Holy Mama of Distraction

Ok, so I saw my first (ever) showgirl today. Live and in person. She wasn't on a stage in a chorus line with other showgirls, kicking her legs up and dancing with big fans, she was walking toward me down a very long hallway. It was a showgirl-out-of-context moment and what happened has led me to this blog.

I was distracted, excited and of course curious why she was even in this part of the very large building where I am working. Apparently she was walking toward a door to a back path to her stage, the levels of seedy underbelly back alleys in this town is mind boggling. As she approached me, i could not help to smile and even blush. She was wearing a big pink headress, a sequin bikini type top and a pink sequin wrap, in pink heels.

It was not so much the fact that she was so boldly scantily clad, or was it the way she was wrapped up? No, it had to be the height, between the headress and the heels-easily 7 feet! Maybe, it was just that she was in this totally mundane setting, a hallway, with dim lighting and beige carpeting. She was like a totally constructed dessert, like the kind you see on the Food Network, that chefs compete and use blow tourches to construct, she was artful and glamorus, and so not like me.

I remember reading somewhere when I was in college taking a women's study class, that women watching porn will watch themselves on the screen. I never agreed with that, I guess because I'm a Dyke. the whole mirror stage and Lacan, I don't even want to really go here, but I did experience a difference, a rupture if you are thinking of Jacques Lacan. There was a seperation in my gaze, but it also went into a place of desire. I did not want to grab the showgirl, it was her image, the power of her image--again, completely out of context, that had transfixed me. She was untouchable, like a rare species of exotic bird that I had just "happened upon."

It was this untouchable aspect even in a hallway, or shall I say--especially in a hallway, that resonated something majestic. Something unattainable and fleeting, what this city thrives upon.