“Everyone” is an artist..”

over a year ago, when i was living in brick lane and spending all of my time between spitalfields and shoreditch I had a few strange encounters i couldn’t quite understand. The first happened when i was passing a horrific little stripclub dive called rainbow sports bar. The bouncer smiled at me as i came closer, and as i walked past him towards my destination I heard him call out after me. Weeks later it happened to me again passing another shoreditach strip pub, the white horse, and then again on the corner of another such establisment, the infamous browns (and here let me please note that it is the nature of the neighborhood that these places are dotted around everywhere, not that i intentionally spend my time loitering out strip clubs, true there was a point that I spent a fair ammount of spare time in these places but that was a long time ago, and not in shoreditch….)

and then it moved on from bouncers, every so often the odd guy on the street would give me a lascivious gaze that seemed that little bit more familiar than the usual cruising that a girl faces walking down the street. it was as if all these men knew me… intimately. and i’m not the kind of girl who gets so drunk she racks up sexual encounters with strangers… particularly not men. what was going on? it all crystalized the day i went to my local video store. much to its own hipster street cred, half of the pair who ran this independant dvd/video rental was a canadian ex stripper. I had met her before, as I had taken her pole dancing class as part of the london international workshop festival. it was by far the least sexy and least co-ordinated i have ever ever felt (the breakdancing class i once took part in being a close close second). when i walked in her shop and saw her i wanted to make a swift exit, but she came towards me..

hey are you… i’ve met you right? (visions of me failing to scale the pole in my yellow stilletoes flashed before me)

uh no, i don’t think we’ve me

you look real-ly familiar.

I smiled weakly

do you have a sister called Tamara?

releieved that she hadn’t remembered me from her class, i loosened up.

no.

oh right, its just you look so much like a friend of mine. she’s a stripper who works in the area.

aaaaaah.

no, no sisters, i’m an only child.

right, its funny though you really look like her… see you next time.

as i walked home i thought, out of all the people I really didn’t want to resemble in shoreditch, a stripper was pretty up there. not that i have any issues with the trade (any friend of mine will tell you that) its just that one gets enough hassle from random guys without resemblling someone they’ve paid to see naked gyrating on a pole.
completely incidentally, I soon moved from the area.

fast forward to saturday. a close friend of mine was having her hen night… or i should say “hen day” as the festvities began at 2 pm. Episode one in our celebration of her impending marriage was a private striptease class arranged for the 7 of us. I wasn’t terrribly excited about the idea, but i love my friend and i wanted to take part in whatever she was up for. I didn’t know what to expect, but was pleasantly suprised when a petite curvy mixed race girl showed up and called us upstairs with her heavy london accent. she had introduced herself, but when the class began it was clear we had all forgot her name. so she tested us.

“so whats my name ladies”

and one of the other “hens” (we ourselves had met for the first time today) called out

“Sara!”

our teacher shook her head, and just as she opened her mouth to reveal her name, i found myself mouthing it in revelation

“Tamara”

of course it was… this was the mixed race shoreditch stripper who i had been mistaken as. Right away then i have to make it clear we looked NOTHING alike. she was a beautiful girl so it was no dis to be mixed up with her. but everything from our body types to our walk to our bone structure was different. i think we shared the same skin tone and hairstyle, what is it with some white people that anyone who is black or mixed race suddenly looks similar???

that mystery solved, it was time for the class. this was one of the strangest experiences i’ve had in recent history. basically this girl who was without a doubt warm, engaging, flirtaceous and flexible talked us through movements that I will organically fall into in any night club playing r&b, reggae, dirty electro or funk carioca. I’m no professional, but i have started a disproportionate number of relationships and affairs on the dancefloor. its one of the few arena’s where i feel really confident and sexy, its all about the music and the crowd.

however in a bright wood floored microscopic function room above a bar in clapham, sans music, darkness and close friends, being told again and again to

“think about your man”

“think johnny dep”

“be sexy, be the sexiest woman you know”

“pretend your man is watching”

I-felt-anything-but-sexy

and i desperately wanted just to go with it. to forget that it was all so contrived, but all i could be was super aware of myself. suddenly i had no rhythm, no sex appeal, no confidence.

i was just a girl in a strip tease class who had no desire to be there and felt really really stupid.

meanwhile the bride to be was loving it, as was her best mate who co-ordinated it, two other friends, extremely tall and much more laddish than i could ever be were struggling as much as i was. amusingly the last girl, a tall vivacious married woman was well into it. and in that strange way that so many straight woman seem to be imminently flexibile about their sexuality, in fact are even ENCOURAGED by popular culture to embrace their bi-curiousity and still remainsly safely straight, our straight teacher flirted most with the married woman (illustrating private dances over her for example, and as i watched the reaction of this straight girl all i thought was

she coudl turn at any second. j

afterwards our teacher sat with us for drinks, next to me and said straight girl. our teacher invited us all to see her perform. the girl she had flirted with turned to me and said

“lets go, i’d really like to go,”

I smiled (yeah i bet you do)

” don’t you think it would be fun”

I nodded. i couldn’t help thinking that this woman had subconciously become far more “malleable” than she was ever aware of. it wasn’t going to happen with our teacher though, it was clear she was just a flirt. and then our teacher left and the main topic of conversation was her sex appeal and her body. i was the only gay girl, and i contributed the least to the conversation. but i wasn’t out to these ladies yet, so i thought it safer to hold my tounge.

the day after, most of what she attempted to teach is lost on me, but what i won’t forget was her main mantra/ her advice as to what to do when midst striptease and unsure what move to move on to next.

“ladies… when in doubt wiggle”