Leaving the apartment in a skimpy dress without bothering to put underwear on just to quickly take the trash out seemed like an unproblematic idea at the time. After all, the stairs to the apartment building led not to a main street, but merely to a back alley. A creepy back alley as all back alleys (and even plain alleys) were. But manageable in the daytime. Not exactly “prepossessing,” but, at the bare minimum, not scary. Besides, Ella reasoned, it was only going to be a few seconds. What could happen? The wind, that’s what.

Of course, Ella didn’t realize it was windy. She barely knew which way was up at this hour of the day—which is to say, midday. She usually didn’t roll out of bed until noon after working the pole all night. The only reason she forced herself to today was because she knew she was the sole tenant in the building willing to haul the trash bin to the curb on the designated day. All the others couldn’t give less of a shit if the garbage bags started piling up in there, drawing in rats and other assorted New York City-generated mutants. The other residents assumed that, sooner or later, someone would be motivated to “handle it.” Nobody ever was, so it fell to Ella, who wasn’t motivated, so much as repulsed by the idea of a rat nest forming behind the door where the assortment of various trash cans was kept—one for recycling, one for glass, one for “normal.” (Today was the “normal” trash day.) Maybe it was also because Ella had lived there the longest that she was relegated to the unspoken role of “building manager.” Something she came to resent because it didn’t involve any kind of discount on rent as a result of being the de facto “maintenance person.”

In any case, here she was again, taking her own trash out to kill two birds with one stone as she carted the bin to the curb. What she hadn’t accounted for, however, was the presence of what she had come to inwardly refer to as the “bodega crew” sitting out there on the shoddy chairs and table they had set up in the alley like it was some sort of picturesque courtyard (one supposes that, by New York standards, it was). And there they would spend entire afternoons shooting the shit, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and polishing off six-packs. This while their “leader” friend manned the counter and occasionally popped out whenever there was a lull for the purposes of peacocking. Reminding his friends (or maybe family members) that he was the reason they could be there. Even though, technically, if Ella had made enough complaint calls to 311, they probably could have been ousted. But luckily for them, she didn’t give enough of a shit about their loudness, which she was able to hear all the way up in her fourth-floor apartment, to bother. In fact, living in this city had desensitized her to noise in general. Well, that, and dancing to Pitbull songs at full blast every night had undoubtedly fucked with her cochlea’s once pristine hearing levels. Either way, she didn’t bother them and, usually, they didn’t bother her.

That is, until today. Because, seeing as how she usually took the bin out when she arrived home in the dead of night, she had no idea that they were posted up there this early in the day. Shit, couldn’t they at least start congregating no earlier than one? Evidently, that wasn’t “possible.” For all she knew, they spent the night at that damn bodega (then again, she probably would have seen them if that were the case). A bodega she never frequented, which likely put her on their shit list as it was considered the ultimate affront to bypass your nearest neighborhood bodega in favor of anything else. But she was scarcely in her own neighborhood during the hours when she was actually hungry. What’s more, the club furnished her with all the drinks she needed. So yeah, going into this run-of-the-mill cesspool wasn’t ever a priority for her, and she was certain that they had clocked it. They clocked everything, after all. The building’s own unsolicited neighborhood watch. Many people found this aspect of New York “charming.” Ella never had, and likely never would. Because if she hadn’t after ten years of living there, it wasn’t plausible that she would suddenly change her mind about it now.

In truth, she was only more vexed by this sort of “impromptu community watchdog shit” than ever before. Especially since everything was more irritating lately as she started to feel the ravages of time signaling that she ought to hang up her nine-inch heels and find something “more dignified.” It’s not that she was “old” (she had moved to NY at twenty-one and was about to turn thirty-one in a month), but that she was “old for a stripper.” Or maybe that’s the mantra she was starting to play in her head. Because she thought that, by now, she would have “found” something else. Not that she had really been looking. There was scarcely any time to, in between working the pole, sleeping and barely getting by.

A thought that reminded her of that time when the boss had cut her striptease to Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” right at the part where Dolly was belting, “Barely gettin’ by, it’s all takin’ and no givin’.” Later, he would tell her that it was “too much of a downer.” Christ, why had she expected a titty bar in Midtown to understand anything like camp or irony? Even though a titty bar in Midtown was the height of both.

These simultaneously anxious, annoyed and insecure thoughts swirled in her head that early afternoon. And it was with this chip on her shoulder that Ella went downstairs to deal with the trash, sans underwear, never expecting that the wind would be so…vivacious. Because, from her interior perspective on the fourth floor, it looked like a perfectly sweltering, stagnant-with-humidity summer day (another incentive to ensure that garbage day was taken advantage of). What potential for a strong, gusting wind could there possibly be? She got the unwanted answer to that question about five minutes later, her ass exposed to the bodega crew in all its glory. And it was glorious. So glorious, in fact, that people paid to see it.

This group, alas, got a free show as Ella twisted and writhed around against the wind, unable to grab at her dress to cover her bum as both her hands were occupied—one holding the bag, one lifting the lid. So it was just out there, for what felt like minutes to Ella, but was surely only a matter of seconds. And yet, she knew, based on their rollicking laughter and general grunt-making that they were watching intently for each and every one of those seconds. Probably even took a picture. Probably planned to have a circle jerk to the captured image right there out in the open after she left. Fucking assholes. Always there. Why didn’t they have to work? Why did she have to throw her body at the pole every night while they slept regular hours and showed up to this shitty alley around ten to fritter their hours away?

Skittering down the pavement with the trash bin, she positioned it behind her back so they couldn’t steal another free peek. And it had nothing to do with being “ashamed.” Oh no, she was obviously proud of her body to do what she did. Instead, it had everything to do with these thumb-up-their-ass men having no right to see such majesty for free. Besides, she might be hauling trash, but she wasn’t trashy enough to be a non-selective exhibitionist.