The Masquerade

prologue

Josephine

      I stood in front of Body & Pole with a duffle bag over my shoulder trying to talk myself into entering the studio and taking the classes I had paid for on a whim the night before. No, that was a lie. I hadn’t paid for the classes on a whim, I had done quite a bit of research on pole dancing before I decided on this studio and the series of classes I was going to take. From the reviews and a few of my friends who had done the alternative, strip aerobics, I learned that it did wonders for their esteems and sex lives and that’s what I needed. The esteem part, not the sex.

      After six years with a domineering husband who, it seemed, made it his life’s purpose to tear me down, my self esteem was at an all time low. At the end of our relationship, I knew I needed and deserved more from a relationship than what he was giving me, but as a parting gift he had me believing that he was the best thing in my life and that I would never get a man that treated me better than he did…that I was lucky to have had him. The verbal and physical abuse didn’t help matters and neither did the women he cheated on me with and flaunted around our circle of friends as if I was so insignificant in his life that he couldn’t even give me the dignity of keeping his indiscretions in the dark.

      After seven months with a therapist that I met religiously every Monday and Friday, I began realizing that I wasn’t the problem in my and Frank’s relationship. Yes, I attributed to quite a bit of my own pain by not setting boundaries and leaving him sooner, but I knew I did deserve to be loved and respected. One of the assignments Laura, my psychiatrist, had given me was to work on was building my confidence. Catherine, my best friend and neighbor, had told me the best way to go about that was to date as many guys as possible and let them feed my ego, but after my disastrous divorce jumping into a relationship was the last thing on my mind casual or otherwise. I suppose that the men would be a quick fix to feed my ego, but needing someone else to determine my self worth was the pathway to disaster. I had learned that much and so in the end I’d decided on pole dancing.

      Pole dancing seemed fun and all the women and men I knew who did it were super confident in both themselves and their sexuality, which were attributes I was lacking severely at the moment. It was with that knowledge that I paid for 20 sessions that would last 10 weeks. I figured that two and a half months would be enough time to at least build a bit of my confidence and esteem to a point where I wasn’t just telling people that I was worth being respected and loved, but felt it as well.

      I took a deep breath, straightened my shoulders and walked into the building.