by Elissa Lash
I write at the top of the page: What Did I Expect?
I expected to make money.
I expected it’d be just one night.
I expected to be okay.
I expected to be harmed.
I expected I deserved it.
What did you expect? My questioner has a halo of white hair like dandelion fluff. In our writing group he’s known for his comedic essays. You worked in a strip club.
I’ve written about being assaulted after having dinner with a customer.
After workshop I call my friend B.
No one held a gun to my head, I say. Was I dense or just naive? Isn’t this what everyone will think?
B says, No one expects to be assaulted.
Expectation is like a prediction. Expectation is different than wanting. Expectation is one- half cup desire and one-half cup dread mixed together with a long, handled spoon. Mix slowly. There needs to be a certain alchemy.
I kick off my stilettos, the black ones with silver studs on the straps that always leave a red mark. The other girls promise to cover me for just one set. It’s a Saturday, I need the money, but I have to see her. I pull sweats over my bikini, jam my sweaty feet into sneakers. Go, go, go, the girls say. Get out of here.
I make it just in time for Ado Annie’s song I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No. From the back of the high school auditorium, I watch my little sister onstage. She wears a long flowered dress and braids. A little off key on the highest notes, but she is brilliant. She is good at everything: science and math, field hockey and skiing. Things I’m not good at.
She’ll apply and be accepted by Stanford and Vanderbilt. I have an unpaid internship and work as a stripper.
We both have eating disorders and have been sexually assaulted, but we don’t tell each other this until we are much older. Statistically it makes sense. Statistically it’s fucked up. Later she’ll have debilitating depression. I’ll worry that I’ll lose her.
I find a seat in the back row. I stink of smoke and booze and ass. The parents look at their programs in the dark. They probably smell me, the girl who can’t say no. I said yes to sex work, haven’t I?
When a customer asks me, May I take you to tea at the Four Seasons? We can talk more quietly? I say, Yes. Because the other girls did.
When the Cadillac salesman, who smells of cheap cologne, says, Let me take you out.
Yes, I say, even though he uses cliches when he talks. Later in the parking garage it doesn’t matter when I say no because I’d already said yes.
If I can’t say no, who’ll teach Ado Annie, or my sister, or my daughter to say it?
Back at the club, the girls ask, how was your baby sister?
She was so good.
A performer just like her big sis, says Marla.
I love musicals, Lori says. I love Camelot. Was she in Camelot?
It was Oklahoma. It’s hard to get my swollen feet back into my stilettos. I put my mini kilt on. The schoolgirl costume always makes money. I need to cover the missed set.
You got lipstick on your teeth, says Marla.
I wipe my teeth with my finger. I can’t believe she sang in front of all those people. I light a cigarette.
You must be proud, says Tawny.
My next set is on the center stage. I own the room in my schoolgirl kilt and stilettos with pointed heels that look like daggers. Guys always say, those shoes look like they could kill someone. I love when they see me as dangerous.
The men line up. After 9 PM everyone is loose. The first guy sways. He holds his money in a fan.
Don’t hurt me. He whimpers.
I lift my leg above his head. His line is tired. I am tired.
You look good in those bad girl shoes.
A skyscraper in my stilettos, towering above him, I look good but know I’m bad. Bad ass, bad egg, bad apple.
Can I buy you a drink later? He gives me a twenty.
I want to drive back to the high school and wrap my sister in my arms.
Yes, I say to him because I can’t say no.
Elissa Lash’s work has been featured in The Rumpus, CRAFT, Atticus Review, The Forge Literary Magazine, Bust Magazine, and Tangled Locks and other publications. In 2024 she won the Craft Literary essay contest. Other prose has been nominated for the Best of the Net anthology and a Pushcart Prize in 2024. My memoir in progress, about being a sex worker and a mother, was a finalist for the Kenyon Review‘s Developmental Editing Fellowship. She lives in Massachusetts with her partner and children. When she’s not writing or reading, she’s practicing real estate, advocating for affordable housing, gathering communities of women around fires, or minding my flock of chickens.
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