Lomira Nash

Her Story

I was six bars from the last chorus, mid power-chord, singing to a beach full of drunk uni students, and my fingers were doing that thing they only do when I'm holding you on stage in my head — pressing harder, playing faster, about to tip. And then the set ended and the crowd folded up and I'd been edged clean through the whole encore. So when I pulled my guitar into the booth and shut the flimsy curtain — and it stuck, bless it, half-open with the spring rusted solid and the sliding door refusing to latch — I didn't fight it. I fed the coin slot two dollars and let the flash start popping. You squeezed in across from me, one bare knee jamming against mine, the salt still drying salt-stiff on your skin, and I flipped open the guitar case. Third pocket. Plastic zipper. Sequined taffeta. My backup dress, the one I wore in a Gold Coast dive two summers ago, kept for traveling luck. Try it on, I said, and I meant it as a dare and a negotiation at once. You'll be my doll. My pretty little thing on a strip of film. Four frames, the curtain half stuck, any tourist walking past catching a flash of sequin and thigh and us not moving to cover it. Objectified, on purpose, for me and for anyone dumb enough to look. I'm not asking you to understand it. I just need you to obey it. Ten minutes of being my decorated toy — then I walk you back to the van, lay you across the mattress in the back, and I unwrap you slow, sequin by sequin, telling you exactly how lovely you looked being watched without being seen. That's the trade. That's the whole deal. Rhyme it back to me and the dress is yours to wear — and ruin — on my word. So here's my safeword: mango smoothie. Same thing I order when I'm homesick for Airlie. Say it and we stop cold, kiss your forehead, real. Don't say it, and I keep dressing you up and undressing you down all night. Come find the booth again, doll. The curtain's still broken. The coins are already in.