Moodswing - Perfect bodies

To celebrate the legalization of sodomy in Atlanta, we went to the Clermont Lounge, of course, where the strippers' bodies are all flawed in the most fabulous ways. Grant had been gay for maybe a day back then. When I'd met him two years prior, he was stuffed in the closet behind two ex-wives, a darling daughter and a dog named Ellie Mae. Even so, by the time the headline, "SODOMY BAN LIFTED," blared across the front page of the AJC in 1998, Grant's fag status was in full bloom, like a feathered headdress. "Sodomy for everybody!" he toasted, then he actually looked at the floor as if we should all pile on top of each other to celebrate.

When I moved here in 1989, not only did I not know that sodomy was illegal, I did not know what "sodomy" really meant. I figured it meant anal sex, and not just any anal sex, but the kind that takes, like, gear to get it done. I thought harnesses had to be involved. I thought if you were going to sodomize someone, you'd have to back a van of tackle into your bedroom, and the recipient of said sodomy would pretty much be bedridden for the rest of the month, or at the very least have to sit on one of those inflatable butt doughnuts during work hours.

But my little sister Kim, who was about to start law school, informed me that sodomy includes any type of oral sex as well, regardless of the gender or marital status of the participants. Oral sex illegal? I thought. Until then I was under the impression it was pretty much mandatory if you were at all worried about having a second round with the same person in the future. So how can oral sex be illegal?

"It ain't anymore," laughed Grant at the Clermont. The week earlier he'd caused one of the strippers to fall off the stage by making his dollar tip too hard for her to reach. He was abusing his power, dangled the money just outside her grasp until, splat!, she'd fallen right into the bartending pit, hit the ground like a sack of cement. I wasn't there, but I heard about it. Grant and Daniel had left a phone message for me full of drunken howls describing it.

The stripper's name was Butterball, not her real name, but that's what we called her. We had names for all of them back then: Butterball, Tiny Tim, Tattoo Bitch, Surfer Girl, Anchovy Can (we called her that because we were certain she was a post-op transsexual), etc. Their bodies were all amazingly defected, such as the girl who'd had her implants removed, leaving behind two flapping turkey waddles for tits. I try to tip the girls on stage at least a buck per song, I mean, they're up there undulating their hearts out, and their bodies are a wonder to look at. Tattoo Bitch was so covered in tattoos she didn't even look naked. One day even our bartender, who looked like my middle-school librarian, got on stage and stripped. We couldn't believe our eyes. We'd been going there for years, and here was our flaccid-haired, bespectacled bartender on stage shaking her poontang and talking about it, too. "It's just as pretty and pink and wrinkled as a mouse's ear," she boasted. We wanted to die ... laughing.

In all, I would take the defects over flawlessness, as I love imperfection. In high school, I was different. Stupidly I hated my body, which was perfect but I thought it wasn't. My little sister Kim was the opposite of me. Her body was and remains rotund, and I am astounded by how people treat her because of her size. People talk to her like she's an autistic child. Once, at McDonald's, the cashier literally shouted at her to stand in the corner because she took up too much space waiting for her order at the counter. To this day Kim is the most dignified, intelligent person I know, but she seems completely unaware when this type of treatment occurs. Like she doesn't know that there exists this whole other population of people who are not routinely sneered at for no reason. Or worse, maybe she does.

"You're not fat," I say to her.

She looks at me levelly with her large, understanding eyes. I love her eyes. I remember once when we were kids and she called to me from the diving board above a pool at one of the many motels our family inhabited between real homes. "You're my sister and I love you!" she shouted, her eyes crinkled into half moons of happiness. I was in the water with my perfect body, embarrassed because she'd said that in front of a gaggle of boys, thereby forever aligning me with the fat girl.

"I don't love you!" I shot back. I'll never forget her face, how it fell and how her eyes rounded sadly. Looking back, I wish with every atom of my being that my stupid, perfect body had the power to swim to the diving board, kiss Kim's dimpled toes and say, "I love you, too."

Today Kim is still looking at me with her large eyes. "Really," I repeat uneasily, "you're not fat."

"Holly," she says heavily, "I am."

hollis.gillespie@creativeloafing.com

Hollis Gillespie's commentaries can be heard on NPR's "All Things Considered." To hear the latest, go to Moodswing at atlanta.creativeloafing.com.