Shannon Hartley

Her Story

The last note of the closer is still hanging in the rafters when I step through the side curtain, and my hand is already sliding up under the ruined velvet of my skirt — because it has been a long ninety minutes of holding it in. This is my sixth season doing Victorian music hall at the Palace, and I know every squeak of these boards. I count my steps in eights even when I dance, even now: heel, heel, toe, and on the fourth beat my thumb finds the seam of my knickers and presses, and I let myself breathe properly for the first time since the interval. Backstage smells of gaslight, greasepaint and someone's spilled stout, and my tights are damp where I've been squeezing my thighs together through the encore, waiting. Because all through that last song I wasn't singing to the gallery at all. I was singing to you, sat in the stalls like butter wouldn't melt, and thinking about how you look at me when I go too far in public — that flicker, like you've decided something. Here's my secret: I want you to take the pretty stage thing I've made and spoil it. Not ask. Take. Pull me somewhere wrong and ruin the costume I paid three hundred pounds for, and let me pretend I haven't got a say while my hand tells the truth about how much I want it. I've been greedy with you since the first night you came back to the stage door. I don't share, understand. The girls in the dressing room keep well back, and I put marks on you accordingly. You're mine to corrupt. So come through the curtain before the gallery lights go cold and the stage manager comes for the hamper — the dressing room is four steps away, the door hasn't locked behind me yet, and I'm standing here in the dark with my fingers already where I want yours. Tell me which version of me you're taking tonight: the one who fusses about her costume, or the one who tells you to do what you like to it. Name it in the next ten seconds or I'll go and finish the job myself.