A Less Instagramable Place
too poor to post
When I wrote about the accessibility of home pole dancing, I didn’t consider how much it costs to heat a poorly insulated apartment in a real winter. With my California-colored glasses, I couldn’t see properly. Now that I’m outside of California, in a colder place, it’s difficult to afford to pole dance, even at home. I took down my essay about pole assembly tips because my pole has fallen twice in the past month. My pole spent over four years in temperate climes, and never fell. In a place where it gets in the low 30s regularly in November, I feel unsafe on my pole.
It’s too much money to heat my apartment to a bikini temperature (and a bikini-level of clothing is required to use a chrome pole), and to a temperature that makes the pole touchable. My X-pole is basically a metal icicle in the middle of my living room right now. I usually have to wear multiple layers of clothing, including a large fuzzy bathrobe, just to exist in my apartment, which has a large crack in the front door. I also curl up with a heating pad to fight my enemy: the cold. I can’t pole with my heating pad. I can’t pole without exposed skin to grip the metal. I can’t do enough cardio or hit the pole with a hair dryer long enough to get warm enough to hold on without raising my thermostat (I keep it around 65 during the day and my utilities are still high, even at that temp).
This is all setting aside the small space and poor lighting of my cold apartment. It’s hard to get a good video when I can’t move the camera back far enough, when I can’t illuminate myself in a flattering way, when I’m freezing. I still regularly work on my flexibility with pilates and yoga, but only because I can do those in my sweats. One surprisingly warm day, I was able to take a somewhat nice picture of my needlescale progress:
However, my new customer-facing job requires a lot of walking, bending over, lifting, and kneeling while on the clock, as well as walking to and from work (a total of 1.2 miles in addition to being on my feet a lot during my shift). I don’t have a car, can’t afford ubers, and there isn’t a bus between my apartment and work. My boots are made for walking—no heels, good traction—basically the opposite of the shoes I’d wear to pole dance if I could. I’m physically exhausted after working only a remote job for five years. I didn’t have a day off from both jobs for almost a month when I started my new position. My body felt it every day.
Along with not being able to film good content, I also feel alienated by the (international) vacations and other expensive outings that populate my IG feed. Being an observer is becoming unpleasant. I’m doing better than many people: I am working, I have my own apartment, and I’m in a state with good government assistance in terms of health care and food. But I can’t afford to take time off and travel. I can’t afford to go out to restaurants; I make all my food at home, except for when they feed us at work (which I deeply appreciate when it happens). I can’t afford to take dance classes in a studio that is instagramable. If I could afford multiple (international) vacations in one year, I would take only one; I would give the rest of my money to help the people who are worse off than I am right now.
Looking at all the hip places and far-away destinations isn’t fun anymore. It’s a reminder of what I don’t have and probably never will have. I go on IG less and less these days. Instagram has replaced university as the place where I see how the other half lives. I don’t actually want expensive trips or outings. I just want to be able to heat my apartment enough to lose the bathrobe a couple times a week.