To the stripper,

You had a lot of choices at hand. You could have gone old school for the 30 something white guys with all the money and asked the DJ to play Poison's "Talk Dirty to Me." Or you could have played up to the younger crowd and gone with whatever top 40 rap song was available, possibly Kanye West's "Gold Digger" or the Black Eyed Peas "My Hump." But, instead you chose to play that complicated tangle of a song by Fiona Apple, "Shadowboxer." While you writhed on the floor, I saw the pain of the contradictions you live with every time you step on that stage. That night, I felt that you were more than an object. You were a human, a woman, an artist. So, when you told me you were dancing to put yourself through school, I paid you the highest compliment: I believed you.