The Champagne Smile

By Inez Martinez

Jagger, an aging exotic dancer, leaves behind a loving husband and a conventional career to pursue her dream to 'dance before she dies.' The Champagne Smile

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inez Martinez
• Release date: Mar 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9780648712640

Book preview

The Champagne Smile

The Champagne Smile

The Champagne Smile

Inez Martinez

Inez Martinez

Contents

Reviews

Author

Quote

One The DREAM

Two Children of the Revolution

Three Secret’s Burden

Four Blurred Lines

Five Love's Illustration

Six Unseen Fires

Seven No Boundaries

Eight The Woman in the Glass

Nine Borders

Ten The Champagne Smile

Eleven Pink Clouds

Twelve Mad and Bad

About The Author

References

Copyright © 2024 by Inez Martinez

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a database and retrieval system or transmitted in any form or any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the owner of copyright.

                     ISBN:  978-0-6487126-4-0

First published in the USA in paperback by Amazon, Sept 2019, and as an eBook in Australia and the USA by Amazon, Sept 2019. Printed by Lightning Source Aust. Pty Ltd., Victoria. Australia, Oct 2019

and published as an eBook, Oct 2020.

Reviews

PRAISE FOR THE CHAMPAGNE SMILE

energetic and unique… Thom Sullivan Carte Blanche

confronting and touching… Mary Hayman

an engaging literary adventure into a world [of] … pole dancers, strippers and private booth shows. [Martinez] knows her material and is confident with her unique prose-poetry style to carry it along… A terrific read!

Stephen House Real and Unreal

The most powerful contemporary piece of writing I've encountered and the context is on our doorstep reminding us of so many immediacies.

Geoff Aitken, poet

Thank you!

Dear reader, I truly hope you enjoy this book. Thank you to my teachers: Steve Evans, Melinda Graefe and Matt Hawkins. Thank you to friends, mentors and cheerleaders: Mick Johnson, Kerry Volaris, Vince Whyler, Jude Aquilina, Thom Sullivan, Steve Evans, Lindy Warrell, Shaine Melrose, Alison Clifton, Nigel Ford, David Harris, Valerie Volk, Maria Vouis, Geoff & Jenny Aitken, David Cookson, and Sue O’Brien, to name a few.

Author

Although, The Champagne Smile, is based on real events,

it is predominantly a work of fiction and any resemblance

to places, and people, living or dead, is coincidental.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A Place is previously published (as Inez Marrasso) in Dream-Water Fragment: Friendly Street Poets 42 Ed. Ros Schulz & Karl H, Cameron-Jackson. 2018.

Hindley Street Dream is previously published (as Hindley Street and as Inez Marrasso) in Q: Friendly Street Poets 45 Ed. gareth roi jones and Sarah Radford, 2020.

No Boundaries and Pretty Strippers are previously published (as Nezy Musicarro) in Worlds in Words: Friendly Street Poets 41 Ed. David Harris and Edie Eicas), 2017.

A Place and Dorian Gray were recorded for the Well-versed series audiobook and broadcast on PBA radio March 2019.

‘Blurred Lines & Double Lives’ is previously published (as Inez Marrasso) in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal vol. 32, no.5, 2019, pp. 1615-16.

Cover photos by author: Inez Martinez.

Illustrations by author: Inez Martinez.

Quote

‘The flowers of desire …’

The flowers of desire from our youth,

(Those thistle seeds of waking and obsession),

Lie scattered by the harvesters of truth,

And perish in the winter of possession

                      Felix Dennis, A Glass Half Full (i)

One

The DREAM

Hindley Street Dream

DIY decorating bursts

cannot quench her thirst

for a skinful of grapes

she prays to taste before the grave.

Trays of paint cannot satiate

her barely-curbed urge to dance

before she dies. Stripped wallpaper

draws Izzy’s stare every day

the same refrain of restraint.

His fist misses the point but hits

a facade swollen with tears

like air bubbles under wallpaper.

Ego spitting with libido

she races from the driveway

like a petrol thief. Follows

the scent between her legs

that frightens and excites the child inside her.

She steps outside. Double-barrel

mascara eyes, red-blot lipstick smile.

Electric shocks course through limbs freed at last.

He chases her like a rabid dog

that will hunt her down one day

when the owner is dead

and the drugs have worn off.

Hindley Street thumps to a nightclub beat:

pavements of painted faces at venue queues

breaking fights that make the morning news.

Pink neon tubes

shed no light on a side street

where packets are passed

out like drunks in the gutter.

She suspects

inside these nurseries of nudity

everyone is a poet

searching for truth and beauty.

She covers his words with a black veil

but can’t cover her ears against the cheers.

Whispers of music are turned up

‘til the speakers give off heat.

Penniless punters are turned out

into the murky street

and the crowds shout for FREEDOM!

Freedom from fear.

Age. Wage.

A polite slave waiting.

Always waiting.

Clothes that nod. She was robbed

of her soul in the dull corridors

of corporate giants –

walls cuticle beige or nipple pink

screams bleed from carpeted corners.

She passes a man clutching a sign:

Mental Illness HELP!

She dodges the upchucked evidence

of a schoolgirl’s first foray

into the city nightlife.

A woman can change

reinvent herself

makeup, hair, mind

make up for lost time.

Inspired by Jay Gatsby,

she will not be short-changed.

Live loud.

Now she steps out.

Now she fits her wants.

Now she is Jagger.

A new name.

Trade monthly reports for

a tight torso?

Trade spreadsheets for CD’s

Trade corporate wear for

satin underwear?

And debt collection for song selection.

What’s the difference?

Money for time, for your mind.

Money for nudity and a smile.

The encumbrance of stability.

The liability of respectability.

The depreciation of her brain.

A new lifestyle both risky and exciting.

Jagger’s jet brown hair

vapour trails her lithe body

through a moonlit carpark

where one night she’ll fuck a male model

after the Big Day Out –

a guy who squeezed into laundered jeans (not his)

just to get inside the club.

That’s the new life she spies

in which all the lights are Las Vegas green

each actress upstages her own scene

and every night glitters like New Year’s Eve.

She crosses the road

to her Hindley Street dream.

Effervescent Heart

She left him.

Her vision board torn in the move:

Carmen Electra in fishnet stockings.

Remember

her wedding day –

the urge to run down the aisle

high-five everyone in the pews.

Bubbling hearts champagne the day.

But soon everything strained;

laughing hard to contain the pain.

Agrafé – stopped with a diamond.

She will be corked.

The usual refrain –

a sleepy nature (his).

Effervescence bottled (hers).

A clash of cultures.

Botrytis. The rot sets in.

The failed marriage

a triumph of autolysis –

her texture finessed,

her flavour complex.

Coeur de cuvée.

She is the heart of the first pressing.

Life lines and refines her

a process of reasoned struggle.

At the altar, the priest mispronounces

her name.

It changes again today.

Controlled. Self-control.

Unbridled. Wild.

Vineyards shower pests

with a confetti concoction

to induce confusion sexuelle.

Mating disrupted.

But Jagger is not