Jetlag dreams

I find myself talking to the landlady of a go-go bar in Oxford on a quiet night when one of the resident dancers hasn't turned up. Apparently these women are very unreliable. So she asks me if I'll do the warm up for the main act, who is the real Bada Bing pole dancing deal.

And so there follow several months where I dance at the same time every week in a tiny room (accessible from an even tinier dressing room, where I smoke roll-ups with the Bada Bing pole dancer and put a lot of make up on), wearing the same dress, which I do not take off and which is entirely unrevealing, to the same song, which does not exist but which can best be described as a cross between Standing In the Way of Control and No More The Fool. I do not use the pole on principle, I am no better a dancer in my dreams than I am in real life (well, maybe a bit), and I get paid in cash that the audience gives to the landlady because there is nowhere in my outfit to stick it.

And I never get busted. This is my secret life until there is a Christmas break, when the landlady is kind of vague about what day she's opening up again. But I pride myself on my reliability, so I am walking round town looking for the alleyway that the bar is down with my dress in a plastic bag, getting a bit panicky because I can't find it and I need to get my make up on before I am on at 9.30. Then I bump into Ex-Schoolmate R and Ex-Housemate S. We have a conversation about the ethics of dancing in bars for money, and then I say I have something to tell them and I'll be back in half an hour.

When I find the bar it has children in it, and I wonder about the ethics of this as well. Then I realise it is under new management, and has in fact turned into a subterranean Chinese children's party venue. It now echoes like a swimming pool and there is lots of screaming.

I feel that I should be pissed off with the landlady for not telling me, but I am secretly relieved that I have got out of the dancing in a bar for money game without letting anyone down. I knew it wasn't really for me.

joella