She quit when I came along. She calls it exotic dancing, which isn’t quite right. It is dancing, but exotic doesn’t mean dancing while you take your clothes off. Inuit dancing could be exotic, but that’s not what Mom did. She made good money at it, but it all sort of drained away. Before I was born, she was poor, and we’ve been poor ever since. A lot of people think that just because Mom used to be a stripper, her children are screwed up and will stay screwed up forever. Not so. My brothers would have been the way they are no matter how Mom paid her rent. If I’m screwed up when I become an adult, it will be my own fault. If I’m screwed up now — well, I’m not, so there’s nothing more to say about that. Sometimes strippers get to travel. I’d like that. Mom says, though, that in all her years of traveling as a dancer, all she saw of the world were two-bit Ontario towns and their two-bit taverns, and there’s more to the world than that. As if I need to be reminded. I asked Mom once if she thought being an exotic dancer would be a good career for me.
