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Sparkle (0)
Las Vegas: high-speed city of debauchery, lights and excess. This is where I got married so, this being my life, it made perfect sense that I would happen to be here again, following a decision to get divorced.
I’d planned the trip months ago with my friend Katya, who’s relocating there for work, and then proceeded to completely forget about it until she called me a couple of days before my departure. I was somewhere between moving into a new place and restarting my life, but I couldn't say no now. Besides, I figured a little time-out would help me clear my mind and put things in perspective.
So there I was, Friday night and the perspective I was facing were the parted thighs of a life-sized Barbie writhing on a stage. Just then, a good-looking man walked up to me and told me I looked beautiful. I lit a cigarette and smiled. He asked if I wanted a drink. I told him I didn’t.
After he left, Katya leaned in and asked me what he’d said. She looked shocked when I relayed the message.
“I thought maybe he’d insulted you,” she remarked, “just going by the look on your face.”
“Really?”
“What’s going on with you?” she asked. “You’re single again! Where’s the old Anaiis? The girl that would get up on that stage and strip because it was fun? The girl with the guys tripping over themselves to talk to her? The one who could drag them along with a word? Is she still in there? Come out, tigress. You’re still in there. I know you are.”
Suddenly, my marriage flashed before my eyes: throwing out all the outfits that I didn’t think were appropriate, stifling all the desires that were incongruous with those of my husband. I called it “growing up”—but was it growing up, or disconnecting with my body? When was the last time my body had reacted with the intensity of that tigress I once knew?
I reached back in time.
My husband and I had had a fight. Somewhere, we’d made a tradition of making up—we’d drive to Laguna Beach and listen to a live band or see art, things I really liked. That night, I was feeling particularly frisky, and had been running my foot up and down his leg under the table.
“Anastasia!” he said, removing my foot from his crotch.
“Mmm?” I giggled.
“This isn’t appropriate.”
I shot him a questioning look, “we’re in a dark restaurant and we don’t know anyone here anyway. What’s a little fun?”
“It makes me uncomfortable.”
“This from the king of public displays of affection?” I smiled. “Ease up.”
“It’s embarrassing,” he said.
“Fine,” I replied, and elbowed the cream that had been brought for my coffee right off the table.
A waiter hurried over.
“Oops,” I said, smiling. I could feel my husband glaring at me. “I am so sorry. I’m just not the kind of girl you should take to dinner. I do such embarrassing things.”
The waiter smiled and assured me it wasn’t a problem.
My husband half-apologized, half-berated me after the waiter had gone.
“It’s fine,” I said.
But it wasn’t. Later, my husband asked me if I wanted to take a stroll on the beach. Walking along with the cool sand at my feet and the moon high above us, I forgot myself again.
“You know what I want to do right now?” I asked him.
“What?”
“I want to fuck… in that lighthouse.”
He looked at it briefly, then turned back to me and said, plainly, “you’re demented.”
Love is stronger than reason. Love is stronger than desires. So he didn’t want to get down in a lighthouse. Big deal. It’s not as though we never had sex, I reasoned. Even if we generally only did the things he liked because he wasn’t into my “acrobatics.” I put these things away in the name of compromise. That’s marriage: compromise.
But little by little, I compromised everything about my body. I shut away my desires, I locked up my acrobatics, I erected a wall between my mind and my skin.
So there, in Las Vegas, amidst an orgy of pleasure and desire, I tried to call out for my body, but found I no longer knew how.
On the computer, when you lose your wi-fi signal, you can repair your connection. How do you repair your connection IRL?
When I got back to Los Angeles, one of the first things I did was visit my chiropractor. He’s been working with me to treat an injury I suffered after a cab hit me a year ago. He told me we would
