SmokeLong Quarterly

I once was pretty, beauty my only inheritance, so when my photograph convinced a bar manager to buy my one-way ticket to Guam I took flight; exposed flesh covered in goosebumps from the air-conditioned cool, we dancers perfumed ourselves in lilies, candied violets, rosebuds, orchids, jasmine, a garden blooming—some swollen around a hidden secret, others a slit glistening with nectar or blossomed open with velvety petals drooping, but all waxed smooth—and it was okay to look, reminiscent of early Eden, exposed without shame, with identification proving us adults, but night after night we assumed identities like children playing pretend, and set our made-up faces with clouds of rice powder, our bodies undulating in light and shadow, haze of cigarette smoke on a mirrored stage, our performative femininity a reflected glamour spell enchanting men, we were never to fade, never to wither, and always, Mamasan said to the men, ‘Buy the lady a drink, Buy Mama drink, too, I gonna take care of you, I gonna give you a deal’ and the men clinked shot glasses, shouting, ‘Kanpai’ and throwing their heads back, swallowing spirits which possessed them to make poor choices at great expense, drunkenly believing us their possessed, owned by cash, but always, Papasan threw the men out at the end, and if the men spent big, we felt spent, but if they did not, we felt broke, monetarily, and otherwise, wondering how to fix ourselves, and I did not feel attracted to men, but felt attractive, which is better to feel when you’ve been dealt an abundance of poverty and that particular classist exclusion that is social starvation, drinking up the male gaze like colostrum for women, an alchemy of liquid gold and elixir of life, nourished by their infatuation, becoming a dream girl, not feeling worthy of your own dreams—that was me, I was dancing in Guam when I met my ex-husband at the tip rail—and nobody looks at me like that anymore, I have aged out of those glances, but I’ve  made the illuminating discovery that there are other ways to twinkle.