WARNING: Slightly graphic material – if you’re uninitiated in the world of body-painted (human) animal menageries.

            “What do you want to be – a cougar, a zebra, a giraffe?”           

Most of the girls get exotic choices, as they lounge naked in the spa bathroom turned body painting studio.  The spray paint flies, turning the room into a kaleidoscope of multi-colored aerosol droplets.  The fumes make my throat seize.

I’m coughing in a most unexotic way, wondering how I got myself involved in  this body painting gig for some gazillionaire’s holiday party in a mansion up on a hill, when the master body painter turns his attention to me. 

He eyes me critically, his cross-eyes getting meaner and more cross-eyed by the minute.  He tosses his dreadlocks back with a loud “hmmph!”  I don’t think he likes what he sees.  Well, he saw my emailed picture, didn’t he? 

“Maybe we don’t need another girl,” he says.

Oh no.  You saw my picture.  I didn’t just drive from Hollywood all the way to a mansion on top of a hill in Pacific Palisades to be turned back.  I will not leave without my four hundred dollars, as promised on Craigslist.  It’s not like I’ve got warts or leprosy.  It’s not like I’m missing a body part.  

OK, so I’m not 20.  I still think I look pretty hot for… whatever age I am.

“Hmphh,” he grunts again.  He does that every time he looks at me.

“I’ll wait, just in case,” I say, determined.  I plop myself down naked on the faux marble spa platform deck, which is probably riddled with all kinds of booty cooties by now.  Cougar, zebra, giraffe…

Flourescent purple, jungle green, and black and white striped exotic animals.  Hey, that girl is short and stubby.  I certainly look better than her.  Except… she’s 20.  A short, stubby exotic fluorescent purple spotted cougar of some sort.

Mr. Cross Eyes is putting the finishing touches on a giraffe, a tall French girl he gazes at adoringly.  He only paints the tall girls, he’s got a thing with tall girls.  He lets his assistant paint the short or less than perfect girls.

He lovingly keeps spray painting big brown and gold spots all over Giraffe Girl’s legs, torso, arms, and back.  OK, enough already, she’s over-spotted.  He then paints Zebra girl, a Pippi-Longstocking-skinny thirtyish woman with overly bleached towhead hair.   Pretty or gross, depending on whether you like the titillating combination of anorexia and peroxide bleach.

Cross Eyes finally turns to me. 

“You shaved, right?”

“Well, I trimmed very close to the skin.”

He grimaces in distaste.

He points me over to his assistant, crossed eyes ablaze.   Waving his arms in total disgust.  If I was sane, I would be totally humiliated.

But I’m not.  I want my four hundred dollars.  And I look good, no matter what he thinks.  Shaved or not.  Young or not.

“What do you want to be, a tiger?”  the assistant asks me.

“Too many tigers and cougars already,” Cross Eyes snaps, interrupting us.

But he’s soon caught up with another long-legged thing. 

The assistant turns back to me and grins.  “Tiger?”

Yes, I nod.  Of course I’ll make a sexy tiger.  My sinewy, muscle-y, lean (I like to think), but well filled-out pilates-yoga body will make a fantastic tiger.  Since when do tigers have long skinny legs?  That would be some ridiculous-looking tiger.

The assistant goes to town, giving me a glorious rainbow of red, gold, black, and orange stripes.  Every inch of my body is spray painted one or more colors, and yes, I am gloriously, completely naked, and you can’t even tell.  Even my crotch is spray painted and camouflaged in colorful stripes.  I don’t look naked at all.  I look like… a painted tiger, a work of art.

I can’t help but admire myself in the mirror. 

I go downstairs and have the makeup lady paint me whiskers and a tiger nose and tiny face stripes to match my body. Yes, there is a makeup artist just for the hired help!  And an entire green room for us with state of the art crafts services.  I help myself to the lasagna and crab cakes and chocolate cake.  Then I remember I’ve got to go easy.  I’m naked.  I can’t get bloated.  A bloated dancing tiger doesn’t look so good.  I eat only a fraction of what I’d like.  I’ll space it out in small eating binges.

Outside the mansion, the party is under way.  We dance on platforms with dance poles on them.  I go wild.  I’m a tiger, growling, clawing, undulating, swinging on the pole to the heart-pounding music blaring from tower-high speakers. 

The men stare, the women stare.  Their favorite place to stare – my crotch.

“Is she naked?”

“No, it’s a costume.”

“Hey, are you naked – or is that a leotard costume with paint on it?”

I growl, pretending I don’t know how to talk.  I’m a tiger.

They take pictures, trying to get to the bottom of whether that’s my real crotch, or just a costume with a painted on crotch.

After a while, the awe and fascination wear off.  They move on.  So many acts to see.  The ten painted animal girls are just the appetizer.  The gazillionaire really went to town on this. 

Next to my platform sits the Fattest Woman in the World.  No, really.  The gazillionaire has hired the real lady from the Guinness Book of World Records.  She works in the circus.  It’s her off season, I think.  There’s also the Shortest Man in the World, also from the circus.  There’s a (real) Bearded Lady, yup, from the circus.  We’re not talking a few whiskers you need to pluck off your chin.  This is the real thing.  So many circus people, so many acts. 

A contortionist  bends her body into a pretzel on top of the six inch wide railing that leads to another part of the garden.  There is a huge stage, where trapeze artists are putting on a full-fledged Cirque du Soleil type show.  Clowns (real circus ones with real tricks) smile and grimace and cry and honk horns on little cars everywhere.

The work is easy and fun – at first.  Just dance and act like a wild animal on a pole for twenty minute stretches, wait till another animal girl relieves you, then take a break and nibble on food and take in the circus acts for twenty minutes, then back to the pole.  That’s the way it’s supposed to be.  I notice Giraffe Girl and I have to dance our butts off.  The other animal girls have no work ethic.  They disappear for long stretches, leaving no one to relieve us from the endless ogling and picture taking.  (No touching allowed.  The security guards everywhere make sure of that).  It’s fun enough, but after a while, it gets old.  My back and my high-heels (the only article of clothing I have on) are starting to kill me.  The pulsating aches and pains from dancing on high heels for hours make me want to scream.  I’m exhausted.  My legs feel like wooden stilts.  Where is that anorexic Zebra Girl and the purple cougar and the rest of the menagerie?   Giraffe Girl and I finally escape our platform cage near the end of the night and go find them.  They’re gossiping and hanging out in the spa bathroom.

We shoo them outside, threatening to rat on them.  They lazily get up.

It’s our turn to chill out.  Giraffe Girl and I get in the spa tub and rub our spray paint off.  We’re done.  We did more than our share.

Our stained towels freeze in our hands when Cross Eyes walks in.  But he doesn’t seem to notice we’ve smeared our spray paint off.

His crossed eyes are shining.  “The owner loves you, he loves you all.  It’s fantastic!”  He doesn’t even glare at me.  He goes back out to party.

Giraffe Girl and I look at each other and laugh.  We finish rinsing off, get dressed, and pig out on lasagna. 

When it’s over, the other animal girls limp in.

“Why didn’t you relieve us?”

Giraffe Girl and I shrug as we finish the last of the lasagna.

We’re first in line for our four hundred dollar checks.