When Samantha comes home for a weekend at her parents’ place, she isn’t expecting anything more than a boring day trying on bridesmaid dresses and a boring night watching TV with her parents. But when she meets Claire, a tall and elegant single mother, on the bus ride home, her plans change.
Claire invites Samantha to the local strip club where she will perform. It isn’t exactly a date, but it’s certainly interesting. Samantha isn’t entirely sure if Claire is using her for more tips or genuinely interested in her, but when she gets invited to a backroom for a special performance, it’s truly hard to say no. Will there be more between them than a single night?
Both of Samantha’s sisters, Lisa and Cassie, were in the special private dressing room area the boutique had blocked off for their party. Most of the other women in the wedding party had come and gone by now, their alterations set and ready for the seamstress. Since Samantha had missed her initial stop, and then gotten on a different bus to come back around the winding downtown streets, she had been last to arrive, and now would be last to leave. She still had her gigantic backpack stuffed with clothing for the weekend, as well. It sat on the floor of the fancy boutique area, like a discarded briefcase. She was surprised no one had called bomb control yet.
She soon caught sight of the rainbow flag on the straps. She recalled the Pride Parade when she’d gotten the patch, and the girlfriend who insisted that it was more than okay to wear these items openly. She had sewn it on for her, a task that Samantha had been grateful for her to do, since she was all thumbs when it came to arts and crafts. Samantha was still grateful for that patch, and the sweet task, in a way. At least it had let Claire know I was on her team. That was a nice thing to depend on -- a rainbow flag made you visible to those who may not appear queer, and vice versa -- but another part of Samantha soon became disappointed. She’d wanted to believe, especially as she twisted through the downtown streets and passed Mount Royal again to get to the boutique, that it had been her raw sexual magnetism that brought Claire to flirt with her. That there had been just something about Samantha herself that attracted the other woman to her enough to invite her to see her show.
But now the rainbow flag kind of gave the whole thing a different spin. And the fact that she’s clearly a stripper, Samantha reminded herself. A stripper with a baby, who maybe isn’t even gay, and just saw an easy mark.
As Lisa fussed with Samantha’s dress, the hot pink of her cheeks matched the pink of the gown. Samantha saw her brown mousy hair in the mirror, in desperate need of a cut. Her boring brown eyes. And her rather skinny body. No curves in any place, right or wrong. Who would actually want to get with her?
“You look good,” Cassie said, standing on her other side and being the angel to Lisa’s devil on her shoulder. “I know pink’s not your color, but we can do wonders with makeup.”
“She’s an autumn,” Lisa argued. “She should be able to wear pink. Most of the other girls on my party are autumns. And they looked good.”
“I always thought she was a winter?”
“No, autumn. You’re a winter, though.”
“I thought I was a spring?”
Cassie and Lisa went back and forth for a while, leaving Samantha in between. She sighed when Lisa went to her phone, to bring up the color palettes she’d been working with, hell-bent on being correct.
“Guys. It’s fine. It’s not like I’m a dress person anyway. I’ll wear it once. Pose for photos. And then it can live in the back of my closet. Or donated to Salvation Army,” Samantha said. “Or something.”
Lisa pouted, complained that all her hard work was for nothing, while Cassie only laughed as she envisioned a few high school girls going to prom in something like this. “Or maybe even someone in a strip show act.”
“What?” Samantha asked, caught off guard. “What do you mean?”
Cassie shrugged. “I don’t know. Only that a dress like this would be nice to rip off, rather than dance in. You know? So like a strip act.”
“Hey!” Lisa said, and then argued with Cassie some more about how much style she had, how this type of dress was on Instagram, and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, all Samantha could do was imagine the dress falling off her own body in shards; she imagined herself with all the grace she’d seen in Claire’s toned arms and legs.
And she didn’t care if she was a mark or not. She was going to go to that strip club tonight. She was going to watch. She was going to be treated as special. And whatever else happened, happened.
Samantha stepped away from the full length mirror, found the boutique helper, who marked down the places where the dress needed to be altered. Afterwards, and while her sisters were still bickering back and forth about something else wedding related, Samantha dressed in her jeans and t-shirt once again. She held her backpack over one shoulder, and gestured to the door.
“Well, if you guys don’t need me --”
“Hey. Where are you going?” Lisa asked.
“What your sister means,” Cassie said, rolling her eyes, “is that mom and dad want to see you, too.”
“I’m staying with them. I’ll see them later.”
“But not like a thief in the night. Come on. You gotta have dinner with all of us. Then you can sneak out and go on whatever date you’re planning.”
“I. Uh.”
Cassie only winked.
