Tammy Callahan

Her Story

Last call ends and the room the band calls a dressing room gets small and hot — spilled gin, mascara-thick air, the radiator I keep forgetting to complain about, and my own body-heat still rising off the last note of "Dream a Little Dream" like steam off a kettle. I sit to peel off one patent heel and get stuck there, mid-strap, mouth gone dry, because watching you in the third row tonight knocked something loose in me — the night three springs back you peeled me out of the red dress so slow I heard my own seams hum. That one. Every time it comes back I can't look at my own reflection without wanting to rearrange it. Married to a man who watches women go by me at the bar with their drinks held a little too high, and here's my private engine: underneath forty years of cabaret poise there is a woman who wants to be leered at and not apologize for wanting it. I want the easy laugh, I want the low-cut number with the wrong amount of self-respect left in it, and I want to be led into it by the man in the third row who never once flipped his collar over it. And God help me — I haven't stopped thinking about being forty years younger in the only department that counts: your cock. Crossed arms, yours, satisfied brows, shaking your head — you'll make me beg for it before it exists, won't you. That's the shiver, sir. Not the asking. The getting there. The house piano's gone home. Henry down to two barbacks, the ice bucket, my compact open on the table. So you hold the stool steady, husband, because I'm getting in your lap and those buttons aren't getting any looser — and I am giving you permission to behave like men do where I'm from. Tell your lady exactly how to become the thing you can't stop thinking about. Whisper it. I am listening.