REHAB
REHAB
BETSY HOUSTEN
Sometime after midnight, I was broke
and living on bagels and waiting to go on
at the Pussycat Lounge. What kind of place
hires a girl with just a once-over and a question
about her stage name? The kind that pays
only in cash. I wasn’t sure I’d be up to it
but Roxy promised the money was great
and I’d learn to love my body more than ever
once I got the hang of it. Her practiced arms
in bright fishnets, coaching me in the wings.
Like this, like this. I copied, trying to be enticing,
eyeing the exit. I did not belong here, among
such glittered sylphs. Then the boss nodded,
and it was my turn, and the song changed,
Amy Winehouse rasping through the speakers
like a big fat cigar she’d been smoking all her life,
like she’d seen a thing or two and it made her feel
roughed up and full, way down deep in the place
where her voice began, so I took that stage,
casting off layers as I went, until all I was
was pixie cut and red thong and six-inch heels
in the floor to ceiling mirror, scoping myself
as I swayed from new heights, reaching down
to pluck bills and tuck them into my underwear
that glowed under those lights, everything looked
good under those lights, even my dusted-up
luggage of muscle and stubble and ducts,
and my borrowed shoes stabbed the bar like
intervention and sweet Jesus she was right,
I’d pay me. I’d pay the fuck out of me.
BETSY HOUSTEN is a queer writer and massage therapist who earned her MFA at the University of New Orleans and makes her home in Brooklyn. Her writing appears in Autostraddle, Sundog Lit, Rogue Agent, Entropy, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. You can find her at betsyhoustenwrites.com.