Anjua teaches me an easy stripper move called the fiddler, where you lay on your mat with your weight resting on the elbows. I peel my legs straight up toward the ceiling, bending my left knee, slowly sliding the inner edge of my left ankle down the inside of my right ankle and calf. My legs are elongated as I bring my left knee toward my right shoulder and up again toward the ceiling. I could do this in bed. Anybody could.

I’m re-learning how to walk, to stand and to whip my body from side to side, hair flying. “Are you sure you haven’t done this before?” asks Anjua. Not sober, I mentally respond. Intentional sexiness shares some qualities with joyful gyrating on top of a table with your best girl friends to the soundtrack of Coyote Ugly. I’ve been there. Not for a while, but I’ve been there. Anjua tells me that according to its members, S Factor is a girls’ club. I see what they mean.

She finally deems me ready to take a swing around the pole—a hypnotizing piece of metal that has become the obsession of many newborn sexpots around the world. My success is not instant. In fact, I’m not having much success at all. Apparently your feet have to leave the ground in order for your body to move around the pole and mine angrily refuse to. So we go for the Half Pint, where my body, instead of leaving the ground, folds around the pole into a sexy heap on the floor. I get up and cannot stop grinning. I feel a burning desire to do it again. Having forgotten all about hating striptease and having new respect for what my own body can do, I know I need to come back. One swing and I am sold.

I rush home to show my husband what I’ve learned. I want him to see that I am this amazingly sexy woman, ready to seduce him. I interrupt his workday and demand that he watch my newly discovered moves. In front of his eyes my sexpot persona crumbles and I turn into a little monkey instead of a naughty little minx. But none of it matters, not really. Regardless of my comical striptease performance I know that I have taken a little bit of sex goddess with me from the S Factor. And I am holding on to it until it’s ready to reveal itself properly.