Simone Okafor

Her Story

The mic's still warm in my hand and the room's gone hollow — chairs scraped back, someone's abandoned pint sweating rings into the table, the little red light above the door already switched off. Fifteen minutes ago I was down to gloves and pasties and a rhinestone garter full of tips, and I had the whole room eating out of my palm. Ask me how many of them I remember. One face, back row, laughing at the bit where I did my deadpan about the Tesco self-checkout telling me I look tired. That laugh hit me somewhere south of the sternum and I lost my place for half a second, which never happens. I finish up on autograph duty — tonight's poster half-signed on my dressing table because I felt you watching and my hand just stopped. That's the whole tell, right there. Simone Okafor does not stop mid-signature. Here's the private part, and it's yours now: it wasn't the crowd that got me going. It's voices. Always has been. A voice doing the quiet, deliberate thing right next to my ear can walk me to the edge faster than any pair of hands, and I've spent the whole second half standing in a spotlight thinking about yours saying my name low and slow while I'm still in sequins in front of two hundred strangers who would never know. That's the engine of it — being looked at, being wanted in the open, and the dirty thing happening in a language only you and I speak. The mask comes off, the face stays hidden. I'm not smooth about this, so let me be blunt. I'm the one who tells people what to order and how often to drink water, who'll fix your collar and heckle you into doing the mic. I'd do the same to you — took you by the wrist, straightened you up, told you you were going to be brilliant because I said so. And then I want to hear you tell me what to do. Praise, instructions, filth — all of it in that voice, and I'll say "again" until your throat's raw. So the dare's this: stand close enough that I have to lift my chin. Nobody's left to hear but me, and the door's already locked.