to stick dollar bills in their garters. I took a deep breath and began to dance, riveted on my reflection, not daring to meet eyes with the other girls or customers. It wasn't so different from being a go-go dancer when you got right down to it. And I'd been mildly successful at that.

Then the song changed to 'Lady in Red' and May removed her gloves throwing them over the bar. It was a toss up as to who was upstaging who, the boob jobs or May. Moving my hips and pulling up at the edge of my dress to expose my sequined panties, I looked down at the small cluster of men below. Most of them were clean cut, in their late thirties to early forties, attired in crisp grey suits, separate from one another, despite their uniforms. May and the black girls held their undivided attention. Occasionally they threw a curious glance at my end of the stage, most often looking past me to see if the bathroom was engaged. I felt vaguely nauseated, restraining myself from leaping off the stage, grabbing my coat and hailing a cab back to the East Village. It was bad enough that I was there selling my body but the worst part was no one was interested.

I slowly undid my back zipper, revealing first one shoulder, then the other. The black girls gradually stepped down the stairs off the stage, with tens and twenties in their garters forming a thick paper fringe around their thighs. May, in high cut 50's panties, with a slender arm coyly hiding her breasts was still collecting money from the bar crowd. My dress was now a small heap at the edge of the stage and I watched my reflection over my shoulder pulling the white feather boa across my sequined buttocks. I'd now gone past shame and embarrassment at my inadequacies as an entertainer and a woman, to pretending I was alone in May's apartment, dancing for no one but myself. May sidled past me, her dress draped over one arm, tucking her money into a long glove.

- excerpt from 'The Subject of Weeping', a novel

photographer: edland man