Reinventing Mona by Jennifer Coburn Page B

for Viagra. Her oversized T-shirt bore an illustration of a cat sitting atop a pile of books. “So many books, so little time,” it lamented. We were all conspirators. Secret keepers for one another. Certainly no one in Myra’s book club knew she was at a stripping class. When her husband’s boss asked if he had any special plans for the weekend, he surely didn’t answer that he was going to witness his wife’s first striptease, hoping it would help cure his impotence.
    Kelly wore black Bettie Page bangs and multiple tattoos on her arms. Pale foundation accentuated the heavy black liner on her top eyelids. Chewing a fresh piece of Juicy Fruit, Kelly said she was getting married in three weeks and wanted to surprise her new husband on their wedding night. “Ahhhh,” the women sweetly sighed as if she’d just sold her hair to pay for his watch chain.
    Hidden beneath a mane of tangled brown hair was Olivia, a stocky woman who said it was her sixth time taking the class. “I’m an addict,” she said. I refrained from leading the group in “Hi, Olivia.” For the last three years, Olivia worked at the metal supply company where they manufacture poles for strip clubs. Two years ago, she filled in for a delivery guy and became fascinated with the club scene. “It was a forbidden underworld of sexy women and ogling men, where all the rules of the outside world don’t apply. I was hooked from go.”
    Fern was in her forties and looked like how Cher might have turned out if she hadn’t enjoyed the comforts of fame. Her long frizzy hair screamed, “I bartended in Reno one too many years,” and her eyebrows were so over-plucked, they looked almost terrified to try to grow back. She had the kind of face that was always smoking, even when there was no cigarette dangling from her dry lips. Fern said her husband promised he’d stop going to strip joints so often if she learned to dance for him. He even bought an extra large coffee table with a detachable pole in the center.
    “Wasn’t that a million dollar idea?” offered Olivia, who quickly let it be known that she was the ultimate authority in all things exotic. Over the course of the evening, poor Tabitha couldn’t get two sentences out without Olivia piping in to share her favorite strip music, her online source for clear-heeled platform shoes, and her demonstration of the hip roll.
    “I love to dance. I love making love, and I love feeling sexy,” said a middle-aged Latina whom I imagined managed a family restaurant by day. “When I heard about the class, I told my lover we got to do this for each other,” Maria said, gesturing to the woman beside her.
    Together? But they don’t let men—ooooooh, she’s a lesbian. I see now. As must be Ginny, the embarrassed-looking woman beside her.
    Vicki was the only one in the class who actually wanted to be a stripper, which I wondered if her ballet friends knew. “I’ve been dancing all my life, but I could never join a ballet company.” She gestured to her cantaloupe boobs. We all laughed, a bit envious of such problems. “I dance with a modern jazz company but the pay is for shit so I need to supplement,” she explained. Vicki was exactly what one would expect a stripper to look like, right down to the perfectly arched Hollywood brows and platinum blond hair. She had the Paris Hilton look, walking the thin line between sexy and cheap.
    “I’ve got three kids under six and I need to wake things up in the bedroom or my sex life is going to be finished,” said an exhausted-looking woman.
    “And what about you, Mona?” Tabitha asked.
    “Oh, um, okay,” I stammered, hoping my body would move more skillfully than my mouth. “I guess I just want to get in touch with that, you know, that other side of myself.”
    “Your untapped sexuality,” Tabitha said.
    “Um, yeah, I guess.” How humiliating that she could immediately see how “untapped” my sexuality was. It was plain to see I was as appealing as a keg