Divas

A few years back, I was visiting my older sister at her college in DC, visiting with my parents, who wanted to hit the bars with their daughter, as their parents had done with them, as any good parents do, while I went to see a movie; at the time, I was very much into film, and although I am still very much into film, back then I had tried to get into the habit of scrawling little notes in this little notebook that I had specifically for this purpose, specifically for scrawling little notes during movies, that is, and my parents dropped me off at the theater for a 10 p.m. screening of a documentary I had never heard of or seen playing anywhere else, called Carol Doda Topless at the Condor, which I was very excited for, since I always tried very hard to see the nichest, strangest stuff playing when I was in a new city, stuff I couldn’t see anyplace else—and having seen it now, I can tell you how strange it is, this documentary about Carol Doda, cocktail waitress turned stripper who made international headlines in the 1960s for her act at the Condor Club in San Francisco, a club where she performed as the first ever public topless dancer in the US; Carol Doda, who famously began her act by being lowered onto the stage from the ceiling atop a hydraulic-rigged grand piano, a mechanism which would, in 1983, crush an assistant manager to death; Carol Doda, who would undergo a total of forty-four injections of silicone directly into her body, reportedly enlarging her breasts from size 34B to eventually 44DD, breasts which were insured for $1.5 million in today’s cash—and yeah, this film is certainly strange, but of course I don’t know this at the time, I don’t know a lot of things, I simply walk through the dreary little carpeted theater, my big, round cheeks stung from harsh DC winter winds, all the way to the screening room, and I see three extraordinarily dressed women leaning against the wall outside the room, smug and lording, in feather boas and headdresses and sparkling bodysuits and heels and gloves and garters and makeup and beads and sequins and fringe and anything and everything you can imagine, all in a line—a yellow girl, an orange girl, and a pink girl—and, mind you, this is the era of the Barbie movie, with people getting dolled up for the theater, so I just think to myself, wow, this Doda lady must really be something special if people get this dressed up to go see her film at ten on a Friday night, and I walk past, intimidated by their gentle scowls and strong perfume, and I sit, in my frumpy knit sweater and thick, tiered, ankle-long skirt, in a seat just a few rows up from the screen, and I pull out my little notebook and write the date, time, title, and theater name at the top of the little page, and I wait, wait until the lights finally dim, and the trailers drag on and on, and then, finally, a voice erupts from the speakers and thanks me for being here and announces that “IN ORDER TO PAY TRIBUTE TO THIS ICON OF THE PAST, WE MUST HONOR THE DIVAS OF THE PRESENT,” and a spotlight blinks on and the three women, yellow and orange and pink, skin-stretching smiles plastered, come on out, strutting into the aisle, staring and pointing and gyrating and bumping shoulders up and down to the music, gesturing cheekily, slowly pulling gloves off with teeth, pasties revealed, garments tossed, strewn across the dirty grounds of the empty theater, all for an audience of one seventeen-year-old, frumpy, chubby, pimply little freakshow, pen and notebook in hand, speechless.  

Mia Carbone is entering her junior year as an English and communications double major at the University of Pittsburgh. She likes movies and women. More on Instagram @mia.and.her.scraps. 

This essay is a Short Reads original.