On Visiting a Pole Dancer

The pole dancer begins her act by stepping out and removing her knickers, which is what any of us could do, and concludes by suspending herself ten feet in the air by her legs only, which is what none of us could do if our life depended on it. 

Is it a trifling act which we observe here, given that neither you nor I could achieve it even if we were to dedicate the remainder of our lives to the pursuit? It is an act of physical ingenuity, requiring the sharpest training of the physical will from late adolescence, with ever-anxious application up to early adulthood, in order to perfect. 

Man is a creature of limited ability and infinite desire. But the pole dancer realises in her dance what we think is confined to our imaginations. Look! She is suspended ten feet in the air, and only by the wedge of her high heel! With the free leg she manages to unclasp her brassiere, and it falls to the stage.

We observe this act of dexterity with awe, yet it costs nothing to the pole dancer. She observes the act to which she is author as if it were occurring on its own accord; as if it were a mere mechanical operation, and she had only to laugh at the astonishment of the spectators, watching their crisp banknotes adorn her altar.

A single error would be fatal, but the exactitude of her movements play out like a natural law. To ascend the pole in three rapid motions, to suspend oneself upside down by means of only an arm and a buttock, to descend at such speed, and to stop a hair’s breadth short of tragedy — a man unable to admire this can be said to have admired nothing in the whole course of his life.

This is beauty surmounting difficulty. It is as if this labour of learning, once conquered, resolves itself into ease and natural pleasure. When I last saw the pole dancer performing, she finished her performance wearing nothing but two rings on her left foot, which had the curious effect of exaggerating her nudity. Indeed, she appeared more nude than if she had worn nothing at all.

The sense of awe which I experience in this neon pulpit is irreplicable elsewhere. Neither the discourses of the Conservative leadership campaign, nor the writing of incisive commentaries in the Spectator the following day, stir anything comparable in me, for they are acts which I could replicate without difficulty.

The pole dancer does, and she makes me ashamed of myself. What have I been doing all my life? What is there that I can do as perfectly as this? I have spent my life turning over rocks and commenting on them, throwing words to the wind. The very most I can pretend to do is to write a description of what this woman can do. But this is something that any other of the patrons could do as well as I, even those who have not learned to spell.

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