#TripleX (25 page)

Before our lesson began, we were instructed to spray down the pole with Windex. “This shit isn’t going to kill 99.9% of the slippery coochy germs on here. I’m having second thoughts,” Ang giggled as she wiped down the pole next to mine, grimacing like she might contact an SPTD (Stripper Pole Transmitted Disease).

I twirled around the pole, and my hand slipped right off, causing me to stumble forward. I caught myself and jutted my bottom out to make Ang laugh. “Hey, does this pole make my ass look fat?”

The curvy instructor, actually much curvier than I would have predicted, laughed. “Are we finally ready ladies?”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready. All my jiggly parts were stuffed into a skin suit that made me look like a fat-assed walrus, and I was supposed to learn how to twerk and hump myself up a pole. Ready wasn’t the word I would use. “Seriously though, how much weight could this pole take?” I asked, because there was a real possibility of a major construction accident if my twerks took the pole down.

“Yeah… you got mine connected to some support beams—that are cemented down—right?” Angelisa asked the instructor. Then her eyes narrowed on mine, “She’s lost a little more weight than I, so I’m a little nervous.”

“A freaking pound! One. Damn. Pound. And I ate back at least three with that bag of M&Ms!” I lifted my finger and poked it toward her, “And don’t think I don’t know that you’ve been getting me whole milk in my coffee and slipping the fattening salad dressing my way. I’m onto you! You competitive freak job.”

“Ladies…” the instructor warned as Ang grumbled under her breath about how much of I bitch I was for eating M&Ms in front of her. That woman could hold a grudge
forever
.

“Never mind our stupidity.” I pointed my index finger and waved it in huge circles at myself, “All these curves are dangerous. Will I tear the ceiling down?”

“Not a possibility.”

“And will it be possible to take some filthy pictures to send to my ex-husband? To show him what he’s missing?” I winked.

“Ladies, before we even begin the lessons and exercises. You both need to stare at yourselves in that mirror and tell me, verbalize, your strengths. What makes you sexy?” She strolled between the two of us like a drill sergeant with sex appeal. This woman could strut and accentuate her assets with one sexy swing of the hip and shimmy of her ass.

“Are you serious?” Angelisa asked, her eyes wide.

“Dead serious!” she said, nodding.

“Being sexy is way more than
looking sexy
. It even goes beyond
feeling sexy
. It’s
knowing
how sexy you really are.” She closed in on me. “You’re only as sexy as you know you are. How sexy are you?”

Giggling, Ang said, “Not very.”

Sighing, Sexy Sergeant said, “You ladies need to start focusing on the hot, the sexy, the women I see in this mirror.”

After some very embarrassing confidence and ego-boosting exercises, we were ready to begin the lesson. After telling my reflection how much I liked my boobs and how great my hair was without ever really looking in the mirror, it was time to start grinding on a pole—which was a lot less humiliating.

I couldn’t stop laughing, so I did what I do best—joke around. “I’m dry humping a pole. This is the most action I’ve had all year.” I jumped a foot up the pole and slid down with a loud sharp squeak of skin. Hello, Gravity. “At least I have a pretty face and a great sense of humor,” I quipped.

The instructor smiled and patted me on the shoulder, “You can do this. You can do anything. Just try.”

“Yeah, I figure if the writing gig doesn’t work, I can always set one of these up in an assisted living home for the elderly and hold Bingo/Pole shows. I’m hoping for a huge senior following—seniors with cataracts and glaucoma.”

The instructor laughed and started us out with some stretches. Then, we were told to stand up, grip the pole, and strut around it like we owned it. I took a deep breath, grabbed that fear in the palm of my hand and crinkled it up like it was nothing and blew it away with a soft exhale.
Screw it, let’s do it
. If the Oxford Dictionary people could put the work
twerk
in the dictionary, then I could at least try to make my fat ass do it.

An upbeat hypnotic song filled the room and
boom
.

We were pole dancing.

Booty-bouncing. (Not an earthquake to be felt)

Pussy-popping. (This caused to me come up with an entire series of erotic books.)

Pelvic-rolling. (Shakira ain’t got nothin’ on me)

Twerktastic pole dancing.

“That’s it ladies. Work those asses!” The instructor purred. “Now hold the pole in front of you and squat low.” She did the movements as she called them out. “Get low and pop your booty up and down. That’s it, girlfriends. Pump your pussy in and out. That’s it, that’s real good.”

When all was said and done in the class, I realized the hard part wasn’t the dancing and bending or gyrating. It was watching your own reflection, eye to eye, in the mirror. And learning to feel sexy in whatever skin you’re in.

And, I couldn’t do it.

I wasn’t ready to do that—not yet, anyway.

For the next two weeks, in that small Nebraska town, after class each night when Angelisa soaked in the bath, I shoved myself in the dark hotel closet with my computer. At ten o’clock every night on the screen of my FaceTime App, I’d find Jake Ryan staring back at me, smiling.

“Hey,” he said.

I waved and smiled, brushing the mess of hair out of my face. “Hey,” I whispered, afraid to have Ang hear me talking to her brother. If she knew what I had asked of him, she’d be so upset with me, but he was the only guy I could talk to about this stuff. One, I really didn’t know him. Two, he was safe, because he was Ang’s brother and
completely
off limits to me even though we innocently flirted (I knew he was just trying to make me feel better about myself and I appreciated it. It was good practice receiving compliments and accepting them from him.). And finally, he was the only single guy I knew; he dated all the time. I asked him for advice on what guys our age wanted and how to date—in your forties. The things I never had to think about since I was married.
Was.

I took a sip of water and asked, “How was your day?”

“What the Hell are you drinking?” he asked, mortified.

“Water…” I answered.

“Water?
That’s
a water bottle? It’s in the shape of a dick—a big, giant dick.”

“Yeah, I bought it at the sex shop,” I said, waving it in front of the screen.

He laughed, “How are the… ummm… dance classes going?”

“Oh, my God. You’re a grown man, and you can’t say pole-dancing?”

His cheeks actually reddened, and he looked away shaking his head. “Why are you doing all this stuff? What are you going to find doing stuff like this?”

“I’m finding where I put my smile, Jake. My laughter. My fearlessness, because honestly, they’ve been gone way too long,” I admitted. I’d gotten so comfortable with him during our secret conversations. I didn’t care what I said in front of him anymore.

“You going to give all that back to your husband when you get home from this?” he asked, curious and concerned. His smile didn’t reach his eyes, like they typically did.

“Hell no. He doesn’t get any of the new stuff. He gave me the best years of his life, but his best sucked. God, they sucked,” I said, shifting and moving my laptop. “Now I’m on to the best years of mine. But the dance lessons are great. It’s one Hell of a workout. And honestly, it makes me feel…
sexy
.”

“Yeah? Sexy, huh? I can imagine,” he grinned sexily—the smile reaching well beyond his eyes.

“Can you? Imagine?”

Yeah. He was teaching me how to flirt again.
Maybe that was something I should have kept up in my marriage, flirting with my husband
.

Twitter: Take the plunge and ride the broken shaft. Pete yanks his meat for feet. Yak splat ain’t all that.

God, it feels so good. Oh wow, it’s… it’s so hard, so stiff. I’m almost there… almost. “Mom, I need you,” Evan bellows from the other room. Sighing, I un-suction the plunger from the hardwood floor, sticking it under my arm as I walk to see what Evan needs, making sure it comes with me wherever I go.

“What?” I ask, ready to get back to my deep plunge.

“Nothing,” he says, smirking. Oreos surrounding his lips.

Groaning, I round the corner, suction the plunger to the floor and begin to rub myself up and down its long, hard handle, hoping the heat and friction will send me over the edge. Humping it like a middle-aged woman in heat, I’m almost—

“Angelisa! Get the fucking plunger,” Christine yelled from the bathroom. “The fucking plunger.”

“I am fucking the plunger,” I grumbled, rolling over and stuffing my head back under my pillow.

“Angelisa! Wake up. Get the plunger!”

Opening my eyes, the strange depravity of the dream shocked me as I jolted upright in my bed. “Where’s the plunger?” I asked, jumping up and stuffing my feet in slippers.

“I don’t know, at the front desk,” she screamed from the bathroom. My God, how big was her crap this morning that she clogged the freaking toilet? And why in the world was it my responsibility to be the one to ask the front desk clerk for a plunger? That’s even a little too humiliating for me. I dialed the hotel operator instead, hoping to have one sent up, but the annoying busy tone pierced my eardrum. I tried again. Still busy, meanwhile, Christine was still cursing up a sailor storm in the shitter.

Pulling a hoodie on, since I wasn’t about to put a bra on this early in the morning, I stomped to the elevator. There was an “out of order” sign on the left elevator. I pressed the button for the other elevator and waited. I heard the clatter of the elevator and realized I hadn’t noticed that a man was hunched over on his knees, working on the broken one. The doors were opened, so I peered down and saw the long, terrifying plunge all the way to the basement floor.

“Whoa, scary!” I said, loudly, backing up as the height factor made me queasy.

The elevator repairman stood, turning toward me. Scratch that, a beautiful, buff, black man stood and turned toward me, grinning sexily. Holy fuck a cat! Where was that plunger when I needed it?

Friction. Need friction. Christ almighty!

“Nobody’s ever called me ‘scary’ before,” he whispered, closing the space between us as his eyes traveled the length of my body. Oh my God, things were twitching and coming to life. Oh boy.

I gasped, and my eyes bulged. “Ummm, I meant the shaft was scary,” I clarified, jerking my head toward the empty elevator shaft.

He moved even closer, his body nearly touching mine; I could feel his breath on my cheek. “Nobody’s ever called
that
scary either.” He glanced down at himself and moved his hips ever so slightly. I gulped—like audibly gulped. In his face.

Now, I wrote books that would boast a scene like this, where the heroine would grip his “shaft” confidently, and say something clever, like “I’m not afraid of anything, big boy.” Well, we all know books like that are fiction, because this middle-aged, mother-of-three, turned bright red, giggled uncontrollably, turned on her heel, and sprinted for the stairwell, taking the steps two at time for fear that the hot black man and his frightening shaft would plunge deeper into her than she could possibly handle.