Introducing: Michelle MaBelle

This Monday was some form of national holiday.  Maybe Presidents' Day.  In fact, certainly Presidents' Day, since I did some split-second Googling in the interim to be sure.  I woke up at nine in the morning with the worst hangover of my life.  I stumbled into my kitchen, gulped down a glass of water, and went into my bathroom to assess the damage through half-lidded eyes.  There were drag queen-worthy false eyelashes stuck precariously to my counter, various colorful bottles with suspiciously shiny contents, and my eyebrows still gleamed purple at certain angles.  I threw up the rats' nest of my hair, shoved on glasses, hopped into a pair of Aladdin pants, and somehow made it out of my house by nine fifteen.  I needed supplies.

In the grocery store, I gravitated toward the juices, and picked up a natural alternative to Gatorade.  All that refined sugar was not what I needed first thing.  Then I took some Perrier, since I needed a little effervescence in my life, and a bag of lemons with some Grade B maple syrup for good measure.  It didn't help that the day promised to be sunny, cheerful, and beautiful.  Just what I needed to juxtapose with my foul mood.  While removing my credit card to pay for the groceries, I noticed that I still had glitter lodged firmly under my fingernails.  Ironic, since I distinctly remembered a near-panic attack due to lack of sparkles the night before.

When I came home, my little brother was sitting in front of the television, playing some video game.  I took my multivitamin with another glass of water, concocted a poor man's hangover remedy from the Perrier, juice, and lemon, and sidled into my room, avoiding any bright spots on the carpet where the early morning sun was intruding with the benevolent, unthinking beam of a particularly oblivious and insistant hated relative.  A friend was good-naturedly texting me hangover cures that ranged from the obvious (drink water) through the strange (masturbation) to the downright unlikely (play guitar).  Instead, I draped a blanket over my window, turned on a small desk lamp, and settled down with my beverage and The Complete Sherlock Holmes. 

As the day progressed, I made small movements to leave the cool, dark sanctuary of my room and migrated to the couch.  It was strange to be able to sit, complete free of immediate worry.  It was the first time in the last three days that I'd had a moment to simply breathe.  Friday, I'd discovered I was to be shit-canned without actually being shit-canned, and went to party to drown my sorrows.  Saturday, I had work, and errands to run, which got me home at a time I'd rather not recall.  Sunday, I had to practice my performance, attend my godson's birthday party, make it to my friend's house on the other side of town to do my makeup, and finally go back downtown for my debut. 

For the past month, I've been working on poise, sexiness, campy seduction techniques visible from stage, persona, and musicality.  I'd slaved for hours over a hot glue gun, constructing pasties, adhering rhinestones and sequins to any available surface on my costume, bejewling a set of gloves, and making gaudy novelty bows to attach to whatever area was free of said trimmings.  I'd almost caused multiple accidents because I was too preoccupied with imagining myself on stage along with my music to bother paying close attention to the road.  I'd done the dress rehearsal, and created a fringe bra and panties at the last minute to participate in a GoGo routine at the very beginning of the show.  And it was Sunday.  And it was time.

It seemed that I was destined to be late to everything.  I'd been late to the practice I'd scheduled with my coworker and fellow aspiring star, to the birthday party because I was in desperate need of a manicure, barely on time to my friend's house since I'd had to drop off my little brother in the meantime, and I was stuck in traffic on the way to the show.  I had to get back onto the highway, and find a roundabout way to approach the venue downtown.  I made it ten minutes after I'd intended to be there, and burst into the dressing room in the back with all the weight of frenzied panic of which I'm capable. 

The wind was so strong that it almost took off one of my gigantic false eyelashes, which may have been impeding my progress.  Luckily, no one seemed to notice the hurrying, ridiculously-made-up girl with purple facial glitter following the arches of her eyebrows from temple to temple.  In retrospect, that's slightly surprising, but I was wearing glasses.  Easier said than done, since the eyelashes were long enough to hit the inside of my glasses every time I blinked, and almost dislodged them on multiple occasions.

I couldn't believe the show was so close.  I'd worked so hard on everything for the past month, and I hoped that I would be able to make myself proud with my performance.  I had friends coming.  I had a reputation for excellence to uphold.  I had unpaid seamstresses to tittilate.  My stomach was churning, and not only because of the greasy pizza I'd consumed at the birthday party, or the fact that said pizza had been my only solid food for days.  I hurridly threw on my tights, fringe bra, boy shorts, and high-heeled GoGo-esque black boots.  With the boots, I stood at an impressive 6'3", at least.  There wasn't anyone in the audience, but I found myself uncharacteristically shy with all the male production staff.  Up until that moment, this world had been an exclusively women's one.  The GoGo girls and I practiced our dance, and received praise from the choreographer/lead dancer, which was very encouraging indeed. 

And then it was time to wait.  That half hour was the longest of my life, hands down.  To calm my nerves, I slung back a glass of Chardonnay, and then another of some unknown amberish liquid that a forward-thinking fellow performer had smuggled in.  We took a profusion of pictures, and complimented one another on our boobs and costumes.  It seemed that we were waiting on one of the girls to arrive, so I borrowed an ankle-length fur coat from one of my fellow performers, and went outside to hand off my camera to a friend.  I saw the crowd of audience members, and recognized my friends, who were unreasonably excited to see me. 

I suppose I hadn't considered their motivation until that moment, but as I looked at them, we all seemed to realize that the dynamics of our relationships would be changed irretrievably once the night was over.  I succeeded in procuring a cameraperson for the evening, and went back to the other performers to sweat and wait out the night until we finally were called to the stage.  At the last minute, the girl we'd been waiting for arrived, and I looked at the performance queue.  I was in the middle, second to last of the girls who'd been in my class, and before our two emcees, who'd apparently decided to perform as well, since there were much fewer of us than I'd expected that night.

And it was time.  I could hear the crowd screaming as the talented emcees introduced the evening, and the first number.  It was time.  The lights went down, and we clomped onstage into our positions.  As the lights went up, we went into the dance.  I could hardly hear the music over the crowd.  It was exhilirating. 

In practice, I remember getting tired at least halfway through the dance.  Onstage, I had more energy than I'd ever had in my life.  Without my glasses, I could hardly see anything, but there was a single moment when the lights changed just enough for me to see the crowd before me.  I almost fainted.  The house was packed with screaming, whistling, and clapping strangers.  It looked like a sea of faces spread before me, and their attention and energy was focused on the stage.  When we finished our dance, we ran off stage, and I looked at my fellow dancers.  My gigantic smile was reflected in every face there.  I've never felt such a high.

Too soon, it was my turn to go on stage.  I'd changed my costume and watched the acts before me.  I'd watched girls in their reveals, and their private smiles.  I'd enjoyed the music, and the techniques.  And the announcer was discussing me.  She made the audience laugh, piqued their interest, and I heard the first few bars of my song.  I was so jumpy, I almost walked out too early, but I held off until my cue.  And then the room was mine.

The emotion is indescribable.  I knew that they expected magic, and I delivered the movements I'd agonized over to the barely-audible music.  Nothing went the way I'd expected.  The part that was always easy came off with difficulty (the top with velcro attached got stuck, and I had to take a few extra counts to maneuver out of it without showing how surprised I was), and the pieces that I was sure would throw me off beat (the corset!) was a piece of cake.  Gloves went well, but stockings were choppy.  The skirt was a dream.  It was time for my final reveal.  I started with my back to the audience, and I had a split-second of hesitation in my mind.  Did I really want to do this?  I decided I'd come to far.  I turned.  When I dropped my bra, a roar went off that almost made me jump.  And I knew that I couldn't stop there.  The tassels twirled, I gave a look, covered my front, and strutted from the stage.  Standing just off stage, shivering in a pair of pasties and a g-string, I knew that I'd accomplished what I'd set out to do.  And I had to do it again.

The rest of the night was a blur of congradulations, hugs, kisses, and booze.  Copious booze.  People I didn't know wanted to give me a hug, to compliment me, to be near the inner spark that warmed me.  At least I had the presence of mind to remove my makeup before collapsing in bed.  The next day, sitting on the couch in my living room, reminsicing on the night past, I realized that my Burlesque classes had given me something absolutely priceless.  I don't ever want to let go of it.

A Rant or A Plan

Today, I came into work with a slight feeling of trepedition.  I knew that I had a meeting with my supervisor at some point near the beginning of my shift.  This would make three of the three work days this week that I've had a meeting with her, and I had wondered what the meeting was about before I accepted it.  She'd titled it ambiguously, and seemed overly attentive to my reactions yesterday, when we met about something unrelated. 

I thought something was certainly up when my team lead came to my cube to find me when it was about ten minutes after the meeting was due to start.  Apparently, they thought it would be a remarkably clever idea to schedule a meeting exactly when my shift began.

A little background might be in order.  I work for a non-profit organization which supplies senior citizens with services through Long-Term Care Medicaid.  It's not exactly a state organization, but if anyone in the counties it serves wants the sorts of services we arrange, they go through the company I work for.  I'm a Russian interpreter here, and recently turned twenty one years old.  I do my job well, and thoroughly.  I've been employed here for slightly over a year, and in that time have seen enough of old age to realize a few very important things that should be shared.  That's an entirely different matter, however.

My supervisor is one of those very scary people when they have a little bit of power.  She's extremely by-the-book, and tries to control a lot of different things.  I don't think I want to use her name here, but a few distinguishing features couldn't hurt.  She's a Scorpio, and I haven't heard anything about her love life, but it seems pretty quiet.  After a woman passes a particular age, a position of power and an inadequate love life are a very volatile combination.  That's conjecture, of course, and shouldn't be taken as fact, but my feelings have a tendency to turn out somewhere close to the truth.  So this generally dissatisfied stickler was to whom I was assigned when I first started this job about a year ago.  I had no idea that there would be so much random and silly conflict between the two of us, but I've never really gotten along with Scorpios.  Most recently, she gave me a "final written warning" (though I'd never received a first or second) regarding my attendance in accordance with a policy that came into effect a full five months before she started counting absences.  We don't always see eye-to-eye. 

So today, I prepared myself before walking into the meeting, knowing full well that the presence of witnesses is never a positive sign.  In addition to my team lead, an HR representative was sitting at the table.  My team lead is a generally quiet girl, who seems to think more than she speaks.  I can relate to that, but she's always maintained a certain distance, so I didn't think much of her.  The HR rep was a large black woman with a lot of pink in her wardrobe and accessories.  Her scarf was pink with a green flower pattern, and her waterbottle was the same ostentatious color of violent pink.  She also had a legal pad in the same shade, with a list of what looked like names, one of them crossed off.  The color works well with her skin tone, but as I write this, I'm reminded unpleasantly of Professor Umbrage.  I suppose that's inevitable.

My supervisor didn't keep me in suspense for long.  I'd just closed the door and sat down when she broke the news to me.  It turns out that HR, or someone, had done a survey recently, and found that the work load for Russian interpreters is insufficient to keep me on staff regularly.  She said that the survey found that the full-time employees would be more than adequate to manage the volume of interpretation work needed, and they'd no longer need my services as an hourly employee.  They're retaining me as a Per-Diem employee, and officially still active.  The way my sup explained it, they'd call me if they had an excess of work, and I'd take care of it as needed. 

I wanted to ask her how the fuck she expected me to keep my schedule open for a stupid phone call that may or may not ever come.  Having studied some Behavioristic theory, I know that rats are much more stressed when they're shocked randomly, and don't have the illusion of control over the electric shock, as opposed to situations in which they have at least the illusion of control over the pain.  And being a girl, I've waited by the phone for longer stretches of time than I'd readily admit.  So there it is.  I've been let go from my regular position, effective February 27th.  Not even two weeks to try and find gainful employment elsewhere, because technically I haven't been "discharged."  I've just been demoted, or something. 

This isn't as bad as it could be.  My only regular expense is my car payment, which is $250 per month, and gas money, which will conceivably be much lower now that I don't have anywhere I really need to go.  I also have a second job, which I held onto because I didn't see any reason to leave.  I work retail at a semi-high-end clothing store, where they pay me less than half of what I made at my translation job.  It's not the best, but at least it's something to get me by in the meantime, while I haven't found anything better.  And I know that this has nothing to do with work performance, because as I mentioned before, I do my job well.  The company just has a lot of internal issues it needs to work out, and one of my crazy coworkers doesn't help.  She's the sort of woman who will invent things to keep her occupied while she's at work, all the while complaining (loudly) about how, since she's so good at her job, she doesn't have anything left over to do at the end of the month.  I just realized that I read somewhere that the most popular day to fire someone is a Friday, because it causes the least incedence of workplace shootings.  I wonder if that's a factor they took into account when they decided to let me know the good news today?

That line of thought won't lead anywhere good.  Instead, I choose to see this occurance as positive.  As they were telling me, and asking me if I had any questions, I thought about how I would've reacted to this news a few years ago.  I'm sure I would've cried.  I could see my facial expressions mirrored in those of the two women (my team lead was doing a passable impression of wallpaper as the meeting progressed) and knew that I was close to losing it.  My eyebrow twitches and facial contortions were making their way into their beaurocratic masks.  I took a breath and controlled myself, since I've known that this was where things were eventually leading.  I'd had the suspicion for months now.  The fox can feel in his bones as the date of his hunt approaches. 

And that was it.  I didn't have any questions, aside from logistical ones regarding how I'd be working, the answer to which I've already detailed.  As I left, I felt their eyes on my back, and wondered what I'd do.  I came back to my computer to compose myself, but found that I was calm enough.  I gathered the other Russian girls with whom I work, who are also somewhat close family friends, and told them all about it in the break room.  They were justifiably pissed on my behalf, but as I kept running over what happened in my mind, I realized that everything is for the best, after all.  I've never felt at home here.

As I mentioned, I've worked here for a year, in the interim between my 20th and 21st years.  This is an office job, and one that comes with benefits like dental insurance, picnics, and paid time off.  It's a grown-up job that I lucked into, by virtue of knowing one of the other interpreters and having the good fortune and personal maturity to convince the VP and my Supervisor that I was capable.  I sit in a cube all day, trying to look busy when someone comes by, living in fear during my lunch hour that someone will say something about my spending more time away from my desk than at it.  We have tiny indoor gardens attached aesthetically to the walls, and stainless steel refrigerators in the kitchens filled with food Post-It-Noted with owners' names.  Half of it goes bad before the week is over.  Almost all of the women on staff are either engaged or pregnant.  I don't belong here.  Except that I've grown used to the atmosphere, and my coworkers, and the clients, and the work load.  But comfort is never a sound reason to stay. 

I've always wanted to be engaged in my life.  Actively.  I want to suck the marrow from my experience on this earth, and I want to love the things that I do and the people with whom I'm surrounded.  I'm twenty one years old, living with my mother, with a savings account that's devoted to my month-long excursion to Europe with my best friend since the second grade.  I'm enrolled in school, but not this semester, because tickets to Europe are one thousand dollars cheaper in April.  My big plan, believe it or not, was to use the excursion to Europe, and my stay in the UK, to enroll in classes at the University of Edinburgh, and set up a life as far away from my protective and somewhat traditional Ukrainian-Jewish family as I possibly could.  For a year, at minimum.  My biggest impediment was the job that I would regret losing.  And now, through no real fault of my own, I've lost it. 

This should be liberating, but it's just making me nervous.  An ulcer is building in my lower stomach and I can't do anything about it, or the fact that the moment someone throws open the door to my cage, I have no idea where to fly.