She Perfected The Filthy Glare

Being a lapdancer is easy. Leila just walks in, pays Tina the twenty quid house fee and gyrates round a pole. She's half drunk but it doesn't matter, men still pay her to dance on their laps.
The first time she does it she can't believe it's turning anyone on. She throws an amused look to the stag party. Afterwards, Tina pulls her aside to say her expression is unconvincing, but she'll do.
“You're nimble enough, you'll learn some tricks.”
Leila agrees to try more classic poses like the pout, the lip and teeth lick and the vulnerable wide-eyed look. She perfects the filthy glare.
When she's got enough to pay her rent she leaves, but she soon goes back. Wiping arses for minimum wage just isn't the same afterwards and the only thing her art degree is any use for is teaching.
Teaching is what her parents do, and her friends that have given up on art.

When Leila practices her routine at home she does it with her tongue locked firmly behind her bottom lip. She belms away, grinding her hips to songs by Girls Aloud, refusing to take her life seriously. Her boyfriend, Danny, laughs and dances along with her. He's an art graduate too. He wishes he could make sixty quid an hour.
They go out for dinner for the first time in months and over wine and moules mariniere they talk about the importance of staying free, of keeping out the system, of doing jobs that don't make demands on their brains. They decide to turn the spare room into a studio.
“And then I do this, and then I do this, and then I do this, she tells him when they get home. She flicks her hair and sits astride him.
“You'd better not do that,” he says afterwards, collecting his pants from under her pillow.

At first, Leila does portraits of the other girls at Glamour, sketches them out in biro in the changing room, takes photo's of them while they work. Then Tina gets pissed off and tells her to get on with her job.
“Who d'you think you are? Toulouse-Lautrec?”
A couple of the girls laugh.
Leila doesn't do much drawing after that, doesn’t want the other girls to think she’s pretentious. She puts the pictures of the girls in drawers in her studio, thinking she’ll get back to them later.

Leila quickly learns that it's easier to dance drunk in the no-sex sex industry. She breaks the night up with straight vodkas at the bar with Kat, no men allowed, Kat's rule:
“Makes us more desirable to them that's forgotten they're paying for our attention. Plus it gives us a fucking break.”
Kat looks at least ten years older than the other girls and has a way about her that lets people know she's earned those years.
The two of them start going into town together after work, dancing sarcastically for old men in old men pubs, making fools out of them, and their women, if they have them. On these nights Leila ignores Danny's calls.
“Conversation with a man is the last thing you want after work,” Kat laughs, passing her another shot.
One night, after dancing in town, they end up on Kat's kitchen floor, drinking vodka. Kat’s hating:
“I just hate it when token girls come in, thinking they're one of the lads. I bet when they get home they jiggle their tits around, all inspired, like that's the way they like it...”
“Maybe that is the way they like it...”
“Go to any club in the country and it's the same – London, Cornwall, it doesn't matter – you twirl yourself around their crotch, jiggle your tits and narrow your eyes. Where did it all come from?”
Leila leans up on an elbow, closes one eye to look at her friend, “You taught me how to poledance.”
“It's a fucking conspiracy, that's what it is. And I'm in on it!”
Kat laughs finally, and Leila joins in, relieved, bending her knees to make the foetal position.

The sun's hot on Leila's face when she wakes up. Six o'clock. Work in two hours. She strokes the smooth skin of her stomach and closes her eyes. Tonight Danny will see her at work. It's not his thing but his friend's getting married and this is what stags do.
What hens do too, sometimes. Leila organised a stripper for her sister last year thinking it would be a laugh. The girls had all cheered and laughed but looking back Leila wondered if they were just getting their own backs.
After a long talk, Leila had promised not to dance for Danny's group.
“I'm not ashamed of you, I just don't want to see you dancing for other men. You're my private dancer,” he lowered his voice to a whisper and Leila gave in.
“I dance for you for free,” she said, falling into the easy comfort of a private joke. Danny kissed her on the nose.

Fatman is in his usual booth by the bar and Kat is sitting next to him, laughing. Whatever Kat says, she always seems to be having a good time. Loads of men won't have anyone else. Leila finishes her three minutes on the stage and goes to sit with them. Fatman pours her a glass of champagne.
“We celebrating?” she asks and Fatman just smiles. Kat tweaks his chin and goes up to the pole to do her showcase, directing all her filthy glares at him.

At twelve o'clock the stag party comes in, noisily. Tina takes them straight to the stag booth rather than a private booth so they can be seen from the bar.
“Stags attract stags,” she says, “free advertising. Kat, you know what to do.”
Kat shrugs at Leila and heads over to the bar.
Danny's face is red with alcohol. A few of the girls are sitting with the group already, pound signs beneath their mascara, when Kat sashays over with a pitcher of something blue. Danny looks around and Leila moves behind a pillar. She wants to see what kind of customer he is.
Kara, a new girl, just graduated, sits astride Danny and Kat starts writhing in front of Coll, the stag. Danny and Coll look at each other and laugh in the way Leila has seen a thousand other men laugh, like a high five, then Danny stops laughing to concentrate on what Kara's doing. His face is serious suddenly, his mouth open, looking up at her like this really means something. He puts his hands on her waist and she pulls them off lightly the way all the girls are trained to: without offence. Kat lifts her leg onto Coll's shoulder.
Leila puts her head against the pillar, feeling sick, vodka churning in her stomach. She stays where she is for a few songs then wonders what she's doing. This is her territory. Danny knows she's here, they talked about it. She doesn’t need to hide. Kylie starts up singing I just can't get you out of my head and Leila thinks of her silver hot pants, thinks for the thousandth time what's the fucking difference? and strides out onto the stage.
The spotlight blinds her as she spins round, arms stretched like she's reaching out for something. She clasps the pole with her thighs, slipping down, burning her skin till she can feel the squeak of bad friction. She's thinking of Salma Hayek in Dusk Till Dawn, that girl from Saved By the Bell writhing in Showgirls, Madonna, she's trying to picture herself as one more in a long line of admired female beauty.
She spins again, exhausting the few moves she has, gyrating round the pole repeatedly, wishing there was something more original she could do. The song finishes and she flicks her hair, imagining Danny's expression, his standing ovation, but when she jumps down only Fatman claps. Kat woops from the bar, waves a twenty.
“Nice moves darlin’, but I think your boyfriend just left. Too pissed. Was he the blonde one?”
“No, no. He didn't have a dance.”
Kat raises her eyebrows and orders them vodkas. Leila knocks hers back and orders two more.

When Leila gets in she sits down at her desk for the first time in months. She thinks of all her work, slowly rotting away in drawers. All those years working and studying and she's closer to nothing. She lies down on the floor, thinking about something she read once, about people with just over average talent having the worst time of it: too talented for menial work, not talented enough to carve out something else. Who wrote that? Dostoevsky? Enid Blyton?
Hiccupping, Leila falls to sleep on the studio floor.

Danny wakes her in the morning.
“Why d'you sleep down there?”
Leila groans and Danny laughs, goes downstairs.
Kat stares out from an unfinished painting in the corner and Leila stands up, turns her to face the wall. She puts the computer on, wanting to distract herself.
Danny comes back in.
“Made you a cup of tea.”
Leila keeps her eyes on the computer screen. “Have fun last night?”
“I don't remember,” Danny smiles.
Leila blows on her tea.
“Did you see me?” she says and he shakes his head.
“No, but we agreed, didn't we? Why, did you see me?” he raises his eyebrows, hopeful almost.
“No... I mean, I saw a stag party come in, but you weren't with them. There was someone a bit like you but he was all red faced, feeling up one of the girls and sweating...”
Danny frowns and Leila puts her tea down too hard, spilling it.
“Leila...”
She goes into the bathroom, seeing her hands shaking as she pushes the lock across. Danny bangs on the door.
“What’s the problem, Lei?” and Leila shouts back:
“Nothing!”
She picks up a razor to shave her legs out of habit then drops it, stamping down hard, screaming through her teeth. The sharpness of a neat cut shoots through her and she stares at the water turning red. Blood soaks the towel when she dries herself.

Danny's still waiting outside when she comes out.
“I was pissed, Lei. What does it matter?”
She walks past him to their bedroom.
“Why is this a problem suddenly? I've coped with you doing it all this time...” He sees the blood trailing behind her. “Why are you being so fucking melodramatic?”
Leila sits on the bed, lifts her foot to examine her cut. Danny comes back with a plaster and tries to put it on for her. She yanks it off him.
“You're a fucking hypocrite,” he says quietly and a few seconds later she hears the front door slam.

Leila lies back on the bed, trying to follow her thoughts. She walks into the studio, taking sketches and paintings out of drawers, placing them around the house. Kat and Kara face each other on the bed. Tina gyrates above the microwave.
She lines the settee with rough sketches of girls that left quickly, the ones that didn't give reasons, turns MTV on to girls dancing in bikinis. Jay-Z shouts he's got ninety nine problems but a bitch ain't one and Leila laughs, tells him that's perfect and turns it up.
She pulls on one of her work costumes, a sparkly gold figure-skating dress, gathers up her best underwear and walks from room to room draping knickers where they can be draped. Red and white polka dots hanging on the toilet flush. Pink frilly brassiere sliding down the banister.
She takes stilletos from her cupboard and places them in the shower, turns it on, thinks Ghost Whore Washing Herself. She watches a little black dress in the microwave go round and round and round until it bings.
The flat buzzes with noise. Girls and their trinkets hang everywhere and Leila walks between rooms in her gold tasselled dress taking polaroids, her own installation.

Leila’s smoking in the living room, overly made up, when Danny gets back.
“I made art,” she tells him, gesturing to include the whole flat.
“Fucking hell, Lei.”
She laughs and he joins in, walking round slowly, quiet, like it's a gallery. Leila walks behind him, checking his body language for response. He laughs at the shoes in the shower, steps respectfully over a pile of tampons in the hall.
“It's your best work yet.”
Leila puts her arms around him. She holds his hand and sits on the bed.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, Danny.”
“No one does,” he says, sitting down next to her, “don’t worry about it.” He kisses her neck.
“But I don’t know what to do.”
He kisses her cheek, then her mouth.
“Don’t, Danny...”
“You look so sexy in that dress.”
Leila kisses him half-heartedly.
“Do the routine for me...”
“I'm not in the mood.”
“I really want to fuck you though, you look so sexy in that dress. Put your tits in my face…”
“I'm not putting my tits anywhere.”
Danny clenches his hands around her arse, pulling her towards him. “But you're my private dancer…”
“Fuck Off, Daniel!”
Danny moves his hands quickly and Leila gets up.
“What the fuck?” she says. “Look at the state of you.”
Danny leans over to cover himself.

*

“I'm applying to be a teacher, Lei,” he says later when they've made up.
Leila nestles into the warmth of him, wondering if this should make her happy.
“You can do it too,” he says, kissing the back of her head. “We can be teachers together.”
For a second, while he's warm behind her, his lips against her hair, she thinks maybe she could. Maybe they could settle down and teach in the day, make art in the evenings. But Danny keeps talking, reasoning too much, until she has to stop listening because she knows what he's giving up.
“You don’t want to be a teacher though.”
“I don't want to be a newsagent.”
“But you could be something else, you could push your art more...”
Danny rolls his eyes but Leila keeps on talking.
“We both could. We could have a new start, put on an exhibition together, make something happen...”
“It's too late, Leila. We're not good enough. It's time to do something else...”
Leila sits up, stares down at him.
“Look at us, we hardly even make art anymore. I'm a newsagent and you're a lapdancer.”
Leila's eyes widen: “God.”
“What?”
“The way you said that.”
“Don't be stupid...”
“I saw your face, Danny. You're a lapdancer.”
“I didn’t say it like that.”
“That’s what you meant.”
Leila looks at Danny, thinking about something she read once, about every relationship being one conversation from breaking up.
“I'm just thinking about the future. I mean, I'm not going to make a living as an artist, am I? Really? And what else am I going to do?”
“Those that can’t teach.”
“Well, we can’t all get paid to dance naked.”
Leila breathes in, getting defensive, but looking at Danny her anger shrinks. He looks sad, tired even. He looks so without malice it makes her sigh.
“I suppose not… Thing is, I'll never be able to make this much money doing anything else.”
Danny raises his eyebrows at her and she raises her eyebrows back.
“Will I?”

After their talk, Leila stays away from Glamour. She applies for waitressing and gallery jobs, looks up art competitions and residencies to apply for. Eventually, she gets a trial shift in a cafe nearby, but when a woman’s rude to her about the temperature of a latte she finds herself walking out, thinking she can make ten times as much as this dancing.
Danny's pissed off with her when she gets home.
“What, you can't even complete a waitressing shift now?”
She shrugs, prods at his trousers in response:
“Are you wearing cords?”
Their exchanges get more and more like this. Weeks pass with them going to sleep far apart, waking up holding onto each other, neither wanting to get out of bed. Then Danny’s teaching pack arrives and Leila makes a decision.
Danny is lying on the settee when she comes downstairs in her figure skating dress. He puts his book on the table so she can see the title. Teaching Key Stage Three. She wants to laugh at the incongruity but the way he’s looking at her makes her want to hurt him and she picks the book up instead, flicks through it. Smirking, she announces:
“Daniel Fletcher, teacher of Art…”
Danny picks up the remote control and turns the telly on. Leila waits for a minute, looking at him as he watches the Lottery.
“Well, I'm going to work,” she says, her voice colder than she'd meant.
“Evidently,” he says, without looking at her.
“You’d do it if you could,” Leila says simply. She closes the door.

Tina laughs when she sees Leila walk in. “We can't bloody get rid of you!”
Leila hands over twenty pounds.
“I'm going to take a few pictures tonight as well, if that's alright.”
Her first Polaroid is of Tina looking pissed off.
“I thought you’d left us behind,” Kat says affectionately, handing her a shot of vodka. Leila downs it in one, does her best Pat Butcher:
“What? Leave all this?”
Kat goes home early, getting a lift with Fatman but Leila stays on. She dances till the very end of the night, topping herself up with vodka as she goes, breaking Kat’s record in tips.
When she gets home Danny is sitting at the kitchen table in the dark, his backpack at his feet.
“You're drunk.”
“You’re Danny…” Leila opens the fridge. “Have we got any rum left?”
“Leila. We need to talk...”
“Looks like it’s too late for that.”
Danny picks his bag up.
“I'm going to stay at my brother's for a bit, I...”
He doesn't finish his sentence, walks over instead for a hug. Leila stands frozen in his arms, thinking she should put up some resistance but then he kisses the side of her face, just by her eye, and she can’t pretend. She rests her head on his shoulder and squeezes him. He squeezes her back and they stand like this for a long time, an unruly silhouette against the cold light of the fridge.

The next night, Kat comes in to Glamour to say goodbye. She tells Leila she's been offered a job as a hotel manager. Something to do with Fatman.
“His real name's William and he's absolutely loaded. He's got four hotels and he wants me to oversee them all, the whole chain. I honestly can't believe it, Lei. I thought I was here for life.”

Fatman organises a big do for Kat at one of the hotels she'll be running. It's sophisticated in a showy way and he swans round all night with Kat on his arm. She already looks different: hair a more expensive red, dress down to the floor. Leila tries not to think about Pretty Woman.
She waits till Fatman’s gone to the bar to give Kat her present. It's a portrait of her in one of her Fifties costumes, done in oils.
“I’m a bit rusty,” Leila says, “but at least I’m getting back into it.”
“Don’t be silly, it’s amazing…”
Kat says she loves it, but Leila can see it isn't true. At first she thinks it's because she's flattered her but when Fatman comes back, she sees it's something else.
“It'll be a nice reminder, Leila,” he says with a little laugh, and Leila tries to smile back, realising she's already part of Kat's past.
Kat goes off to the bar to get them both a shot of vodka for old times’ sake. She spends the rest of the night making a big show of the fact that nothing has changed between them, that they'll stay in touch, and Leila smiles and laughs, toasts her friend's success again and again, then afterwards, when she finally sneaks away, she sits in the hotel grounds wondering what just happened.

*

Long after he has collected the rest of his stuff, Danny comes in to see Leila at work. His hair is short and he looks like an art teacher. Leila can see he thinks she looks like a lapdancer.
“You look well,” he lies and she lies straight back.
“Here for a dance?” she says and they both laugh, like the last time they were both in here didn’t cause them any pain at all.
“Just thought I'd come and have a look...”
“See if I'm still here?”
Danny smiles in that way that’s all his and Leila thinks how nice it would be to wrap herself around him like she used to. They sit at the bar drinking bottles of beer with lime, neither of them prepared to moan about their circumstances. They talk about their family, the past, people they know, anything but what they chose. An hour passes easily then Danny gets up to leave. He kisses Leila on the cheek.
“Look after yourself,” he tells her and she smiles.
“You know where I'll be if you want me.”
It’s meant to sound casual, lighthearted, but it sounds weighty, pointed, and Leila laughs to cover it.

She leaves Glamour soon after, too distracted to dance. Spends the evening in her studio going through the drawers of work she’s built up over the years. Between a sketch of Kat half naked and a drawing of her mother she finds a photo, face down. Her and Danny at art college. They’re both spattered with paint, holding cups of tea and looking at each other, straight in the eye. She remembers it well. The day before their final show, just before they got together. They stayed at college till it got dark, working on their paintings frantically, believing it was all so important. She’d walked him home afterwards and he’d asked her in, made her cups of tea with rum in and told her what he believed in, what he’d never settle for.