There is a sense of sensuality attached to what I do. Playing the piano in the semi darkness and ill-lit rooms of various pubs, clubs and saloons of this fair city for the price of a good meal and of course the money I receive helps keep me in clothes that I could not afford to buy on the salary as insignificant as mine. Apart from that I do it because I can, because somewhere the extrovert needs feeding and if not to the wolves then to my own self-worth.

I do it to stop the wolf from biting me, the pent up aggression I feel when I can’t be calm, when time hurts. The piano stops that, the look on the faces of all who sit or stand in the gloom, the slowly rising dry ice used so liberally during my sets as if to obscure certain facts of my performance, the creeping wisps, the insubstantial tendrils of smoke that glide craftily up the noses of each and every punter before me, seems to drag them panting towards the stage as if being led by some mystical far-eastern sound that only cobras hear.

I have been playing these clubs for a year now, I get the right amount of applause in which to feel valued and I get to play music; I get to hear music that stems at the beginning from my own fingers. I get to feel the strength of the A, the mystery of the F Sharp and the beguilement that comes from hitting an E just at the right moment in the song and the slow suggestive wink that everybody in the audience believes to be directed at them solely.

The times I have received a note back stage as I am undressing, the show stockings and sequined dress coming off carefully, slowly as not to get damaged, and the nervous look on the young lad that knocks on my door and tells me, cap in hand being scrunched together with the note that there was someone downstairs who wanted to buy me a drink; well those times now number so many I have lost count. However in my day job, the work I do when the sun shines and the drinkers have not yet found their watering hole for the night, I can count on one finger the amount of times somebody has said to me, “Hey do you fancy maybe a beer after work tonight? Or even, “I’m getting a coffee, want to come with?” Not that I am complaining, if they had I wouldn’t be doing what I do now and enjoying not being broke for the first time in my life. It’s surprising what a little change can do for the soul.

The mood in the club tonight is a little ugly though. I can see over the top of the piano that there is a restlessness circulating higher that the dry-ice, that there is the chance that somebody is going to get hurt. In between numbers I try to relax the situation, I talk, something I rarely do as the illusion of the piano player is one that I find needs to be maintained at all times. The voice might just give away the fact I’m some ordinary woman pretending to be special. It catches the attention of a few and the silence in the front few rows just below the eye line of the stage quells the rampage and possible carnage that could have erupted. I smile; I wink my left eye between the gap of the lid of the piano and hope that somewhere in the audience someone has fallen in love with me.

Are we not all entertainers I think to myself as I go into a favourite song, the smooth tones of a gentle Jazz number, incomplete without the sound of a saxophone or trumpet to give it extra buzz, heck even a drum played by someone behind me might have added to the general effect I was hoping to capture, to tame like Tinkerbell in the Captain’s cage. I played on, the melody comforting, intoxicating, drowning in memories and I knew that tonight I had managed to soothe another beast.

I entertain, that is what I do. I come to the bars each night around six and play music for them, for you. I change because who would look at me if I rolled into the joint looking like the sack of shit I am when in work. Here I am a star, not a big one, don’t want that, the illusion must not be broken. But here no, the smoke, the small cigarette I keep on hand just in case I need to have a small drag or even if a large party walks in unexpectedly, an even longer one as I watch them drunkenly find tables, chairs, the toilet, more beer and a bottle of champagne on ice. I fantasise that the cork of the bottle hits one in the mouth and acts as a cap, an inexpensive pacifier in which my music will not be obscured by the shouts of a man requesting this song or that song, I don’t do requests.

If you came into my work place and saw me behind the desk, typing out an account, filing a letter, serving time then you would not see me. I would just be someone for you to use to get something done, to have do your bidding. I take your card, I smile, I try to even wink and make an attempt at contact that fails miserably. Not miserably, no, awfully. The first layer of mask falls and you look at me strangely as if I have lost control of a major function ability, that my brain is telling me that it is O.K. and appropriate to wink at you, a perfect stranger. You turn on your heels, you fall into the living world again and I go back to the list of jobs that stretch out before me, typed out, filled out, layers of jobs in between it all and more coming in by the hour. I take requests.

The night it is different. The night is diverse and the stakes of the day become altered. I might be the person behind a desk during the day doing your bidding but by night, you do mine. I capture your imagination, I play the tune that your ears may hear but your heart covets slyly. I offer you something unique and in your smoke filled eyes, unobtainable. Of course it’s not truly unobtainable, you can go home, play your records and for a while wallow in the sole ownership of a song and experience that not even the loving embrace or tender kiss from your loved one can match. You soon feel cheated though, the song is always sung the same way, it always boils down to the moment of first mesmerisation, you are forever trying to recapture the exact time, the second between the tick and the tock of your watch in which you felt the first urge to kiss the groove. So you come out, you head into town for something new, the pleasure in which your better half doesn’t understand you need. The thrill which I provide and in which is always excusive!

I look up and sing for you, the matchless sound offered to you alone, you hear what you want to hear. It is exclusively yours, your memory enhanced since the last time you came through those wooden doors and was struck blind by the bombardment of sound, the unique Tinkerbell fluttering her wings for all her might against the large hand of the pirate.

There are many faces in the crowd I know by sight tonight. I have seen hundreds of names and telephone numbers in the past. I forget them all but the faces never leave me. The sweat pours of one man infront of me, it mixes with the dry-ice and I imagine the women who he dragged along with him politely retching at the smell coming of him. I imagine him to be called Bob, he looks as though he is worth at least that, perhaps double. The woman I know I have seen before, in another time she came into work and barked orders at me as if I was an errant four year old eating from her soon empty biscuit barrel. Now she is sat there demurely keeping down the sick she feels but also looking at me as if she wants to curl up on the piano lid and act like a movie starlet, teasing, mischievously licking her lips at me and at the crowd. She wants to be somebody else. I smile and hit the top note and finish the song, her hopes cruelly dashed, she is bought back to Earth and she will cope by no doubt making somebody else feel insecure, mocked and belittled.

I have grabbed my cigarette and announce that I will be back in 15 minutes. I will play some more. The groans from the front row are led by the woman on top of the piano lid.  I make my way to the back door. One of the barmen throws me a grin, I never forget his name. He puts out his own brand of cigarette, stubbing it out in the same place he stubs it out every time he works. The black blemish has gotten thicker over time and I know for all his charm that the blemish on the wall is not as thick or as black as the one on his right lung. He smiles and I return one to him gently, blowing him a kiss that will keep him going during the night and every night as the blemish takes a grip. The intimate sound of the bar’s main waitress’s heels coming up the passage way turns my head for a moment, the sound hits me before her over compensating perfume has chance to get up my mose. She looks at me and scowls, she hands me a note and turns away muttering under her breath that it’s not fair that I should get all the attention.

On the paper is a scrawled, in almost unreadable handwriting, message, “Meet me after your set, you intrigue me.” I look at it for a moment and then place the lit end of the cigarette on it and watch it burn brightly. The message now was truly smouldering.

I throw it to the floor and see it blacken and disintegrate, the charred remains finding a home in the air and flutter as if the fairy had finally been set free. I remember a poem about a girl being kept in a metaphorical cage and start to hum the tune that I tried to write for it. One day I will complete that task. I tell myself that every day.

I head back inside the club and see the barman entertaining the last few minutes of his break by passing time with the waitress. She seems unimpressed but they will go home together, they always do, that’s what man and wife always do. I make my way back onto the stage and sit behind the piano to hollers, to wolf whistles and to the odd cheer. I thank them, I thank you in particular for I know you are out there somewhere out there in the dark enjoying my performance and I blow a kiss in the general direction of the crowd, each person believing it may be for them before bursting their bubble by saying kindly, “To the person who sent me that handsome note during the interval, bless you, you have truly touched my heart but alas you know I can’t be exclusive to just you, I do have my man to think of after all.”

This causing somebody embarrassment but not as embarrassed as I feel everyday stuck doing what I do. The urge to scream and get out of it all too much sometimes, but then I see the next person come to me and I find once more taking requests.

I feel the urge to go into a high tempo mode, the song just so loud and brash, that the embarrassment felt by whoever sent the note is soon swallowed up, the playful backslapping and ribbing they are taking is quicker forgotten that way, the small turned down moment forever overlooked and that they will have the courage to perhaps attempt again. I like it when they at least keep on attempting, not for any sadistic pleasure, I wouldn’t be good at what I do else, but for the brief second of hope it brings them. I am not for them. I do not take requests from anybody, not in the night-time. The night is mine.

I lock up the door to her changing room, she has given an excellent performance tonight and for one I am glad to have been there. I am always there. I make my way down into the bar and see a man waiting and talking to the owner. He stops me and asks if the piano player is coming out all, he would like to meet her. I shake my head and explain she has already left the building, she will be back tomorrow though if he was coming along once more to hear her play.  “How does she do it?” I hear him ask, “I wait every night but she never seems to be noticed leaving.” “Well”, I told him and smiled with sympathy, “She is such a very quick changer.”

Ian D. Hall