Private Dancer

I had just turned 18 when my mother and sisters moved out of state. I decided that I wanted to stay where my friends were and live an independent life of adulthood in Los Angeles. It’s where I grew up, and it’s what I knew. Let’s be honest though, what I wanted was to not have to answer to anyone. But, independence can be a double edged sword – especially when you aren’t prepared to swing that blade correctly.

So, I stayed in L.A.  I already had a job as an assistant manager with one of the coolest retail stores in the mall, you know the one with the “questionable” jeans that were so popular? What else could a sweet valley girl ask for? Well, it turns out the answer to that question was A LOT. A lot more.

A lot more came in the form of a girl who always came in to shop and who always had money. She had platinum blonde hair, long french tipped nails, her clothes were all expensive designer brands, and she looked like an angel. So beautiful. So put together. I wanted what she had. I wanted to look like I had it all too.

We became friends and she took me under her wing. At the time I felt like I was going places. As if I’d hit the big time. She took me to big Hollywood parties, where I met famous people. She also took me to little Hollywood parties where I met even more famous people.

It wasn’t too long before I started playing the part of the sidekick to her platinum main character. It was easy enough. I would drive her BMW around town and drag her half-conscious, drunk body into her Wilshire penthouse, where the doorman never batted an eyelash when I’d ask for a hand. Glamorous.

I kept my day job as the responsible retail manager, but it was getting hard. I could barely keep up my nightly excursions, let alone balance a cash register, and inventory? I can’t even tell you to this day what the hell we sold. I think the model in the billboards was a buxom blonde in a white button up shirt, but things are fuzzy, and I could have been selling fish and chips for all I knew. For all I cared. Because now I was using cocaine, and I was getting to be famous myself, in a small way, and who needed a small time retail job anymore now that I was glamorous too?

I didn’t learn for weeks that my platinum hero was an escort. I’m naive though, even today at my age. If you tell me something about yourself I’ll believe you. I’ve never mastered the womanly spidey senses I’m supposed to have been born with. By the time I figured out what she was doing, and who she was working for, it didn’t matter. As a matter of fact, there was nothing I wanted more than to be part of that world myself. Drugs and the illusion of glamor will do that to a young girl on her own in the city.

Wanting, as you may already know yourself, is the easy part. We can want anything. It’s the doing that’s difficult. But, when you’re rubbing elbows with Hollywood’s elite, loaded with cash, and stuffed full of cocaine? Well, then most anything is doable and isn’t too difficult at all.

We got the “okay” that I could go along on her platinum outings. I loved it. I would get dressed up and made up. I’d show up to little Hollywood parties and – I’d dance. I wasn’t supposed to take my clothes off. I wasn’t supposed to go into another room alone. I was supposed to dance. Music, no music, I would dance in a corner, I would dance in the middle of the floor, and I would dance with whoever wanted to dance with me.

I could tell you all the disgusting details of what people are like when they’re full of drugs and dancing with a girl for hire. I won’t tell you the worst, but I’ll leave you with this: Can you imagine, some of the biggest names in Hollywood wearing condoms under their pants just to dance with a girl they don’t know? I sometimes wonder if it would have been easier if I could have worn the platinum wig and just gotten things over with.

Reality usually sets in at the worst of times, but sometimes also just in time. When my mother called to say that she and my sisters would be moving back to California, something switched inside of me. I suddenly realized that I wasn’t the little girl she’d left behind. I wasn’t the wide eyed, sweet, ambitious young lady who was supposed to be in my second year of journalism classes at the university. I was now another overexposed, jaded, coked out actor. But, the part I was playing was too serious. The worst part is that I sought this part out and performed as if I was born for it.

Slowly, I came to my senses because when you’re nose deep in drugs, and almost prostituting yourself so that you can have everything you ever wanted, real life doesn’t come into focus as clearly. But things do eventually zoom in, as long as you’re strong enough to recognize them, and more importantly, do something about it. I suppose my stubborn nature, the same one that lead me into this, was part of the reason I got out. That and remembering the pride I had for myself that I had left behind in the mall.

A month later when my family showed up I was back to who I was before they had left. I was back to wearing the jeans, T-shirts, and dirty tennies my mother always gave me crap for, and back to being myself – on the outside. Because when you go through, or rather, when you put yourself in a place that dark I don’t think you can ever come out the other side as the same person that went in.

I suppose the moral of this story is: Don’t let your daughters hang out at the mall! A better, more appropriate moral is to know your worth, and work for what you want. Don’t take the easy road, it more than likely will only lead to a longer trek back home, if you’re lucky enough find the road.

Jamma Tardif
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