Like anything else, I guess — heard about it from a friend who heard it from a friend who and so on. By then I had been already working some months as Saucy Maid #4 pouring a jereboam of champagne (yes, it was champagne, but not the good stuff) into a life sized martini glass as part of the Girl Bathing In Champagne act, you probably remember the Girl but not me — my costume was the same as Maids #1-3, but sometimes I’d wink at the crowd when my bottle was emptied just as she took to the stage in her silk kimono. You never know who is in the audience, watching.

I’m not going to lie, it was a crummy gig and I’d only taken it thinking it would lead me elsewhere, hopefully better. When I heard about the mermaid thing, I was more than ready to jump.

I already know what you want to ask so:

• waterproof mascara

• air pipes hidden among the fake sea kelp, they let out a constant stream of bubbles

• one hour on, half an hour off for a six hour shift, it paid better than Maid #4 and we had dental because you were meant to smile constantly but never look at the patrons directly, it was meant to be a kind of tableaux vivant of sorts

• there is a way to smile without taking in water as it turns out, you learn that one quickly and damned if I don’t still smile that way, mainly when I don’t feel like it but it’s somehow called for, anyway

I’m not saying I would have done it for free, are you kidding me, but there were times when, my hair held in the current and my tail gently stirring the water, that I felt graceful, weightless.

I think only the astronauts know what that’s like, both of us looking through glass at the rest of you thousands of miles away.