Pantera is magical.

I now know this to be true. I had heard all the buzz – how she is kind and funny, how she’s real and honest, and how she rocks all hell out of the pole – but even that wasn’t effusive enough.

Let me give you the background

Labor Day weekend was the big Pantera workshop at Pole Bliss Studio in Manchester, New Hampshire. I had been planning this for weeks; it was to be the perfect vacation weekend.

Except that this particular week turned out to be the week my boyfriend and I are moving in together. And not in New Hampshire, which would have been more convenient, but way up north in Vermont, where we live. We hadn’t planned on it being this weekend – we’d planned on next, at the earliest. But the buyers were [selfish, disorganized, non-communicative] in a rush, so we have to be all moved in by Wednesday morning. And, with two rooms left to paint, me being out of town, and my man working nights the minute I return, this was not the most convenient thing.

Pre-Workshop Renovations

The day before the Pantera workshop, I spent nine hours in the basement taping and painting and lugging things around. I could barely lift my arms by the end of the day – which, as you can imagine, is exactly what you want the day before a workshop weekend with Pantera. Oh, and the food. I hadn’t eaten a day’s worth of food in any 24-hour period all week – the impending move, the disarray, the chaos of a thousand things falling together at once had kept me from getting to the grocery store. Or cleaning the kitchen. So I had to go out to eat. But if you live in northern Vermont, there are not a lot of options. So I’ve been hungry. And tired.

Oh, and I got my period.

So, you know. Perfect. I felt exhausted, achy, underfed, overwhelmed, and anemic. Great. Let’s pole!

Wanted: Mood Adjustment

Now, normally, nothing would make me happier than a big pole workshop weekend. I am a total extrovert and the excitement of a crowd of people, all into pole, is generally enough to put me right over the moon. But this was not a normal week, and I was having a hard time getting into the groove.

The event was to kick off with a pole performance, with Pantera as the grand finale, plus a chance to ask her all sorts of questions. I had been looking forward to this for weeks and the last thing I wanted was for my mood to be crappy and ruin it for me.

Little did I know how the magic of Pantera makes such things impossible.

Because that’s when it happened.

I was in the hall awaiting the show, when I saw a woman and her friend come out of another room and head towards the studio. She was in a red and black kimono and was wearing platform-soled, spike-heeled, black, rhinestone-studded pole dance shoes, and I thought, ah, this must be one of the performers. And then, just as my slow little brain was forming this thought, I saw the tattoos.

The tattoos. Pantera’s tattoos.

Which means, this must be PANTERA.

Oh my god! It’s Pantera! Right there in the hall with me. Looking just like she does, clicking her way down the hall to dance. Where I get to SEE HER DANCE.

So, ever cool in the face of celebrities, I yelp, “Oh my god, you’re Pantera!” And then, because I immediately realize I sound like a total idiot, I say – hoping she’ll remember we’ve emailed – “It’s Jennifer, from PoleSkivvies.”

And do you know what she did?

She hugged me. She hugged me hello! PANTERA GAVE ME A HUG. Right there, in the hall, in Manchester, New Hampshire, in the year of our lord 2009.

And then she said, “God, you’re tiny.” Which made me laugh, because Pantera’s no giant. So I point this out and she bends her foot to drop down the 20 thousand inches her shoes are adding, and sure enough, we’re about the same size.

It was so cool – my mood lifted up past the ceiling! She walked down the rest of the hall and I flew to the other door to take my seat and wait for the show to begin.

Stay tuned for the next post to get the scoop on Pantera’s performance and her awesome pole dance classes, which have left my arms so sore I can barely type.

(Besides, you didn’t really think I could say everything there was to be said about this weekend in one measly blog post, did you?)