Fat Chance As a Stripper

Ginny fell in love with a dragon. His name was Harry. He was a gorgeous dragon born under the star sign of Aries. This crackling combination of eastern and western astrology rendered the raw energy of Aries and the Dragons cocky pluck into a beautiful concoction that Ginny was unable to resist. 

Harry’s burning desire to get ahead in life seemed to colour every stone his dragon nature overturned. When he set about to achieve something, he did so ruthlessly.

Like many Aries /Dragons, he was both crafty, and devious. He was so self-confident of his abilities to charm that before Ginny even realized her heart was missing, he held it in the palm of his hand.

Harry had a weakness. Well truth be told he had several. He was somewhat arrogant and this created blind spots.

Though he’d managed to capture Ginny’s heart, he was not especially proficient with keeping it. She eventually began to yearn for it back and set about finding ways to pry it loose from his hands.

Ginny wore many labels.

Human - well for the most part, though some days she wondered.

Female - biology seemed to support this one, though nature provided a little glitch and rendered her infertile with some hormonal imbalances that produced the embarrassing side effect of excess facial hair. Ok - she could grow a beard.

Daughter.

Granddaughter.

Sister.

These were the basic labels that helped identify her and mark her place in a world where place and standing depended upon such distinctions.

As she matured and sought to understand these labels, she gathered a few more. Some benign, but many controversial and contentious.

She’d been raised as a Christian, but had grown to have a deep mistrust of the rules that dictated adherence to some very confining and dogmatic beliefs.

For the most part, she was heterosexual, but as many discover, found herself much more in the middle of the spectrum. In her fifties, she had briefly explored a relationship with a woman, but realized she fell closer to the left of the middle and actually preferred those of the male persuasion.

Ginny had a very curious nature, loved to explore different cultures and was open to ideas that many found too complex to contemplate.

She dabbled in astrology and was not content to limit her investigations to the western version. No, she was quite fascinated with eastern beliefs and loved the combination of the two.

She was a Leo, born in the year of the Ox.

Now this combination supposedly created a rather stodgy, austere and infuriatingly arrogant personality.

The Oxen, noted for their strength and ability to work hard could also be thick, heavy, slow and exasperatingly stubborn. (Not unlike their western counterpart, the obstinate Taurus.) Oxen supposedly had fine imaginations for coming up with new schemes. When combined with their tenacity to push through any obstacle, they became a rather formidable force of nature.

Ginny’s Leo qualities seemed to balance things out in an interesting way.

Though somewhat vain, with a tendency to arrogance, she strove for humility and only occasionally pulled rank, demanding servitude from her loyal subjects. She was not above using a paw to swat those who failed to comply.

She was generous to a fault, magnanimous with her affections, and quite capable of using others to gain advantages. Her “I told you so” attitude could be quite irritating.

She loved being surrounded by a loyal court and was quite brilliant at entertaining.

Her loyalty was without question and, as with most Leos, if she was your friend, she was your friend for life. 

The label that disrupted this somewhat daunting character, was one that caused Ginny much grief.

She was born in an era where children were not diagnosed with learning disabilities and those that didn’t fit in were simply labelled...troublesome or BAD!

Had the adults in her life understood the condition we now call AD/HD, Ginny’s life might have taken a different course.

What saved her from outright anarchy was a combination of fear and reluctant compliance. Between the right hand of a stern Judaic/Christian deity and the left hand of her mother, Ginny, for the most part was an obedient child.

Things changed as she entered her teens.

She began to question more deeply and though her mother’s left hand still held rule, she found ways to avoid punishment.

She eventually broke away from the indoctrination of a strict Catholic upbringing and as she entered her late teens and early twenties, all hell broke loose.

Life became a daunting journey and there were often times she wanted to give up. Sheer stubbornness, propelled by her Oxen nature moved her forward through the years.

By the age of 67, she had survived two marriages, several serious affairs and a dip into the pool of love with another woman.

What she did not survive, was escaping a carnage of physical destruction. Her body had taken many hits and the pain from severe arthritis often reduced her to tears.

She did her best to deal with this pain and though it greatly affected her mobility, she would recklessly push past. 

Her lack of concession had serious consequences.

She’d been warned by many doctors that were she not to take better care of herself, she’d eventually end up in a wheelchair.

Ginny chose to ignore their advice. This old pattern brought many issues for her to sort through. Again, her plodding Oxen character pushed on to the end of the row, only to turn around and continue plowing in the opposite direction.

When she first met Harry, she could still walk. Her Leo nature understood the stalking game and so she pursued him rather relentlessly, hiding in tall grass, waiting to pounce at any opportunity.

Harry simply unfolded his gorgeous dragon wings and flew off. But not before indulging in a sentimental farewell as he circled over her head blowing kisses.

Ginny grew increasingly more frustrated and...a little bored.

She eventually decided to pay attention and listen to the advice many of her friends gave. She knew she needed to let Harry go. This was hard work and she shifted back and forth, one step forward and several back.

She drew upon her Leo/Oxen nature and stood her ground, trusting that with patience and time, her heart would catch up with what her head told her was the truth.

And so one night, after falling into a drug assisted sleep, she began to dream. The dream began rather innocently, but rapidly dropped into the dimensions of a nightmare.

As the nightmare evolved, she woke with a start.

The sound of clapping and shouts of “Take it off, take it off” echoed across the corners of her mind.

For one brief, terrifying moment she thought it was 1972 again and that she was standing on a table in some divvy bar, long hair flying as she swayed and moved to the rhythm of a band’s throbbing music.

Only her friends frantically grabbing her off the table saved her from removing her bra and panties. She laughed giddily as they managed to get her dress back on and leave the bar before they were lynched by an angry mob of drunk men, anxiously waiting for the free show Ginny was attempting to perform.

As she adjusted to the present, she became painfully aware that it was not 1972 and that the years between had made some major transformations. Even had she still been able to get up on a table, most would be horrified if she began stripping. The door to THAT particular career choice was firmly closed.

Her body hurt. Not just from the accumulation of over 200 pounds, but from the injuries, minor and major that had pummeled her once lovely body.

Her knees ached. Bone on bone had replaced once healthy cartilage and when she hit a nerve the wrong way, the pain became so intense that it took every ounce of willpower she possessed not to drop to the ground.

She’d developed osteophytes in her hips. In x rays they looked like small shards of glass. Sometimes when she bore down on one, it felt like someone had shoved a broken bottle into her hip and again sheer willpower kept her from passing out.

Most days she walked through a shrouded red haze of pain. Though she managed to hide from others the agony of her condition, she often became cranky and short tempered.

It was perhaps this reality that bothered Ginny the most. She was an extrovert who enjoyed people immensely and yet she found herself avoiding them, fearful that her burden of pain would cause her to lash out and do irreparable damage to relationships she cherished deeply.

Not only did her body hurt, but her heart ached. Her longing for Harry dropped into the sorrowful realm of unrequited love, and nothing is more pathetic than a sad hearted, love stricken lion.

Her dream of her days as a stripper was the catalyst that finally propelled her into awakening to new possibilities. 

She decided to wave the white flag of surrender and finally conceded that perhaps, just perhaps her many advisers had been correct...she deserved so much more.

Did she regret her decision? Did she yearn to return to the days of her youth? Did she continue lusting after her fiery dragon?

Quite simply the answer would be...Fat Chance!