The Green Eyed Monster Vs Being Utterly Crap At Anything Involving Physical Exertion

Every week, my sister, her best friend and I strip down to what can only be described as an indecent amount of flesh and attempt to look erotic whilst hanging off poles like inexperienced monkeys (I am speaking from myself in this respect, they don’t end their moves with duck feet, legs splayed open on the floor, with a deeply furrowed brow looking more like a five year old who’s just fallen off a climbing frame from a great height than a pole-dancing goddess bathing in her sexuality).

We dance with a mixture of girls, weight and ability wise. There are those who will never be dancing for crowds of hungry eyes, gyrating their hips, exhaling sex appeal with their every deep, erotic breath, performing acrobatic moves worthy of Olympic gymnastic standard (if you were to strip out the judge-offending raunchiness and the competition was expanded to those who have at least considered puberty as a lifestyle choice) and all in an outfit that leaves so little to the imagination that it would make a gynaecologist blush.

And there are those that will.

I am, comfortably, happily, although perhaps a little frustratingly one of the former.

Not that I want to pole dance in public under any circumstances, let alone actually tear money away from poor misguided punters who should actually be watching someone who at least understands the concept of sexiness. But it would be nice to at least have the option within eyesight if not in reach to at least consider and discard (and return, once more, to making websites).

I don’t know where I was when sexiness was distributed, clearly unevenly. I suspect I was probably having a warm Ribena, which may have been the start of my problems. But I can’t recall, other than my lovely boyfriend after much prepping, ever being called ‘sexy’. Other names, yes. But sexy?
Perhaps it is my uncomfortable compromise of baby features alongside womanly substantial hips and an ever faithful spread of stretch-marked back fat that are first confusing then intriguing to the viewer, and not in an ‘ooh I want to get to know her better’ way, more of the ‘hmm I’d like to submit her genetic makeup for testing’. Perhaps it is my thick, unmanageable volumes of once blonde hair expanding from my frustratingly youthful features that conjure up the words ‘fluffy’ rather than ‘sexy’. Perhaps it is array of unattractive, toddler-borrowed facial expressions or my insistence on wearing the same clothing combinations that I have done since I was 14.

To counteract this noticeable lack of a key part of pole dancing, I attack the lessons with a tremendous amount of dedication and seriousness for one so small, focussing on attempting to perfect the moves, hoping, wishing, praying that one day sexiness will flow through my being and I will be finally transformed into the alter ego that at the moment doesn’t quite want to fit.

This in itself poses one or two not exactly insignificant problems.

The first is that I just cannot remember things. I watch our instructor repeat the moves again and again, trying to absorb every minute detail, but my thoughts are already curled around the defiant fact that I will not remember once I attempt to copy the move. If I do, on the odd occasion, manage to achieve such heady heights as mastering a move, on leaving the class I appear to walk through some sort of invisible sheep dip for brain cells, eradicating anything useful and instead not being able to process thoughts more complex than ‘gin & tonic’.

Luckily I am left handed so at least I have an excuse to ask the instructor to show me a move that I have already watched, probably attempted and possibly even practiced, again because I can’t quite remember what the hell I am supposed to be doing.

Secondly, my limbs have decided that, while my face hints at a bygone age of prepubescent, the rest of my body is heading very much in the opposite direction, seizing up at every opportunity with not even a hint of the suppleness I used to take for granted when dancing. And then there’s the physical strength. Yes I may have a disturbing ability to climb like a monkey (and looking like one gets you no brownie points in the class I might add) but my stomach muscles just laugh in the general direction of the pole when I size it up, and my thighs just don’t appear to be able to crush the metal within them like I really hoped they would considering their size in comparison to the bone that they encase.

Lastly, and certainly not least, I am beginning to notice it isn’t just sexiness you need for pole dancing. You need style as well.

Still, I am aware of all my shortcomings, noting that yes, I may utterly suck but I am only a beginner, and that’s what beginners do. They suck.

That’s what I thought until last night at least.

So there we were, the three of us. I graciously opted to join with a girl who had only so far had her induction and one lesson. I truly believed in some misguided way that I’d be able to help her with what I’d previously learned. I even felt a twinge of smugness at my being so nice.

I should have known by the fact our teacher had told us about her, this miracle girl, in our lesson the previous week. How she had undergone the induction and, not suffering an ounce of pain, had returned the following day, where she had proceeded to bash her foot so badly half way through the class that it spurted blood everywhere, only to continue throughout the rest of the class.

Okay, so she had clearly mastered the first few moves nicely. She had an enviable style, but there is for the most part of our class a real and true feeling of support and good will, and so I was genuinely pleased for her that she’d taken to it so effortlessly.

Then, as the class progressed, this started to get a little out of hand. As she attempted new move after new move, completing them like a pro, and adding a bit of flare in for good measure just to rub salt into my already suffering wounds, I struggled, banging my head against the pole, ending up on the floor, attempting things awkwardly, uncomfortably, inaccurately. And the best bit was that she was telling me how to do it right in a polite but firm manner. No, that wasn’t the best bit, that was the fact that everything she told me was true.

This girl also appeared to have a photographic memory. While I asked repeatedly what a move was, she absorbed every nuance of our instructor’s demonstration, copying to such an extent that I began to feel slightly ridiculous and completely rubbish.

This girl was lovely, helpful, supportive (in the physical sense as well as verbal, as in one instance she encouraged me to attempt a move that involved me ending up with my head on the floor and my legs wrapped for dear life around the pole, leaving me with chaffed thighs all evening) and extremely, extremely naturally talented.

I had already previously established that pole dancing wasn’t what I was natural at. I have already been through many hobbies and activities striving to find what I do in fact have natural aptitude for, what I am gifted at, surely there is one thing, surely I cannot be terrible at all things that involve doing more than just walking (in which I have at least some aptitude but I refuse to believe that counts).

I had hoped that pole dancing might have been the hallowed activity, the one that I took to like a duck to water, the one that I fell into like I had been born to dance around a metal pole (if anyone ever has). But I had quickly realised this was not to be.

I have seen students join since I first began and do exactly what I wanted to achieve. But my sister and I have usually just had a bit of a grumble and moan about how we wish we’d been able to achieve such a natural instinct, and continue. After all, we’d get there in the end, we were chipping away at it, improving gradually, congratulating each other with every achievement, it was all a learning process.

Last night though was beyond a joke. Now I understand how all those other extras must have felt playing second fiddle to Harry Bloody Potter. Most of them weren’t even assigned names. In the pole dancing equivalent (if there is ever to be one, in which case I would like to know about casting details), she would have been the protagonist, while I would have been Girl In Background Looking On #5, which would have most likely ended up on the cutting room floor, perhaps appearing in some hidden DVD extra if they had some free space.

I left last night, aching and not feeling all that motivated.

I adore my classes more than any other exercise I have ever attempted (and believe me that’s a comparison to a severe number of hours of my life) and in no way am I planning to achieve the standard that many dancers I have had the pleasure to watch have reached. Besides, I think I am probably on the wrong age side of twenty to be attempting anything of the sort. Pole dancing classes were my sister’s ingenious answer to our being rejected for a British Sign Language class (because it was full, not because were reprobates) which not only mean that we see each other once a week without fail, but we get to swing around metal poles and remind a few muscles of their assigned much neglected jobs while we’re at it.

So today, approaching the issue on a different tack, I have informed my sister that we are getting outfits that look less like we are going to a pyjama party and more like we are pole dancers. Once we have moved (wherever that may be to, which is an incredibly sensitive topic), I will proceed to erect a pole so we can at least pretend to practice. I have even toyed with the idea of purchasing some incredibly high heeled pole dancing shoes, but one step at a time.

I am not by nature a competitive person. I don’t wish to be the best in everything I do. I just don’t want to utterly suck, whether that be comparative to whoever I am paired with or merely in general. Yes of course I was sickeningly jealous. Yes, perhaps I did wish a little that there was at least one move that she didn’t master without even attempting it. But I refuse to, on this instance, believe myself to be a bad person for such thoughts. If perhaps I addressed other deeper, darker half-conceived, not-quite-thoughts I would not be a nice person and so we shall pretend such inklings were never even thought of being felt.

However I’m quite relieved to know that next time we’ll be faithfully back in our Thursday class.