Honey, I’m Off Duty

My tattooed, topless, larger-than-life housemate

Photo by Dmitry Pankin on Unsplash

Mak is a larger-than-life diva. She has the kind of presence you notice immediately, whether she is in the strip club or not. She doesn’t need a stage to command attention. If you met her in real life, you would probably find her equal parts intimidating and impressive.

For a while, we were roomies too.

Mak is covered in tattoos. You might imagine chains, skulls and roses with thorns, but hers are incredibly beautiful and feminine. Sensual cats of the jungle, exotic fairies, perfectly blended watercolors. I have no tattoos myself, purely because I have never loved anything enough to permanently put it on my body. But Mak is the kind of person who could almost convince me to change my mind.

She comes from a long line of artists and performers. Her mother is a model, her father an artist, and Mak grew up constantly in a pose learnt from modelling her mothers outfits and sashaying down a pretend runway. Pretty much every childhood photo she has shown me has her in some elaborate costume, pouty lips, demanding attention from the camera. Not much has changed.

I was slightly hesitant about moving in with Mak. She is “extra” in almost every possible sense of the word, and I am the complete opposite.

I remember coming home one afternoon to find her topless on the sofa, chatting animatedly to a couple of girlfriends who had popped round to visit. Her boyfriend at the time was diligently working away at the knots in her back after a night spent contorting herself around the stage — and various men.

I was completely used to seeing naked women at work, but encountering Mak’s bare breasts in the broad daylight of our living room threw me a bit. Without the familiar backdrop of the club, I suddenly had no idea where I was supposed to look.

And, to be fair, she has a fantastic pair of breasts. They are not especially easy to ignore.

“Hey hon!” she said, in a big booming voice that was halfway between American and a borrowed UK accent.

“We’re about to order pizza, do you want some?”

Given my slightly introverted nature you would not be silly to think that Mak and I wouldn’t get along. But somehow it worked.

Yes, Mak was a diva, but she was a savvy diva. I respected her hustle at work. Behind all the “hon’s and sweethearts” was a laser focus on making money and Mak did not mess around or allow any man (at the club at least) to take advantage of her. She was never interested in cultivating regulars.

“Oh, I can’t be bothered pretending to be their girlfriend,” she would say, making a gagging motion, one finger pointed towards the back of her throat. “You can have those ones, darl!”

Because she was such a force she wasn’t the silliest person to align myself with. We worked well together when necessary and we also knew when stay out of each others way. Mak saw me as a great way to leverage her income as we were polar opposites physically. I was blonde (at the time), relatively petite and very ‘girl next door’ vibes whereas Mak was brunette, exotic and a walking piece of art with all her ink.

She was a good housemate too. Apart from her little dog that pooped everywhere, she was really clean and tidy. She was a self confessed daddy’s girl and her own art was dotted around our place, similar to the art work on her body, lots of vibrant watercolors and whimsical paintings of love and theatre. The house was set up in a way that gave each of us our own little pocket of space, which worked perfectly. I wouldn’t say we were ever close friends but I knew exactly where I stood in Mak’s world and she was so obsessed with herself that she left me happily in mine.

Sometimes, on a rare night away from the club, we would head out, fueled by sweet wine and dressed in our sexiest outfits, ready to dance the night away.

Going out with Mak was always a good time. She loved to dance, and nights somehow felt more fun when she was there. I remember tottering down the street in heels, leaning on each other for stability, both of us in fits of giggles over the interaction she’d had with some poor man who had attempted to flirt with her.

Mak had looked him slowly up and down and said, in her unique twang, “Oh honey, I am off duty tonight.”

The strip club, right or wrong, makes you a little immune to pick up lines. After you’ve worked there for a while you’ve kind of heard it all.

Mak always had a guy on the hook. At one point, she was shagging the neighbor. Whenever she felt horny, she would simply pop next door. He was a trust-fund baby waiting for his riches to arrive and wasn’t usually up to very much, which worked well for Mak. He was almost always available when she needed him. She told me he was a good kisser and liked that he always had a joint ready for them to smoke after sex before she wandered back home.

There wasn’t any dramatic reason that Mak and I stopped living together. She just decided she wanted a change of scenery. I was sad to see her go, although by that point I was becoming increasingly frustrated by her new boyfriend, Logan, an aspiring musician who played his electric guitar loudly at all hours of the day and night and kept bringing his washing over to do at our house.

She left me one of her paintings as a moving out gift. An abstract of a dancer on a pole. I adore it.

We don’t really keep in touch anymore, but from what I can see, she appears to be doing well in her new city. She’s managed to get a foot in the door of the alternative-modelling scene and has built up an adoring fan base.

I know she would love that.

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