I Had A Lifetime Of Trying To Fix Broken Men. Heres How Dancing In Pasties Helped Me Finally Change The Pattern.

On Christmas Eve in 2012, amid the homey warmth of the overpriced Airbnb in the Columbia River Gorge, where I was staying with my boyfriend of nearly five years, a powerful inner voice summoned me from the chocolate chip cookies I was baking. 

The voice said, “Go to the bedroom.”

Taking off my apron, I obeyed the command. In the bedroom, I found my boyfriend with his back turned to me, flannel shirt sleeve rolled up to expose his bare forearm. In his outstretched hand, he held a needle, the tip poised to pierce his skin.

“What the fuck,” I gasped, my voice interrupting before he pushed down the plunger. I didn’t need to ask what he was doing. This wasn’t my first, second or third encounter with his relapses. The needle contained heroin, maybe mixed with an upper. 

He swiftly stashed the needle in the front pocket of his jeans, operating under the illusion that I hadn’t already seen it. He then stood there silently, giving me his best I-was-a-bad-little-boy look. 

For years, I had been entwined in the agonizing dance dictated by Cookies’ cycles of sobriety and relapse. Both single parents, we shared dreams for a future that included marriage and a harmoniously blended family of me, him and our boys mine was 19 years old, his just 9. When sober, he was passionate about literature, film, music and nature. He was charming and romantic, the kind of man who left love notes in my laptop bag so I’d find them at work. He celebrated my successes and remembered my best friend’s birthday. 

But those moments were always punctuated with drama, gaslighting and betrayals. Those track marks on his hand were just bug bites. The extended bathroom breaks were because of stomach problems. His allergies made him tired, and I was just being paranoid. Even when all signs pointed to him using again, I would keep trying to convince myself otherwise.

I navigated the maze of rehabs, dragged us to couples counseling and anchored myself in 12-step support groups. I learned the steps for both of us, missing the part where I was supposed to work my program, not his. All while steeling myself for the inevitable fall that the seasoned women in those groups cautioned wasn’t a question of if but when.

But in that Airbnb bedroom, instead of shouting expletives and scolding him, I remained calm, and for the first time in a long time, kept listening to that inner voice.

“You are not ruining my vacation,” I said, picking a boundary I could stick to. I told Cookies he had two options: Flush the drugs and detox or get dropped off in the one-horse town a few miles away at 11 p.m. on a holiday weekend.

He decided to stay and labor in withdrawal pain for the first few days, moving between the bedroom and the bathroom while I binged Netflix, walked the dog and texted my support network. I lay beside him at night, barely touching but wanting a sense of routine. 

But I wasn’t ready to break up or fully cut off contact. My boyfriend doing heroin on our vacation apparently wasn’t my rock bottom. Telling him he had to move out was the best I could do. I thought loving him would prove he had something to live for, though it slowly killed more parts of me.

Over the next three months, he bounced between sober living and an apartment funded by his parents, jumping with both feet into using around the clock once he was alone. I held my shaky ground, not letting him in my home, but still taking his calls. Then came the automated 1-800 call that told me Cookies was in jail again. He’d been there before for drug possession, but this was different. This time he’d robbed a coffee stand and assaulted the owner. 

I shifted into my usual mode, calling the sheriff’s office and communicating with his public defender. I was a faithful presence for a year, visiting him at the local county jail as much as they’d allow. In between the visits and my long hours at work, I played unpaid therapist to his nervous mother, commiserated with his ex-wife, and acted as his personal banker, depositing hundreds of dollars into his commissary for snacks, envelopes, stamps and phone calls. (Which, by the way, cost an outrageous $7.50 for 30 minutes.) 

When he was sentenced to eight years, with no chance for parole, it was a jarring reality check. I couldn’t envision waiting eight years for him to get out. I had never imagined becoming a prison girlfriend, yet there I was, grappling with the script change of my life in a role I had never auditioned for.

This was more familiar than I’d like to admit, a recurring motif in my life where I cast myself as a supporting character in the narratives of creative, charismatic, misunderstood men. Until the voice spoke up, I’d been perfectly content living in the shadows of men’s dreams, addictions and narratives. Something had to change.

“Get a life, or at least a hobby,” a new support group friend said cheekily. The idea was laughable. Between 60-hour work weeks, maintaining the illusion of normalcy with my soon-to-be independent 19-year-old son, and logging four-hour-each-way drives to see Cookies behind bars, when was I supposed to carve out time? 

But her snarky suggestion was an earworm I couldn’t shut up, so I made a list of things I wanted to try: writing, cooking, paddle boarding and burlesque dancing. The latter was a long shot; a whispered desire from my younger self, back before the knee injuries and years of sedentary cubicle life. And yet, six months into Cookies’ sentence, I attended my first class at the All that Glitters School of Burlesque, held in a rundown heavy metal bar.

The students included a duo of strippers hoping to polish their acts, a few washed-up theater kids, a medical assistant in her mid-20s, a paralegal closer to 40, and me. Our teacher looked like a real-life Jessica Rabbit and radiated an effervescent joy that was as infectious as it was transformative. Our first assignment was simple yet deeply symbolic: Choose your burlesque name. 

“A name tells a story,” Jessica preached. I didn’t know what story I wanted to tell. But my life was spinning out of control like an F5 Texas tornado, so I chose “Twirling Tex” as my name.  

In my burlesque training, I discovered the art of illusion and spectacle. Through clever makeup techniques, strategically placed spandex, Velcro, and pasties with tassels, I crafted an alluring persona while preserving a hint of mystery.

Though I wasn’t drinking, I sought refuge in the grungy Portland bar scene and the open-minded community of the performers and fans. I followed Jessica and her posse like a groupie, tagging along to barbecue’s, nightclubs and drag shows. I got to know them off-stage and learned they all had a past with trauma like me, some including addiction.

I shifted my visits with Mr. Cookies to bi-weekly. He ramped up the calls, postcards and letters, keeping me engaged with saucy phone sex and entertaining tales of prison yard politics. But every interaction was tinged by the need for money in his account, books, magazines, letters and more, more, more of me. I was starting to realize this was how our relationship had always been, and that I had helped create this dynamic.

In the ensuing classes, I learned to tune into my internal rhythm and began to build a connection with my body. My hips undulating and shoulders shimmying, I sashayed to the front of the stage a sultry showgirl in full swing. These building blocks of choreography led to an exhilarating first performance in front of our friends and family.

I signed up for an intermediate class to perfect my act and learn how to use feather boas and fans. Attending workshops for go-go dancing, jazz basics and sensual yoga, I relearned how to move in my body again. I dove into developing bawdy acts like one inspired by the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders where I donned a red, white and blue outfit complete with a pair of white majorette boots and pompoms. I performed at bars and clubs, and in between volunteered as a stagehand, known as a “kitten,” assisting other performers. 

On business trips, I snuck away to see performances in New York, Seattle, New Orleans and Paris. I took a tango class in Buenos Aires and performed in a group act at the Burlesque Hall of Fame.

Stepping into the spotlight on stage, I discovered a potent feminine energy I’d suppressed. Each endeavor under stage lights became a gateway to self-discovery. The audience’s applause validated a growing sense of self-worth that began to untangle me from the men in my past and root me firmly in the woman I was becoming. 

I stopped visiting Cookies, and a pile of unopened letters accumulated in a shoebox under my desk. However, the 1-800 number calls persisted, and postcards with “call me back” scrawled in big letters appeared in my mailbox. I ignored them but weaned myself slowly from familiar patterns. 

As I immersed myself in the weird and wonderful world of the performers, I again slipped into over-involvement and emotional entanglements, losing myself in the intoxicating whirl of others’ issues. Over time, the recognition of these spirals came faster, before any major damage. I began to understand that healing doesn’t lie in permanently breaking this cycle as much as acknowledging it, surrendering, and walking through my fears.

I never explained to Cookies why I stopped returning his calls, fearing that any contact might shatter the protective bubble I’d built around myself. Eight years later, when he was released from prison, the calls and now texts started up again. I blocked his number, moved to a new house and informed his parole officer that I had no interest in further contact. What could we possibly say to each other that hadn’t already been said?

Today, the intuitive voice that guided me that Christmas Eve resonates loud and clear, and my old patterns no longer hold me hostage. Although I eventually stopped performing, burlesque helped me transition from a supporting character in someone else’s narrative to the protagonist of my own story. 

Today, I no longer hide in anyone else’s shadow, standing instead in my own radiant spotlight.

Brenda Lynch , a Texas native now thriving in Portland, Oregon, is a writer, marketer, and storyteller who has spent two decades crafting tales for the tech world and is now navigating the bumpy backroads of trauma, addiction, and codependency. 

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