A Snake named Balboa and the Art of Faking It
Forbidden or Not: “The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.” —Audre Lorde
How did I end up newly sober, in a basement bar with blackout windows, working part-time as a bartender, and miss all the red flags?
Short story: I needed the cash.
It was spring break of my third year as a psych major. My two brothers showed up at my off-campus house—one fresh out of a detention center, the other trying to get into college. We were broke. I had a part-time job that didn’t cover the cost of living. I was a people pleaser with a clean record and seasoned charm. Easy to hire.
The bar owner asked me about drinks. I rattled off a few, even though I only knew gin with a shot of tonic—my former blackout drink. He looked me over and said, “There will be dancing.”
“I love dancing,” I said, swiveling my hips.
He hired me on the spot—Fridays, 7 p.m. to close, double what I made at the deli. Plus tips.
Friday night, the bar was half full—hauntingly familiar. Men smoking, drinking, shooting pool. Not one asked for a cocktail. I poured beer, shots, maybe two White Russians. Then Madam Fay arrived.
Painted face, high heels, layered in scarves. She floated toward me, extended a bejeweled arm, and pressed a cassette into my hand.
“This is my music. We start in five.”
“We?” I choked.
“Me and Balboa,” she laughed.
That’s when Balboa—a sleek, muscular boa—slowly raised her rectangular head from between Madam Fay’s breasts like a slow-coming secret, slithering under the dim lights. Hypnotic eyes, tongue flickering as if to taste me.
I braced myself behind the bar all night, pouring booze—a nervous tick running amok through my body—while Madam Fay slowly undressed down to herself and Balboa. The tips were hefty. So was my urge to drink. But I didn’t.
At 3 a.m., I burst into my home and woke my brothers:
“You’re not gonna believe this. There was a stripper… with a snake!”
They came the next night to protect me. Good thing.
Madam Fay didn’t show. The owner threatened:
“I need you to dance.”
Holy. Shit.
My brothers distracted the owner while I hatched an escape. I ran the length of the bar, leapt over like I’d trained for it, and bolted up the stairs.
That was the night I began reckoning with my perverted initiation into sexuality—raped by our Catholic football coach, silenced by patriarchal culture, and spiraling into blackout drinking and deadening sex.
I never judged the dancer. I judged myself.
Sex was forbidden—betrayed—taken… without consent, without consequence for the takers.
After years of faking orgasms like I was auditioning for Broadway, I severed myself from my sex. I got serious about sobriety on every level. I lived the life of a renunciate, a nomad, a mystic, a virgin forest—whole unto herself.
And the real orgasm? The one I didn’t know I was allowed to have?
That came later, after a slow, soft underground journey of untangling lies and discovering my unbrokenness — my body’s true yes.
Hot. Sweaty. Sacred. Erotic.
Not forbidden.
To be continued...
✨ Dear Generous Readers, old and new,
Thank you for being here, reading, and sharing. I appreciate your 💜 more than I ever did gin and tonics. I leave you with more from Audre Lorde:
THERE ARE MANY kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feelings. To perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives.
—Audre Lorde, Full Essay: Use of the Erotic: Erotic as Power
🐍 Do you have a story of recovering your body integrity to experience natural erotic pleasure?
Thank you. 💫✨
With Love, Prajna @PrajnaOhara.com
Join us:
New Moon Gathering for Women, Wednesday, April 30. Online
Retreats in Vermont (2 spaces) and England.
Related posts:
Erotic Awakenings: Resurgence of Women's Mysteries
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Thank you for tagging me Prajna. This is what patriarchy does to women - it takes and takes and takes from women, and then gaslights us into believing it's our fault that we've been robbed. There's a cultural shift where women in midlife are taking back what has been stolen and perverted by men. Unfortunately, I've noticed in books, TV shows, movies, etc on this topic, the women always have to pay a price for reclaiming what is theirs. They lose their primary relationship(s), jobs, reputations, and even their lives for daring to experience pleasure for themselves. It's maddening because it's being packaged as "female empowerment" but it's the same old misogyny dressed in a different costume.
Dear Prajna,
thank you so much for tagging me in the first place. And before I go into my own response, I can only completely agree with @Amy Gabrielle for her comment, especially the last part. It is one of the reasons why I no longer watch movies or TV. The constant onslaught of patriarchal narrative sometime mocking us cross-dressed.
Reading your words was like entering a sanctum—a velvet-draped room lit by candlelight, where truth, memory, and myth dance together like firelight on the walls.
I felt the pulse of your story in my bones. The way you wove survival and reclamation into every scene—spine-straight and soul-bared—it reminded me that erotic pleasure isn’t just about the body; it’s about presence, about sovereignty, about finally returning home to oneself after years exiled by silence and shame.
Your line—“I never judged the dancer. I judged myself.”—cut through me like a bell in the canyon. I’ve known that self-judgment, that inherited guilt masquerading as virtue. And I’ve tasted the fierce liberation of refusing to carry it anymore.
Thank you for naming the forbidden, for inviting it to shed its skin and shine. Thank you for showing that healing isn’t always soft—it can be raw, guttural, glorious. Like the hiss of a snake before it strikes truth into the heart of what’s been hidden.
With gratitude and kinship from one who also knows the long road back to sacred, unshamed pleasure,
Jay