Please forgive the most predictable wintry subject line ever, but at long last I’m starting to feel festive, so shoot me.
In my little part of the world, it’s been snowing. I didn’t see it fall. I was staying with Dan on the coast, which didn’t get any snow, and driving back home, we moved very suddenly through cotton-blanked rolling hills, alarmed occasionally by big clumps of the stuff being sloughed from car roofs. We passed a fluffy white cat unusually enjoying the snow and looking as though it was born from it.
Snow only falls when enough flakes cling to each other to compound to the right weight, but floating and dancing, they look weightless.
After removing some heavy burdens in my life (see last issue) I finally feel (for the most part) light and fluffy after a turbulent year. Among this shift, I began to pole dance more regularly again.
I started pole dancing in 2020. A long lockdown had eradicated any social skills I had, so I started poling on a one-to-one basis with the candyfloss-haired, beaming, backflipping angel that is my pole teacher Vic. By the Winter I was able to invert.
Eventually I started going to classes. I don’t know what I was so anxious about because I’ve met some of the sweetest people I know in this community and particularly in Vic’s classes. When I was a chubby little 8-year-old, I did gymnastics and always felt shamed because of my body and held back from the tricks the skinny girls were learning. I became a shapely but small adult but I have always felt like a chubby girl inside because of how I was viewed as a child.
The experience in the pole community could not be more different, with girls and some boys all coming together to enjoy this sport and encourage each other for what our bodies can do - not what they look like. Seriously - although many of us have a vice called polejunkie.com and get as many pictures as we can in our outfits, they do have a skin-to-pole practical purpose and most of the enjoyment of pole is not even remotely sexy. I can be in an inverted straddle, legs yawning wide open (as wide as they can with my limited flexibility - new year’s resolution!) in a pair of tiny pants and rather than a sultry smize, I will have the biggest, most childish grin on my face as if I am that 8-year-old girl, finally allowed to do her tricks.
And maybe that’s partly why pole feels so emotional and important to me, no matter where I am with my skillset or if I’m in top form physically or not. It feels strange talking to non-polers about the emotional aspect of pole dance, but that’s not me trying to gatekeep because I’m encouraging people to try pole at every opportunity. I just know it’s something pole dancers will understand and each of them have their own story to tell.
Early in 2021 a relationship broke down that, basking in the glory of retrospect, I know was wrong for me. I had a pole one-to-one with Vic that day and turned up and cried in her arms. She made me a cup of tea and chatted with me and then we started our session. And as soon as I got on the pole and put my mind to what I was doing on it, I just forgot. For an hour, I forgot. And I felt better.
That’s not to say I haven’t cried because of pole. It’s happened to all of us. We’ve all had weeks when our body will just not do what we want it to. We should be able to do a trick, we’ve done it before, but now we can’t. We don’t have enough grip. We have too much grip. We fall (although this is way less common than you’d think.) They’re frustrated tears. Not with pole, but with ourselves. But in the community, we support each other. We say it’s just one of those days. We do a cute variation. And we hug. In all our ridiculous gear, we weird sweaty hug our girls.
Which is why it’s been such a turbulent year. Because since I started pole, I’ve valued it as a constant in my life. I lost sight of that for a little while and too many other things prevented me from going.
Then we had a photoshoot and a few months later started preparing for our first ever showcase. It motivated me to go again. I put aside my wounded pride from not being at the peak of my physical fitness and I just did it, even when I sucked. I started getting the muscle memory back. I reminded myself of what I can do and what I will be able to do again before too long.
In particular, working on the showcase reignited the fire, with the help of the community and my loved ones. It felt really special to have Dan there in the front row along with two dear friends, Patrick and Faye. And how appropriate that one of my pole peers, Alicia, picked the song ‘Walking In The Air’ for her beautiful piece. That’s how pole, and dance in general, makes me feel.
We all pulled together to treat Vic to a spa break and some pamper treats, which she absolutely deserves. Because of the rail strikes, I haven’t been able to go to one last session before Christmas kicks in, but I do have another photoshoot this weekend which I’m really looking forward to. Particularly going for a nice lunch date after I’m finished - holding poses in a photoshoot is 10x more exhausting than in regular training.
In other feeling-light news, after some hectic days and moments of panic, Dan and I have secured a flat to move in together in the first week of January and the reference paperwork just got approved today. So I’ll be in a new job and a new home, which is a lot of (necessary) uprooting.
So, to new beginnings, to flying, and to doing cool shit upside down.
The joy of nesting. Dan and I both came down with whatever terrible, apparently non-Covid flu that’s going around. We spent the week taking baths and playing two-player games on Nintendo Switch. I have particularly enjoyed playing Untethered 2 - also known as Unraveled 2. In this platforming adventure game, you play as two ‘Yarnys’ - literally little yarn people tethered together. You solve puzzles, jump over sinister cinders and avoid getting eaten by birds, blasted into a turbine, and other pretty awful forms of demise. It was really fun, and only occasionally infuriating, working together on it - and the characters are really cute.
My Spotify wrapped, which has informed me that the only time I’m not listening to The Weeknd I’m listening to chillhop beats. I’m going to try to be less lazy with my listening in 2023.
Forever,
💌
Lau.