The Exchange (13 page)

Soon it was time for the show to begin, and I made my way from the
coulisses
, as the French call backstage, to front of house. Once there, I saw that the small auditorium – empty just a few moments before, save the waiting staff arranging the tables – was filling up quite rapidly. I wondered if it was always so busy or whether it was the prospect of Lisette’s new dance that was bringing in the punters.

I took a seat towards the rear, at a table for two. Lisette had said she’d join me for a drink after her number was done so she could relax and tell me a bit more about her work. She’d seemed flattered by my interest in the environment and in her personally, and I hoped to strike up a relationship whereby she’d let me photograph her a bit more, going about her business at the club and outside, unposed. I’d seen the woman behind the mask and now I had seen her donning the mask, readying herself for the magic of make believe. What most interested me were the interstices – the gaps where the mask slipped, or when it was only partially applied, showing two faces at the same time. I was interested in the places where reality and fantasy intersected, and what that meeting sparked off. I thought Lisette – exotic and yet ordinary – may be the one to guide me through this realm of which I had only had the most tantalising glimpses.

I sipped at a vodka and tonic as I waited. The atmosphere was almost tangibly electric. The crowd was definitely psyched for something big tonight.

I looked around. There was a surprising heterogeneity to the crowd. There was what I assumed to be the normal quota of lone middle-aged or older men, nursing a drink at a table for two, looking as if they were hoping to strike it lucky. None of them were what you’d call god’s gift to women. But there were quite a few younger men too, in pairs or in small groups, and some of them were quite hot. A few met my gaze as they felt my eyes on them, and I looked away quickly. I wished I were braver. Who knows? – these were the kind of guys with whom a girl might truly find herself, sexually and maybe even emotionally too. These were the kind of guys who might show a girl a really good time – so good that their lives might be changed for ever.

I looked down and fiddled with my lens. My camera was in my lap; no one could see it yet. I was nervous about using it, for obvious reasons, but now my fingers were itching to bring it to my face. It was, I realised, a version of Lisette’s mask, in some ways. Yes, I wanted to take photos. But more than that, I wanted something to hide behind.

I resisted the urge. There was no way I could get away with taking photos of the clientele of a sex club, that much was certain. If I spotted anyone interesting, my only option was to go and ask them for their permission to shoot, and then there’d come the self-awareness and the posing.

So instead I took another huge swig of vodka and tried to relax back in my seat as the curtains went up and girls filed on to perform the first act – a classic chorus-girl legshow with the performers in black fishnet tights, satin hotpants and waistcoats, and top hats. I watched them with awe, partially incredulous that they should be able to do their routine wearing teetering stilettos without breaking their ankles. Behind the thick pancake make-up and plastered-on smiles accentuated by cherry-red lipstick, I recognised some of the faces from my wanderings backstage a half-hour before. The transformation that had then been in progress was now complete.

And yet, as I watched them pout, twirl and wiggle their derrières at the appreciative audience, I thought I began to see the masks slipping, little by little. Perhaps I was super-sensitive to it – perhaps even waiting for it,
willing
it to happen. But whatever it was, I watched, half fascinated, half appalled, as the pancake began to melt and slip beneath the theatrical lights, as the lipstick began to bleed around the mouths, as the mascara began to smear. The legs began to tire, and the pasted-on smiles began to slide off some of the faces. A few managed to hold on to them, and I wondered if they were the most experienced girls or, conversely, the newest – if the ones who had been doing it for a long time were now too weary to pretend any more?

I began to click away, certain that no one would notice me in the dimmed light or hear me over the music. I zoomed in on the faces where the cracks were beginning to show, where the glamour was starting to evaporate, showing the ordinary girls underneath the make-up and the fixed grins. Among them I spotted the Dita Von Teese lookalike who’d seemed so aloof in the changing rooms. I’d taken her for a star who thought she was better than all the others, not a chorus-liner. For a few minutes I concentrated my lens on her. She still looked aloof, but now I understood that it may be a different kind of aloofness. That perhaps it was the aloofness of knowing she wasn’t up to this.

I studied all of the girls as they wound up their routine and filed back off the stage. They were all pretty, with and without makeup. Some of them were exceptionally so. But none had the kind of strange, otherworldly beauty that it takes to make it in modelling. They could all have been underwear models – and some probably doubled up as that, for all I knew. But this undoubtedly offered a more stable, regular source of income. I imagined that, like many prostitutes, some of these would be highly intelligent young women looking to supplement their income and/or fund themselves through higher education. Despite some of the pained expressions, it must beat stacking supermarket shelves.

The compere came on and began to make an announcement. I leaned forward in my seat, my vodka balanced on one knee, secured by one hand. My other hand held my camera up to my face.

‘… one of our star dancers,’ I heard him say, ‘today unveiling, if you’ll excuse the pun, her brand new act, the Dance of the Seven Veils. Lisette was inspired by the dance that Salomé is said to have performed for John the Baptist as well as by the dances of her native Egypt.’

I looked at Lisette, who had appeared and was now centre-stage, wondering if she was at all annoyed at being described as Egyptian. She hadn’t reacted in any way, so I guessed it had been agreed beforehand that she would claim to be so. I didn’t suppose it really mattered, although I didn’t think I would have allowed my own heritage to have been stripped away from me so easily. And I wondered at the cheesiness of the story: Middle Eastern women wore veils as modesty coverings, not to titillate, and the Bible certainly didn’t have Salomé performing a striptease.

The audience was whooping and cheering in anticipation. I looked around and thought I made out, in the half-darkness, several female forms. I guessed that some of Lisette’s friends had come to support her. I wondered if Konrad and his crowd were in the audience. Part of me hoped that they were, and that I’d get the chance to hook up with them again after the show. Every time I thought of Konrad I got a thrill at the mental image of him dancing for me. But had he only been putting on a show for my camera? After all, posing was his life, his bread and butter. Did he even remember doing it, or was it just a momentary thing, fired by champagne and the party mood?

The music – something generically Oriental – began, and I forgot all about Konrad. Although I’d seen it in progress, Lisette’s transformation was startling. From a cute North African chick who wouldn’t look out of place serving up couscous in her parents’ restaurant she had become a raving exotic beauty, swathed in evanescent layers of sheer fabric. Her terracotta-coloured ankles and forearms gave a tantalising glimpse of the delicious flesh that was shortly to be unveiled.

Sweeping her eyes around the audience, a mischievous glimmer in her eyes, Lisette began to move her hips from side to side, slowly. After a few minutes, she started to undulate gently backwards and forwards. Then she alternated the two movements, swishing the sheer fabric of her veils around the stage with one hand as she did so. Occasionally she’d swish it a bit harder, and an expanse of leg would be revealed, eliciting an appreciative ‘ooooh’ from the audience. A seductive smile flickered around her lips, but unlike some of her colleagues on the chorus line, Lisette looked as if she was genuinely enjoying herself. Perhaps that was why she was here now, in a starring role, and they were only bit players.

As I watched, Lisette slowly divested herself of her layers of veils. Each time she shed one, her relish was apparent in the way she watched the audience’s expressions and thrilled to their oohs and aahs and to their cat-calls and wolf whistles. She was having fun in giving them some fun. I wondered how that must feel, to have such a hold over people. I knew that some of my images had a profound effect on people, and that gave me a sense of pride. It also gave me a sense of responsibility. I had something important to tell them, via my art. I was on a mission.

Did Lisette feel like that? Her act wasn’t political – indeed, one could argue the opposite, that it was non-PC on a number of different levels. But in giving people joy by watching her, did she have a sense of vocation and also one of fulfilment? Or was it all about the money?

I was so drawn in, I didn’t even look for the cracks. I only realised this later, of course. Lisette’s total immersion in her role took the viewer into it with her. Of course, it was all a game. We all knew that – the audience and Lisette herself. But we all wanted it so much to be the reality, that I think we willed it to be so, at least for the duration of the act.

With one final flourish, Lisette pulled off her penultimate veil and cast it across the auditorium, where it fluttered down onto a lucky guy who brought it up to his face and kissed it, his eyes trained on Lisette’s. She smiled back at him, sultrily, pulsating her body backwards and forwards. Beneath her last sheer veil, you could see the small triangle of her panties and, where the fabric clung to her breasts, tassels on her nipples.

For a while, she continued to dance like this, taunting us with her near-nakedness, twirling and soaring like a scarlet butterfly with diaphanous wings. Then she held the veil in front of her, like a screen, and allowed us to enjoy the splendid sight of her body just out of reach.

Then suddenly she cast off the final veil and the music funked up to an Arabic mix of Donna Summer’s ‘Love to Love You Baby’. She had her back turned to us now, and we could see the magnificent mounds of her well-rounded buttocks in her thong. Leaning back, she let her long hair descend down her back, then her face appeared and finally her betasselled nipples, quivering just above her face like firm jellies. Finally, she leapt back up and turned to face us, in a pounce resembling a tigress’s. She was clad only in jewellery, at her neck, waist, wrists and ankles, and her thong. Oscillating from side to side, she began to make her tassels spin. The crowd went wild. This seemed to turn Lisette on, and she whirled harder, faster.

When the music stopped and she bowed, some of the crowd were on their feet, clapping and roaring. Blowing them air-kisses, Lisette, looking euphoric, skipped across the stage and disappeared into
les
coulisses
. A few minutes later, urged by the crowd, she skipped back and gave one last spin of her tassels. Then she disappeared for good.

As I sat waiting for her, sipping at my second vodka and tonic, I surveyed the crowd. Lisette’s act had shaken them up – they were much livelier now. And I felt the same. Where the chorus line had been slightly depressing, Lisette had been a shot in the arm. Partly it was her own obvious enjoyment of her new routine and the effect it had on people. But there was something else to it. Something had happened to the audience, and it had given Lisette’s performance a new dimension. It was as if they had submitted to her, fully, suspending all disbelief and just letting themselves be carried away by her. Of course we all knew that the act was a frivolous nonsense, but by some collective force of will we all bought into it, and Lisette, sensing that, empowered by it, had reached new heights of self-expression. She had become, for the duration of the dance at least, electric. Even someone like me, someone who liked to hide behind something – a camera in my case – could see the allure of that. To be worshipped – was that what we all wanted, at heart? Was that what my photographs were all about?

The next act took to the stage, but the audience had lost interest and most of them were chatting and drinking now, paying little heed to what was happening up front. It was as if they had climaxed with Lisette, and now there was a kind of post-coital lethargy to them.

I felt sorry for the poor girl on the stage. She was doing her best. To keep myself interested, I trained my lens on her and started to take a few pictures. But the cracks showed through quickly, and once I’d caught those on film, I lost interest. My mind started wandering. I glugged my vodka as I scanned the room, seeking out Konrad.

When I looked back on the stage, something odd happened. I’m still not sure if it was the drink, or tiredness, or a mixture of the two. Or perhaps it was something different altogether. But all of a sudden it wasn’t the girl up on the stage any more but me, in her costume, performing her act.

I’d never danced in my life. Well, of course, I’d danced, in the conventional, everyday sense, but I was never really into it. It required a letting go, a lack of self-consciousness, that wasn’t really me. I was too uptight, basically.

But now, as I watched my fantasy self up there on the stage, I saw how I could be, if only I gave myself permission to loosen up. And I looked good. My body was still young and firm, my boobs and buttocks perky. I looked fresh and hot in the pink bikini-style briefs and pink, black and white leopard-print bikini top. My arms raised and my hands behind my head, I thrust my pelvis towards the crowd, over and over. Hearing their cheers and cries of encouragement, I thrust harder.

A hand appeared on my arm. I looked up, startled. Lisette was smiling down at me, radiant. I smiled back, knowing how she must be feeling – how alive, how powerful. It was an intoxicating sensation and I only wished I’d had it for real, not just by proxy.

‘How did I do?’ she asked.

‘Wonderful,’ I said, and I was happy that I could say it genuinely. I liked Lisette, and I would have hated to have to lie to spare her feelings.