Chapter III

# Part III:

I was running. As the breeze was making my hair fly, as the coolness was reddening my cheeks and the ground making my hair wave, I just felt infinite. Nothing could have ever stopped me. Neither the cops, nor my family. They didn't know that I was out. Hopefully, they would probably have killed me. I didn't care. I only wanted to feel free. So I kept running until I arrived. I breathed in and out, again and again. I was standing by a small building. It was like all made of concrete. It actually looked like a jail. But I don't think that a jail would have had neon representing a stripper. I opened the back door and came inside. The floor was rough and scratchy under my ballerina. This place was far from being the most comfortable place ever. I heard a song. The kind of sing you listen to when you are making out with your man. Or whatever. I stepped forward in the dark room. I sent to the locker room where I found Maria Rodriguez. She looked at me with a slight smile. She detailed me from the head to the feet and she whispered:
"Why don't you join the "Club" honey?"
"Because I am an actress, not a prostitute." I replied, a bit aggressively.
"To me, there is no difference here. Here, my girls act as the men' fantasy. They forget who they are to become what my customers want. They act everything out. You say that you're an actress, but actually you have to show them what the script wants you to show." Maria explained.
"Maria, you are already drunk."
"No I am not. If you weren't so stuck, you would have won a lot of money."
"And lost my dignity." I said to end the dialog.
Maria Rodriguez was not just a procurer, she was a talent seeker. So she wasn't such a bad woman. She had been beautiful once. She still had the dancer body she sculpted so long ago. And as she told us so many times, she struggled a lot to keep her head above water. She had a tanned skin and chestnut wavy hair. She was a real business woman actually, she knew who had talent and who would interest her regular customer. And she wasn't such a bad boss actually. She used to yell at us when we weren't involved enough. But I had never hated her. Probably because her daughter, Carmen, had been one of my best friends. Probably because when she saw me at the Farewell Spectacle she offered me that job. She touched my hair gently and sighed:
"You should probably get ready."
Maria didn't care about the colour of our skin. She just wanted us to do the job correctly. She was the only white people I could have talked to. She wasn't so white though.
I got inside the dressing room and I took my costume of Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest. I made my hair curly and put some make up. I looked at myself in the mirror. I wasn't scared. I was just stressed. I didn't know why actually. I knew my part by heart. I gave myself a Hurray mental speech and I stood up.
The red curtain was dropped. It was fake velvet. As everything here, it was fake. Fake diamonds on the ceiling. Fake costumes. Fake actors. I touched its scratchy surface. I lived in a world of fakeness and lies. I sighed deeply as I heard the show end. Sometimes, I used to look at myself in the mirror and wonder how low I arrived. I used to ask myself how I wanted to achieve my goals. Then, I used to shake my head and say at loud "No matter what they say, I screw the entire world, and I am a winner." That's what I told myself that night and high on my fake heels, I became Cecily Cardew.
I acted well that night. I took the public in my hand and I flew with them into my Wonderland. I looked at them with my iced glance. I pouted to show that I wasn't happy. I laughed as a pre-pubescent girl. I was in my world. I didn't care about their sexual predator look. I didn't care about their whistle. I just wanted to touch them deeply. And I didn't make it. I didn't touch them. Or they would have stopped laughing like total jerks. They would have stopped looking at me as if I were a meat ball. I cried inside. "Never show them your emotion. They don't deserve it." Used to say my brother. Oscar Wilde used to say that "“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
" so I kept acting. Sometimes, I asked myself if it was worth being treated like a prostitue just to act. The answer was obvious. No. It wasn't worth. But, I needed to escape. I needed to forget everything. My family. School. My problems. The lack of money. The lack of everything. And my plastic world.

After the show, I joined the girls. We were like ten young disillusioned too precocious women. We had lost our childhood and youth. You don't need to know their name actually. They were all Black. The public was mostly made of White people. Yeah that was the thing. We weren't good enough to deserve a place in the society but we could just please them as object to watch.
Most of the girls belonged to the Club. There were also boys. Not a lot, just two. Both of them were Hispanic. They were Maria's kid. The first one was called Alejandro. He was seventeen and was kind of cute. His brother, Fernandez was younger. They knew Carmen before she fled.
Alejandro grabbed my arm and took me far from the other. He had big brown eyes and a very tanned skin. His hair was more than dishevelled. He could have pleased me. I could have dated him. But he wasn't black. And we were more and more stuck together than ever.
"How are you" he asked.
"Fine I guess."
"I have heard about your school." He said softly.
Everybody had. We were about to be "integrated" to the white people' school. Fine. Very fine.
"Yeah, it had to happen one day or another."
"You shouldn't be that contemptuous. You should feel grand."
"Why? We don't ask to be manipulated, we just want to be recognised as normal people."
"You are normal. You are even much more than normal. You are like... Out of time. And out of this world.”
"And you are... Like drunk."
We both smiled. Nobody could understand the link between Alejandro and me. We both loved drama. We both had the same sense of humour. But there was a pact between us. We couldn't date. Mostly because of Tyler Blake, my "I am Destiny boyfriend" who wasn't actually my boyfriend. It was very complicated between us.

I didn't use to talk to he other girls. I thought that there were dull. Extremely dull for there had no future, no nothing. Prostitution wasn't the promise of a wealthy life. Prostitution was the promise of surviving. But what in what kind of life? Life of illness, reject and loss. But it was reserved to weak women. Or women who had no choice. In my view, prostitution was just an easy way to easy money. It was possible to do lot more. Like my parents. Like all the non prostitute girls of Brooklyn.
They all took one sip of terrible quality rum and then went to get there customer. Maria didn't say a word when they left. She just sighed. And prayed for their sake.
She came to me and gave me ten dollars. I thanked her and walked back to home. Alejandro decided to walk with me for a while. I didn't talk, I wasn't very talkative. But he was.
"How do you picture yourself in ten years?" He asked after a while.
"Married, four children, and a yacht." I said, full of sarcasm.
"I am being serious Destiny." He said, not kidding at all.
"I don't know. There is no bright future for women like me here." I admitted.
"Don't you want to make things change?"
"I can't. Things won't change Alex, you can write laws, give an Oscar to a Black man. But you can't change human mind." I explained.
"Yes you can." He claimed.
"If you really think so, then you are foolish."
"I ain't foolish. I'm just optimistic."
"Then, how do you picture yourself in ten years?"
"Married with a wonderful woman" he whispered looking at me"maybe children, I don't know. I would love to live in a huge house with a view on the sea. And of course with an oscar."
"You are foolish."
"No I am not."
He shrugged and kept walking with his nonchalant walk. When we arrived down my building he just looked at me and whispered:
"So I guess that you won't listen to me. And that you won't make any effort in your new school."
"You know me pretty good indeed."
"Good night Destiny." He muttered.
"Good night Alex."
He put a slight kiss on my cheek and went back to the theatre. I sighed and climbed the fire staircase. I slid by the window into my bed and I closed my eyes.

Author's Note

Hope you will like it :)