SmokeLong Quarterly

I’m always curious about how writers use punctuation. “Twinkle” is one sentence, but it doesn’t necessarily use that choice to make the narration feel breathy or rushed. The semi-colon right up front also caught my eye because it indicates the things on either side are equal somehow. Could you walk us through how you approached punctuation for “Twinkle”?

I wrote “Twinkle” at my first artist residency. I had a fellowship and large stipend, and I thought, this is it—my chance to prove I am a writer. I pushed myself to begin and finish something in those three weeks that I could submit. As an elder millennial I was self-publishing blogs, debating on message boards, dealing with audiences who said, ‘I’m not reading all that’ when I was young and developing my writer voice, so brevity is my greatest strength. I believed I could write one good sentence and submit a micro. I have a conversational tone, that too from blogging. I hope readers hear my pauses through punctuation.

The narrator uses language that makes a couple of pretty provocative comparisons. One is when she compares the men’s watching of the dancers to early Eden. Since such watching is usually described as frightening or a sign of power, I was interested in this comparison. Talk to us about the choice.

As a child, I had an abusive home. My only escape was reading or attending church without family. I voluntarily read the Bible before I read classics. My writing had biblical references as far back as I can remember, so I don’t know that it’s a choice. But I wanted to convey how uninhibited it felt to dance nude, and have our beauty seen since the men were not seen as sexual deviants for looking. Dancing healed my shame too, having grown up in the nineties, averting my eyes in the locker room, but still called homophobic slurs for looking at girls in the classroom. Us dancers checked one another out. There was no shame.

The second provocative comparison is how the young women are compared to children throughout the story, with Mamasan and Papasan taking care of them, but also with the way the narrator infantilizes them by comparing the male gaze to colostrum. I thought this was a daring choice. Could you talk about it?

Yes! That was the thread. Girlhood. This piece is a memoir. In America, we call them house moms and bouncers, but in Guam, Mamasans and Papasans take care of “the girls.” My intention wasn’t for the narrator to infantilize anyone but reveal how infantilizing sex work is. A millionaire paid my bills for a year, and everyone agreed he was my sugar “daddy.” Dancing was not empowering, but also not the worst job I had. It reminded me of playing. We wore costumes and exaggerated makeup like children who haven’t mastered subtlety and chose overtly feminine pretend names. We sat in men’s laps but required adult supervision for our safety. We needed the male gaze (and wallet) for nourishment. We had autonomy enough to tell customers to fuck off or say no to anything requested. Still, it felt like we were kids without real jobs.

Right from the beginning, we know the narrator is speaking from the future about events in her past when she says “I once was pretty.” We return to that awareness with her final words, “I have aged out of those glances.” Why was it important to you to frame the story historically like this?

Sex work is a rare job because no one gets better with wisdom or experience. Youth is the only requirement. It is not even about being conventionally attractive, as many older women are, and many successful strippers are not. It is a service for men to feel mature. Many do not feel taken seriously or respected. They want a young girl to listen to them with a sense of awe. They cannot get that from a therapist, friend, colleague, woman they ask on a date, or even someone they employ. If she also has a great body? It makes the man feel even more important to have her time. Then, there are men who want validation from other men, spending obscene amounts at the tip rail on a young girl with rent due, displaying their dominance. Everyone knows sex work is something you age out of, but it doesn’t mean life is over. It’s not like being a celebrity sex symbol and losing your entire identity. You just become who you always were when you were pretending to be a guileless and naïve nympho. You become whatever you want.

The story ends by focusing us on the title “Twinkle.” None of the story’s language sends us to the usual associations with the word “twinkle,” so I wondered if we are correct to think about its use to describe stars and how that might fit in here with the narrator’s claim that she’s found other ways to do it.

Definitely. The youthful are revered in American culture, and cosmetic illusions of extended youth are a major industry, but there are other ways to shine. I was thinking about Marilyn Monroe, who died incredibly young, but on the cusp of aging out of stardom. There was already talk of who would replace her. Now, no one can. There won’t be a bigger icon. She died an archetype of youthful sexuality. What’s sad is she was playing pretend like a stripper but wanted what men want. She wanted respect for her craftsmanship. I wrote this with gratitude, a retired stripper and complete unknown with endless opportunity to emerge through freedom of self-expression.