“Do It Again” • Steely Dan (by Christie Chapman)

There is a pipe in the hotel room that is all painted the same nubby white. The pipe is vertical, so it goes up-and-down, like a stripper pole, like a stripper going up and down on a stripper pole. Like me, drunk and pretending to be a stripper going up and down on a stripper pole. And stripping. Not pretending, but for real. We’re in Room 325 of the Ambassador Hotel. More numbers: I am 27, and he is 51. He lives here, in New Orleans, and I have flown down to visit him. He’s the dad of the guy I dated in eighth grade, and I have just lost my virginity to him and gotten drunk for the first time in my life, but what matters is this: He is amused by my drunk pretend stripping, encouraging you might say, and has tuned the clock radio to a classic-rock station. The station is playing “Do It Again” by Steely Dan, and there is no other song in the universe more perfect for the moment than this. It sounds dark and shimmering like chimes and mysterious like stories people only tell bartenders when drunk, back-alley stories. The song is a generational bridge, familiar to this Boomer leaning back on the bed with his can of beer, a guy who went to college during ‘Nam and had crushes on bra-burning feminists and married one and divorced one, and also familiar to this Gen X-er, who once borrowed her mom’s bell-bottoms and suede fringe vest and dressed like a hippie for Halloween. Earlier in the night he took me to a strip club where he was a regular and I got jealous but now I have his eyes all to myself. I have whipped off my long-sleeved white cotton T-shirt, whipped it around and around my head like someone who is only pretending to be a stripper. I have taken off my white lace bra, too, and I gyrate now like a hula girl on a dashboard, in my full brown cotton hip-hugger skirt. He creakily stands and dances with me, one hand on his beer, one hand on my breasts. My skirt rides low on my hips, and I keep it on. I might be a pretend stripper but I know about striptease. Reveal but conceal. Show some but not all. Take your time. Do it again.

Christie Chapman is a writer and mom in Springfield, VA. Her work has been published and is forthcoming in Electric Literature, LEON: Literary Review, The Bulb Region, Ghost Parachute, Flash the Court, Does It Have Pockets, and elsewhere. She was a Lascaux Prize Finalist for Flash Fiction, and was nominated for the Best Microfiction anthology. She is very friendly on Instagram @christielauryn.