Burnt Sugar

The thing about going out on your own is that you always have to find something to occupy yourself with. I don’t smoke so the option of posing casually with a cigarette was out; I’m not the type to take a book to a social event; and I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt someone else’s conversation. So that left with me two options: watching and drinking. Deciding who to watch was easy; deciding what to drink was a bit more complicated.

I’m a bottle-of-beer kind of girl. I like the feel of the ice-cold glass in my hand, the sensation when the wet rim of the bottle meets my lips and the fast bubbles pour into my mouth. The moment of holding the beer there, tasting it, feeling the fizz against my tongue, and then swallowing it down. It’s a ritual that I enjoy and one that I generally repeat every Saturday night. But this Saturday night was an exception. Instead of the usual dyke bar full of fellow beer drinkers, I had chosen somewhere different – very different.

I’d seen the poster that afternoon: a narrow-waisted woman with bright red lipstick sitting astride a bedroom stool and holding an old-fashioned powder puff. The headline was simple: Burlesque Night; the location was the other side of town; and there, in the small print, it told me there would be a full cocktail bar. Dress to impress, it concluded, with free drinks for the best attire.

Well, I never was...