 or the next week her octopus imagination wound itself about the dentist, experimentally turning him this way and that. But he remained obdurate and glassy-eyed in its sinuous grip, and eventually she released him with an exasperation that became forgetfulness.
She didn't even notice when he failed to call her; partly because of an emotional fight with an editor named Alex, which made her rage about the apartment, angrily talking to herself for days. Alex, with whom she had cultivated a rather tender friendship, had wanted her to write something about her sexual experiences, even though she hadn't had any for over a year. She was offended because she thought he was being exploitative, which offended him because he thought she was being judgmental and hypocritical as well--hadn't she, after all, written about being a stripper two years earlier? "That was different," she huffily explained to Joshua. "That wasn't about stripping; that was about power struggles in relationships. Stripping was just the motif."
Then her word processor returned, looking small and likable in its Styrofoam nest, and she was offered an unusual job writing text for a book of photographs by an artistic photographer, which would require her to travel to Los Angeles. The photographs would all be of a famous model known for her risqué public persona, and the model wanted some of them to be taken in a strip bar with a real stripper.
"We want a thousand words on illusion and transformation," said the editor. "We want your real-life take on it."
Jill arrived at the strip joint at eight in the morning. Various assistants, looking tired and hungover, worked at arranging elaborate camera equipment or stood with an air of taxed authority over portable tables of makeup. The model was sequestered in her trailer, and the famous photographer was shooting the stripper as she walked on a table. The photographer told the stripper she was beautiful. She wasn't, and she appeared to know it, but the photographer said she was again and again until she finally, shyly, began to carry herself as if she were. The owner of the place sat behind the bar, nursing an early cocktail and desultorily jeering his employee. "Take it off!" he weakly cried.
"She doesn't have to take anything off." The photographer spoke in the proud tone of a mother. "She's perfect just as she is."
"The big star," muttered the owner.
"Shut up, Nelson," said the stripper. "If she says I'm beautiful, then I'm beautiful."
"Silly bitch," he replied.
The photographer turned sharply. "Don't call her a bitch," she snapped.
"It's okay," said the stripper mildly. "I am a bitch."
The model entered in the full splendor of her great height and conferred glamour. "Wow, there she is!" bawled the stripper. "Yeah!"
As the model and the stripper posed together, Jill drank coffee with a set of superfluous assistants, listening while the model asked the stripper about her life. For example, did her boyfriend object to what she did for a living?
"Boy, that light sure is hell on the old cellulite," said Jill.
"We were just saying the same thing," responded an assistant.
During a break, Jill questioned the model about why she wanted to pose in a strip joint.
"These women are so interesting to me," she said. "Their lives are totally degrading--but are they really so different from us? I'm saying, Look, let's have some compassion."
Jill remarked that she had not felt degraded when she was a stripper, which seemed to surprise the model.
"Well," she said, "there's a lot of denial. There has to be, in order to survive."
The crew was still engaged in a disorderly departure when the bar opened for business. The lone customer did not seem to notice the harried people carrying camera equipment. He just sat there with a drink in his hand and stared at the stripper, who had taken off her G-string and was bending over to look between her legs at him. He looked completely uninterested, but still he sat there and stared. When the song was over, he handed the girl two dollars. She came off the stage, holding the two dollars and griping about the lousy tip. There was humiliation in her griping, but there was also feistiness, and the combination was lovable. Jill tried to figure out why it was lovable and couldn't, except that it was an interesting combination of collapse and ascendancy. Jill thought the dentist might really like the stripper. She was, after all, a lot like him, yet he could feel superior to her.
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