Cut the String

It’s the Summer of 2006 I’m 24 years old, and I’m speeding down Hwy 395 Leaving Carson City Nevada. I have an opportunity to reveal my secret super power and I am so excited.

The windows of my small grey Toyota Matrix are down, Jack Johnson “Bubble toes” (My current favorite song), is blaring on my radio. I feel unstoppable, as I weave in and out of traffic passing every mundane person on the flat stretch of highway in Washoe valley. I am wearing my favorite burgundy tank top and sunglasses, with a fresh layer of red lip gloss smeared on my beautiful lips. And the cutest underwear that I currently own.

I’m a first-year nursing student. Which means most of my time is spent in immaculate white scrubs, white shoes, nerdy glasses, with no makeup, my long dark hair is kept in a non-descript simple braid.

In nursing school, you are put in a white uniform that way everyone around you always knows exactly who you are. You are an inferior, largely ignored, lost student. You are desperate to please yet never impress, and the outfit screams the part.

So right now, I am on Fire because I am free for this beautiful evening. I started taking pole dancing classes in 2004 and although I was initially intimidated, I found myself instantly hooked. I had never felt sexy in my entire life. As I found myself looking into the large mirrors in the dance studio, I saw a beautiful new person. It was not just my perspective of my own image that changed, I had a taste of an erotic elixir of strength that was so new to me, and I drank it all in. So “Exotic fitness” became my new favorite place.

I left home at 15 with zero self-esteem and a completely shaved head with only bangs to show. As my terrible hair grew out over the years, I was left with this untamable Sonic the hedgehog look. I wore a beanie for 2 years straight and if I ever was caught without it, I was humiliated.

At 17 with more hair, I left the mainland. I spent a year on Kauai and 2 months straight in the North shore jungle with very little human contact. I spent days covered in mud thinking this was freedom, thinking the smell of the trail was the elixir for escape.

A year later at 18, on Mother’s Day, I realized my period was late, and I was indeed pregnant. I took the test in a Hawaiian grocery store bathroom, and my world went dark. Over the next few days, I moved from ruin to resolve. My world changed as I left Kauai to go home to Nevada to become a new single young mother.

Motherhood took over my life and I never had a chance to feel like a sexy woman. I was not the embodiment of anything exotic or erotic. I was a cake maker, a house cleaner, I planned meals, pushed strollers and the lawn mower.

As I watched the instructor Brenda for the first time, demonstrate crawling on the floor like a seductive temptress, a part of me was activated in a way I had never felt before. It was a sexy light bulb moment, and I wanted to be as hot as Brenda with all of my being.

Just like nursing school, pole dancing had a uniform, but it was designed to grab attention. Short sparkle sequence shorts, spiked, patent leather, high heal boots, and glamourous dancing bras. I bought all of it. And My career as an unpaid secret pole dancer began.

I was a dedicated student and worked super hard at developing skills. The classes were small so my tricks were quickly honed. From climbing to spinning to hanging upside down I could do it all. I started to develop this type of sexy super power that I previously had no idea existed. I felt vibrantly hot and strong, and it was tremendously empowering. For the first time I wielded my body as an art form.

As I drive to Reno that sexy superpower feeling is gushing through my veins and spilling out my rolled down windows to everyone on the road. I can’t wait to play on that pole, see my instructor Brenda whom, I now call a friend and feel like a sexy superwoman.

Brenda is strong, her body is pure muscle. She has bleached blonde hair, a spray tan, is my height about 5 f 4i, with perfectly voluptuous breasts. She has a home gym built off the main floor of the studio and works out all the time. She has experience with bodybuilding competitions and awards to show for it. She lives off of chicken breasts and broccoli and tells stories of taping her butt cheeks together and eating snickers bars on the day of body building competition.

Yesterday, at the studio I was all smiles as I walked into class. Everything is always structured the same, so warm up on the floor goes by quick, and at last we are on the pole and there is never enough time. There is always a new trick to master, always more arm strength to develop. We end each class cleaning the pole, but in a sexy slow way. Everything must be done this way in the role of a super sexy woman. I love this woman this slow, elegant erotic girl.

As the class packed up, Brenda looked up at me and asked “Hey Tawnya, Sandra and I are going out tonight to a bar called Shooters. It has a pole on the bar and Its super fun to dress up and show off. Sandra walks over to me and smiles, I am so thrilled to be asked. “I would love to go” I said. Sandra is also gorgeous but is Brenda’s opposite she’s dark haired, naturally tanned and tall. They both fill me in on details, -I’m not to look too dressed up, just casual. “You know just wear cute underwear.” Sandra said

I’m so excited because one, I am a total groupie and I feel so cool having an opportunity to hang with my teachers, and two because I have never showed off what I have been working so hard to improve to anyone before. My husband looks down at my fitness hobby and after 2 years of dancing he never once agreed to watch me. I am busy at home with my two young boys so I never get out. My boys are 4 and 6 and so consuming that I have lost interest in my marriage completely.

I get the go ahead from my uninterested husband to go out on the town with my instructors turned friends. I’ve told him most of the truth. He knows I am going to bar in Reno with girlfriends.

When I arrive at the parking garage, I check the mirror, grab my pink razor flip phone and text Brenda, we meet up outside a casino and walk the dizzying floor of noise and lights. I am really nervous, but so proud to be walking like a diva with my personal idols.

We arrive at Shooters and I’m so scared. The bar is smaller than I expected, and there aren’t many patrons yet. Brenda knows the owner, so we all pull up a stool and chat. I am two drinks in which is plenty to calm my nerves.

The bar begins to fill up with people, and the moment arrives when Brenda gets up, removes her pants and steps up to the bar. She dances slowly and her moves are gentle and strong, everyone is cheering. Im so excited for her! She comes back down regains her composure and then she says to me “Your turn!”

I nod my head in understanding and think “Okay I’m ready.” I kick off my shoes and pull down my pants, pile my clothing quickly beneath the bar and take Brenda’s hand as she assists me up on a stool and I step from the stool onto the bar. I grab the pole and “Apple bottom jeans” is playing on the stereo and I instantly light on fire.

I am not as slow as Brenda because I cannot contain my enthusiasm. I am in the splits angling my body just right off the pole, dipping way low and my butt is in every man’s face, and I hear so much cheering! I am the hottest girl in the world, I feel it reverberating from my bones to the bar.

After a long while I come down to take a breather and have some water. When this really nice guy in a baseball cap taps me on the shoulder. “Um excuse me, I just wanted to let you know that, umm.. there is this string hanging out of your underwear, and umm.. it looks like a tampon string but I’m sure, it’s probably just part of your underwear, but umm.. I just thought you should know.”

The blood drains from my face and I crouch to gather my pants and run into the tiny bar bathroom. I lean against the door and slide down it in shock. I feel so ashamed. Here I thought I just climbed up on a mountain of discovery of my own sexuality only to fall all the way down again. I’m crushed.

This stranger with a baseball cap unknowingly had just informed me that I was not in fact the hottest girl in the world, that actually, I was just a human girl on her period trying to be sexy and everyone there saw a long string hanging out of my adorable underwear. He had the creativity to call it a clothing malfunction. I had the humility to not return to the bar to dance.

I rushed out of the bathroom fully dressed and over to Brenda and whispered what happed, she looked me up and down and decided that it was time to go. As they giggled, I groaned, they were shocked that I didn’t know that you are actually supposed to “cut the string”. Cut the string? I had no idea. This was before diva cups existed.

Still reeling with humiliation, I made it back to the parking garage got in my car and leaned on the steering wheel. I tried to think of who I could call. There was not a single person I could think of to express this ultimate tragedy.

I make it to my nursing class the next day still feeling raw from the experience. I stay quiet all day. I make it home to my family that night, feed my family dinner and crawl into bed.

15 years later I still think about that devastated girl who slid down that dirty bar bathroom door in shame. That girl that didn’t know how to “cut the string”. The girl that would one day cut a million things to step into a different better version of herself.

The girl who left her indifferent first husband to find a man that would install a pole anywhere in the world for her. The girl who left a 6-bedroom house to live in a tent and build a house off the grid. The girl who refused to have her last baby in a hospital and chose her bathtub instead.

The girl who quit drinking wine and started to write.

I am so proud of that girl for trying so hard and discovering so much. I am so proud of everything sexy she learned and then forgot. The girl who was the hottest girl in the world.

The girl who didn’t cut that string.