The Cool Girl’s Guide to Contortion

In memory of Jonathan Bernbaum (1982–2016), who lost his life in the Ghost Ship Fire

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i didn’t have much of an audience. Guests were few and far between, chatting nervously with one another. As if to compensate, the DJ blared the music. He was playing the Black Eyed Peas. He may have been mocking the guests. He may have been mocking me.

I was in a lyra suspended five feet off a raised platform. Front mermaid to splits. I took out the back catch in order to simplify the routine. I’d heard this tech firm was a zombie now, but they had gone ahead with the holiday party anyhow. My fee had been negotiated by my agent: five hundred dollars, yet to be collected, and shares. I had the feeling I wouldn’t get the former and wouldn’t want the latter.

I hung upside down, dismounting into a handstand, down into the splits. I raised my hands in the air and received exactly no applause. I stood up and ran backstage. This was already the second of five scheduled miniroutines. What would happen if I just left now?

At least my dressing room, tiny as it was, was an actual dressing room. It was dingy in an authentic way—on most nights this was a rock club. The venue was old; it predated several booms. There were band stickers covering a graffittied mirror. zambri. battles. fuck buddies. All people cooler than I was.

Veronica, my dressing-room mate, had left a covered plate of hors d’oeuvres for me. I was glad to see it was normal stuff: mini quiches, bacon-wrapped dates. Food got pretty weird in San Francisco. At one party, I had been offered tiny charred octopus tentacles. At a different event, only assorted flavors of foam were served. At that party, a guest got so fed up with the offerings that he decided to order several dozen pizzas. The delivery guys were greeted like heroes, but only because the pizzas were from Little Star.

You either work in tech or you work in food. Or you live in the East Bay, like Veronica and I. Now she squeezed herself into our dressing room, cocktail in hand, and offered me a sip. I normally didn’t when I was working, but was it really work if you weren’t sure you were getting paid?

I took a drink—an appletini, how retro—and she handed me her phone. I swiped through the pictures of myself performing that she had just taken. You could no longer just be a performer, you also had to be a brand. These needed to go on Instagram. Our agent, Sylvia, was always bugging us about our Instagrams.

The pictures sucked, but it was sweet of V to try.

“Busy, huh?” I asked her.

Veronica read tarot. People were lined up at her table asking if things at the company were bad or really bad.

“Yes, and nobody’s even tipping. They’re leaving their phone numbers, though. As if.”

The technical term for a person willing to date a charmless tech bro is sapiosexual. Sapiosexuals live in the city and charge takeout to their boyfriends’ cards. V liked men, but not this sort. Sometimes I wondered if that was a bad career decision on her part. I didn’t like men at all. That may have been a bad career decision on my part.

I posted a blurry picture of my dismount that had the advantage of making my ass look enormous. Then I scrolled through my feed.

“Lara is working the Google party tonight,” I said. Lara’s party had revelers, cheer. It had multiple performers on multiple apparatuses. There were stiltwalkers and flame eaters. Lara was on the silks. They hadn’t needed me or my hoop. “I hate her,” I said, but it was worse than that. I loved her and we were sleeping together and we were roommates.

I wondered how much of this V knew. Unlike other tarot card...