Stargazer

Edie Montana

by Edie Montana

Story

Humans are astrologers, stargazers. They have always been fascinated by the stars, spending a considerable amount of time studying them, gazing at them.

As humans gaze at the stars, I am gazing at you. As my customers gaze at me when I am on the stage of the strip club, I am the one gazing now. In this galaxy the lines separating the different roles are blurred. Am I the star, am I the customer? Are you the star?

I gaze at you.

There is something about your expression and the way you move. You are holding the pole with your elbow, in a fierce stance, wrapped in a tight vinyl dress. You don’t smile and your cheekbones are proud and defined. You dance like a snake, dark, smooth, and slow. You are not looking at the customers, nor in the mirror; your eyes are blank, lost in the music, hypnotised and hypnotising, completely absorbed by the act of dancing. You spin so lightly around the pole as if your body was made of air and not of flesh, more like an ethereal creature than like a human.

I am sitting here, hidden in the corner, mesmerised, feeling like a shameless customer who can’t stop staring, re-discovering my role, desiring you.

Yet sometimes, when you are gazing at the stars, you realise with much disappointment that the bright dot in the sky is in fact an airplane. You notice a glitch, an artificial blink, an intermittence. After the first moment of disappointment, you might keep staring, deluding yourself that it’s actually a star, interpreting every single change in its brightness. Until you can’t lie to yourself anymore. It’s an airplane.

It doesn’t take me a long time to find out that you are an airplane ready to crash and destroy everything in my surroundings.

© Edie Montana 2023-02-03