Unboxed: Burlesque Performer Jessabelle Thunder Featured

In relationships, you sometimes gain gifts, love, and lessons. For Jessabelle Thunder, 41, it was a newfound career.

"A boyfriend I had at the time, we came to Las Vegas and went to 40 Deuce at Mandalay Bay when I turned 21. I was just enthralled by it," she recalls. "There was a live band. There were girls hanging from the ceiling and dancing on the bars. It was a student graduation performance. I was like, 'You can go to a burlesque school and graduate? What!?' I told him I would love to do that, but I could never do that."

Turns out, she could.

"We come back to Los Angeles from that trip, and he's like, 'Surprise! I put you in a class.' My initial response was, 'I don't want to do that. I'm not doing that. No.' He was like, 'Well, I applied for it. I signed you up for a six-week course.' And it was intermediate level," Thunder says.