You can watch my performance in the video above. Note that it is NSFW. If you are reading this essay via email, click the little three dots below this line to start from the beginning.
I don’t know if this is a beginning or an end. Probably both.
I’ve been depressed. Finding no joy in my talents or hobbies. Getting my ass kicked on any number of levels. If another person asks me if I’m “open to criticism,” I’mma tell em what I really think.
Last night on Love After Lockdown, a woman answered her friend’s relentless critique of her prison romance thusly:
“WELL, YOU BOUT TO BE A FORTY-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN,”
and when her friend looked hurt, she continued,
“See? How does that feel?”
Something inside me cheered.
As Frank Constanza famously quipped:
My patience has been down. My confidence, too. I put out an important work of art this year and despite huge successes in any number of metrics, a handful of eat-shit reviews on Apple Podcasts had me sadness-napping for months. They hated my accent. Who doesn’t. They thought I was overly serious. I have always been called melodramatic. I haven’t written seriously since. Not here, not anywhere.1
These haven’t been the only complaints I’ve received.
My two-year-old yells at me all day long, and that’s just the baseline.
I am in the business of providing luxury vacations for sexy ladies, and no mistakes are acceptable at this level of product.
No mistakes are acceptable, anywhere, from me.
I pride myself on being hard. Unmoveable. I grew a callus over my soul long ago.
Yet recently, a Chapstick rolled off the table, and my rage could’ve set the house on fire.
Did I mention I am 43 years old, and without a doubt heading into the mind-and-body-altering world of perimenopause, complete with night sweats, depression, and rage?
Recently, my teenager mistook a box of various works of art DEPICTING ME as empty cardboard garbage, and therefore fair fuel for a bonfire. He and his buddy casually set hundreds of dollars worth of photos of me on fire among other boxes of trash. It was a mistake on his part, and he was horrified to learn what he’d done. Yet I flew into such a fury of weeping and hollering that the Chapstick was looking at my son like,
Damn bro, I got off lightly with this bitch.
I spent half a grand on hormones online at 3 a.m.
I’d never let anybody see me sweat (other than my bedsheets), but I knew the cracks were showing.
It’s been a year of being humbled.
Hell, it’s been a few.
Nonetheless, this year also marked ten years of my professional career as Lux ATL, founder of Stripcraft.
To celebrate this milestone, I had planned a big party showcasing my online dance students. I named this event the Stripcraft Spectacular, and while I intended the event to serve my students—
frankly, I also intended this event to celebrate me.
Sometimes I feel shortchanged in that arena.
I celebrate other people for a living.
My husband, a kind and stoic man drippin’ in the ‘tism, ain’t the most generous with compliments.
So, I throw my own parties.
Yet as the time for this event approached, I found myself sinking further into hopelessness. I had dedicated my life to the craft of writing, and now I never wanted to write again. I worked absurd hours and developed ulcers trying to create the perfect product for my clients, and still missed the occasional mark. A single missed mark erases every good thing. I must deliver perfection, and I am unable to execute.
I fantasized about disappearing in any number of ways. I used to feel as if I had something special to say. I felt now as if I was one more voice in the din of lonely hearts begging for love in an attention economy suffering from inflation. I felt as though the coolest thing I could do was shut up and stop talking about myself.
I felt practically embarrassed at the bravado that had been the hallmark of my Lux ATL brand.
Nonetheless, this past weekend, it was time for me to get on a stage, night sweats, self-doubt, and all.
For days preceding the Stripcraft Spectacular, I wrung my hands at the abject likelihood that I was going to fuck up this event, disappoint my clients, and ruin my career.
(“Ruining my career,” by the way, is always a top-of-mind fear)—
And yet, nonetheless, here the spotlight shone, awaiting my arrival, ten years of customers and friends in the audience, still probably thinking I’m cool despite my inner monologue calling me a hack, an old hoe, a failure, a bad artist who should shut up.
Yet despite these self-deprecating accusations, still shone that spotlight.
Still, from the DJ booth, rung out my name.
“Lux ATL!”
Lux. The best friend of my life. The scrappy stripper who pulled me out of the gutter, made me somebody, earned all these fans, these clients. The gorgeous dark-haired woman staring at me in the mirror of many a black-lit lap dance room, taking the hits so Lindsay wouldn’t have to.
Backstage, I removed the estrogen patch from my abdomen. Washed off the remaining adhesive with the same rubbing alcohol we use to prime the poles.
“Lux ATL!”
I strode upon the stage, into a spotlight so bright that I could not see, and in the span of two songs, fell in love with myself again.
Not Lindsay. Lux. Not the middle-aged woman I’ve been trying to make myself accept. When my mother was my age, she was an overweight health-distressed widow who walked around crying all day. I thought it was my turn. I’ve been expecting my husband to die any time because husbands die when you’re forty-three and leave you alone, walking around weeping, with rudderless children, fifty extra pounds, and a sagging face where once there was devastating beauty.
All year long, I’ve been secretly thinking the Stripcraft Spectacular would be a funeral for Lux ATL. I would dance on stage one last time. Throw one last party. Then slink away with my tail between my legs, ultimately a failure who briefly enjoyed a few good years of being somebody.
All year long, I was wrong.
Outside many of the famous mausoleums of New Orleans, there hangs a bell. Connected to the bell, a thread leading to the corpse inside. This bell serves as a safety device should a person be accidentally interred while alive. Hear a bell in the cemetery ring, and you know someone in a grave is announcing,
I am not dead.
I live still.
Pull me out of this darkness and back into the light.
—L.B., November 2024
I have not written seriously—outside of a magical weekend in New Orleans, co-writing a pitch for a television adaptation of my aforementioned major work of art with actual successful artist and celebrity, Wendi McLendon Covey. Thanks for the vote of confidence, pal.
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