The Only Ones For Me

I don't know what to say to people anymore.

I show up to the party looking fabulous, for real- magenta jeans, brass bullet belt, a grey silk tunic showing off some delicious skin and everyone just kind of stares at me.  The place is full of hippies smoking weed in tied-eyed green and I suddenly wish so badly for a house party in Pittsburgh where everyone is broken, insane, brilliant and brave, but not trying to be healthy or hip, just crazy and, oh, right, it's Saint Patrick's day. Now I understand the green.

I immediately retreat to the corner to talk to a friend who is supposed to be an ally or a whore or somewhere in-between, I'm not sure, and we are talking shop and suddenly she says, hey, this is so-and-so and she pole dances, too! I smile as they talk about their first experiences on the pole- the girl says her first teacher was a gay man and I say, that's actually really cool. The next girl says her first teacher was a sassy ex-Olympic gymnast who hit their toes with rulers when they didn't point. I say my first teacher was Black Suga, Baddest Bitch of the Badlands, a stripper in South Dakota who taught me moves during our downtime in the titty bar and before I'm done telling the story, everyone grows quiet. The hippies, the pole fitness girls, even the whore.

Road less traveled, I guess.  It has made all the difference in making me completely incomprehensible to most people.  That's ok, though, because out of every hundred I make uncomfortable or offend, there is that one who says, "sounds like you've been on quite an adventure.  I've always been bravely unconventional, too," as we smoke cigarettes in the back yard telling raw details of blood and guts living, our hearts bare. We are far away from everyone else and that is totally ok because she is the one I've been looking for.