A/N last night (I had a dream! I found myself in a desert… actually no…) I was watching Rent and this idea just sorta came to me… I thought about doing a fic called Boheme and having chapters like this for music, film anarchy and dance, but I decided dance works the best.

To Dance:

A way to make a living…

I was seventeen when I quit school. I had always wanted to be a dancer! Mis padres helped me as much as they could, but school wasn't doing anything for me. It was boring and depressing as all get out. Those places are designed to suppress all artistic style and individuality and that's just not my style. Anyway, when I ditched school and went to The City (well… further into it.) I needed to make a living. What I had had in mind was maybe something small but, you know, just… dancing and then maybe audition for a chorus in a show or something. Cause I was good, dammit, but good just doesn't cut it. So I set my sights a bit lower. And by a bit, I mean… well, I guess I could say it's a pretty big step down from aspiring to be a ballerina or dance on broadway to suddenly settling for dancing in front of horny old guys whose wives would kill them if they knew where they were for tips. But it didn't matter because even though it wasn't broadway, it was a living.

Masochism…

I remember the first time my boss handed me those tacky handcuffs and I gotta admit I was a bit surprised. I mean, it wasn't that kinky and nothing I hadn't done with my boyfriend, but I guess at that point, almost eighteen, I was still getting comfortable with the whole thing—not that I let that show in my performance. I danced my heart out like it was the sort of thing I had been practicing for years, even though it had little to do with my innocent pirouettes. It didn't take me too long before I realized that I had to give the customer what they want. And these customers are sadists and masochists—all of them—but once I got used to it, I actually found that I was completely okay with that. The handcuffs were just the beginning.

Pain…

Sometimes I didn't want to go out for the next show. Sometimes it hurt to much, physically and emotionally. I love what I do, and I'm proud of it. Sure, it may not be 'respectable,' but I look past that and tell myself that I'm just dancing, just like always. But some days I would have doubts about that. My perfectly corrupted, sexual mind would revert back to the wide-eyed, though not innocent, teenage girl who had never expected to find herself in this… line of work. But that was fixed easily enough. I soon learned that smack helped. The smack helped everything. The only times it can't make me go back on are when I've just been dancing too much. At a certain point a person's feet and flexibility can't take much more and they just want to collapse when they're reapplying their heavy stage makeup. But even then I work through the pain and go back onstage. The pain is good. It means I'm getting better. And I need the money.

Perfection…

Being perfect is hard. Seriously, it's the hardest part of the job. And I don't just mean "practice makes perfect" perfect. I mean like practice makes perfect and then hair and make up and sex appeal makes perfect… er. I guess not for all the girls. Some of them just throw on some slutty, sloppy make up and go open their legs to the audience, but some of them don't get paid as much as I do. So I guess I don't have to be perfect, but it'd almost worth it. It beats living in the tent city next door.

Muscle spasms…

I hated muscle spasms. They just happened sometimes and it was usually okay, but then there was that one time where my freaking leg tensed up while I was dancing! Yeah… um, well, I laugh at it now, but it sucked at the time. No one tips the dancer that falls on her face… Yeah…. Bad day…

Chiropractors…

So at one point I decided to find myself a nice cheap chiropractor, for the sake of keeping my body in good shape. But you know what's awkward as hell? When you get the chatty chiropractor who wants to know what your job is and all that. Like, did you ever go to the doctor who asks you stuff while you're getting a freaking shot? Or the dentist that makes small talk while filling your mouth with tooth paste? Yeah, well I got the chiropractor that likes to chat. Which I guess isn't her fault, I mean, whereas with the dentist it's like "dude, you are physically preventing me from talking and asking me questions at the same time!" But the awkward part is the "so what school do you go to?" thing. And hen I say "I don't" the next question is what do you do and then I say that I dance and then, of course, comes the million dollar question "Oooooh! What kind of dance?" And, bless her, she was such a sweet person, and I really didn't mind her questioning, but I think I freaked her out a bit when I answered that last question…

Short careers…

It was never a career that I pretended would last. I mean, lets just say it already: I'm a stripper. No one comes to see a stripper whose in her fifties. And I don't blame them. I wouldn't come to see me in… thirty years… But I feel like I'd worry about that more if I thought I would make it that far. If I'm alive and well when my body has lost it's agility and sex-appeal, then maybe I'll come up with a back up plan, but right now it seems like I'll die doing this. And actually a bit sooner than later… So really, one way or another, I'll have a pretty short career. It all just comes down to how it ends.

Eating disorders…

My first experience with eating disorders? Hm… Well I think I was, like, 14..ish? It was a few years after I had started dancing and I met this girl, Eva, her name was, and she was just so skinny and I guess I got to wondering if that would make me a better dancer. Hah. I think my coach was just a bit of a bitch and I was desperate for her attention. Which, incidentally, I got. She said stuff like "Looking great, Meemz!" which she had never said before, so I sorta took that as a "go ahead, this is good for you!" It took me way too long to realize that it wasn't. And I mean way too long. It took me til one of the other strippers at the freaking cat scratch club while she was shooting up backstage looked up from her needle and said she thought me didn't look so good and that she should gain weight. Of course it didn't occur to either of us that the drugs were bad, but at least she had the common sense to point out that starving myself was unhealthy. She said she had been there. She was kind of a mentor to me during my first year at the club, before she died of an overdose.

A/N so yeah… To Dance! I might do one for film from Mark's perspective… later…. Anywho, I hope you enjoyed. Read and review! :D