Disembodied
By Jen Knox
Imagine a young woman finds an empowered relationship with her sexual identity and personal power while earning the resources needed to achieve a certain level of comfort in the world. She has a plan, propelled by an image of a quiet life in the suburbs with a big backyard and a sweet dog with an underbite. She imagines her future self, degreed and respected, a woman people will listen to. A woman who will inspire others. To her, stripping is less cliché than practical. It’s a short-term investment, perhaps even an act of feminism and rebellion.
Perhaps this would’ve been the story if she’d been at another club, maybe on the north side of town or in another state, another country, another dimension. Instead, she worked the pole two blocks from the house she grew up in near downtown Columbus, Ohio, and she lasted only a few months before she found herself robbed of her body and her bags—with a gash over her left eyebrow, a concussion, and alcohol poisoning that rendered her barely able to walk.
She slumped down against the wall behind a Goody Boy restaurant, tasting death as the fried potatoes of diner food permeated the air. Yellow lights flashed nearby, and she could see the world in shapes alone. Later, she would bathe in the blue waters of regret, thinking about how impatience had led to the structural collapse of her life more than once and how she’d been running from place to place and role to role as though trying to outpace the natural order of life. But her thoughts against this wall were feral. Pupils dilated, she scanned the scenery before her, trying to determine what resources she had left, what dangers could be around the corner, whether she should bother standing, and whether she even could. She pushed her feet against the ground, and it pushed back.
*
I’d walked past the strip club regularly since I was a child. It was near the corner store I often visited to buy Mom’s Benson & Hedges Menthol Ultra Lights or a gallon of milk. The club sat in the heart of a slowly burgeoning arts district just north of downtown Columbus, Ohio, in a neighborhood called the Short North. A man who wore a rotating collection of earth-tone flat caps and stood only a few inches taller than me often hovered in the doorway of the club, scanning the street as he smoked short cigarettes. Kings, like I smoked.
Women who might as well have been goddesses to my childhood self would dance in the window after 4 p.m. or, to be more accurate, they’d sit wide legged on stools looking bored and doing their makeup in the reflection of the windowfront glass, appearing equal parts dangerous, tortured, and glamorous. I studied them, knowing that while I had the tortured part down, I wasn’t naturally glamorous, and I’d only ever been dangerous to myself.
Picking the right outfit wasn’t hard. My chest of drawers contained mostly T-shirts and a few button-ups. Because I never wore skirts, I had only one. I paired it with a dressy white shirt, big earrings, and too much makeup. Luckily, I had an extensive collection of loud lipsticks and thick eyeliners from my time working as a cashier at Revco.
Since I knew that the man wearing the flat cap usually occupied the doorway between 2 and 4 p.m., I selected 3:15 to walk past the club in my one short gray skirt and a cloud of thick hair. It was cold and the sky was a collage of grays. We both knew what I was communicating.
When he appeared in the doorway with a smile, I knew I’d soon be collecting my degree with no debt and no hassles. Looking back now, I wonder if he recognized me as the kid who, only a few years prior, might’ve passed the same club with a brown bag of milk that weighed down her thin arms.
The club was small and simple. There was a mirrored stage surrounded by tiny round tables. There was a couch, and a private room. Two women took me under their angel wings: Glitter, a mother of two, and Diamond, a model-like party girl with a graceful innocence. Then there were the rougher girls, the veterans, who told me to stay the fuck out of their stuff. These women had scars and drugs and attitudes, but they also had some of the best moves.
I started out by mimicking the other dancers, and I leveraged my natural flexibility and affinity for impersonation as I moved around a pole or got into what I now call a yogi squat, in stilettos that lit up the stage. The job wasn’t particularly interesting—it was easy to mentally check out during a dance, feeling the music or focusing on the lights until all of reality blurred—and the regulars weren’t bad. Except for the drunk college students who would come in on Saturday nights, or, worse, the gangsters and drug dealers, whose invisible wounds were perpetually fresh. They would grab at us and get kicked out. They would threaten and steal. We would stand our ground.
As I neared my twentieth birthday, I had saved hundreds, not the thousands I’d earned. The shoes and outfits were expensive, as was the liquor that allowed me to leave my body on demand. I developed a habit of eating a Hawaiian burger (a burger with a pineapple slice on it) and drinking two Tequila Sunrises before my shift. I would dance a few times and occasionally ask a customer if they’d like to buy me a drink, which was sparkling water, and meant they were buying a couch dance. The couch was sturdy, and I’d mastered the art of hovering my limbs without contacting anything or anyone, until the end, when I’d lift a thong strap in anticipation of a tip. I was enrolled in community college, but I was finding it harder to focus on homework and easier to drink in the mornings.
My stripping career ended the day a man bought me a drink, only to slyly grab my wallet and run next door. The club manager was nowhere to be found, so I chased the customer myself. Glitter chased me.
“Don’t fuck with them,” she said. When I walked into the bar, I waved to the tender, who started preparing my drink, and looked around. The man was gone, but his friend was perched on a barstool, smiling, patting the seat next to him. Glitter leaned down to whisper in my ear, “It’s not worth it. Let it go; call the police.” But I didn’t know how I’d get another ID, or what they’d do with the one they had, so I told her I’d be fine. I let the guy buy my drink and tried, to the best of my ability, to convince him that this had been a funny game and I liked him a lot. We could stop all this now. They could give me my stuff back and we could still hang out.
The friend was handsome, tall, on leave from the military—or so he told me—and had a silver Audi that he pointed to from the window. “My buddy is already home. Let’s go get your wallet back,” he said. “You can bring your friend.”
“Why would he take it? You all obviously have money.”
“Because he’s an asshole.” He rolled his eyes as though we were in this together, us against his idiot friend.
“I’m up next,” Glitter said. She held my gaze a moment as though willing me to follow her, but I told her I’d be back soon.
“I’ll have her back by close,” the soldier told Glitter. He drove me to his apartment, where the wallet thief was playing video games. It took less than a few minutes after the front door closed to feel the weight of the room, and I announced that I’d like to leave—ideally with my ID, but I no longer cared. The man who remained on the couch shook his head in disapproval, while the handsome soldier led me into another room. In this room, he tried everything he could to share his illness, his powerlessness. This was not gentle or welcome. He pressed against me, whispering pain and threat, as though trying to infuse me with whatever poison flowed inside him. I summoned my superpower and stepped out of my body.
I’d been toying with leaving my corporeal self for extended periods since long before my stripping career started. My limits would soon be tested, as there were more damaged men. And, after a week of my body being held in a home with multiple abusers; after a week of being robbed of my identity, money, and physical grip on this existence; after a week that might as well have been a minute or a year, I forgot entirely who I was, and I surrendered. I took what they gave me and drank everything they offered. I knew I had to let go, so I watched and waited from a safe distance.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. As I readied myself to leave the body for good, an unexpected savior arrived. She was the girlfriend of one of the men, just swinging by to say hello. She said she knew someone was in there, and she was going to kick that woman’s ass. She tried to push her way into the living room and caused so much chaos that I was able to walk out to the front porch. I stood, shakily, squinting at the natural light, and watched as her face contorted.
“Fucking with my man. I’m going to kill you,” she said.
I watched myself as a silhouette, moving toward the heat of her rage. Two of her girlfriends were with her, and one of them knocked me to the ground, where my forehead was in line with the corner of a concrete step. The girl who wanted to kill me tried. She held my long hair and bashed my head into the corner repeatedly. Blood covered my eyes, but I felt nothing. The man who had captured me grabbed her and hit her in turn, a whirl of anger in a 3D world I watched from afar. Some time passed before someone put ice in my hand, and I felt the chill. That night, I was left alone. Completely. Finally. The wind whispered that I could begin my journey.
I stumbled out of the duplex full of pain, with no identity. It was either dusk or dawn. I had to get somewhere safe. Later, I would find out that my mother’s apartment wasn’t far, but at the time I no longer knew where I was in the world. I might as well have been in another city or state. I’d been fed abuse—mental and physical—liquor and pills, and not a lot of food for days. Everything was blurry, and I stumbled across the street, then farther west, forward, no cell phone, no nothing. When I reached the Goody Boy restaurant, I slumped down against the wall near the dumpster and sank to the ground, tasting death as the smell of fried potatoes permeated the air. I didn’t have the mental capacity to take inventory of how I had ended up there. Instead, I scanned the scenery before me, trying to determine what resources I had left, what dangers could be around the corner, whether I should bother standing, and whether I even could. The answers wouldn’t come easily.
When I was little, I was impatient about sharing what I knew. I would read a story and retell it. I’d learn about how trees could sense and warn each other of danger, sending messages and nourishment through an underground network. Back then, I wanted to be a teacher, to spread knowledge as quickly and widely as possible, and it was this mission that caused me to approach random people and strike up conversations.
This young girl seemed to come alive in the wind that bit my skin. I hugged my knees and leaned against the brick, deciding I was too impatient to wait for death. I attempted tiny movements. I pushed my feet into the ground and imagined what it might be like to stand. Gravity seemed to have momentum as I struggled against the blacktop, attempting and failing to hoist my body upward. It took a few tries, but I eventually found myself upright again, and I leaned against the wall, visualizing what it would take to walk.
I moved in a limp and aching body, in seventy-dollar shoes that lit up with each step, but no one could see the illumination. It was broad daylight, and though people stared as I took my journey, no one stopped to help. I moved instinctually, dizzily, recognizing landmarks but not yet assigning them geographical meaning. Ultimately, it was no more than a mile that I trekked, but it took me a full day. My tongue was a dry lead weight in my mouth, and each breath was a struggle, but I continued.
I recognized an elementary school that was a few blocks from home and traced my hand along the side of the building, using every vertical surface as support. Busy basketball courts led to diners, which led beyond small homes and, ultimately, the small Presbyterian church that sat in front of a row of one-bedroom apartments. My mother’s was the first unit. It faced the back door of the church, which was also an entrance to a room full of donated clothes. This back door was never locked, but most of the churchgoers didn’t know about it. I opened the heavy door slowly, allowing the musty scent of second-hand clothes to blanket me. I sat near a pile of flannels and wrapped one of them around me as I waited and focused on what I was coming to know.
*
I used to imagine the woman I’d one day become if only I had more of something. Today, I remember this younger version of myself, feet pushing down into the asphalt-hardened earth, and the earth pushing back. I remember a feral energy surrounding a story that many will file under “That’s what she deserved” and others will see as a story of victimhood. I see a young woman who bears down with the strength of a warrior, while her body rises. I see the flicker of her power in this decision, the strength that grows exponentially with each step she takes after. I walk with her as she not only finds her way home, but takes the longer journey, realizing everything she imagined because she knows she can.
"Disembodied," CutBank: Vol. 1: Iss. 99, Article 12. Winner, CutBank’s Montana Prize in Nonfiction. (2023)
Jen Knox teaches leadership, meditation, and writing. She is the author of Chaos Magic (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2025), The Glass City (winner of the Press Americana Prize), and We Arrive Uninvited (winner of the Steel Toe Books Award). Her work has been supported by grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council. Her forthcoming essay collection, At Work—a reflection on blue-collar life, feminism, and identity—will be published by Cornerstone Press at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in 2027 as part of the Back Home Series. Jen blogs about writing and death at jenknox.net.