The first thought she had when she entered this dingy, forlorn bar on the outskirts of town was to turn the other way and never come back. Yet here she was, still a year later on the crudely painted stage, singing the same old songs about heartbreak and fame.
When she came to the glittering city, she was like every other wide-eyed sweetheart who wanted to become another name in lights above the towering skyscrapers of New York. The year she came, they were everywhere. Fresh off the plane, with their one-way tickets stuffed deep in the Michael Kors bags bought with the last scrapings of their life-savings, all of them believed they would rise above the ashes of the boring haze of their previously mundane lives.
These lights, however, that shine on her every night, are not the ones that worship her in the divine glow of destiny and fortune in front of the admiring masses of the press and the other “lucky ones”. Instead, they are the bar lights that are dim and waning, casting her in a harsh glow in front of the bored, crude patrons of this one-trick pony town.
Just last night, she stepped up on stage in the worn red heels with cheap nude stockings and a leather skirt that barely covered her bottom. Up that creaky stage, hearing the tipsy wolf whistle from some beer-bellied drunk sneaking away from his wife, she kept pulling her skirt down as the cold head of the microphone tapped twice against her thigh. It was an October night in New Jersey and the bar owner wanted to let some “fresh air” in to keep the men sober.
“That’s why I love blondes!” slurred the balding man in the corner, holding a sloshed-over bottle of Jack Daniels.
She gripped the microphone tightly as the other men began to chuckle. Nobody came here for the music even though Alan advertised her husky voice all across town with the cheesy label of “Iris, The Throaty Siren”. They came for the booze, the smoke, and the shivering blonde up on stage.
And when Iris began to sing and her cheap red lipstick cracked on her lips, they would lean forward with feral smirks plastered on their faces. But she would plaster on a cutesy grin and swing around the creaky platform, tempting the men with her rough and tired voice, hoping that one of them would be her savior, a big-time agent looking for “Fresh, New Talent!”
Yet every night, when her soles were sore and tired, and the fluorescent lights of the “Open” sign flickered twice before shutting down, Iris was left dry-throated sitting in the small dirty bar of this New Jersey town.
Alan would reach his hand over and smile, saying, “Next time, sweet pea.” He knew about her clichéd dreams of becoming a famous singer and lighting up every billboard.
Nights like this were when Iris always wondered why her mother named her after something as showy as a flower—perhaps, because she wanted Iris to be more than her mother ever was, a housewife who lived in house dresses and flimsy shifts and forgot to take care of herself while she took care of her husband. A housewife who no longer went to church gatherings and no longer had friends because she forgot there was a world outside the one with silver pots and a sleeping baby firmly latched onto her hip. Iris would be the one to blossom outside those walls, while her mother knowingly confined herself further into bed sheets and homemade curtains, because she had already turned the lock on herself decades ago.
Wouldn’t Iris be the name of a star? Iris. Like Beyoncé or Rihanna, just a one word name that would promise show biz success. But as the name “Iris” was shouted like a dirty word every time she sang in her red heels and when “Iris” was accompanied by beer breath and searching hands, she no longer felt like her name was something to be proud of and something to be admired. Instead, it felt like a name that had been turned foul and suggestive, like “Candy” or “Cherry”—a whore’s name.
Tonight, when she sat in her freezing apartment counting up the crumpled bills, she clutched the money to her chest and thought of the dream she had when she came to the city to become a singer. She wanted to make music and she wanted respect and love from the world, not the lusty leers of men who were failures in life, with their belches, pale and hanging bellies, and wives they abandoned every week to prey on fresh meat. And she would not be another failed, washed-up singer, who after losing her shallow beauty, married the first guy that offered her some quiet life, tucked in some cozy corner of the world where she could never get out again, forever suffocated by cooking and cleaning and the four white walls that would eventually become her prison, trapping her from the world’s light. Because irises eventually wither and die without light.
Irises may look exotic and fragile, but they are hardy and will not fade out. And as Iris rocked back and forth on her bare heels that were worn from blisters from the gaudy red shoes, she knew she would live up to her name.