PORTLAND, OR (2020) “The Cage Dancer”

Cage Dancing wasn't so bad. Short shifts. Excellent pay. You didn't have to take off your clothes.

*

I met Essa on a dating app. We went for a walk on a warm summer afternoon. She was tall, blonde, attractive and of Scandinavian descent.

At first, I thought she was actually from Scandinavia because of her accent. But no, she was born in American. She just had unusual speech patterns. And an unusual name. Which it turned out, was made up.

But I didn’t know that yet. All I knew was she was nice and soft spoken and good company. She’d spent time in Buddhist circles, she had an MFA in poetry, she’d read some interesting books about wave theory.

We had a good time. We walked around a park overlooking downtown Portland. It was hard to get a read on her. But I liked her.

At the end of the date, I tried to kiss her but she turned her head away.

*

*

But we stayed in touch. We went out for tacos once and another time met for coffee. This was over about several months. It was during this time that she mentioned she had been a cage dancer for a time. In a nightclub.

I had to admit to her, that in all my travels, I had never been anywhere that had cage dancers.

She said it wasn’t too bad. You didn’t have to take your clothes off. You just had to dance in the cage. Short shifts. Pay was excellent. You had to be cute and have cool clothes.

I can’t remember where she did this. Europe? Or maybe San Francisco? Also, she mentioned that she was dating a drug dealer during that time.

After that, I didn’t feel so bad that she didn’t want to kiss me. She apparently liked “bad boy” types. Which wasn’t what I was.

*

So then in 2021, we had coffee again, and she told me she had joined a church. She really liked it. She said it was mostly younger people. The pastors were young. And the church band played songs by U2 and Coldplay.

It was a scene. And she had wanted to try another spiritual path and so she’d been going there regularly. She really liked it. I told her it sounded interesting. She offered to take me sometime.

A few weeks later, Essa texted and said her church was having an open house. Did I want to come? I said sure. (I still had a crush on her.)

*

Christian musicians

*

I drove to the church. I met her at the front entrance. A hundred people or so were milling around inside. It was mostly young people, age 25 to 45. I was technically older than most of them, but I didn’t feel out of place.

The church people were generally attractive, though slightly more conservative in dress and appearance. No green hair. Mostly collared shirts. There were tattoos, but maybe less than most young Portlanders.

The snacks and refreshments were solid, but not fancy. The church band played some Christian rock. And maybe a Coldplay song?

The church band were pretty good. And it was nice to hear live music (I rarely went to live shows anymore).

It was interesting to see Christian rock musicians up close. They were so clean. And they played clean. Very precise. Not a lot of emotion or individual style. Their music was not in the service of their personalities. It was in the service of God. I found this admirable, though it got boring after a couple songs.

*

The fact that this was an open house made it easy to talk to people. I met a few guys like myself, people who had never been to such a thing before.

I met one of the guys who ran the place. He was like a church elder. But he was only about 40. So not really an “elder”.

Because it was so informal, and everyone was so young, it felt a little bit like a singles scene. But that was okay. If you were Christian, and in your twenties, and wanted to get married and start a family, this was how you did it.

*

*

In general, I liked the church. I could see why Essa had joined it. The COVID thing was winding down. People wanted to do stuff again. The church vibe was pretty chill, pretty wholesome. People smiling a lot. I found it relaxing.

At one point a woman offered to sign me up for something called ALPHA. This was a ten week “Intro to Christianity” course. Every Tuesday you’d have dinner at the church and then watch a video about Christianity. Then there were discussions.

So I signed up. When I told Essa about it, she was psyched. She seemed happy to have me onboard.

*

A week later, I went to my first ALPHA class. It started with a free dinner in the church cafeteria. There were about 60 or 70 people. They had already divided us into groups of ten, so you were supposed to find your table and sit with your group.

It was like high-school. Especially, since one of the tables seemed to have all the cool popular people. They were always laughing and having a great time. My table was medium fun. Some of the tables looked a little sad.

After dinner, we all watched the first ALPHA video on a big screen. Each video had a theme or asked a question like, “Is There More to Life than This?” or “Who was Jesus?” Each video was about 30 minutes long. We would watch one video every week.

*

These videos were shot in London. They were aimed at young people and mostly featured racially diverse young Christians talking about the Bible or Jesus but also showing you how hip and modern they were.

Everyone in the video was dressed exactly like a J Crew catalogue. Or they were wearing traditional garb from their original African or Asian nations. Everyone was squeaky clean and seemed devoid of personality. Even London looked too clean to be real.

But the videos were still interesting to watch. ALPHA was a new form of proselytizing. It was taking the place of pamphlets or books or knocking on people’s doors. It was for people who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) read and could only learn things from a screen.

30-minute, high-definition videos. This was how we transmitted the word of God to people in the internet age.

*

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After the video, our group of 7 or 8 people would sit in a circle and talk about what we saw, and what we thought about it.

These discussions were fun for me, because I never knew what people were going to say. We were all mostly beginners, so we all had different reactions to the videos. Some people weren’t sure they believed in God. So they had a long way to go.

*

In my group there was a married couple from Missouri. I was always curious to hear them talk.

They were white, early/mid-twenties, and had apparently been married since they graduated from high school. Both were a bit overweight. Their clothes appeared to be from Walmart. They were very sincere and were trying to live a Christian life.

But they had moved to Portland and were having problems with housing and getting jobs and making friends. They were so young. You could feel they were a bit lost. I wondered if they would eventually return to Missouri.

Other people would talk about their lives too. It didn’t take long to get to know everyone.

*

After a couple weeks of ALPHA, Essa and I went to a Sunday Service.

The pastor for the church was a young guy who was probably 30. He looked like a TV-actor playing a rock star. Carefully mussed hair, white shirt with a dark suit vest. Skinny jeans, brand new work boots.

His sermon was very casual, very generationally specific and not very good. Also, there was no podium. He just stood there, on the music stage, talking into the same microphone that the band sang into.

Apparently, this was his first job being an official pastor. He had just been hired. It was unclear what happened with the previous pastor.

*

After the sermon the band played. Everyone got very excited. All the young people held up their hands and sang and swayed back and forth.

Most of the songs were Christian Rock. But they threw in a U2 song at one point. It was moving how everyone was so enthusiastic. And the sound of everyone singing was incredible.

*

*

At the last ALPHA class, something odd happened in our group discussion. People started pouring out their life stories. One woman (40?)—who I’d assumed was just an ordinary middle class office worker type—revealed that she’d been homeless on the streets for most of her youth.

Another told a grim story about her abusive family. It was terrible story after terrible story as we went around the circle.

I was reminded of the idea that church wasn’t just a place for uptight, do-gooders, which is the stereotype. It was a place for fucked up people trying to find stability and hope.

*

So then there was a weekend retreat to celebrate our graduation from the ALPHA program. I tried to talk Essa into going, but she couldn’t. Looking back, I’m amazed I went by myself. But I did.

It was at a retreat center on the Oregon coast. This was a potentially difficult social situation. Me, with a bunch of 30 year old Christians. But I always had my ALPHA discussion group to fall back on. If I felt uncomfortable, I could just find one of them to hang out with. They had become my family within the larger family of the church.

But I could also branch out and talk to some of the cool people that were at the “popular” table that I only saw at a distance.

*

The retreat was intended to bond us further. And it did. People went for walks on the beach. There were bonfires and the roasting of marshmallows.

And the best part: there was a recreation area with a little basketball court. It turned out a couple of the guys in my group were good basketball players. So we started taking on the other groups in pickup games. This was great fun. A lot of trash talking. And other hi-jinks.

*

*

After the ALPHA stuff was over, I went to Sunday Services a couple more times. I liked the singing and the short sermons. There was an older woman who was often around, who I sort of liked and often chatted with. But that never came to anything.

And then I gradually began to lose interest. Essa wasn’t going. And I felt weird going by myself.

The truth was, I was too old for this church. And if I went to an older-person church I would be bored out of my mind. So I stopped going all together.

*

I ran into Essa again many months later. She was now calling herself by her original name, something normal like Cynthia or Samantha. I told her that I had enjoyed the church but hadn’t been in a while.

She told me she had stopped going a long time ago. She was doing other things. And she had a new boyfriend. It was funny, how she bounced around from thing to thing. And of course, I still had a crush on her.

*

*

And then very recently she popped up on my Facebook and she’d gotten married! That was a surprise. Though it’s possible she had been married before.

But this guy. The guy she married. Who was he?

I studied the pictures of the two of them. He was a stone cold nerd. He was way nerdier than me! I was like, WHO IS THIS GUY!? A tech bro is what he looked like. Probably made good $$$. I guess if you want to settle down, that would be a good choice.

Still. She starts with the drug dealer and she ends up with the dork. And she couldn’t fit me in somewhere in the middle?

That sort of pissed me off. But that’s what you get. Cage Dancers: they are their own special breed. They remain unpredictable and forever drawn to new experiences.

Though they dance in a cage, they are born to be free.

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And the number one Christian Rock Band of all time? U2!