Lacy loves the way nature always makes room for her to just show up and be. Photo by Colin A. Danville
“It’s rare to even let you see me like this. But I guess it’s better this way. I mean, being honest is easier when you’re not in costume. That’s what those wigs are. A performance of options. I let my clients choose who they want to experience. I can be any woman there is to be. Wigs add depth to the work, let them know I’m serious about playing my role.
My mother taught me early on how to master the art of change. To adjust the eyes, soften the smile—can’t ever seem too eager, like you need them, kills the mood. With her own long nails she moved my chin into place until it was tilted just right. The face says it all.
Mama insisted this was because in life you have to be able to adapt to ugly situations. To laugh when things break. Even if they break inside you. Mama showed me how drying your heart out with sadness never did the world a drop of good. She said it was better to dig through your rubble and salvage whatever was the root of something beautiful and run with that. A bad day is a bad day. Then there’s tomorrow.
So anyway, I don’t wear hair. I am bald all by myself. I shaved my head when a man I loved long ago crushed my spirit like rose petals destroyed inside an angry palm. I almost lost myself in the wreckage. That’s also when I became a performer of so many identities. And don’t call me a prostitute, not even a sex worker. I am offering something more holy than carnal satisfactions. My den is a sanctuary from the mean, harsh world. In my bed they can be healed, warmed, made soft and new again like when their hearts first started beating inside their mothers’ wombs. If you have to call me anything, call me a pleasure principal, a soul surgeon, an open heart specialist.
It wasn’t planned. I sort of fell into this work. But that’s off topic. My hair, yes. My hair that I don’t have. My mother used to braid my hair when I was a little girl. Her fingers felt like prayers and secrets written on my scalp. She was the only one I let touch my hair. Until that love of mine. The one that deteriorated into what we could no longer call love. My hair, like my tears, had to be shed.
Once it was all gone, it just felt right to put my head under the sun. Its warmth was a prayer all by itself. The sun is good for lending a kind of healing touch when there’s no loving hands around. Yes, I have plenty men, and sometimes women too, roaming in and out of my body all day long. And they pay good money for my time and my gifts. But none of them know how to touch me. Let alone pray.”
Lacy is a character I’ve been exploring through scene sketches for many years now. She was originally a part of a series I used to write called Embodied Character, where I would dress up as various characters from my fiction pieces, work with a photographer, and then use the photography to deepen parts of the narrative.