My first year goes fine. I’ve gotten a lot of the prerequisite courses out of the way, the English and the chemistry and the two semesters of a foreign language. My second year begins with my first mid-level courses and a few introductory film production classes. The absence of funds means I rarely leave the campus. I spend my days in lecture, taking notes, or in my dorm room doing homework. Lizzie is gone most of the time, often coming back at all hours, reeking of alcohol. She invited me to a party once, but I declined. I’m not interested.
My father never contacts me.
My twentieth birthday passes unnoticed. I spend it writing an essay for Metropolis on the use of camera angles and shot length. I’m not making any friends. I don’t know how to make the effort.
The only thing keeping me sane through this whole process is school. To most people, college is work. It’s something they have to go through to get on with their lives; for me, this is my life. For me, it’s not just about sitting through lectures and writing essays, it’s about learning a craft, a trade. I’m soaking up everything I can about film, about the process of taking an idea from some notes scrawled on a legal pad to a film on a big screen. I watch films in every spare moment, and I dissect them. I have my Flip camera everywhere I go, making short films about anything and everything. Most of those pieces are vignettes, just momentary slices of life set to music. They’re as much expression to me as dancing.
I’m halfway through my sophomore year when I get summoned to the financial aid office. It comes by way of a letter written in vague language saying there’s an issue with my status. Or something. I barely read it. I find my way to the office with its gray tile floor and gray pillars and red leather ottomans and partial cubicle offices. After a thirty-minute wait, I’m summoned by a woman in her mid-thirties with mocha skin and short, kinky black hair.
“Hi, Grey. I’m Anya Miller.”
“Hi, Mrs. Miller. I got a notice from this office about my financial aid.”
“Call me Anya, please.” She takes my student ID card and brings up my file, reading it with an increasingly blank expression, the kind of look that says she has news I won’t like. “Well, Grey. Your scholarships have been covering nearly all of your tuition and your book costs, as well as room and board. Unfortunately, you’ve used up most of the scholarship funds. You have enough to finish out this year, fully covered. Or you can stretch it out and it’ll cover some of your tuition, but not all. You’re listed as an independent, which means you’re capable of supporting yourself. If you were listed as a dependent on your parents and their income was low enough, you would qualify for financial aid. But since you’re an independent, you can work to support yourself.”
“How can it just run out? I thought it was a loan? Like, it would just keep piling on? I mean…what am I supposed to do?”
Anya just gives me a sympathetic look that says she doesn’t have much in the way of answers. “It was a grant, and it was a finite amount of money. This should have been explained to you. You might qualify for a work-study program, but the job fair was held a week ago, and the positions are all filled, I’m afraid. As far as staying on campus? Most students in your position end up finding a job of some sort to pay their way.” She says this as if that much should be obvious.
I suppose this was explained to me, or to Mama, but I was so absorbed by Mama’s fight with cancer that I didn’t pay much attention. And I suppose it should have been obvious, but I’ve never had a job before. I have no clue how to go about finding one. I absently thank Anya Miller and leave the office of financial aid in a daze. I spend the rest of my time between classes that week asking around campus about work, but there are no openings. Even the laundry facilities are fully staffed. I receive an official letter from the university delineating how much scholarship money I have left, laying out the exact tuition, and how much I’ll have to pay every semester if I use my scholarship to pay half. It’s an extraordinary amount of money. I have thirty dollars to my name.
I start filling out application after application for nearby restaurants and bars, shops and stores and boutiques, No one is hiring. A week passes, and then two. I get a map of the L.A. bus routes and start filling out applications farther and farther afield from the university.
Maybe I’m not asking the right questions, or maybe all the jobs really are filled, but I have zero luck. I think have a lead on a job at a bar, but then the manager conducting the interview finds out I have no experience and that fizzles out. The end of the semester closes in. If I don’t come up with a job soon, I’ll have nowhere to live, and my reason for being in L.A.—my film degree—won’t happen.
I ride the bus line farther and farther away, asking anywhere and everywhere if they’re hiring. No one is.
And then I see a “NOW HIRING!” sign.
My stomach sinks when I see the name of the establishment: Exotic Nights Gentlemen’s Club. The hiring notice says, “Now hiring exotic dancers. Inquire within for details.”
I may be a naïve pastor’s-daughter and a hick from Macon, Georgia, but I know what a gentleman’s club is, what exotic dancing means.
I keep riding the bus. I stop in at a drive-through taco joint and ask about jobs, no luck. I even find a dance studio, do an audition and ask about working there but the owner just laughs.
Weeks pass. The end of the semester is drawing near. hiring notice haunts me. I dream about it. It’s work. It’s income. It’s the ability to stay on campus. But…it’s a gentleman’s club. A strip bar.
It means taking my clothes off in return for money. I get sick to my stomach just thinking about it. I’ve never even worn a bikini before. No one has seen my naked body since I started bathing myself at the age of nine. I can’t. I just can’t.
Can I?
I can’t ask Daddy for money. I can’t go back to Georgia.
I don’t sleep, can’t eat. I miss a class, and I fail a test. I receive an official notice that my dorm funding is gone. A week after that, I get the letter reiterating how much I’ll have to pay in tuition for the next semester, assuming a full-time class load of at least twelve credit hours. Books are extra.
I cry myself to sleep at night.
I put quarters into a battered, graffiti-covered payphone and dial Daddy’s number, listen to it ring once, twice. I hang up before it rings a third time.
Then, a break. I land a job as a hostess of an Italian restaurant. It’s a job, it’s work. I stay long enough to pull two full paychecks, and that’s enough to make me realize hostessing won’t even come close to paying tuition. I beg them to give me more hours, let me wait tables, anything, but the manager stonewalls me, pointing at my lack of experience. In a few months I might be able to start taking some tables, but not yet.