Confessions of a Feminist Stripper

A Love Letter to the Aussie

2011-06-26T20:47:00.000-05:00

The Aussie and I are on the patio of the W hotel bar, waiting for my kickass Chicago customer with the Flock of Seagulls hair, who’s paying us to skip work and go out on the town with him. We are having a really amazing conversation about what this job does to your social life (in a nutshell: it torpedoes it), and that’s when it hits me. This relationship epitomizes the reason I started dancing. I knew I needed to get on the inside, so I could gain the trust of these women, but I never really expected to find such true friends such as her. Lately, I’ve realized that my mission, in this lifetime, is to connect with people, to try and understand the truth of others’ experiences; she has shared with me more than I ever thought possible, perhaps because we’re so on the same page about this shit, even though we’re quite different. When she finally started reading my blog, after we became close and I kept telling her about all the quoting of her I’ve been doing here, she texted me: “I’ve been waiting for you.” (I started crying at a stoplight when I read that). And the truth is? Not only have I been waiting for her, for like fifteen years (since I first became fascinated by the sex industry), but I never expected to find her at all. But find her I did, and on my way out of the business no less. The timing couldn’t have been better (unless I’d connected with her, say, five years ago). I’m so happy we’re friends.

I had my eye on her for a while. You see, I’ve never met an Australian that I didn’t find hilarious (and hot), and she was no exception. But she was a tough sell, hard to get close to (I am too. Go figure).We’d had some highly entertaining conversations at work, and had made plans to hang out a few times (her idea), and every time, she would cancel on me at the last minute. So I just stopped trying after a while, stopped believing it till I saw it. Strippers are flaky, whatever. But then her best friend, also an Aussie whom she had met in the club, moved away. She mentioned this to me one night, sitting at the bar, and also added that since her friends had left, she was kindof lonely and looking for someone to hang out with. I saw my opening, and I jumped at it.

It’s been hot shit on a platter ever since. She and I get along really well, and can party with each other in an uncannily seamless way. We’re seemingly always on the same page, we go at the same speed when we go out together (she says she has two settings: on and off. She’s fun either way), are always like, “YES! Great idea! Let’s do THAT!” and are there for each other when we need to recover and wind down and lay on the couch and order PPV and delivery food. I feel like I could travel the world with her. And that’s saying something.

A friendship like this is one of the main reasons I started dancing. I knew that I needed to get in really tight with another stripper before anyone would share any personal details, impacts of this work on one’s life, which had any depth or breadth. Images, scenes, snippets about her riddle the Evernote entry that I keep running on my droid, the fodder for the blog. I take notes at work, and I regurgitate them here. There’s a bunch about her that need to come out, now. It’s time. Ahem:

I’m on stage four, twirling while the Aussie dances to Bizarre Love Triangle. It’s a Flashback Sunday, always a good time. This song reminds me of walking to the bus stop in middle school, when a cover track done by a one-hit-wonder band named Frente was on the radio, which I of course listened to religiously on my trusty walkman. Back when I didn’t even know it was a cover of my now much-beloved New Order. So, the song conjures up images and memories of adolescent angst, all the while I’m spinning mostly naked on a pole. My how far we come, my how my path was absolutely impossible to predict. Who knew I’d be here, almost twenty years later? How could I have known, hormonal and angsty in seventh grade, that I’d be getting all mushy-subversive here, now. She’s doing her same routine as always, which I noticed yesterday, it never changes. I’m tearing it up, tearing up, and I’m filled with joy. I’m so glad we’re friends.

I often get sentimental when I’m dancing and certain songs happen to come on. If I’m just walking around the club, it’s not a big deal, but if I’m onstage or performing privately, the music can create emotional weight that dictates meaning around the simple movements I’m undertaking. The audience, the customers who for the most part only objectify me, will never know how subjectified I am in those moments, seemingly performing for them but reappropriating those motions for myself while something personally meaningful plays. I’m dancing to a secret, embodying something emotional while projecting only faked lust. They’ll never know what this means, because I keep it only for me. I’ll never let them inside to see this part of me, but I can express it, only for myself, naked, in front of god and everybody. This is a beautiful thing. These walls we put up, most shrinks would call them unhealthy compartmentalization techniques which arise as coping mechanisms in an abusive environment; these walls, they are beautiful. I can be entirely myself, but nobody has to know. I only let them see what I decide to share. And I can be one thing, while they’re seeing another, but only I know who I truly am in that moment. There is poetry in compartments, beautiful expression embedded like mortar in the walls we put up. She sums up her (very different) perspective on this sentiment of mine: “This is not the kind of place where you want to have people see who you really are. I try and pretend that songs like this don’t exist. When they come on, I feel emotionally raped.” While it might be a violation to her—and it is to some extent for me, to be reminded of real feelings/memories/people/selves while trying to project an image of faked eroticism—I revel in that violation. Fine, bring new meaning to my performance, rattle my core. I won’t let it get to me, I won’t let you see who I really am unless you deserve it. And money doesn’t buy trust.

***

We’re sitting at the bar, and a drunk guy decides to insert himself into our conversation, asking us if we want to come home with him, and it’s not even 7pm yet. We’re getting increasingly annoyed, rolling our eyes at each other, until she finally goes, “We’re in the middle of a conversation.” He responds, seeing me taking notes on my phone (which I often do during these times with her), “Then why are you texting? You shouldn’t be texting” and I go, “The word ‘should’ doesn’t need to come out of your mouth again.” Fucker. How dare he, intrude upon our moment of realness, how dare he interrupt our dissection of life and the meaning of the sex industry? Hey, science: where is my force field already? Jeez.

Part of what I was recording when fuckface decided to intrude: She goes, “Since we’ve become good friends, this [read: work] has become easier for me. It’s nice to have an ally. We’re helping each other make money. When I was working with Fiona [aforementioned best friend who moved away], we had some problems because she’d go upstairs and make her thousands, and then come downstairs and kill all my seeds [guys she’d had her eye on].” We have very different work styles, so we don't often work together. But when we do, man, does it work.

***

I’m sitting at a table consisting of her, her customer, and his business associate, and I’m looking at her, watching her expressions, watching her work her magic. We’ve been paid very well by these guys for the last two days, and I don’t think either of us has even taken our dress off. Always the observer, I’m regarding her, knowing this might be the last time we work together, getting sentimental, when she hikes her eyebrow at me and I nearly melt. She’s holding court and shit is amazing. I love watching her wheels turning. I’m soaking it in, saying goodbye to this aspect, this facet of who we are together.

***

Our friendship happened at the most opportune moment for both of us. She says: “A lot of things about my life, I’ll fluff them up before I put them out there, but you don’t because you don’t give a fuck. Your anger comes out in your style [of relating to customers] and mine is starting to. I’ve been conforming and I don’t care anymore. The timing of our friendship is correct. I’ve always been this person, but it’s showing more on the outside now. Your lack of fraudulence makes this a lot more fun for me. When you’re sitting here with me, a lot of people [read: strippers] who would normally come up and complain [about the club being empty] don’t do that anymore. I still think we’re going to make money. I’m staring at an empty club but I’m in a good mood because of you.” We complete each other, here. I give her courage, she provides reaffirmation and depth to these things I’ve been trying to put my finger on for five years. This is a beautiful thing. I am so grateful.

***

She doesn’t like to go upstairs anymore, she’d much rather work her magic on people downstairs where she knows what she’ll make and what she has to do for it, rather than leave anything up to chance. She says: “When I have control over the situation, I don’t feel objectified. That’s why I don’t go upstairs, because I don’t feel in control up there the way I can control the anonymous laps downstairs. Control is an illusion, I know, but…” I say, finishing her thought: “power changes hands every other minute in here, and you’ve figured out how to maintain yours.” Subject/object, power/control. The nuances are subtle in this space, and these articulations of ours are absolute revelations for me, each inspiring unspoken amounts of gratitude. No amount of reading stripper anthologies would have ever gleaned thought streams such as these. And that’s why I had to become a stripper.

***

We go on and on about relationships, in and outside of the club, literally and figuratively, and I quote her extensively. “We come in here and the relationship is very transactional, but our interactions [with eachother, and to a certain degree with our customers] don’t feel that way.” On how outside relationships affect work relationships: “Getting fucked before work is bad for your money. Relationships and work can’t coexist. Spending time with people makes you not want to go to work. We sell chemistry, and if you’ve experienced real chemistry recently, it’s like it’s a zero sum thing, you’ve used it up and you don’t have enough to sell when it’s done. That’s why it’s cool to jerk off each afternoon before my shower [I do that too!], but having been sexually real with someone prior to work makes it harder to sell it here.” Oh, so that’s why I didn’t work as much as I should have when I was engaged. Oh, so that’s why I haven’t had a serious (local) relationship while I’ve been a stripper. Fuck, I wish I’d met her sooner.

***

Randomly: “It’s good to have friends who know where the bodies are buried, who still like you anyways.” When you engage in a stigmatized activity together, you can share things with each other that you’d never possibly speak to another human being. That is all.

***

We can be really frank about money with each other. “In the real world, $400 is $400 but we choose to not live there.” Meaning: most of my peers would be perfectly thrilled to make $400 in a day, but that’s a crappy shift for us. In a nutshell: we’re spoiled, and we’re really good at being spoiled together.

***

She compliments me in really deep and meaningful ways. “There are so many girls who fall into this work, talking about things and people as if they’re objects, instead of ideas. And after five years, you’re still talking about ideas, and that’s a good thing. You’re going to make it out of here alive.”

***

The only thing which could have made our friendship better timed would have been if I’d gotten close with her while I was writing my thesis. It would have significantly changed that document, for the better, for the real-er. But, no regrets. I’m so lucky to have her in my life, at the bar, on the stage, on the couch, on the dancefloor, forever. My thoughts about the nature of our work have been greatly enriched by her influence. And that, my friends, is why I became a stripper. All the money I’ve made in the club could never rival the value of this gift she’s given me. The clothes I bought will rip, the memories of the vacations I took will fade, but I will never be without the insight her love and sharing has given me. All the sacrifice, all the indulgence, all the pain and tears and laughter and joy and greed, all of it was worth it, because of her.

The Girlfriend Experience

2011-03-26T18:18:00.003-05:00

So in the last entry, I detailed a few “types” of customers and outlined (my perceptions of) their motivations. But I left out a big one, in my haste to publish that post: the girlfriend-seeker. This post isn’t just about that type of customer though, it’s about the myriad of services we sell, namely: the girlfriend experience (GFE).

Girlfriend seekers are the most pitiable class of customer I’ve encountered. I’ve seen variations on this theme, so many times: old rich white dude is lonely. Maybe he got divorced, maybe his latest (usually stripper) girlfriend finally got sick of dealing with his shit, and the money and resources and shelter from having to work was finally not enough. Maybe she just got bored of having to fuck some old dude, and wanted something that actually turned her on. Whatever. So newly-single old rich white dude, what does he do? He comes into the club, looking for the next one.

Seriously, I’ve seen this so many times.

There used to be a regular named Jim, who bared a striking resemblance to a frog (no really. It was WEIRD). He was a sweet old bastard, way too gullible, and lemme tell ya, the phrase “looking for love in all the wrong places” never rang so true for me as it did during the hours I spent with him upstairs. Maybe the second time we sat together (he paid hourly and was respectful, this was long before the economy tanked when hourly was still fairly standard), he goes, “You’re going to make me fall in love with you, aren’t you?” I mean really. How do you respond to that. I don’t even remember what I said. But in his gullibility, I could tell that he REALLY wanted to believe it.

Jim was looking for a girlfriend, straight up. He told stories about the women he’d “taken care of” in the past; this was most definitely a pattern for him. He told me he was lonely. He told me he would take care of me. Now, normally when guys say shit about how they’d like to date me, I generally steal myself and play along, just so I can empty their wallets and get the fuck out of there with them still thinking they have a chance. (Lately that’s not the case; I don’t give anyone the impression this is anything but ephemeral entertainment. I’m getting blunt in my old age). But eventually I had to stop sitting with Jim, because the charade just became too much, and it reached the same old tipping point of “whatever they’re paying me isn’t enough to deal with their bullshit.”

He disappeared for a while, but I’ve seen him a few times in the club in the last couple of years, accompanied by—you guessed it—one of our dancers, who doesn’t work anymore, whom I guess is now his girlfriend. I hope she’s happy, I really do.

Then there’s David, the guy Kendall and I sat with on Sunday. David was my regular wayyyyy back in the day, like after I first started, for about a year, until he disappeared. I figured he got remarried and moved permanently to his house on St. John. He’s got a shitload of money. David’s cool in that I can actually be honest about my relationship status(es) with him. He recently resurfaced; it’d been so long that I actually thought his name was Michael. But whatever, I’m crappy at remembering names. So anyways, here he is out of the blue, a few weeks ago. I sat and ate with him and we caught up, mostly about our love lives and what’s transpired in recent years. He’s recently single, and whaddaya know, back in the fucking strip club. Just bought his ex a house in LA so she’d get out of his hair. Hope that’s worth it...

What is it with these old rich white dudes constantly getting into commodified relationships? Do they lack self confidence, and figure they might as well purchase their companionship in a roundabout kinda way? Is it a power thing, so that they can get rid of whomever rather easily, if she turns out to be batshit crazy? Do commodified relationships automatically attract the batshit crazy? Because it seems to me, and it’s not just the fact that they resurface every couple of years when their latest fling goes tits up, that the commodification just fucks everything up. I mean yeah, there are plenty of perfectly healthy relationships in which one partner takes care of the other financially, this is obviously not uncommon in our culture, and lends itself rather well to breeding. But this is something different. It’s commodified from the get-go. How could they honestly think it could last? How are they not walking around constantly questioning the authenticity of their relationship? Are they even aware of that uncertainty, and if so, does it bother them?

Old white rich dudes aside, there are some guys who just have no clue that hello, this is our job. I’ve been over that here before. You get to the part where they pay you, and all of a sudden they’re clueless. Like, what? You want money for what just happened? But I thought you really liked me! Then there are the guys that want to see you out of the club (and not for cash, either. I’m happy to have dinner with someone for $500, but rare is the person who gets that, sticks to that, and can afford that). They think that, just because you provided a service, which also happens to include fake affection, this means that you want to go out on a date. So fucking annoying. WAKE UP. You're at a STRIP CLUB. We do not ACTUALLY like you.

And yeah, I give my phone number out. Some girls have business cards, others have work phones (those are also tax deductible btw). Here’s the deal: If there’s a chance I’ll get repeat business out of it, it’s almost always worth it. I make it clear that my primary mode of communication is text messages, that I haven’t listened to my voicemail in three years so don’t bother calling and/or leaving one, and that they should text me when they’re coming in next, instead of leaving it up to chance whether I might be working that night or not (especially if they’re travelers. Oh, how I love the travelers). The point is: if they want to sit with me again, I’d rather be there than not. I’d say this strategy works out about 5% of the time, but holy god, the money I’ve made over the years because of it. And yeah, I still get 3AM-attempted-booty-call-drunk-dials from time to time, from the locals. Stupid locals. To be clear, I don’t think this is like, the revelation of the century or anything, but there are some people who take it the wrong way, and are all, “Whoa! That stripper gave me her phone number! She must really like me!” And then they’re texting me with boring shit, day in and day out. I mean, some checking-up is fine, some random volleys here and there are acceptable, sure, this is a business relationship and certain ties need to be maintained. But really? How clueless ARE you?

Like I said in the previous entry, I cannot wait for the moment when I delete all the customer numbers from my phone. I have them saved in the same spot in my contact list; every single one of them has an “L/” before their name (L stands for Lodge), and some sort of descriptor after their name, because I suck at names and generally require mnemonic devices in order to keep my shit straight. Sometimes those don’t even work, and when someone I don’t remember does come back in, I tell him to text me when he’s sitting at the library bar. That way I can usually pick out the face, and save face in the process.

Seriously, I fantasize every day about the moment when I delete all of these numbers, save maybe like, five. There are five people, out of one hundred and seventy two (no really, I just counted. Trust me, I’m JUST as shocked as you are right now, probably more so), that I care about maybe having a drink with the next time they’re in Austin. Five people whose company I would keep even if they weren’t paying me.

Notable mnemonic descriptors include: “Andrew the pervy Canadian” (people’s kinks fucking fascinate the hell out of me) “Bob the nosy New Yorker” (OMG what a dick, but oh, so much money…), “Brad with the weird nose,” (for the record: I don’t remember the nose, but I guess it was weird, LOL), “Brian the SMU douchebag” (nuff said. Def remember him), “Cliff the desperate married guy,” (fuck, that could be ANYONE!), “Ed the submissive” (subby customers are really good outlets for aggression), “Hurricane Steve” (insurance adjustor, crazy stories about Katrina), “James in the chair” (god I miss him. My paraplegic customer. So irreverent, he was. He enjoyed pretending he had cerebral palsy whenever a waiter would ignore him due to that presumption, and missed the days before movie theaters got handicapped seating, because he had to park his chair in the aisle and then got to laugh when people tripped over it and down the stairs. And you know how blind people get insane senses of smell and hearing? Well, his neck was so sensitive, I could barely touch it without him stopping me. He’d had orgasms from neck stimulation. But I digress), “Jim the hot air dude” (Jim from a previous blog, “I got caught being a real person,” the one who kept asking me about my evil ex like months after we’d broken up. He flies hot air balloons), “John the cheapo who thinks art is good” (god, he was so cheap. Why did I save a cheapo number? Who knows) “Reagan octopus tie” (that guy is RAD and I hope he comes in again), “Ron with all the mile points” (can you tell what I was after?), “Scott the spanker” (that was a fun night!), “Tony the ?” (hmm. Don’t remember him. SHOCKING), “Chris with stripes” (he always wore shirts that have what I call “intelligent stripes.” He’s one of the five. And I think he lives in Austin now. I want to be his friend. He’s SUCH a nerd), and “Rob the racer” (has Ferraris, races Porsches, pity I never took a ride in a fucking Enzo, that’s a helluva box to check; fuck, I’d do that for FREE).

Phew, names. So many names. So many forgotten moments of feigned intimacy. So many remembered moments of actual intimacy, so many fears and hopes and dreams spilled out over drinks and flesh. Enough. I’ve had enough.

All that being said, we do the GFE all the time, and it’s great. People need companionship, the same way that babies in Chinese orphanages will die if you don’t touch them. I’ve said it before, but I’m okay with what we sell, even though my time to sell it is done. We provide what certain types of customers lack in their personal lives, we provide love, support, acceptance, acknowledgment, intrigue, adoration. R. Danielle Egan calls this role the “whorish wife.” Her work featured prominently in my thesis. The whorish wife provides all the emotional support of the wife, but the physical (in our case, feigned) availability of the whore. Such a great term.

Some of my coworkers bring a different meaning to the GFE. Many of my friends in there (read: the handful (<10) women I’ll keep in my life post-stripping) pick up dates in the club. Not like, people they fuck for money, but actual guys they date. To this day, I don’t understand it. I’ve tried once. But the guys that come into the club, the locals, the young attractive ones? Not the people I want to date. Generally the men in my life, especially the ones I’m intimate with, don’t enjoy strip clubs (unless they go to party, that’s a different story and motive altogether), and I like to think it’s because they can get pussy on their own. So the ones who come into the club, who are in the right age/attractiveness bracket, those guys just aren’t my speed. They’re boring. But whatever, not judging my girls, just making the point that yeah, sometimes we DO actually like you!

So yeah, GFE. Big can o’ worms, that one. Thanks for reading, ya’ll.

what men want

2011-03-25T00:50:00.001-05:00

I’ve said it before, and I will continue to stand behind this statement, no matter how jaded or far removed I become from the biz: everyone comes to the club for different reasons. But there are certain patterns I’ve noticed, and conclusions I can draw therein. Here are a few of them. This list is not complete. It gets ramble-y, but these are some of the most important observations I’ve ever made about what stripping does to relationships and psyches, so fucking pay attention.

Exhibit A: The ideal customer.

The ideal customer knows he’s paying for an entertainment/companionship service, and doesn’t deny this to himself or to others. Last night I was bored and kept following Mazlowe around to her tables, because she picks good ones. We were busy eating and cackling with one of her regulars (this was about the time when we decided that during my last week of work, I should change my name to Pavlov and only dance to “Ring my bell” and “Who let the dogs out”), when he said something really interesting. “How do you explain to your coworkers that you come to the titty bar to hang out with amazingly intelligent beautiful women? Nobody would believe you.” And it’s true, most people don’t get it. But there are exceptional customers out there who get it. They get that we’re at work, they get that they have to pay us for our company, and there’s never a problem with that arrangement. These men must have a combination of some pretty specific qualities: intelligence, empathy, generosity, and loneliness. If they’re local, they have to be dissatisfied with their personal life. If they’re travelling, they have to be bored because they’re on a business trip in Dallas and there’s not anything interesting to do here.

I usually prefer the travelers, because they don’t have any mistaken notions about “what it all means.” Every time I find a local regular, the relationship eventually ends because they realize that they’re not actually dating me. We have awesome times together, but eventually he’ll wake up and be like, “Okay, this feels like a relationship, but I have to pay her to hang out with me. She doesn’t want to be my girlfriend.” That will be that, I’ll take an income hit, and move on. Right now my local regular could become the exception to that rule, because he’s in a romance-less marriage and they’re basically roommates and staying together because it’s cheaper than a divorce. So he’s probably “safe” in that regard. But who knows.

Now, let me be clear. I truly like and appreciate every regular I’ve ever had. I don’t care who you are, customer or not, but you don’t get to be my friend, much less see me once a week or more, if you’re not interesting as hell. Would my regulars be people I could sit down and talk with in an airport bar for six hours while we’re both stranded in, say, Milwaukee? Absolutely. Will I keep in contact with some of them after I’m done? Sure. They’re good buddies, and they have good stories, and I feel that at least a portion of our relationship(s) is/are genuine, despite the commodification. But I won’t keep all of them around. I fantasize about the moment when I get to delete the literally hundreds of phone numbers I have stored. Airport conversation or no, would I be this nice to them if they weren’t paying me? Probably not. I’ve become quite skilled at channeling my affection. But I’m tired. I’m tired of pretending to like people more than I do.

The constant channeling into different outlets can get exhausting. The Aussie and I both prefer to make all our money from one or two sources per evening. As she put it, we tire easily of the “I’m this, I’m that, I’m this, I’m that” game.

Yes, we are selling parts of ourselves. The Aussie said, “This is exploitation on my terms. You think you’re not being exploited in a cubicle? This is on my terms.” It’s true, we’re all whores for our jobs, but we strippers have a little bit more control over where that exploitation comes from, i.e. we can walk away from an abusive situation if we deem it so. The Aussie’s mom said, “We all sell ourselves, in marriage, in life.” And her daughter, my dear friend, extrapolates: “I’m just doing it the way I want to do it. And that’s why I’ve stayed so long. I don’t want a real job until I can do it the way I want.”

Selling ourselves changes the way we interact with “real” people too. I tend to be really social when I go out, relishing in the fact that I’m engaging in real interactions with pure motives. The Aussie expresses something different: “You lose the filter when you’re not getting paid. I don’t want to talk to people when I go out, I want to take ecstasy and dance and lose my shit. I don’t even know how much I’ve given up by [stripping]. I’m not getting laid.”

And it’s true. This job makes it impossible to have a real relationship. You work at night. You’re constantly selling so much of yourself, it changes the way you love. The Aussie says, “I’m so used to manipulating people that I find myself dating people who are beneath me because they’re easy to manipulate.” She’s recognized this, and is trying to break that habit. “I’m excited by people, which is why I’m a good stripper, but my instantaneous connection is sexual, which is why I’ve never had a relationship that grew. Eliza is in her first post-stripping relationship and is having a hard time adjusting to the real. It’s romance, he’s not a customer, she likes him for him, not his money. She’s basically been dating customers and is having a hard time switching back.” Now, my personal experience hasn’t been like this. I’ve had relationships, I don’t manipulate my lovers, I don’t see my patterns with customers spilling over into my intimate life, but most of them were long distance, so I could still control my time (read: work nights and schedule week/ends where I see my bf and fuck off from work). Now that I’m single, and living in a place where I won’t find a mate, and all I could really do is go out on a date here, a date there, and I don’t. I don’t see the point. I don’t want dates, I want love. I’m tired of this. You can’t put a price tag on love. When I’m done here in a few, whatever I lose in income, I will earn back tenfold in authenticity.

Some customers think you can buy love, though. Not all customers are ideal. There are some who are completely deluded, and some who are aware they’re being deluded.

Exhibit B: The Skeptic.

In “Never trust a man with a boat,” I describe how some customers can turn on you once they realize that you’re not dancing naked for them, or laughing at their jokes, or generally being adoring, because you genuinely feel like it. Well, a few weeks ago, I had a really interesting exchange with a guy after I’d done a few dances:

Him: “Wow, you’re really good. I totally think you’re going to go home with me, but you’re not.”

Me: “Um, thanks?”

Him: “No seriously, I feel like I should be giving you my number right now, but that’s pointless, because you don’t actually like me.”

Me: “I do like you. But not in the way you’re thinking. May I be completely honest?” (stealing myself a little here, ahhh fuckit)

Him: “Sure.”

Me: “You’re too short. I need guys who are at least three or four inches taller than me.”

Him: “But I’m five ten.”

Omg. He’s so not five ten.

Me: “No way.”

I take off my shoes (which is considered prostitution in this state btw, still need to figure out the arcane source of that particular blue book law), we stand toe to toe, quite literally. He’s not five ten. Whatever.

The point is: he cut through the crap. He called me out on my game. And he seemed quite put off about it.

Whatever, he deserves it. He clearly didn’t know what he was getting into when he started talking to me.

Flashback Sunday

2011-03-21T17:56:00.004-05:00

Sundays are really fun. Usually there’s only maybe thirty of us working (a huge percentage of my friends work on Sundays too, because we’re awesome and so are Sundays, so that makes it even better), and the goofy DJ also works that night. There’s not a whole lot of customers but they’re pretty good, you know, quality over quantity. There’s no house fees on Sunday either, so you can come in at ten for a quick four hour shift and not have to pay sixty bucks. We do a poker tournament in the library that night too, thus everyone congregates in the other room where it still feels like a strip club, so it concentrates the smattering of activity in a smaller space. We typically have a lot of fun on Sundays, like, by the end of the night someone ends up doing the sprinkler dance onstage. And sometimes, the goofy DJ decides that he’s not going to play any music that was made in the last two decades, and on those glorious occasions, you get flashback Sundays. We’re trying to make it official, but the mgmt is dragging their feet. So the DJ just does it anyways, from time to time. He’s not just a strip club DJ, this man knows his music and is really into it. He makes teh good funnies on the mic too. I love him.

Well, last night was a flashback Sunday. And it was fucking epic. We made that space of patriarchy and subversion our own, we owned it. I utilized a repressive format for pure expression. Yeah. Chew on that one for a while. Dare ya.

I got out of the shower to a text message from the Aussie that said “OMG there are no customers here, only poker players.” It was 8:30, so I decided to come anyways because it typically doesn’t pick up till late. Drove my ass down there, wondering if I was making a mistake. It had picked up by the time I arrived, pretty average crowd for a Sunday (read: dead as a doornail). I ate some fajitas, got to visit with Delilah for the first time in two months, we discussed our looming moves/transitions out of the business. Ran into David (whom I’ll discuss further in an forthcoming piece about customer motives that’s going to collectively blow all your minds) and he wanted to go upstairs with a friend of mine, Kendall. We go up there, took turns dancing, laughed our ASSES off. Omg. She got her tits done in Germany when she lived over there, so now she just refers to them as her “German imports.” That was one of the kickers of the hour, in addition to when David suggested that we come over to “check out [his] baseball card collection.” The music was basically awesome, we had the speaker turned up all the way in our booth, and were giving really unusual lapdances, you know, actually in time with music. At some point I worked up a sweat. And I mean really, how often do I get to dance for a beautiful naked woman to The Cure’s “Why can’t I be you?”…that’s right, never. Too fast of a song for the club, you’ll never hear it. One of my favorite Cure tracks too. So much fun.

We got paid hourly to have a blast. One of the few times you’re going to hear me say this, in my jaded condition, but OMFG sometimes I really love my job.

Well David had bought me offstage at the beginning of the hour, and I was kindof sad about that. After we got paid for our hour and were back downstairs, I was exhilarated by both the rockin’ good time Kendall and I had just shared, and the highly respectable amount of cash we’d made (especially for a Sunday), and I wanted to dance. I mentioned this to the house mom, asking if she’d put me up onstage. She said, “Well, I don’t want it to seem like I’m playing favorites,” meaning she didn’t want to change the order of the rotation. I said, “Oh I don’t give a fuck about the list, I just want to go onstage. Like now. I don’t care if I have to go again later, in fact, I’d love to.” She picked up the phone, I told her I wanted Madonna’s “Dress you up” and “Into the groove,” and I changed into my boots. Those songs are way fast for a stage set, normally my music is a bit slower because I have no stripper moves to speak of, I just throw out a watered-down version of my normal dance moves (read: more flexing and posing and attention to angles), because I'm going to move to whatever's playing and if it's within my dancefloor-optimal BPM range of 128-135, I'm going to look like a tard and end up sweating way too much. But I wasn’t intending on actually acting like a stripper out there, not this time. And I could run a 5K in those boots.

I laid it the fuck down. I danced and danced and danced. Like I didn’t care who was watching, you know, the way it should be on the dancefloor. But it’s not a dancefloor, even though the surface is perfect, it’s a stage. Great fun, since I got the DJ up there like, timing my lights and I’ve got my coworkers screaming their appreciation, and I know all the words and all my moves were right because I have every fucking intonation and beat of those tracks memorized because I LOVE MADONNA and I was just…flying. Spinning and stomping while generally BLASTING my sexuality at people.

Thank god I snagged a bar towel on my way to the stage, because I was dripping with sweat by the time I hit my first side stage. I spent the next two songs dabbing at my face, armpits, under my tits. No really. Dripping. Do you like your strippers sweaty? Doesn’t matter cuz I don’t give a flying fuck.

Post epic stage set. Not really any money out there, and I’d already made what I normally make on an average night in my first hour, so I didn’t care. I just bought myself a couple tasty adult beverages and talked to people till I had to do my last set. I was the last girl on stage for the night, which is usually quite annoying because that’s prime time to snag your final victim of the evening, but I didn’t care. Hell, I was only supposed to do one song, and I did two. Robert Palmer’s “I didn’t mean to turn you on,” and one of my favorites to drop when I’m feeling particularly angsty, Joan Jett’s “I hate myself for loving you.” And this time it didn’t matter if anyone was watching because nobody was. Everyone was gone and the waitresses were cleaning their tables and there I was, fucking going at it with this huge sound system all by myself.

In the dressing room I’m informed that Taylor knows a Korean karaoke joint that’s open late and will serve us booze afterhours. We grab some friends and the cross-dressing regular, and off we go. Now, I’ve only sung karaoke twice, and both were rather underwhelming experiences, mostly because I can’t sing to save my life and I generally don’t enjoy playing games that I’m not good at. And I always thought those private room joints were probably lame, because what’s the fun if no one’s watching? Well turns out they’re SUPER fun if you want to make a total fool of yourself in front of your friends. Shots, sake, snacks that include cookie crisp, a playlist that’s very roughly translated from Korean, a playback system that gives you a score at the end of your song (lowest score we got was 97—that’s about when we started yelling “GOOOOOAAAAAAL” and decided that we win at karaoke), cordless mics, and a big coffee table that’s just begging to be stood upon whilst belting out Stacy Q’s “Two of hearts” or Paul Simon's "Kodachrome." Yeah. We did all that.

I got home at five. I got paid to have a blast last night. Sometimes I really love my job.

zero tolerance

2011-03-20T17:15:00.001-05:00

Ever since I made the decision to quit the biz, my tolerance for stupid stripper bullshit has dropped to record lows. You know what we are? We’re a bunch of gorgeous women who’ve generally always gotten our way because of our looks. Men put up with our shit because we’re easy to look at. They’ll listen to the drivel that comes out of our mouths, no matter how asinine it might be, because we’re hot. But in the club, we have to tolerate each other’s bullshit, and that can be easier said than done, at least for me. I imagine dumb bitches don’t even notice when other dumb bitches say stupid shit. But I do. I notice.

Exhibit A:

So I’m in the dressing room, on the side that’s basically a walkway smashed between a big row of lockers and the wall, which is covered in mirrors, makeup lights, and lined with a counter and benches. But before you imagine the quintessential shady strip club dressing room, please note that our dressing room isn’t shady at all, it rocks. There’s two big makeup areas with nice lights, about 200 lockers, a table stocked with free food, a bathroom, two showers, a washer/dryer, and all the free toiletries and supplies you could ever need. It’s fucking plush.

Anyhoo, I’ve got my makeup laid out, my phone and flatiron plugged in, my bag on the bench. I go to grab something from my locker, and when I come back twenty seconds later, there’s a tiny, adorable, drunk airhead in my spot. Her locker is directly across the walkway from my shit, so I guess she thinks that place at the counter is just hers. But in reality, you know, the world where the rest of us live, the counter is public space, and I happen to be using it. She’s basically dropped her dance bag, clothes, boots, etc, right where I was sitting. Her fourteenth drink of the day is sitting in front of my makeup.

I walk up, confused, and she goes, “Oh I’m sorry, were you using this spot? I’ll be out of here in like ten minutes, is that okay?” It’ll only take me five to put on my makeup and run the flatiron through my hair. Am I going to wait around while she goes through her drunken getting-dressed routine? Fuck no. Also, she’s got one of those really loud nasally voices that carries really well, especially when she’s wasted. And yeah, she’s wasted. I don’t want to be within thirty feet of her, much less three. I say, “Well dude, I’m kinda already set up right here.” She frowns at me, like this makes no sense to her at all, and says, “Look, there’s plenty of room right there,” pointing down the row of benches etc, “Why can’t you just use one of those spots?” Okay, now I’m pissed. Who the fuck does she think she is? She persists: “Seriously, I’ll just be like five minutes.”

Now, I’m not a very confrontational person by nature. I’ve never hit anybody in my entire life, never even kicked a man in the balls. If I wasn’t at the end of my rope with these dumbasses, would this have been the point where I would have backed down? Maybe. But as previously mentioned, I’ve had it up to here. So I go, “This is public space, and I was here first. I don’t see why I should have to move. Why don’t you go use one of those spots?” Again, this seems to be a foreign concept to her, and she stares at me like I just asked her to solve a polynomial equation or something. Wow. Am I about to get into my first fight? She comes back with, “Look, I’m not trying to cause drama or anything, I just don’t see why you can’t wait, I’m only going to be here like three minutes.” Why does her number keep getting smaller? Oh right, she’s used to lying to get her way. I really don’t want to fight, so I back down. It was really just the principle of the thing, and in five seconds I’ve got my arms full of my stuff, and I’m moving down the row. I toss, “In anthropology, we call that ‘displacement’” over my shoulder as I retreat (one of my favorite references. Such a useful word). Again, this makes no sense to her, and she yells, “APOLOGY?! But it’s really not a big deal!” LOL. Omg. Poor thing is so confused. How adorable.

Fuming, but amused, I plop down next to Cheyenne, who’s like, “WTF was all that?” And I mutter out a brief explanation while drunk bitch is still down there loudly spouting passive aggressive crap about how she really won’t be that long and doesn’t see what the big deal is. I’m nearly done with my makeup when she apparently finishes donning whatever bullshit Ed Hardy inspired street clothes she wears, stumbles down to us, and goes, “See? All done. You can have that spot now.” My goodness, I’ll bet this bitch is downright impossible to date. I raise my eyebrows at her and say, “Um, now I’m set up in a different spot, and I’m almost done. No way I’m moving again.” And again, “Well, I’m not trying to cause drama.” Really? You’re not? Because it sure seems like that’s exactly what you’re doing. But instead of saying that, I just stare at her. When they’re that wasted, you just have to stop responding and eventually they’ll go away. But instead of going away, she puts her arms around Cheyenne, cooing, “Hey sweetie I haven’t seen you in sooo long! Did you switch to nights?” WTF. She’s still in work mode (makes me wonder if she’s ever NOT in work mode), and so she’s faking affection to try and get what she wants. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even know Cheyenne well enough to be hugging her, who goes, “I’ve always worked nights.” “Oh well, I’m on days now, I have good clientele so…” and eventually she leaves. Cheyenne and I stare at each other in the mirror. I go, “Ugh. Do you even know her?” “No. I hate drunk bitches” “Me too” And that’s that.

Exhibit B:

Speaking of being impossible to date, some of these girls really don’t treat their boyfriends very well on the phone, when they’re drunk at the end of their shift and usually fishing for a ride home. The other day I was putting on my makeup and there was this girl sitting down the bench from me, going, “Alfredo. Stop. ALFREDO. Stoooop. Alfredo! STOP.” Like, over and over again. It got kindof amusing after a few minutes, and I started playing marco polo with her. She’d go “Alfredo!” and I’d chime in with, “stop?” Of course she didn’t notice, but we had a good snicker at her expense. “Alfredo. Stop. Where you gonna be when I get off? How come you not answering when I call? Alfredo. Stop.” My point is, when you walk in stone cold sober at 6pm, the girls who’ve been there drinking since 11am can be the hardest to deal with.

Being drunk and ornery isn’t a good way to convince your lover to come pick you up. But it gets worse. I remember one night, there was this chick with alcohol poisoning. I’d seen her earlier in the night, doing all sorts of stupid fruity shots with a big table, hooting and hollering and carrying on, and by 1am, she was done for. She was literally passed out face down in a puddle of her own vomit on the floor of the house mom’s office. They had to clean her up and carry her out into the hallway, and she didn’t budge during this process. Passed out cold. So they’re asking around trying to get her a ride home, and someone mentions calling her boyfriend. Apparently this situation had arisen before, because the house mom goes, “We did. He won’t come get her. This has happened too many times.” Wow. I mean, I don’t even know what else to say, but wow.

Exhibit C:

Oh, this one is the best. Are you ready? You’re not ready.

So the other night, I descended stage six and walked into the dressing room just before there was a fight at the tables nearby. Apparently this stripper attacked a neighboring table and bit a customer. It gets better. So I hear about this crazy girl, you know, the one with pink extensions in her hair, and then at the end of the night, there she is in the dressing room. She’s got a wild look in her eye and she’s singing something incomprehensible at the top of her lungs. I’m walking past her to the house mom’s office to tip out, and our eyes meet as she’s belting out whateverthefuck. I didn’t mean to, but I guess I shot her a weird look, because I mean really, WTF is she doing? She sees me shoot her said look, and starts yelling at my back after I pass, “Yeah, you’re lookin’ at me. You’re lookin’ at me cuz you know I made way more money than you did tonight, right bitch?!” I just spent four hours upstairs making bank, and never even took my dress off, so no, our respective earnings for the night were definitely not the source of the look I shot her. I still have the same wide-eyed expression of disbelief on my face when I get to the office, and the dance manager is sitting there next to the house mom, looking bewildered. I don’t even say anything, but I look at Bob, and poor Bob just goes, “Um. Yeah.” Poor Bob. His job sucks. The dance managers (as opposed to waitress managers, bar managers, general managers, etc) have to switch positions about every six months; it doesn’t take long to burn out on dealing with our bullshit.

I go back to my locker to finish getting dressed and pack up my stuff. Crazy girl is a few lockers down, and has dumped out the contents of her bag all over everywhere, and she’s rooting through it for something while talking shit to her friend. “I’m gonna go up to the DJ and pick up my CD, and you’re gonna watch my stuff. If anything’s missing when I get back, I’m going to fucking cut you.” Whoa. What a great way to treat your friend who is currently doing you a favor. So she storms out, and I turn around to her friend with the same wide-eyed expression. Her friend looks sheepish and simply says, “Sorry.” I’m like, “Don’t be sorry! I feel bad for you, having to wrangle her. WTF is she on?” And the friend comes closer and whispers, “Shrooms.” Ooooooooh holy fucking shit, this just got WAY more interesting. So crazy girl decides to take mushrooms, come to work, and is clearly having a bad trip because she’s biting customers, singing at the top of her lungs, and going all aggro on everyone. Wow.

After that, I took my time packing up, so I could eavesdrop some more. She comes back and starts spouting more nonsense, and I’m sitting cross legged on the floor a few feet away with my back turned, just laughing my ass off and trying not to make it too obvious. By the time I leave, she’s curled up on the floor, bawling. WOW. You really can’t make this shit up. I can’t believe they didn’t fire her.

puppy dog crossed with serial killer

2011-03-06T15:28:00.001-06:00

So there used to be a regular named Scott. He weighed about 300lbs, walked with a heinous limp (he had a groin injury that wouldn’t heal because he was too fat to work out/do physical therapy), and he was one of the most socially awkward people I’ve ever met in my life.

Scott was always around, you’d see him at least twice a week. Now he doesn’t come in anymore, and nobody is sad about it. A few weeks ago I was sitting at the bar with Willow and the Aussie, having an epic cackle-filled bitch session, when the subject of Scott came up.

Everyone made the mistake of dancing for Scott at least once. Most of us just the one time; we never understood how dancers could sit with him repeatedly. Here’s what would happen: he’d ask if you wanted to go to the champagne room (he had a VIP membership but was too fat/handicapped to make it up the stairs), which of course we’d agree to, because champagne room usually spells cash money. So you’d get back there, and he’d want to talk for a few songs first. Fine, whatever. Then you dance one song, and he’d want to take a break. Two songs off, one song on, so basically it takes about forty five minutes to make sixty bucks (god, I sound like such a spoiled brat). And of course he knew this, he was trying to monopolize as much of our time as he could for the least possible amount of money. And it’s not like he had anything interesting to say either, and he’s so fucking fat, it’s really hard to dance for him (see “suck it up,” where I describe the mechanics of dancing for the morbidly obese). And he’s just…creepy. I mean, he seems totally harmless, is clearly easy to outrun, and was nice and stuff, but there was just something off about him. Like a puppy dog, but crossed with a serial killer.

So we all made that mistake once. But the thing about Scott was, he just didn’t go away. He’d come in, and even if you didn’t dance for him, he’d still manage to be awkward and creepy and cheap at you. He’d come up to the main stage, and give you one dollar. I’d cringe if he tried to touch me, like nearly gag. To avoid having to touch him (hell, people I’ve never seen before at least get a kiss on the cheek for a dollar), I got to the point where I’d just walk up, crouch down to take the dollar out of his hand, thank him, and stand up and keep dancing. And of course, that made me look like a total bitch to any of the potential paying customers who might happen to be watching the interaction take place.

But you know what? After the bare minimum tipping ritual occurred, Scott wouldn’t just leave the stage like every other customer does, he wouldn’t go back to his seat (he never sat at a table, so he didn’t have to buy a drink). No, Scott would stand there, at the edge of the main stage, under the lights and right where everyone was supposed to be directing their attention, and watch. For the entire song. Sometimes the next song as well. He’d just stand there. Not only was it creepy, but it probably shooed away other tippers as well.

It was so fucking annoying.

Here’s what would happen next: he’d show up at the second stage in the rotation, and the same thing would go down. And the next stage. So basically he’s spent three dollars, and gotten to be in close proximity to a naked chick who doesn’t want to touch or talk to him. I wouldn’t engage him in conversation because I figured that would only encourage him, but the side stages are a helluva lot smaller than the main, and it got increasingly awkward to try and ignore someone who’s standing three feet away instead of ten.

You weren’t safe anywhere in the club unless you were moving (like I said, he’s easy to outrun, and his limp is so telltale, you can spot his gait from across the club). If you were sitting at the bar, or standing there talking to anyone but a customer, he’d come and stand right behind you, or next to you, not say anything, and wait for you to acknowledge him so he could engage you in bullshit smalltalk and you could try and keep him from touching you (keep in mind, he wasn’t gropey, he was just so creepy that even a pat on the arm was like OMG DON’T TOUCH ME). He did the same thing to all of us. The Aussie told a story about how she was sitting at the bar, talking with another dancer, when he pulled his hover maneuver (although, maneuver is a bad word to use in conjunction with Scott. He’s so awkward in so many ways, I can’t imagine him maneuvering anything). She had to be purposefully rude to make him go away: “Hi great to see you but we’re in the middle of a conversation ok bye!”

So that’s Scott. Scott doesn’t come in anymore. Maybe he had a heart attack. Although probably not, because he keeps trying to friend me on FB. Nobody misses him.

Cold, right? I know. I have a ton of stories like this, that I’ve been withholding because it kindof seems like bad publicity. But I don’t care anymore, I’m three months away from quitting, and the gloves have come off. I’m not going to hold back my honest uncensored opinion anymore, just because I’m afraid of the income hit. I’ll make what I make. Dammit, I’ve learned some serious shit in my five years in that club, and I’m going to lay it all out for you before I’m gone.

Home stretch. More to come.

Good Touch/Bad Touch

2011-02-11T17:48:00.000-06:00

I'm very particular about how I like to be touched. More specifically, how I DON'T like to be touched. I'm not talking about stuff that's germane to work, as in, don't-you-dare-infiltrate-my-g-string-fortress, I'm talking in general. Ask any of my ex boyfriends. General rules: no poking me in the ribs (I've covered that here before), no tapping (you know my name, so just use it if you want to get my attention), and no highly repetitive/incessant movements (unless it involves my genitalia and, you know, we have that kind of relationship).

“Repetitive motion” is the hardest to articulate. And when I try, I feel like I'm coming off too bitchy. So unless we're extremely intimate, you're never going to know you're bugging the crap out of me. How do you tell someone “OMG stop rubbing my arm like that” without sounding like a total cunt? That's right, you don't. And how do you explain something that bugs you on such a subjective level, to someone who's clearly doing it subconsciously and could only attempt cessation through constant vigilant effort? How do I describe that I like to be touched in long, lingering, aptly-aimed, one-pass caresses? It sounds fucking high maintenance, right? Yeah. That's why I never tell anyone unless I'm fucking them. Like a lot. And sometimes it never even has to come up. It's a chemistry thing.

I remember the first time I realized repetitive motion annoyed me. I was in high school, and seeing a movie with a boy. I was a virgin, so hand-holding and the occasional face-slobber was as turned on as I ever got. As we sat there in the dark, you know, holding hands, he would NOT stop moving his THUMB on my hand. It drove me absolutely crazy. I didn't do anything about it, except be annoyed and distracted for the entire movie. I think I broke up with him after that.

Well, last night I ran head-on into this little peeve of mine. On my initial lap around the club, I passed a table. Three customers, once dancer (whom I know, she used to work the day shift with me back when I was green as hell). The two empty-lapped dudes both held my gaze. Having just got there, I figured I'd keep looking. But on my way around the other side of the room, I decided to go back. I marched up and demanded, “What the hell is going on here?” Blink blink. I love that line. I picked out the obviously-not-from-around-here-are-ya guy and perched on his armrest. I'm really good at perching on armrests.

We talk, I move from armrest to lap. He's from NYC, in town for business, he sells specialty paint, like the rust-prevention kind or the kind they use on golfballs, blah blah blah...and he won't. Stop. Rubbing. My. Back. And my arms. And my flanks. In fact, even when I manage to pin his arm, kinda casual-like, under my elbow, he still moves his thumb, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. His breath smells like cigars. At one point I actually adjust my position on his lap so that I don't have to smell his breath and so I can wrap his arms around my torso and keep them there, pinned. I do a dance, and again, won't stop touching me. When I'm hovering above him, his arms are outstretched and on my sides, like a toddler begging to be picked up. When I'm leaning back against his chest, they're rubbing my thigh like I've spilled a bit of condiment on my fishnets.

Eventually I have to go onstage, vowing to myself to find a better victim while I'm in the fishbowl. I do dances for a guy like this about twice a year, and every time, it's short lived. Whatever they pay me isn't enough to deal with the obnoxious way they interact with my body. I have to move on.

Well, not a whole lot going on that early, so I resign myself and go back to toucher guy. The other two dudes are clients, and my guy's entertaining them, so he's got all the money, which is good. The most good-ol-boy of the clients goes, "Oh wow. You're hot. And you're a liberal! And you're SMART! A smart liberal. Wow, that's so rare." LOL. Also, he has a term for people like me: BEML. As in, "Big-Eared-Muslim-Lover." I say, "But my ears are really small." LOL. I love good ol' boys. They're all just libertarians, harmless really (unless you fuck with their property--then they'll shoot ya). They'll keep their laws off of my body, so we tend to get along pretty well, and there's lots of witty banter fodder. My guy is very well traveled and has patronized various facets of the sex industry around the world, so at least his stories are interesting.

Anyways, my guy has all the money, and I've conferred with my friend who was at the table before me, so I know he's worth way more than just one dance. And so I dance. And dance. And he keeps touching me in ways that bug the crap out of me. I got a ride into work, so I start drinking faster. That helps. I try and channel my new lover. That helps too. I dance and dance and dance. Same shit, over and over, at 3:30 intervals. And he ate it up. I took a break every five songs. I let him know his total every $300 or so. To stave off boredom, I start trying more uncomfortable positions, putting extra weight on my arms, etc, so at least I get a better workout. I think to myself, “Wow. My ass IS really strong, isn't it? Fuck.”

I ended up dancing for him ALL FUCKING NIGHT. For like, literally seven hours. I've never done that many songs in a row for the same person, and the only other times I've made that kind of money have been on nights when at least a portion of it came from hourly. I think he's a bit of a masochist, because he keeps saying things like, "You know how much power you have over me right now, don't you?" Yes, thank you for stating the obvious. The ATMs wouldn't handle what he owed me at the end, and he had to get bear bucks. When he left at 1:00, I'm relieved, because I'm tired as hell. I change clothes, sit in the dressing room, eat my brown bag dinner, and wait for my ride to get done cleaning their tables. I could try and go make more money, but there's no way in hell I'm going to go talk to someone on the floor for ten minutes so I can make maybe $40 off them; I just made a small fortune and I'm spent.

So that's what I learned last night. If you pay me enough money and feed me enough vodka, repetitive motion is okay. Don't tell any of my ex boyfriends. I'll just sound like a bitch.

Superbowl report

2011-02-08T12:06:00.000-06:00

The weather fucked us in the ass. Sideways. With handle bars for extra leverage. Ice shut down DFW for two days, the airport closed for a while, storms creamed Chicago and NYC and nobody could get here, people canceled/delayed their plans till days later, blah blah blah, our week got epic screwed. I holed up with friends and made the best of it. It was an ice rink out there.

Our big rush hit on Friday (instead of, you know, Tuesday...goddammit), which also happened to be the day that I started feeling feverish symptoms. The roads were still semi-fucked and I knew I was coming down with something, but determined, I loaded up on dayquil and caught a ride with some waitresses who have an SUV. The main room was full when I showed up at six, but the library was pretty empty. Still, I'd never seen it so busy, so early. Sitting at a bar, I commented to another dancer that it seemed like midnight, like some sort of weird time warp. No windows or clocks, people. Just like a casino.

I did a stage set, and made a (metric) crapton of money in the first three hours of my shift, practically with my eyes closed, so easy. Went upstairs with a table that bought three bottles of Cristal, and was well on my way to a record-breaking night when my immune system betrayed me, and I just couldn't deal anymore. It's really hard to do dances when your skin is tender and your joints ache.

Oh and, did I mention? I fell on the ice three times in the two days prior. I had (still have) a big bruise on the back of my pelvis, and my ab/ass/neck muscles were sore from my body (successfully) attempting to keep my head from hitting the ground. It hurt to walk. Oh AND, the hot water in my tub is busted so I've been washing my hair in my kitchen sink and taking whore baths with a pot full of water and a plastic cup in my bathtub, just washing/shaving the important bits, for four fucking days. My cunt has razor burn (which I almost never get now) from the improper shaving conditions, exacerbated by the fact that I have to keep fending off repeated g-string-fortress-infiltration attempts from these tourists, and my defense techniques only cause their fingers to drag up against the grain of my inflamed stubble as they desperately seek a handhold, making everything all the worse.

But you know what? My job really isn't that bad. And it was the biggest weekend of the year, and I'd be damned if I was going to miss it.

Anyways, I was on the list early enough so that I was not going back onstage, and thus was able to take a good long nap in the costume closet, curled up amidst tulle and sequins and fedoras and boas, with the chills, inside my peacoat, head resting on gallon ziplocks full of stripper gear (remember, I was stuck waiting till my waitresses/ride got off work sometime after 2:30). After about three hours, I came to, and laid there in the dark for another hour, just listening to the radio chatter coming off the managers in the hallway. It was around 12:30, and we were already out of the credit-card-purchased dance dollars aka funny money aka “bear bucks” (meaning we'd sold 40K in those alone, and everyone was now scrambling to get the girls to turn it in for recycling). Strippers were getting skipped off the stage like, every five or ten seconds, meaning they'd sold bottles or skip shots. There were 101 of us signed in. They were banking out there, I could hear the din of the crowd every time the nearest door to the floor would open, I could hear the kind of money people were making on the radio, and there I was, laid up with the fucking flu. In the dark. Listening.

I'd kept my boots on and everything whilst napping. Deciding I couldn't deal with letting people touch me, even after a three hour rest, I changed into my street clothes and just started chatting with folks in the dressing rooms. Little did I know, my regular had been sitting at the bar for two hours, not texting me because he thought I was off making bank, while shooing away dozens of girls. He would have taken care of me, just sit there and talk (which I totally could have managed btw, even in my condition) but was being polite and keeping his distance, letting me work the crowd (which I wasn't doing). FAIL. I chastised him the next day for not telling me he was around. Oh well.

So I'm lurching around talking with the girls, asking everyone how their night was, watching drama unfold here and there, stealing glasses of neglected champagne (which was apparently flowing freely out of all the fissures in the building) because yeah, even though I was sick, I was fucking frustrated and wanted to imbibe. I made a point to be nice to the out-of-town girls, because hey, even though they're poaching the venue where we toil in during the off-season, I know what it's like to be a stranger in a new club, and how much it means to have some babe you don't know be genuinely nice to you and say, “Welcome. I hope you made some fucking cash! Do you need a tampon? Here.” (P.S. Denver girls are way nicer than Houston girls, in my albeit very limited experience as an outsider in those cities). I made sure to thank every single manager, food runner, and the DJ for their hard work (the DJ said, "You know, I was just really glad I didn't have to take a shit"); I HEARD those guys running their asses off via the radio; they were out there getting paid the same thing they make every day, but helping everyone else rake in the best money we'll make all year. I was filled with this overwhelming feeling of solidarity and appreciation. I mean, we're definitely more of a family than any other club I've seen or heard of, and I really love our place, but I was brimming with gratitude that night. We are a tightly run ship, a highly evolved, efficient, money-sucking MACHINE, and we were kicking ASS at it. Like, hard.

On the way home, I make the waitresses take me by a drug store, pick up some theraflu and other associated items, and pass out. That was Friday. I felt a little better on Saturday, well enough to rally. The temperature rose and the roads cleared, so I elected to take my own car so that in case the same thing happened, I could at least drive my ass home early.

Well, the same thing did not happen. I tore that place up.

The club was absolutely full at six when they let the night shift onto the floor. I'd been pacing in the dressing room for a half an hour, feeling like a racehorse waiting for the gates to open. And honestly? I have never seen it so busy in my 4.5 years at the club (and that includes a good stretch before the economy tanked). There were literally no unoccupied tables in the main rooms (dunno about champagne and VIP). At 6:30 I come barreling through a dressing room door to find an unlucky food runner/ bar back guy mopping up the mess he'd just made by dropping the better part of a buss-tub-full of miller lights onto the floor. “Oh NO!” I go. “Ohhhh SI” he replies in a sarcastic-but-dealing-with-it tone. Poor guy. It's the busiest night of the year, and he was in the most trafficked of the (three) entrances to the (main) dressing room too. Really shitty timing. Some dumbass stripper was probably texting and not looking where she was fucking going and ran straight into him. Bummer. Those guys work SO hard.

Next, an older dancer/semi-acquaintance of mine is crying because she got slapped on the ass so hard that she has a welt. Steeler fans are going all barrel-chested wanting to defend her honor. I think to myself, “Ooh. Welts. I like spanking now and again” and then feel bad for even thinking that, because she genuinely feels assaulted. I assure the Pittsburgh guys that the managers have it covered and I run away, marveling at the balls on some of these asshats.

I do a few here, a few there, finally scoring an hourly gig in the champagne room, snuggling up to a man with whom I had some fairly decent physical chemistry (sometimes I do dances for people who know how to touch me, not crossing the lines too much, hitting all the right places while not annoying me by doing things like scratching my flanks) but almost no mental connection despite him constantly telling me how amazing I was/am. So we're back there, I'm chugging water as if it's the proto-apocalypse and all the treatment plants are about to be offline, he's constantly making excuses, “Wow, I can't get hard with all these people watching me” and I'm trying to make him feel like he's the only man in the club, meanwhile RON FUCKING JEREMY is sitting right there like staring at me and Dennis Rodman is across the room (I really wanted to touch him, just so I could say that I touched someone who fucked Madonna...alas) and I think maybe Jenna Jameson too, and this is all very surreal. I mean, I don't care if he gets hard. I'd consider it a compliment to my talents if he does; honestly, it's just further evidence that his ass (read: wallet) is mine. But it's fucking funny that he's making excuses for his dick when he's A.) paying for a service; B.) I don't give a fuck; and C.) an iconic/balding/mullet-headed porn star from the seventies is about six feet away from us the entire time and staring.

I get released back out into the madness, which is fine, because all that guy really wanted was for me to come back to his hotel, and I seriously can't be bothered with that. It's a motherfucking feeding frenzy out there. 131 dancers on the floor (the most I've ever seen), and record-setting sales for the club (but I'll never publish those stats). ABSOLUTE. CHAOS. People are getting lap dances at the bar, people are sitting at card tables in order to buy Dom upstairs. There are tits EVERYWHERE. I heard at least three separate dancers comment, later in the evening, that they were completely disoriented when they walked out onto the floor, it was just that busy. At some point half the toilets are clogged in the dressing room, and we're completely out of toilet paper (I think we sent someone to Sam's to get more?). I'm shocked/relieved that the ATMs didn't run out of money (want to see stripper relations go from camaraderie to cutthroat in about half a second? Take the ATMs offline). Eventually we'll all smell like the same combination of cologne, ego, body spray, pheromones, shame and/or greed, but for right now, it's game on. I feel great. I'm picking the weak ones off the edges of the pack. Eighty bucks here, a hundred there, bam-bam-pause-lipgloss-hydrate-repeat. Hell, just typing that sentence made me feel like going back to work tonight. Too late though. Whatever.

So Ruby and I squeeze some ridiculously easy cash out of some hapless (also drunk) Canadian oil and gas guy named Vance (also the name of my evil ex, and a rare name at that; I took great glee in using the fuck out of this one. Uhm sorry, he had the wrong name? It gets better: while my ex liked to tell me that my ass wasn't adequate, this Vance loved asses and couldn't get enough of mine. Wonderful retribution! P.S. If you're reading this, you fucker, yes, I still hate you), while a bunch of hoss-looking-probably-Packer-fans look on from across the aisle. After I'd gotten bored of taking candy from a baby, I do a few laps, eventually making back around to the hoss-looking-guys-who-indeed-turn-out-to-be-from-Iowa. I pick out the easy one immediately and do four dances, good songs too, absolutely at the top of my game and feeling great.

While I'm dancing for this 300lb-corn-fed-captive audience, his bros (I mean bras, as in “cha bra, check out my sick new trucknuts”) are two feet away, discussing their, uh, philosophy of strip clubs. And OMG, I shit you not, in my (fifteen) years of reading about and/or personally observing this environment, I can honestly call this exchange pure fucking gold. No like, seriously, it's comments such as these that made me get into the business, so that I could be privy to them in person. Ahem: “It's like they're habitually lying to people for money.” (Yeah? You think? How incredibly observant!)....And then a song later: “There's no truth or honesty left in this place!” LOL. I've been like, working up a sweat over here, doing squats on this guy's lap during probably the best ten minutes of his year thus far, listening to his buddies run their mouths thinking I can't hear them talking shit, trying not to laugh. I finally can't stand it anymore, and I break character in the middle of a song to lean over and go: “You know what? Some of us aren't capable of lying like that. Some of us are just ourselves in sluttier clothes. I can't change personae like dresses, the way some of these girls do, I just come out here and fucking relate to people and provide a service, which YOU came HERE to purchase, remember?” They both just stop, stare at me for a second, blink blink errrruh. One of them goes, “Goddamn girl, you got ears like a hawk” and the other manages, “Well uh, there's an exception to every rule” and I just snicker, finish my dance, kiss farmboy on the cheek, take my money and run off to my locker to record those quotes into my phone. Dumbasses. What the fuck did they think they would find here, while on vacation for the stupid Superbowl? A fucking girlfriend? TRUTH AND HONESTY?! THIS IS A STRIP CLUB! You can be anyone you want here. This is one place in the world where you are encouraged to think with your dick. Might as well shut the fuck up, not TALK SHIT IN FRONT OF THE STRIPPERS, and enjoy yourself. Actually, I don't mind the shit talking. As you might be able to discern, it amuses me greatly.

The rest of the night passed in a blur. I have no idea how many people I danced for. The chaos never stopped, not even when the lights came on at two (I think most of the customers thought we stayed open till four. They received a rude flourescent awakening). Towards the end my hey-how-are-you-let-me-engage-you-in-conversation-before-I-make-you-pay-me routine has been reduced to, “Only five songs left! Who wants some?” It really wasn't hard. The dressing room was, of course, more chaos. I'm starving, sore, bruised, sick, and I have to pee, but damn, I could have worked another two hours at least. I get out of there to discover the cops have all the turn lanes blocked off, and have to circle around to a super fanagle-y back way to the highway. Home, theraflu, crash.

On Sunday morning I see a FB post from one of the managers: in his three decades of hospitality management, he's never been so busy in his life. That night at work, while we're waiting for the stupid game to be over so we can get slammed again, I question him for more details about that statement. He tells me that not only has he never been so busy, but he's also never worked at a place where after a night as insane as we had, everyone, customers and employees alike, were all leaving with smiles on their faces. And it's true. We really nailed that one, guys. We are a well-oiled machine, we are an exceptional team of tease and overpriced champagne, and we knocked it out of the park. The weather may have fucked us, but we fucked that Superbowl right on back.

I'm really beat up now. There are significantly fewer layers of skin on my kneecaps than were present a few days ago. I haven't even wanted to get out of bed to eat, and holy god, I need to get laid. The final straw came on Sunday night after our shift, when I got hit in the fucking face with a champagne cork. My waitress/ride took home a re-corked bottle of Cristal (sometimes customers don't want to drink the champagne that they still have to purchase in order to access a private-r room, and we get to take it home), which was sitting between my legs in the passenger seat. The vibration from the car caused the temporary re-cork to work it's way out of the bottle and onto my face. One inch lower and I could be missing my left eye. I've got this really painful (but thankfully invisible) welt on my forehead. My buddy Andy said, “Whoa! That's the part they leave out of rap songs!” LOL.

I'm all tore up, but you know what? I'd do it all again in a heartbeat. Bring it. Minus the weather this time.

Dallas Superbowl Stripper Fest 3000: Hype?

2011-01-31T15:13:00.000-06:00

So, the Superbowl is coming to town this weekend. For months, reports have been trickling in on what we can expect—mostly we all expect to buy new cars. Most of the tickets are corporate, and so apparently we can expect hot and cold running expense accounts. Despite the influx of corporate cash, we paid attention to the playoffs (I looked at a NFL bracket for the first time in my life. The games were on my google calendar. For shame, for shame). We strippers were rooting for Chicago and New York because those fans presumably have more money. The Jets played the Cowboys a few months ago, and I walked unsuspectingly into a late Sunday night shift (usually dead, but fun) and was greeted by a club packed to the gills with New Jersey. I screwed up and asked, “so what part of the city do you live in?” and got “fuck you, I'm from Jersey!” twice before I caught on, turned the bitch-o-matic meter up to eleven, and banked. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Those guys are all used to the eastern european girls which populate the clubs out east, so if you sit with them for like, a song, before asking for a dance, they feel special. God that was a fun night. But alas: when the Jets lost last weekend, we heard that half the scheduled charter planes flying into Love Field were canceled. Stupid Jets. Stupid planes. Gah.

Price gauging is getting crazy. The La Quinta in Arlington is charging $500/night with a five night minimum. Parking spots at the Death Star are going for $900. Seriously? Is football really this awesome?

We had a strategy meeting a few weeks ago. The club opened early on a Sunday, served us brunch, and we discussed what sort of changes we could expect in the coming days. Apparently we're the only club that's not raising our prices. They're cracking down on the rules, mainly the ones in place to maximize club capacity and efficiency. They quit hiring out-of-towners a few weeks ago, and now have stopped hiring altogether (thank fucking god—you know those new girls will work every night, because they're, well, new. We had 120 on the floor one night last week. I expect over 200 strippers will work every night Thursday/Friday/Saturday. SO doing my makeup before I come to work this week; that dressing room is going to be a clusterfuck).

Despite the general hype around town (it feels like the Olympics are coming, I swear), we don't need to advertise. We get press instead. We were written up in the New York Times a few weeks ago, and were back on the Rachel Maddow show AGAIN, because Newt Gingrich is an idiot (but we knew that already). D Magazine has listed us as their pick for superbowl-related titties. So you could say, boys and girls, that this shit is ON.

I had a customer a few months ago (who goes to the superbowl every year via various corporate-gift related activities) tell me that we could expect people to start trickling in the Monday following the last playoff game. That was a week ago. And you know what? The club has been dead, people. Dead. And to make things worse? IT'S SUPPOSED TO SNOW TOMORROW. I've been saying for weeks that the only thing that could ruin this fucker would be an ice storm. Well, you can all blame me. I jinxed it.

To make matters worse, there's this bullshit story (started by TMZ...naturally) that the local FOX station started circulating about how Dallas is in supposed “dire need” of 10,000 strippers. Don't listen! It's a vicious rumor! Fucking outsiders need to quit coming in and poaching on our big week! Here's what went down: some jackass club manager in Kenandale (I don't even know where that IS) said his club needs 100 more girls and the metroplex as a whole probably needs 10,000 more (and let's face it, the clubs in Arlington and the outlying cities probably do need more girls. All the hot ones work in Dallas. Everyone knows this), and BAM! Instant sensationalist crap. It's all over everywhere. I've got customers from around the country texting me saying, “Oh hey I was listening to sports radio this morning and apparently Dallas needs 10,000 more strippers?” I swear someone sends me a version of this story via various social media every fucking day, and each time, just a little bit more steam comes out of my ears.

My coworkers are starting to post stressed-out “this better not all be hype” comments on the FB feed. If we don't all pay off our credit debt this week, come next Monday, the general morale of Lodge employees and entertainers is going to be somewhere down around the 5th circle of hell.

"I'm just me, in sluttier clothes."

2011-01-30T16:12:00.000-06:00

The Aussie and I are sitting at the front bar, enjoying a tasty adult beverage at the beginning of our shift. I rather like chatting with her, she's in the 99th percentile of exceptional women in that club. She's an incredibly serene and old soul, one of those people who has stories and wisdom that seem to surpass the years of her current lifespan. I like to talk with her about sex (she's got similar predilections to mine, and is never shocked by my stories, just happy for me), work (she's been doing this longer, and is far more skilled than I will probably ever become), and sex work (wicked smart, this woman can wax theory and keep up with my ivory-tower-educated ass). On this particular evening, we're discussing our strategies for relating to customers. We're both very similar in that we find it downright impossible to employ personae; instead, we feel as though we simply highlight and/or suppress certain aspects of ourselves in order to form emotional/intellectual/sexualized connections with various clients. Actually, those are my words, which makes sense, because that's basically half of my master's thesis topic in a nutshell. What she said was this:

“When I'm connecting, I truly believe in people, like I am giving, and that people are truly good. If I can project and make it a better day for them, then fine. My kindness isn't only presented to people who will pay. Other girls reserve that kindness for the paying customers, and that's why you and I aren't starving to death.”

She's touched on a few issues that are absolutely central to our work: the ability to relate to almost anyone, and the ability to give (or sell) love. She and I have similar strategies for interacting with customers and potentially extracting money from their wallets: we just talk. If I don't feel a connection with someone, if the conversation doesn't flow smoothly, I don't ask them if they'd like a dance; if the chemistry isn't there, I tell them to have fun and I leave. You'd be amazed at the random shit you learn from people with this kind of game plan. Last night I learned about golf. And how walmart killed a small town in Oklahoma. Four nights ago, I learned that a married man desperately wanted to be fucked in the ass, but had never told his wife (definitely not the first time I've heard that one).

But the Aussie's point is that we don't have to be paid in order to listen, at least at first. Our job is to connect, relate, engage. We'll do that for a moment for free before we decide we need to move on (a classic rookie mistake is to do this for too long and then lose insurmountable sums of cash along the way), we don't simply walk up and ask someone if they'd like a dance. I absolutely have to feel like I could sit down for a meal with someone before I'll offer them my more corporeal services. My rules become even stricter with potential “regulars.” The Aussie and I are of the opinion that this makes us highly exceptional at what we do; there are always bits and pieces of our “real” selves included in the relationships we form with customers, no matter if that relationship lasts for five minutes, five hours, or five months. Even years. We sell companionship. We are Texas courtesans in trashy outfits. We are ourselves, only in sluttier clothes.

Case in point: the other night I was very mentally distracted by the awesomeness that had just transpired in my bed with a darling new boy. I couldn't really engage, I was lost in my own head. Sometimes after a vacation or a particularly-entralling break from work, it can be very difficult to “fake it” after being so “real.” Sometimes realness can't be suppressed for the sake of show. On nights like this, I prefer to do a dance here, a dance there, not converse a whole lot, to sell more of my body than my personality. So I'm wandering around playing the who's-going-to-make-and-hold-eye-contact game, and I happen across a Pakistani gentleman in a corner. He seems interested, and I wait <1 song to ask, “So, would you like me to dance for you?” Two things are of note here: First: I normally don't approach middle eastern men, because I generally find them to be both handsy and cheap. They'll grope the shit out of me for a song or two but not plunk down enough cash for subsequent dances to make my efforts worthwhile. Also, usually they either smell bad and/or wear too much cologne. (Yes, I know, that's racist. But we're strippers. We profile. Deal with it). But in my distracted state, I hadn't made much, and I was getting kindof desperate, and he held my gaze, so I approached. Second: the manner in which I transitioned from smalltalk into dancing was a bit odd for me. As aforementioned, I normally wait until I have a mental/emotional connection with a customer before moving into money-extraction mode. But I didn't have a connection with him, rather, I didn't have a connection with anyone that night because I was so distracted, so I figured I'd just play it simple and go for dances right off the bat. Also, the way in which I asked, would he like me to dance for him, was rather submissive, which I also figured (in my racist profiling mindset) would play into his culturally-imbibed patriarchal tendencies.

I got what I asked for. I got approximately three and a half minutes of groping in exchange for $20. I felt like a cheap whore. Then I left. Normally I leave a customer feeling as though I've actually made a difference in their day, their mood, or perhaps (and ideally) changed their mind about what they consider a stereotypical stripper. I didn't feel anything but dirty when I walked away from Pakistani dude.

The Aussie says that my “truth” shines through in a more effortless way than hers, that she has to work at it more. Maybe that's why she makes more money than I do, because it's easier for her to hide.

lecherous death-eaters

2010-05-01T11:31:00.000-05:00

So, there’s this girl who’s been getting on my nerves lately. On the second night that I knew her, she made the mistake of coming up behind me and poking me in the ribs. I yelled and threw an elbow without thinking about it—this is what happens when you come up behind me and poke me in the ribs, without fail. I turn to shoot her a look, and instead of apologizing like most people do when I inform them of exactly how much I hate that and how uncontrollable my reaction is, she goes, “Wow, you’re really high strung, aren’t you?” Oh man. Not the best foot to start out on with me. It gets better. She’s really loud and obnoxious, and never seems to have anything nice to say. Every time you hear the unmistakable sound of her storming into the dressing room, she’s whining about something at full volume. It’s really fucking annoying, to the point where I’ve had whole conversations with other women about it, and actually went so far as to say to her last week, “Girl, you don’t seem to be having a very good time at work lately. When was the last time you took a few days off work? Do you think you might be burned out? You might consider taking a rest.” She just stared at me. Or fired off some excuse, I don’t remember. But seriously, negativity turned up to eleven with vocal projection to match? It’s not something I want to be around every day, but I don’t really have a choice. Doesn’t help that her locker is about four away from mine.

Now I’m pretty sure she’s on drugs. Two nights ago she crashes into the dressing room doing her “Whhyyyyy doesn’t anybodyyyyy like meeeee” (Seriously, this is what’s coming out of her mouth—can you say ‘self fulfilling prophecy’? I knew thatcha could!) routine, but I’m in such a good mood it barely touches me. I’ve just spent three lovely hours messing around with someone I would date if he wasn’t married (I only get to see him about twice a year, and it’s always a treat. He can see the future. And he has fangs) and playing concierge to the rest of his roomful of work colleagues up in VIP. Naturally, my hair got a little messed up, so I’m redoing it: about twice a week, when I don’t feel like washing/drying/straightening my hair, I put it in a bun and throw on these hair pieces instead. They look like tribbles: they’re color-matched, mostly braided, hair “scrunchies” (no, not that kind of scrunchie). They’re an instantaneous updo, and the end result is rather messy and irreverent looking, and it accentuates my neck. I love them. Anyways, they got messed up (to the point of falling off) when I was upstairs having my neck bitten by a wise person, so now they’re laid out on the countertop for reapplication. I return from a bobby pin excavation excursion to my locker, to find whiner girl leading a team of two other women of color in making fun of my tribbles, literally pointing and laughing and throwing out comments about how only black chicks can wear those things. Whoa. I’m not a very confrontational person by nature, and I’m really not interested in spending two minutes applying my tribbles in front of these women who were just mocking them and me, so I grab my things and head over to the other side of the dressing room. A while passes, I can’t shake that feeling, and the incident is kindof gnawing at me. So when I’m talking to this really awesome fedora-and-three-piece-suit-wearing bar fixture, and whiner girl elbows her way in fishing for a drink, I confront her. I tell her that what I thought she said was rude, and it made me really uncomfortable. Now, if the situation was reversed, even if I didn’t mean it or give two shits, I would most likely have acknowledged the other person’s feelings and apologized and explained the miscommunication if one existed. She does no such thing. “Aw, come ON, we were only JOKING, and besides, that’s not what we said.” And I’m like, “Dude. You were making fun of the shit that I wear, right in front of me. Not cool.” And she persists: “Oh, come ON. Lighten UP. Here, let’s kiss and make up” and then, she grabs my head and slimes the lower half of my face with saliva and lipgloss for about ten seconds. I’m trying to pull away the entire time, I’m completely revolted (hell, even fedora guy walks off—and he’s one of the most perverted people I’ve ever met), and when she finally lets me go I shoot her this look of total disgust and stomp off to the dressing room to clean off my fucking face. I think she actually sexually harassed me. And that, my friends, is a really difficult thing to do.

So I did something I’ve only done once before in my four year career as a slutty independent contractor: I told on her. I talked to the house mom, who was horrified, and fetched the dance manager and made me repeat my story. I felt really weird, doing that. Flash forward to last night, and who do I run into at the back door on our way to sign in for the night? Yeah. I avoid her for as long as possible, thinking she probably got in trouble and she knows it was me, but I guess not, because she goes “sup bitch” and I’m like “you were off your tits last night” and she’s like “yep. Gonna do it again tonight.” Ugh. GROSS. I really wish she would go away. I’m going to see if I can get her fired for doing coke in the bathroom or something.

I manage to avoid her while we’re getting ready, and go to visit my favorite bartender to have a salad and a tasty adult beverage. While sitting at the bar, one of the fixtures is asking me about my academic career. I tell him I didn’t get my MA because I thought it would make me more employable, I simply wanted the knowledge. He had done something similar (finished grad school with like 180 hours), and we have a conversation about how education is so belt-knotchy these days. He says to me, “Consider yourself a particle that enjoys brevity in motion. You’re just bouncing through life.” I find this so awesome I run off to the dressing room to write it down, but end up just sending it in a text message to a new lover, a writer, who laid this one on me in return: “Bouncing slipping sliding bending writhing moaning spinning somersaulting gyrating lubricating motivating inebriating bifurcating licking sucking coming sighing and the bouncing all over again. Sounds about right.” Oh sweet lord in heaven, that’s a luscious thing to read right before going onstage to dance naked in front of a crowd. I am the goddess incarnate, and your souls hereby belong to me. Pay homage or die.

On stage four, I receive a tip from a rather muscley person and we talk about body modifications. He’s nice enough, so I sit down with him and his buddies once my relief arrives. I have a pretty good time laughing with this table, and muscle dude has some interesting things to say about tattoos. He won’t let me dance for him though, so his time is limited. “Look, I’d rather just pay you to sit with me, here’s ten bucks.” Ten bucks? That’s not gonna go very far, I’ve been there for like half an hour. Pretty soon I give up, and he’s cool about it—“I understand, go make your money girl.”

Off I go. I snag a lap belonging to someone who tipped me onstage, and end up giving him his first lapdance ever. I love popping cherries. Then I find Mazlowe (yes, her stage name is literally a reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, because she is that awesome), a burner friend who comes into town a few weekends per month to work at my club. I sit with her and the dude she’s working on, just passing time till the night gets busier. Somehow we’ve kept missing each other when she comes to the club, so I soon discover how awesome it is to work with her—I really like her attitude, jokes, and her positive yet berating disposition. We fuck around with her dude for about fifteen minutes before his buddy shows up. Buddy is taking a while to warm up to the environment, and we’re all talking more, cackling at her jokes. In fact, buddy doesn’t seem to like me at all, so I’m pretty sure my time at this table is also limited, just like the last. Somehow the fact that I went to grad school comes up, and Mazlowe’s dude asks me what my degree is in. I’m in a playful mood, so I go, “guess.” His first guess is “animal husbandry” and we all have a good laugh about that one. I give him a few more guesses before I finally tell him “women’s studies” and then, he goes, I shit you not, he says “that’s retarded.” Now, as I mentioned in the "men's studies" blog, it’s my personal policy to try and discourse with people who have misguided impressions of my field of study, but not this time. I feel like pouring my drink on him. Instead I just walk off without saying anything. The feminist outreach program is closed due to lack of funding.

Then I’m pissed. The club is full but not busy: there are lots of people sitting around drinking, partying, but not buying dances. This is typical for a weekend, but sometimes you can get lucky. Well, turns out one of my good friends happens to be making a rare appearance, so I go up to VIP and mess around with my two friends who are keeping him company. Seriously: he and I are so close that there’s no way I can dance for him anymore. It’d be like giving my uncle a lap dance. But I’ll mess around with Rhiannon, oh yes indeedy I will. She’s fun. We spend a considerable stretch of time trying to leave marks on each other’s asses. My time with these friends recharges my emotional batteries—I was having trouble playing the roles downstairs, so it’s really nice to just be myself with these people I’ve known for years.

He has to leave, so soon I’m on my own again, working the trenches. I’m making laps, not seeing much, when I pass muscley dude. He goes, “You should have stuck around, all of this could have been yours” and shows me about five hundreds in his wallet. WHAT THE FUCK. I say, “But you didn’t want dances, and you gave me ten bucks after about thirty minutes. What was I supposed to think?” and he’s like, “You screwed it up. I would have given you all of this.” Omfg, really? Does he feel so powerless in this place that he needs to taunt me with money? Does it get him off to have girls throwing themselves at him all night in hopes of being paid, and then teasing them with what “they could have had” if they had just gotten it right? Is there a right way to play this guy? I don’t really give a fuck, I’m so incensed, I have no desire to even think about what I “could have done differently.” I go, “whatever” and storm off. On my way back to the dressing room, I pass Mazlowe’s “women’s studies is retarded” asshat, who motions me over to the table. I flip him off and keep walking. Fuck this shit.

I sit in the dressing room. I eat cake. I read the book I brought with me, which happens to have been recently released by that aforementioned lover with the talented texting thumbs. His shit makes me laugh, and it's exactly what I need in that moment. I send him a picture of the book on my boot, thrown over one knee, with lockers in the background, and I tell him how nice it is to have him in my locker. He likes this. I’m on a particularly amusing section, so funny that I’m reading quotes aloud and nobody is getting them, which I find even more amusing and insist upon telling him in another text. I distract myself from this wretched night, and salvage what’s left of my state of emotions, I re-ground myself by indulging in the writing of someone with whom i shared a spectacular shag a few weeks ago. I tell him how nice that is, and regale him with quotes I hear coming out of strippers: just down from a (apparently pointless) stage rotation, one goes “well, that was a waste of lipgloss.” LOL. Whiner girl says, “I might throw up, would that help?” Wow. What an attention whore. But worth relaying nonetheless. Along with quotes, I send him increasingly provocative self portraits holding his book in my stripper gear. Soon they release us from this mirrored cage, and he instructs me to come hard when I get home. I thank him for getting me through the last part of my horrible night and tell him I’ll leave some wet spots on my bed for him. He thanks me and says that my sexiness will inform his dreams deliciously. How refreshing, what a contrast, what a beautiful way to come back to myself after being attacked by lecherous death-eaters all night. Thanks for that, sexy man. I owe you one.

hearts on fire

2010-04-23T12:28:00.001-05:00

I was on fire last night. It was weird, too, because usually my first night back after a vacation is rather clumsy. Generally it’s a shift I have to get out of the way, dip my toe back in the proverbial pond of pretending to like people for money before I actually get my game back. Not this time.

I jerked off before work, my customary pre-shower activity. I’ll let you in on a little trade secret: I save my pussy juices and combine them with my perfume. It’s so awesome to watch guys’ eyes roll back in their head when they smell me. They don’t KNOW they smelled it, but they did. Gotta love pheromones. (Don’t believe me? read this). And I love my new hitachi—thank god I only recently got one, because if I had discovered that thing at a young age I would have developed the female version of what Dan Savage calls the “death grip.” But I guess I should be more worried about carpel tunnel?

But I digress. Last night I was glowing, batteries recharged from visiting the only place on earth that makes me feel whole (i.e. San Francisco), it felt like I had a beam of light (and fog, and eucalyptus, and lube) emanating from my chest. My stage sets were perfect—this happens about once a month—I’ll get up there and something just clicks. I love dancing, and I love it when I don’t have to think about it, and that doesn’t happen very often when I’m alone on a platform in heels with lights and an audience that is scrutinizing my body for flaws. I experience that psychological weightlessness on the dancefloor all the time, pretty much every time I try…but not very often at work. Sometimes, though, sometimes it clicks. And last night it did. Both sets too. That never happens. I mean, I love my music—I make sure I keep a CD up with the DJ of songs he’ll only play for me because I brought them into the club, and I switch it out about every six months—songs with meaning, songs that make me feel powerful and sexy and dirty and fierce. Like I own the place. But just because I love my music doesn’t always spell a spectacular set, where every move is perfectly timed without thinking about it, and I feel effortlessly graceful while also oozing sex. Well, last night was one of those nights.

In addition to feeling like captain badass superslut onstage, everyone I talked to gave me money—and that almost NEVER happens. The night started off with my awesome regular Ken, a customer I actually missed when I was in California. We talk with my friend Rhiannon about hunting (yes, this girl is an archer. How hot is that?), and how she wants to do a photo shoot/reality show in camo body paint and not much else. I tell tales of my trip to Cali. I do four dances, and again, every move is perfect. Lap dancing is a bit different, it’s more about nerve clusters and pressure points than timing, but still, there are some nights that I just feel on. Ken regales me with updates on what his crazy soon-to-be-ex-wife pulled while I was gone, and he and I make plans to pop our Ikea cherries together sometime soon. He’s got a new apartment to furnish, and neither of us has ever been to the Swedish home furnishing monolith. Besides, I hear the meatballs are awesome.

I go onstage. I glide and spin and writhe to Miss Kittin’s “Metalhead.” (Incidentally, this is the track that played when I took my first spill onstage, the event which catalyzed the beginning of this blog, my very first entry. It’s dark and mean and hot as fuck, and thus still on my CD years later). On stage three, I receive a tip from a very nice man named John, he’s clearly taken with me, and moves straight to the top of my priority list for post-stage profit-garnering activities. On my way to stage four, a bar regular I’ve chatted with but never actually done dances for slips a twenty into my g-string. I’m like, “wow. Thanks! What’s that for?” and he goes, “Because Robby [my favorite bartender] says he loves you and I think you’re awesome.” Fucking sweet. I love free money. On four I practically get mauled by an overly intoxicated but very funny good ol’ boy. On five, the female half of a couple literally leaps out of her seat to come and see me. On six, I get to heckle a bachelor party, a favorite pastime of mine. Then I’m off to see John.

Well holy fucking shit, turns out we have something huge in common: debate. I don’t know that I’ve mentioned it, but I was a debater in high school and college. (In “never trust a man with a boat,” the boyfriend I described living with for a summer and residing in a dorm while he worked at a summer camp—that was a debate camp. When I wrote that I intentionally hid the debate detail in an effort to protect my privacy, but this morning I am no longer worried about keeping that a secret). Well, he’s a lawyer, I mention debate, and turns out this guy was the high school debate partner of a very successful college coach who recently passed away. Fucking crazy. I impress him with my debate record, we discuss the differences between Lincoln Douglas and Cross-Examination. We talk about non-monogamous relationships and commitment. Recently divorced, he says that I give him hope. And I am so touched that I send myself text messages from his phone, the only way I can really take notes while actually on the floor.

He asks me if I have any piercings that he can’t see, and I spew the saga that was my hood piercing. The “short” version: pierced once, totally easy, loved it, lost it while messing around with Ruby in the backseat of my ex-fiancé’s WRX while he drove us home to fuck, woke up to an ice storm and no clit jewelry, couldn’t get to a shop for three days to get new hardware, and it had sealed up. Fancied myself a badass (he says, “but you ARE a badass!”) so I got it re-pierced in two places, must have had scar tissue because HOLY SHIT that hurt so much I could barely hold still, and the healing process literally included clawing at the walls of the shower when I cleaned them. Then I found myself working around them when I jerked off, and finally met someone who could consistently get me off with his mouth who said it was in his way, so I took them out. I used to say my clit piercings were neon arrows that said “RIGHT HERE, DUMBASS” but at the point where they’re interfering with pleasure? Gone in half a second and haven’t looked back since. So then we start talking about cunnilingus, and he tells me that the next time I meet a man who does it right, that I should immediately demand he give me lessons by having me practice on his ear, and that I should go lysistrata on his ass (read: withhold blowjobs) until he complies. The lysistrata reference was mine, not his. I fucking love lysistrata.

So, that happened, I made about $80 from him in half an hour and had that fantastic conversation, he leaves and off I go in search of my next victim. It’s about a ten foot journey to a table of three guys, two of which are occupied by some of my favorite bitches, so I figure I’ve got some good odds with the empty lap—or at least a majority vote. I sit on him and quickly earn his trust by saying I won’t try and swindle him into the champagne room. He likes garters and stockings, so I go put some on—fine, twist my arm. I spend the next half hour pretending that I actually want to date him because it seems this is what it takes to gain entry into his wallet. Very interesting contrast to John, who I didn’t have to pretend with at all and who actually gave me sexual advice—I have to lie to his person. But whatever, it’s all in a night’s work, and I definitely have the power of persuasion in my bag of tricks.

Another $80 later, and I’m onstage again. This time it’s Primal Scream’s “Some Velvet Morning” and I fucking rock it out. I feel so hot. Hell, I AM so hot. It’s late after that, and the remainder of the night passes in a blur as I do a dance here, a dance there, the most memorable of which comes from the unlikely couple consisting of a hot (and very fucking randy) Persian chick and her body builder boyfriend. I’m like, “So how did you guys meet?” and she goes, “I like muscles.” Nice. Cute. I dance for them both, she gives me this really amazing kiss, and they promise to come back in tonight.

All in all, a great night. It ran the gamut from conversing with a trusted regular and friend, updating each other on what’s transpired in our lives in the last week; a new potential regular whom I don’t have to pretend with and who adores me for my smarts; an easy mark I could play without even thinking about it; and picking up on the vibe of a hot couple and getting to make out with a pretty girl with an accent. I made about $400, below average but totally acceptable, and I had a blast. I was on fire, all my moves were right, it was easy and fun. I really love my job. Fuck social acceptance and medical benefits, I’ll take my life on the fringe any day.

Men's Studies

2010-04-13T14:42:00.000-05:00

As I may or may not have mentioned, I’m a grad student in a women’s studies program. When I attended my first sex work conference (and subsequently became a stripper), I remember a particularly interesting encounter with another stripper/researcher who warned me to be careful that I not “hide behind the research.” Driven by other accounts of stripper/researchers who had customers say, “oh, you’re just doing this for the research” (Katharine Frank, G-Strings and Sympathy 13), I refuse to hide my researcher status from inquiring customers. So when I mention I’m a grad student in women’s studies, I usually get a response like, “Well sweetie, I’ve been studying women for over 30 years, whaddaya wanna know?” or, “You’re already a woman. Why do you need to study them?” while at first these jokes were annoying, I got used to them—I literally hear versions of these statements several times a week. They might be belittling, but they’re not overly offensive. And besides, it’s really hard to offend me. Well, the other night, someone completed that seemingly insurmountable task. Ahem:

I was on the third stage, twirling around a pole for dollar bills, when I apparently caught the eye of a distinguished looking gentleman with an extremely kind face. He approached me, tipped me, and I told him I’d come “bother him” after I was done with my stage rotation. Temporarily ignoring the advances of a VERY hot couple by stage six, I went and sat down on Steve’s lap instead. (sometimes these decisions can be difficult—when you get tipped by 10 different people, who do you approach first? You make the wrong call, waste 10 minutes talking with someone who doesn’t pan out, and your other leads are either busy with someone else, or have vanished altogether. It can be stressful. Every stripper has her own strategy, and my internal dialogue went as follows: I see this couple in the club almost every Saturday night, but I’d never seen distinguished-looking-steve before. also, couples usually aren’t worth more than a few dances, and I’d already seen steve do at least five with a hot Russian babe while I was sitting with someone at an adjacent table earlier in the evening).

Steve starts asking me about myself: this is a good start. Sometimes guys don’t give a fuck who I am, where I come from, what I do when I’m not dancing for dollars, so it’s nice to be asked. I tell him I recently completed a master’s degree, and he asks me what my major was. I say “women’s studies” and he goes, “UGH.” I say, “What was THAT reaction?” and he rolls his eyes. I press on: “no seriously, you just had a very strong negative reaction to women’s studies. I’m really curious as to where that came from.” And he asks,in a very combative tone, “Is there a MEN'S studies?” (omg. Really?). I go, “Honey, the whole goddamned world is men’s studies. Women’s studies was invented because some people thought an alternate perspective was needed. Besides, the school won’t let us change it to gender studies. Also, we spend most of our time talking about race, class, ethnicity, orientation, disability, and all sorts of other categories that separate people and lead to discrimination. Women’s studies is really a misnomer.” Then he goes, “Well, do you think you deserve special treatment?” I scoff: “No.” He asks, “Do you feel victimized?” “No, and I resist that label whenever possible.”

At this point, I really want to bolt. This is clearly going nowhere profitable. But I think to myself, “Part of the reason you got into this business was to challenge people’s stereotypes about what constitutes a stripper, what constitutes a feminist. If you stomp off, he’s just going to chock you up as a bitchy feminazi, and that won’t do anyone any good, now will it?” and so I remain. And then, after insulting my entire field of study, he proceeds to launch into a truly offensive train of thought:

Steve: “So, do you have a doctor?”

Me: “Yes.”

Steve: “Are they black? White? Male? Female?”

Me: “She’s white.”

Steve: “Would you be opposed to having a black doctor?”

(Sweet baby jesus on a stick. Where the fuck is he going with this?)

Me: “Of course not.”

Steve: “What about if he was over 50?”

Me (ignoring the presumptive "he" in that last statement): “No. And what does that have to do with anything?”

Steve: “Well you know, up until about 30yrs ago they didn’t let blacks into medical school. So any black doctor over the age of 50 was given a free pass, and didn’t have to compete.”

Me: “So what? It’s not like they were automatically given a free pass through all their classes as well. They still had to do the work and get the grades.”

Steve: “I just think there should be an even playing field.”

Me: “But there’s not an even playing field, and there certainly wasn’t one back then. And you owe me a drink for that comment.”

Steve rolls his eyes, but complies. I know I’m not going to get any money out of him, and I feel I need to be compensated in some way for the time I just spent listening to his racist diatribe. I’ve had this affirmative action debate with other rich white men before, and I really can’t stand to hear someone who refuses to acknowledge their privilege rail about how “there should be an even playing field.” Of course you think there SHOULD be an even playing field, you rich white motherfucker, because for YOU, there always HAS BEEN. I have a dear friend who once made the mistake of bringing up a similar argument in my presence: “Well, I’ve not received jobs because they gave it to a black person instead.” I said, “So fucking what? How many jobs do you think you’ve gotten because you’re white? There’s no way to know, because that’s your reality. But people of color encounter hidden prejudices like that every day.”

To be clear, almost nothing pisses me off more than a rich white man talking about how he’s been discriminated against because of his skin color. Cry me a fucking river, asshole. You’ve been given EVERY opportunity in life, and just because our government decided that certain classes of people might need a helping hand doesn’t mean your life is any less cushy as a result. So what if you didn’t get that one job? You make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So what if you have to pay a higher insurance premium to fund the healthcare of someone who doesn’t have a job? You can still afford a giant TV and fiber optic cable content, high speed internet, a gas guzzling truck, and bottled water delivered directly to the door that leads to your climate controlled home. You walk on a treadmill in your living room instead of walking to an hour long bus ride to work every day.

My point is this: privilege is often unacknowledged by those who possess it, and the privileges of whiteness are often as invisible as the category itself. And that, my friends, might be the most important thing I learned in grad school.

never trust a man with a boat

2010-01-21T15:58:00.000-06:00

people with boats can be really fucking shady, yo.

a few nights ago, i met a customer with whom i got along inordinately well. he was irreverent, a total smartass, and he appreciated my brain. i met him at the front bar, where he dropped a $20 on me to "stick around." he keeps telling me that he wishes he'd met me outside of the club, and mentions repeatedly that he wants me to come to his hotel room. this is not out of the ordinary, and it's easy to brush off. after he buys me a drink and we talk for about ten minutes, i take him over to a booth so i can work my magic without his buddies around.

i sit through a song, talking, before deciding i need to make more money--great conversation, but i'm starting to become antsy stripper and let's face it, twenty bucks only goes so far. i stand up, and do a few dances during which i have to tell him repeatedly that "if you don't behave yourself i'm going to start charging you extra." i'm only sortof joking; he really can't keep his hands to himself. i mean, some touching is fine, i actually prefer (most) customers to touch me a little bit--it feels less stiff than them just sitting there with their arms glued to their sides while i basically snuggle with them to a beat. but constantly trying to grope me, and refusing to lean back in his seat not only bugs the CRAP out of me (especially that last part. i need to have control over the situation, and when guys lean forward they gain more physical leverage), but also means he receives an inferior lapdance. i can't get close to him and relax while i'm constantly having to police his hands or push him back in the booth so he doesn't knock me over, try and grab me, or overpower me. after two dances he says, "i think i just want you to sit here, since i can't control myself." fair enough. i tack on another 20 to the mental tally i'll give him when it comes time to get money.

so we sit and talk for about 20 minutes, and after another "i wish i'd met you in a regular bar or something" we get on the subject of hooking up with people one meets in bars, and the strategies, goals, statistics therein. i avoid mentioning my assessment of strip clubs as spaces which try and make patrons feel as though they're in a single's bar, only with all the odds stacked in their favor. i don't think it's a good idea to have a discussion about the game with this person; his bubble seems a bit easier to burst than others'. i often have really great conversations with customers about the nature of strip clubs, and they still pay me money. but this one seems like he needs to believe that i would be behaving exactly the same way if he wasn't paying me. fine, i can play along, god knows i've done it before. and then he tells me this story:

a number of years ago he went out to a bar with a buddy, the kind of guy who can regularly pick up two women at once. true to form, his buddy picks up two women, and off they go to buddy's boat. they're expecting a third friend, and suddenly it dawns on my guy that this other friend is much more attractive than him, and thus will undoubtedly usurp his ability to mack on this girl. in an effort to secure any chance he might have of getting laid, he makes his buddy pull the boat out, and eventually they have to break the no-wake rule because the 3rd friend shows up just in time and chases them down the pier. heh.

so they get out to the bay or wherever, buddy goes downstairs to bang his girl, and my guy is up top chatting with the other chick. they're getting along just fine, but he can tell it's just not going to happen, she's not interested, whatever. no big deal, they're just hanging out. pretty soon buddy emerges from down below, and pulls my guy aside to ask how it's going. my guy says, "i don't think anything is going to happen, but it's cool, we're just talking." and then his buddy proceeds to grab this girl by the arm and haul her to a different part of the boat, where he tells her off. "what the fuck did you think you were coming out here for?" "do you know how much it costs to fill up this tank?" he's yelling at her, he's poking her in the chest. all the while my guy is trying to wave him off, because he really doesn't think it's a big deal. wow. "that's fucked up," i say, and he agrees.

here's the punchline: after being told off and guilt tripped for not putting out, for not filling her function as a token warm wet hole, the girl returns to my guy, and snuggles up to him. and then he fucked her.

now i know why he prefaced the story by saying he'd only confessed this to a small handful of people. i'm in shock. i manage to convey how much i appreciate him telling me the story, and he talks about how guilty he's felt about the incident ever since that night. while i'm horrified at the tale, i really am grateful he told me--it's not every day you get to hear stories like that from a virtual stranger, at least not in person (want to read anonymous confessions on the internet? check out http://postsecret.blogspot.com/). but that's one of the things i love about being a stripper--it's the manifestation of my lifelong desire to be a fly on the wall of the men's locker room.

a long time ago, i lived with a boyfriend for a summer, who had to spend a good chunk of his time working at a certain camp for teenagers. his duties included some dorm admin stuff, so he had a room there, and i stayed with him. at night, i would stalk the halls on the boy's floor after they were confined to their rooms, just to see if i could overhear something interesting. i never did. i've always wanted to know how boys talk to each other when girls aren't around, and as a stripper, i believe i get an approximation of that. it works like this: even though they are most certainly aware of our presence as token T&A, they don't care what we think because we're just strippers. also, they never have to see us again, and so it's a relatively risk-free environment. therefore, they don't censor themselves a whole lot around us (and lemme tell ya, it's a rough world out there in the maniverse if some of the stuff i see and hear on a regular basis is actually censored). what's more, i hear all sorts of interesting tidbits that don't have to do with chauvinist underpinnings: i've had people confess all sorts of weird stuff, tell me intimate details of their relationships, talk to me about kinks that i'm sure they don't share with their male friends (like, say, how they want me to fuck them in the ass). often times, the talking i do feels like a therapy session. i'm no stranger to this, and i quite enjoy it--especially when i'm getting paid well.

i know i've got to be onstage in a bit, so we finish our chat and rejoin his friend at the bar for more drinks. he makes another couple comments indicating he wished he had a chance to try his game on me in a "real" bar, and how i should TOTALLY come to his hotel room. i make a joke about him not being able to afford it, to which he replies, "well, i don't want to PAY you." i go, "well that's too bad, because i have to be onstage soon and you owe me sixty bucks." the expression on his face reads as, "?!" and i truly believe he was actually surprised that he owed me money for what had just transpired. "i owe you SIXTY BUCKS?! for WHAT?!" and i'm like, "well, we did two dances, and then you told me you just wanted me to sit there, which i did, naked, for over 20 minutes, and i think i deserve another $20 for that." "but i just gave you twenty bucks!" "yes, and thank you, but that was an hour ago and i considered it a tip." he doesn't budge. i can see him shutting down, getting the kind of attitude i am sometimes on the receiving end of when it comes time to talk about money--but usually that's not until the end of the night when customers are more inebriated and have grown weary of hemorrhaging cash. you can see it in their faces: their bubble bursts, and they just turn on you. they can't deal with acknowledging that they just paid you to be nice to them, so all of a sudden you're a golddigging bitch and they're "not paying anyone else any more fucking money."

over the course of about three seconds, he turns into a pouty child who's determined to get his way. he folds his arms and holds firm in his stance that he's not going to pay me. he says, "how big are the bouncers? i wouldn't mind fighting my way out of here." he keeps bringing up the twenty bucks he handed me--AS IF that's some colossal sum of money. i say, "yes, and thank you for the tip, but that doesn't cover services rendered." he clearly has no idea that i'm AT WORK. "but i thought you liked me." "yes, and i did have a great time with you, but this is my job." his friend, thank god, is no stranger to the strip club game and pulls me aside, apologetic, and gives me all the money in his wallet--forty bucks. "i'm really sorry, he doesn't understand that this is work for you." oh well. i thank him, cut my losses, go on stage, and proceed to forget about it.

the moral to the story: never trust a man with a boat. they'll use their ability to contain you as means to control you. and they have shady friends.

"i got caught being a real person."

2009-12-27T13:11:00.005-06:00

so i'm sitting at the library bar with ruby, having a bite to eat and a drink at the beginning of our shift. this is customary behavior for my friends and me--it's nice to take a moment to transition out of "real person" mode and into our stripper personae. at this point, we've undergone most of our transition already--we've showered, driven to work, fixed our hair and makeup, donned our costumes--but beyond those physical transformations, there are psychological steps to be taken, and sitting at the bar for a while can help ease that process. on this particular evening we're talking about our tendencies within romantic relationships: are we pursuers or pursuees? what aspects of those roles are turn-ons or turn-offs? what makes us lose interest quickly, what keeps us coming back for more?

suddenly, a (somewhat former) regular customer of mine, jim, walks up. i stopped sitting with him a while ago because he got too pushy, and it just stopped being worth the money he paid me. he interrupts our conversation about boyfriends to blurt out, "haven't seen you in a while, how are you and your boyfriend doing?" sigh. we've been through this before, and for some reason i'm not feeling very open to having this discussion, again--most likely due to the nature of the conversation he's interrupted. "we broke up four months ago, jim, and that's the first thing you said to me the last time i saw you, and i'd really appreciate it if you'd stop asking me about that." he goes, "well okay fine, i'll go away." i say, "you don't have to go away, i just don't want to talk about my ex boyfriend anymore. i'm trying really hard to get over it, and having you ask me about it doesn't help."

either he's drunk, or he's just not getting the hint, or both, because he presses me further--"well, what happened?" ugh. in what universe is this appropriate small talk? i snap at him, "look, i don't really want to talk about it. it was really awful, and it'd be great if i didn't have to explain that to you every time i saw you." (seriously, this is the first thing he's said to me, every time he's seen me, in the last several months. either it's the first thing he can think of to talk to me about, or he doesn't remember previous conversations. either way, it's got to stop, because i wasn't lying when i said it was awful, and i REALLY don't to be reminded of my newly-acquired emotional baggage while i'm trying to undergo a smooth transition into stripper mode). dejected, he sulks off. i don't try and stop him. i turn to ruby and say, "oops. i got caught being a real person. my bad."

the next time i see jim, a month later, he asks me the same thing. he just doesn't remember previous conversations. i guess he's just a drunk, and i'm going to have to keep that in mind while pretending to not be a real person around him in the future. i suppose that's what i deserve for thinking i had a candid enough relationship with a regular to talk about aspects of my "real" life.

suck it up

2009-12-16T02:37:00.010-06:00

it's not like i hate obese people--this is texas, hating fat people would be exhausting. hell, i don't even judge their inability to control their eating--this is america. our portions our huge, our lifestyles is sedintary, and with the exception of major (coastal) cities, our street food is drive-thru, empty-calorie-and-saturated-fat-laden, and completely delicious "fast food." in NYC, at least you can grab a gyro. in SF, a crepe (ok, neither of those are super awesome for you, but still. they're not a double quarter pounder with cheese, bacon and mayo, large fries, and a large high fructose corn syrup and caffeine injection).

my point is: this is texas, there are TONS of overweight people (the majority...no doubt), and plenty of obese people. i dance for the former ALL the time, and the latter occasionally.

it's hard to dance for obese people, logistically speaking. there's just not much lap space: because their bellies are so big, it resides atop most of the thigh real estate. there's just not enough room between their waists and their knees on which i can sit and gyrate properly, and so it's more of a physical challenge to do something erotic on top of them. they're so round, i have to lean over them in a really awkward way. moreover, when i stand up, turn around, and bend over, my ass just bumps into their enormous bellies. is that sexy to them, having a hot piece of ass resting on top of their gut? because i'd have to stand 3ft away to avoid it (but hey--at least i'd be legal!).

inversely, dancing for extremely skinny people is difficult in a different way. for example, i have a customer who uses a wheelchair on whose legs i'm afraid to put almost any weight. his lap is bony and frail, and although he can't feel anything on it, i'm afraid of injuring him. women are often more difficult too--their knees are knobbier. skinny is a different set of challenges. the point is, dancing for overly fat or overly skinny people is part of my job.

that being said, i don't mind dancing for obese people so much. so it's more of a challenge--big deal. there are moments, however, which are less savory than others. ahem:

last week was great, above average income for five nights in a row. i should have figured that would come to an end eventually. so, it's midnight, and i've been at work for four hours. i'm not drinking because i'm on antibiotics, and i feel slightly off my game. i've done one dance with the little round fish counter manager from whole foods with whom i talk liberal politics. when i dance for him, he always says, "i'm the luckiest man in the world right now!" but he's only good for one, and other than being delightful, that's about it. i do another dance, for someone who works with MIT researching social network data--we had a very interesting discussion about the politics of knowledge production and the changes in journalism with blogging (he recommends i read a book called "six degrees").

so despite pleasant company, i'm not having a good night. then the nerdy guys (a little one and a obese one) from last week reappear, minus the randy massage therapist gf. this is too bad, because i really enjoyed dancing for her--it was her 2nd ever trip to a strip club, and she was really enthusiastic. the little nerdy guy (the girl's bf) buys the fat one a dance. i cringe, but agree, as i've only made $40. i remember last week, when i danced for him once, and recall some awkward convulsing on his part. i remember him telling me how he saw his first pair of real live breasts in a strip club, how his first kiss was in a strip club, and i become fairly certain he's never been laid. the little one says, "well i'd like to get a dance, but i have a gf, so i'll buy him one instead", and i say "that's what we're here for. we're like gfs who you don't have to call in the morning." and the fat one indicates that he wouldn't necessarily MIND having to call me in the morning, and then i know. he's as desperate as i suspect, and this is real, human contact for him, not just some party-time service he's indulging in.

so i dance. he smells bad, the kind of smell often carried by the obese, because they can't reach everywhere to wash properly; later, when i mention this in a post-work gchat with a massage therapist friend, he goes "yeah. the folds get rank." (i happened to be snacking at the time, but the phrase "rank folds" made me set down the dried mangoes). anyhoo, he is polite and keeps his hands to himself, he has kind eyes and a quick smile, but oh my god he smells like piss.

and every time my knee so much as brushes his cock, it twitches violently, and he gives off a tremendous gasp, often punctuated with an "UNH." his cock twitches so hard that i'm afraid i'm going to accidentally make him come.

the thing is, it's really hard to get close enough to him to do a decent dance without touching his cock. he's well over 300lbs, so see the above about "not much lap real estate." what's more, he has that under-the-navel pooch, which basically ends in his groin, so it makes everything protrude even more. he's basically a big round belly with a poor, neglected dick at the bottom. and he's really sensitive, so every 30 seconds i get treated to a pre-orgasmic spasm as a reminder that yes, he is indeed enjoying this.

i give him the dance his friend paid for, and i leave immediately. as i'm dressing, he says another girl is coming over, but that i should come back later. so i make a few laps around the club, experience no increase in funds, and i happen to walk past the nerdy table again. he seems eager. i think, "what's another 3.5 minutes of torture for $20? this is my job, right?" so i dance again. he gets three in a row. at the end of each song, i feel relieved--not only do i have like three moves i can actually perform on someone this big, which gets boring, but the pre-orgasmic cock twitching is REALLY grossing me out--but at the end of each song, he says, "one more," and i cringe.

the phrase, "lie back and think of england" comes to mind. or rather, "zone out and think of my upcoming san francisco vacation."

sometimes $20 just isn't enough. (hell, sometimes $1800 isn't enough--i recently overheard our resident jessica rabbit bitching in the dressing room about having to endure three hours of being slobbered on, for only $1800. it's all relative, i guess). that $80 i made dancing for him doubled what i took home that night. suck it up. part of our job is fulfilling the role of a pseudo-sexual surrogate. we provide physical intimacy for people who lack it. (the next night i danced for a regular customer whose wife hasn't fucked him in 6 years. he's too good to cheat, and too sweet to leave his family, so he comes to strip clubs. i see confirmation of this "outlet valve" theory every day). i often feel compassionate for sex-starved customers, and am happy to provide this simple touching, happy to fulfill that basic human need, happy to inspire erections, happy to graze them with my knee and see ecstasy on the faces of strangers--for a price of course. but not this time, not him. he was repulsive, and i was terrified i was going to make him come. i pitied his lack of self control--not the overeating, but the oversensitivity.

so i choked back my gags, mentally tallied my budget while i did my job, and got out of there ASAP. was it worth it? maybe. probably, since he didn't actually come.

but alas, as a hair technician i visited recently said when i asked her about what it's like to wax scrotum, "it all looks green at the end of the day."

thank you, drunk bitch

2009-11-20T02:29:00.008-06:00

so i'm driving home through the rain, and i realize i can't let this one slide. that drunk bitch just done brought me out of blogging hiatus. year long writer's block? gone. thank you, drunk bitch.

last night, i saw management politely pile her into a cab. she slobberingly gets into the front seat. everyone waves.

tonight, she stumbles into the dressing room, yelling, "KATIE! I WANNA GO HOME!"

(who's katie? i don't know. where's home? i don't care).

the house mom smiles as this girl is LAYING on the FLOOR pulling her sweatpants onto her flabby hips. (yes, i just made a body-type judgment. so sue me. this chick doesn't work out, she drinks too much, and nobody seems to care. why do i care? because she doesn't take pride in herself, her figure, or anything. she's not one of those full-figured girls, she's fat. and has a really abrasive (and drunken) personality--and for some reason, she still makes money. i know plenty of big girls who are perfectly awesome and make bank, but as far as i can tell, this chick gets drunk for a living).

a waitress stops by to croon, "oh you're so cute i love you!" as this chick is literally slobbering on the dressing room floor. seriously people. our club is owned by a woman, we have scholarships for students, we were voted best club in the nation last year, and we were on two (2!) cable news networks last month. (ahem: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#33501148). we are BETTER THAN THIS.

so here i am, seething while i throw on my jeans, hating myself for the way i played my shift, since i had clearly spent too much time showing off my brain when i obviously could have made more money doing fruity shots (or whatever the hell this cunt is on) and gaffawing for a living.

i had a bad night. not terrible, i met some awesome people (i learned how gas prices are estimated and fixed! i waxed philosophical with san franciscans!), but, sadly, such things do not (always) pay the bills. so i've been wasting my time hanging out with interesting people who i should have been playing. so what. i got caught up in myself and forgot that my self is for sale.

there are nights when i simply refuse to dumb myself down for money. not like her. not like this. WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS.

but everyone overlooks it, stuffs her into yet another cab (or goes and finds katie, who she's STILL slurringly yelling for), and looks the other way. why. WHY?!

i don't understand what she has going for herself, other than single-handedly helping our liquor sale stats. she makes the rest of us look terrible (or, depending on how you look at it, she makes the rest of us look good in comparison). she personifies EVERYTHING about the stripper stereotype that i have made it my mission in life to overcome. i storm out of the club, steam coming from my ears.

the only thing i can know for sure is that i am better than that. the next night, as i sit talking with a new customer, he plunks down $100 on the table and says, "i don't want you to dance, i'm having such a great time conversing that i want to pay you" and vindication is mine.

for all you demanding fuckers

2009-03-12T11:31:00.003-05:00

i know i haven't posted in a while, and while encouragement to rectify that situation has ranged from polite and encouraging to all-out-STFU-whiny, i'm going to address it.

you want to know why i haven't been posting? curious as to what the hell i've been doing? well, here's my prospectus, bitches. it's a dry, tightly packed 10-page version of my thesis. it had to include a literature review AND works cited in those ten pages, so it's not as much argumentation as anyone would have liked--but hey, they don't just give these stupid grad degrees to just anyone, they make you jump through all manner and sort of flaming hoop beforehand. squishing a 40-page argument into 10 pages with a bunch of other requirements isn't easy. and i only got it down to 40 pages after cutting out 75% of my argumentation. so there.

but seriously people, quit asking me for more blogs and bear with me: i've got a pre-defense draft of the thesis due on april 10th, and post-defense final version due on may 10th. don't expect a damn thing until then--except maybe the first chapter, which i'll post here if, like, you really want me to.

so, i'm sorry, and yes, as many of you have so unceremoniously pointed out, i DO have stories to share--but not the time to type them up into the format you're used to. so STFU. seriously. and read this instead of bitching at me!

Stripping Subjectivity: The Multiply-Situated Self, “Covert Mimesis,” and Reinscription/Resistance through Subversion

Sex work is major point of contention within feminist discourse, eliciting discussion often polarized along lines of dis/empowerment: is sex work empowering or disempowering, feminist or unfeminist? Exemplified by feminist conferences of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the “sex wars” divided feminists on this issue: “anti-pornography” feminists denounced objectification as a tool of patriarchal oppression, while sex-positive feminists stressed possible empowerment within objectification and therefore within sex work itself. Anti-sex-work feminists and other researchers from outside the sex industry often focus on what they describe as sex workers’ coping mechanisms to mitigate the objectifying and degrading nature of their work, thereby entrenching an either/or mindset when addressing issues of empowerment, and ignoring descriptions of complex, contradictory, and liminal experience which continually emerge from sex worker narratives (Lerum 8). In this thesis, I draw on my own experience to argue that strippers’ reflexive engagement with roles/personae results in a conscious and dynamic multiply-situated self that becomes a tool of “covert mimesis,” facilitating transcendence of objectification through excessive performance, and enabling personal privacy and therefore empowerment in a phallocentric context by allowing strippers control over their expressed selves.

The strip club context is compelling because it provides a semi-public interactive sphere in which to participate and/or observe core issues of objectification and degradation; enacting a magnified representation of gender/power scripts (Perrucci, “Transformative Power” 336), “some young researchers find strip clubs the perfect laboratory to literally work through these concerns using their own bodies” (Frank 507). Autoethnography is crucial for conveying strippers’ liminal experience of objectification and dis/empowerment: participant observation allows reflexive, contextual engagement with subjective impacts of stripping on identity, shuns the myth of “objectivity,” and endeavors to communicate personal, partial truths (Abu-Lughod 15). My interrogation of strippers’ subjectivities quickly encountered pervasive cultural binaries: the Cartesian mind/body split informs denouncements that strippers are “reduced to objects,” and the self/other divide necessitates a unitary and stable “self,” thus delegitimizing the dynamic multiply-situated subjectivity often resulting from sex work. Strippers’ narratives force reconsideration of cultural dualisms by presenting embodied theories that confound either/or thought structures; liminal experiences of dis/empowerment and multiplicity pervade sex worker discourse, challenging both stigma and stereotype.

Strip clubs are inherently phallocentric environments (Egan, “Fantasy Girl” 111) requiring direct interaction with customers and thus a great deal of emotional labor (Bruckert 86). A successful stripper maintains a believable performance of a role/persona, indulging clients’ whims: in catering to customers’ demands by concealing “undesirable” facets of their subjectivities, strippers alter their expressed selves for profit. A context that demands female capitulation to male desires seems entirely phallocentric, yet many aspects of the strip club context defy distinct categorizations (Perrucci, “Transformative Power” 333). I will argue that feminist stripper ethnographies indicate potential liberation through multiplicity, via roles/personae performance. Drawing on my own experience, I will demonstrate how reflexive engagement with the environment yields a “layered account” of how roles of stripper and researcher affect one’s subjectivity; multiplicity becomes a source of strength, and “the self produced in this text is emergent from the interaction of these roles” (Ronai 105).

Acceptance of multiplicity allows roles/personae to become tools of what Danielle Egan calls “covert mimesis” : strippers excessively perform versions of femininity, knowingly entrenching phallocentric forms yet utilizing their object status in covert resistance (“Fantasy Girl” 111). This performance is covertly mimetic because a dancer mimes aspects of traditional femininity, but only she understands how they differ from her self-image. Covert resistance is largely invisible because her inner self is unimportant to customers: she mirrors the self they desire, allowing her to subvert gender norms while seemingly entrenching them. Building on Egan’s term, I argue that covert mimesis fosters movement between selves (jettisoning the polarized “true” and “faked” self), performances of femininity which acquire new power when seen through a lens of excess and performance (Johnson, “Pole Work” 150). In this sense, roles and masks can be liberating even while they seem unfeminist on the surface (Perrucci, “Persona and Self” 39): Ironically, the strip club (a homogenized and repressive environment) can supply more freedom of sexual expression than its participants may enjoy in everyday life (Perrucci, “Transformative Power” 324).
My thesis will consist of three parts. The first chapter traces the history and content of the feminist sex wars, arguing that the resulting polarization within feminist discourse is due to focus on dis/empowerment, and fuels feminist sex worker narratives. I analyze positionality within feminist stripper literature, emphasizing reflexivity’s crucial role in conveying subjective realities of stripping, and describe how polarizations fueled my entry into the industry. The second chapter unpacks those subjective realities of stripping, focusing on emotional labor, the use of roles/personae and their development into a multiply-situated identity. The third chapter explains how multiplicity is a tool of covert mimesis, necessitating conscious acknowledgment of and movement between selves. Finally, I show how conscious, dynamic multiplicity and resulting covert mimesis fosters privacy and personal empowerment, while enabling increased freedom of sexual expression.

Literature Review

The sex wars represented anti-pornography feminists’ critique and attempts to silence voices of empowerment within sex work, thus provoking an onslaught of feminist sex worker narratives. Steph Weene’s “Venus” represents a basic articulation of multiplicity and possible empowerment within the club’s phallocentric environment. Writing at the height of the sex wars, Weene refutes cultural disavowal and feminist criticism of her willful self-objectification with analysis of her gendered performance of beauty and eroticism that avoids reduction to stereotypes. Originally, Weene’s stripper personae led to self-alienation by commodifying her sexuality; resisting multiplicity is a tendency imposed by the mind/body split, which strippers must overcome before unproblematically engaging in covert mimesis. Thus, she names her reclamation of pride and power “feminissima” (37), essentially a personalized description of covert mimesis and an early description of agency within stripping. Weene’s theory serves as an excellent example of proactive mimetic resistance, and provides a doorway for deeper exploration of multiplicity and privacy in relation to empowerment.

Unfortunately, post-sex wars quantitative researchers and anti-sex work feminists often ignore sex worker narratives of liminality within dis/empowerment. Chris Bruckert’s book Taking It Off, Putting It On: Women in the Strip Trade challenges academic silencing of sex workers by placing embodied experience of hidden transcripts and passive resistance at the center of discourse, and integrating others’ narratives into an intersubjective, cohesive project. Through passive resistance, strippers are in a unique position to invert/manipulate oppressive scripts, forming a hidden transcript that could impact mainstream discourse. While Bruckert’s work supports multiplicity by integrating various narratives, it also upholds an arbitrary distinction between “true” and “faked” persona, thus entrenching the myth of a singular, fixed self: engaging in emotional labor, strippers are “alienated” from their “social selves” (88), though emotional labor is compulsory it “need not touch her self” (95). Expanding upon Bruckert’s work, I argue that strippers’ multiply-situated selves enable covert mimesis (which Bruckert links to transcendence of the self without internalizing repression), and, more importantly, conscious shifts between selves prevents self-alienation when engaging in covert mimesis. These conscious shifts indicate strippers’ proactive and agentive assertion of positively-oriented subjectivities within the sex work context, challenging anti-sex-work feminist claims that strippers are necessarily degraded or victimized by objectification.

The phallocentric strip club context threatens strippers’ self-esteem, thereby making maintenance of roles/personae and covert mimesis essential to a strong sense of self. Danielle Egan’s book Dancing for Dollars and Paying for Love: The Relationships Between Exotic Dancers and Their Regulars sketches liminal experiences of strippers and customers in relation to the complex power structure within strip clubs, where “white, heteronormative masculinity operates unproblematically and is reiterated for profit” (39). Strippers’ performance of “object” elicits a fluid sense of subjectivity, a challenge to embrace “both/and” (145) and highly personalized mimetic strategies of resistance. Egan, like Bruckert, appears to consider the alteration of mainstream discourse as the main goal of resistance; thus, my work will demonstrate that empowerment through subjective theory and privacy are more immediate goals than significant shifts in mainstream discourse. While overt resistance is “anything but futile” (146), subversion on a covert, personalized level can yield just as much personal empowerment but is rarely noticed by scholars of resistance (Paules 181-2).

Movement between selves via engagement of roles/personae is essential to empowerment through covert mimesis and stripping. Merri Lisa Johnson’s article, “Pole Work: Autoethnography of a Strip Club,” identifies the mind/body split as necessitating embodied movement between “many versions of female sexuality” (149). In describing her feminist subjectivity of stripper/researcher, Johnson finds the strip club a space to “wholly be” (151) by utilizing embodied experience to continue feminist theory’s “assault” on dominant discourse and conceptual roles (156). Articulating a lack of “literally embodied activisms” (151), Johnson presents the analogy of “pole work” as an embodied straddling of dualisms, facilitating reclamation of selfhood through movement between hyphenated dichotomies like “stripper-scholar” (156). I extend Johnson’s theory by integrating her binary-subverting “pole work” into other theories of excess and mimesis, showing how a multiply-situated, self-authored subjectivity can positively impact strippers’ feelings of privacy and therefore empowerment.

Engagement of roles/personae results in multiplicity, but conscious deployment of multiplicity is as crucial to empowerment as the roles/personae themselves. Alissa Perrucci emphasizes the importance of acknowledged multiplicity to strippers’ identities in her article, “The Relationship Between Persona and Self in Exotic Dancers’ Experience of Privacy,” arguing that by accepting (as opposed to resisting) the conscious engagement of personae, strippers challenge the myth of a stable/fixed subjectivity, thereby preventing internalization of stigma and alienation from “true” self (38). Multiple subjects allow “authorship of self” (39) within a role without being reduced to stereotypes, permitting feelings of individuality, agency, and privacy within a phallocentric environment. Expanding upon “authorship of self” to include covert mimesis, I extend Perrucci’s privacy argument by adding Johnson’s emphasis on liminality. I will argue that movement between personae offers a more dynamic example of multiplicity than an arbitrary distinction placed between “true” self and “faked” personae. Moreover, conscious acknowledgement of role/persona engagement, as exemplified by Weene and Johnson, demonstrates strippers’ subject
ive agency and makes possible personal privacy and empowerment within sex work.

Strippers engage multiple personae by having the ability to choose when to reveal or conceal certain aspects of their selves; agency within multiplicity enables personal privacy, providing inroads towards liberation within sex work. Identifying strip clubs as spaces where strippers and customers alike can enact multiple gender roles of their choosing, Perrucci’s “The Transformative Power of Sex Work” emphasizes the ability to conceal and reveal information within interactions as crucial to preserving a sense of privacy, which Perrucci deems central to the formulation of a healthy self-image and therefore empowerment within sex work. The club space therefore becomes a site of potential transformation of sexual and gendered scripts, where men and women can subvert gender norms while seeming to entrench them (i.e. covert mimesis), ideally by engaging in a mutually satisfying interaction that furthers social movement towards increased sexual freedom. Though Perrucci connects a multiply-situated self to feelings of privacy and therefore empowerment, her article entrenches a mutually-exclusive relationship between objectification and empowerment via pervasive juxtaposition. By incorporating binary-imploding theories like Johnson’s “pole work,” I transcend Perrucci’s either/or thought paradigm by emphasizing the possibility of empowerment within objectification, and vice versa.

Methodology

Shortly before I began official research into strippers’ subjectivities I was compelled to seek embodied knowledge on the subject, persuaded both by a perceived rift between literature written by sex workers and that written about them, and by an intense desire for insider knowledge. And so I began working as a stripper, intent upon interrogating how my feminist subjectivity interacted with the club environment. The methodology I employ here results from viewing my experiences through the lens of others’ auto-ethnographic, subjectively-informed theories: I use my body as a primary site of knowledge production, but articulate my experience via theories of my feminist/stripper/researcher predecessors. The product combines various facets of feminist auto-/ethnographic accounts of strippers’ subjective experience into a cohesive argument that subverts binaric paradigms (e.g. mind/body, self/other, subject/object, dis/empowerment) and provides space for resistance and empowerment within a phallocentric context.

Works Cited

Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Can There Be A Feminist Ethnography?” Women & Performance 5.1 (1991): 7-27.

Bruckert, Chris. Taking It Off, Putting It On: Women in the Strip Trade. Toronto: Women’s Press, 2002.

Chapkis, Wendy. Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Egan, R. Danielle. Dancing for Dollars and Paying for Love: The Relationships Between Exotic Dancers and Their Regulars. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

---. “I’ll be Your Fantasy Girl, If You’ll be My Money Man: Mapping Desire, Fantasy and Power in Two Exotic Dance Clubs.” Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society 8.1 (2003): 109-20.

Frank, Katherine. “Thinking Critically about Strip Club Research.” Sexualities 10.4 (2007):501-17.

Hunter, Nan D. “Contextualizing the Sexuality Debates: A Chronology.” Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture. Eds. Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter. New York: Routeledge, 1995. 16-29.

Johnson, Merri Lisa. “Pole Work: Autoethnography of a Strip Club.” Sex Work & Sex Workers: Sexuality and Culture. Eds. Barry M. Dank, Roberto Refinetti, Vol 2. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1999. 149-57.

Leigh, Carol, aka Scarlot Harlot. “Inventing Sex Work.” Whores and Other Feminists, ed. Jill Nagle. New York: Routledge, 1997. 223-31.

Lerum, Kari. “Twelve-Step Feminism Makes Sex Workers Sick: How the State and the Recovery Movement Turn Radical Women into ‘Useless Citizens.’” Sex Work and Sex Workers: Sexuality and Culture. Eds. Barry M. Dank and Roberto Refinetti, Vol 2. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. 7-36.

Paules, Greta Foff. Dishing It Out: Power and Resistance among Waitresses in a New Jersey Restaurant. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991.

Perrucci, Alissa C. “The Relationship Between Persona and Self in Exotic Dancers’ Experience of Privacy.” Unusual Occupations 11.1 (2000): 35-53.

---. “The Transformative Power of Sex Work.” Humanity and Society 24.2 (2000): 323-37.

Ronai, Carol Rambo. “The Reflexive Self through Narrative: A Night in the Life of an Exotic Dancer/Researcher.” Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived Experience. Eds. Carolyn Ellis and Michael G. Flaherty. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992. 102-24.

Weene, Steph. “Venus.” Heresies 3.4 (1981): 36-8.

breaking my record

2009-01-14T11:28:00.003-06:00

back when i first started stripping, summer '06, my record earnings for a single shift was around $1000. then, one night, i broke my record. that's a long and horrible story, but it's time to tell it.

it was early in an evening shift and i was doing my first stage rotation. close to the end of my set, a waitress approached me and informed me someone had bought me off stage. this is a little strange, since you can't buy someone off stage once she's already up there, and also because this wasn't someone i knew. he just saw me and said, "that one." so i put my clothes on and teeter on over to his table, where one of the russians had already sat down and started talking to him, and for some reason he didn't inform her he was waiting on someone. whatever. i patiently wait out the russian girl, and start talking to this guy. i was taking antibiotics for some pussy imbalance or another, and not drinking that week. so he took the shot, and starts inquiring about private rooms. he's a traveler, and at that time we didn't have a one-night VIP membership option, so off to the champagne room we go. we negotiate $400/hr compensation for me, but it wasn't much of a negotiation because his answer to every question was "whatever you want." great.

we get our champagne, which should get me off stage for the entire night, but it doesn't work out that way. the club kept calling me up onto the stage rotation, TWO MORE times to be precise. best i can figure, they'd decided they could milk this guy for more cash because they knew he was an out-of-towner and unfamiliar with our rules. again, i'm not drinking, so every time he has to buy the $75 premium shot to get me off the rotation, he takes the shot. so there he is, having had 3 shots of patron platinum and gods know how many glasses of champagne, and there's little sober me, politely pretending to take sips off a single glass of bubbly. he gets wasted, and we're on completely different wavelengths. i start having trouble keeping a conversation going, there's just no chemistry at all. every time i got up to use the restroom, i'd come back and he'd be passing out.

during the course of our interactions, i'm diligently adhering to the stripper code of ambiguity: make him think he has a chance to go home with me, but be really vague and never give him a direct yes or no response. this is absolutely key, especially with the traveling business guys, since they'd much rather i come finish them off in their hotel rooms, rather than having to rely on the ample masturbatory fodder they recently purchased. they have to think they have a chance.

so we get towards the end of the 4th hour, the club is getting ready to close, and he owes me $1600. he asks me what i want, and i say $2000, because i knew he was paying with a card, and after i turn in the funny money to the club, i walk with $1600. this is a fairly common maneuver, though we're forbidden from discussing the conversion rate with customers. he agrees to $2000, my stomach does a little flip as i feel a wave of victory sweeping up my spine. we order the funny money from the waitress, and she brings a form he needs to sign to match the signature on his driver's license. well, this guy is so wasted he can't even match his own fucking signature. it ended up taking him five tries. five times, he'd sign, she'd take it away and come back saying the manager said it didn't match well enough. the manager eventually came to the table to check out the situation, at which point i'm embarrassed that this guy is so drunk, and trying to smooth things over as he is becoming increasingly agitated with each failed attempt at signing his own fucking name.

we finally get this "money", which is not only the biggest stack i've ever seen, but also a significant record-shattering bounty. i'm giddy, but also nervous. this guy isn't giving me the cash, he's trying to get a straight answer out of me on whether or not i'm coming back to his room, i'm giving him the run around, and even in his drunken stupor, he knows it. that's when he turns on me. he breaks me off a paper-clipped bundle amounting to 1/4 of what i'm owed, goes, "you're a fucking bitch. you can have the rest when you come to my hotel room" and gets up to leave. pulse racing, i frantically attempt to remain calm while gently pressuring him to give me what i'm owed. i play all the cards: "you can't spend that anywhere else," to which he replies, "i'll just have to come back tomorrow then." "but i sat with you for four hours. i could have made more than this on the floor, and i thought we had a good time" and he goes, "i don't give a shit."

well, i'd heard tell of girls sending the managers out the door to chase/shake down customers, and knew this service was always available should it be required. i hastily follow this guy to the front door, and sick my boys on him. i informed them of the ultimatum he'd given me, which only enraged them further. unfortunately i can't leave the club (and certainly not out the front door) in my stripper gear, so i didn't get to see what happened, but my buddy charlie was waiting to pick me up and take me to a party, and saw the whole thing. they surrounded him, insistent and angry, he threatened to call the cops and my favorite manager goes, "oh yeah? and are you going to tell them that you propositioned her for the rest of the money?" and that's when he forked it over.

they file back inside the now flourescent-lit club, and hand me this previously-unimaginable sum of cash. then the head manager starts in on me, accusing me of overcharging him (we're only supposed to charge $400/hr, but i know for a fact some girls charge more and the club doesn't care, and they SHOULDN'T, because i just made them hundreds off the funny money conversion). i explain my position (we negotiated 400/hr, he was a handful, he asked me what i wanted, so i overestimated, thinking we'd negotiate it down a bit, but instead he just turned into an asshole). this doesn't matter one bit to the manager, who threatens me within an inch of my job. i'm already rattled by this whole thing, and am near tears by the time he's done with me. he tells me to not cash it all at once, and to not cash ANY of it for a week, because that's how long this guy has to call the club and re-neg on the charges. yes, that can happen. "oh, i didn't mean to" is a perfectly good excuse, at which point the club gives the girl ONE WEEK to repay whatever she cashed, so it can be returned to its "rightful" owner. total bullshit, but it happens all the time.

however, i'm so pissed off i'm beyond the point of caring, so i cash it all. (he never called, but i walked on pins and needles all week. asshole). i go to my party with charlie, in a wretched mood, especially since i'm still sober and surrounded by drunk people once i get there--except i have to be nice to them because they're my friends. it was difficult. that asshole totally wrecked my night, and my victorious record-breaking evening was soured by the shame and guilt i was made to feel in the aftermath.

***

that all changed on tuesday night. i went into work super early (like, 6pm) to meet kristopher on his way home from the airport. he and i have a lot of good chemistry, and i am effortlessly engaged when he comes to see me. damn, i still need to write that blog about the "grey area." yeah, more on kristopher later. lets just say we have a great time and talk about really serious shit. so i eat some surf and turf, my awesomepants amazing friend ruby who just got hired comes up and hangs with us for a bit, before i have to go meet my next customer, who's already arrived (who i've known since high school. long story). i felt really bad about having to cut my visit with kristopher short, but it had to be done. i left him with ruby and trotted on over to the other side of the VIP, and sat down to catch up with my old friend. he and i have been doing the "two ships passing in the night" thing for months, so it'd been a while and it was really good to see him. unfortunately we only had about an hour and some change, because yes, i had ANOTHER customer arrive and send for me.

another traveling business guy, i'd met this person the previous night, when he paid me about 300 bucks in the last half hour of a shift that had completely blown up until that point. he'd promised to come back the next night, and here he was. after about 30 minutes in a booth he decides the main floor just isn't going to cut it, so off we go to the champagne room. again with the "whatever you want," only i can tell this guy is about 350% nicer than the asshole in the previous record-breaking story. his work is interesting, his stories are interesting, and he's all about me. he kept handing me cash, but at the end of the night asked me if i needed any more. i quickly tallied what i'd already made, and quoted him an amount that i knew would push me just over the $1700 mark, but still well within reasonable limits in terms of the time we'd spent together. i had my record in my sights, and i wasn't going to let this chance get away. happily obliging, he orders the rest of the cash in funny money, and victory is mine.

***

what a stark contrast, these two nights; i've come so far since the $1600 shift, it's uncanny. there i was, naive, bad at negotiating, still learning to stand up for what i deserve, just trying to be *agreeable*, and it backfired on me bigtime. i was treated like a piece of meat the entire night, and then treated like shit at the end. that money didn't feel good, it didn't feel like i'd earned it, it felt like reparations for him being an asshole and me putting up with it for four hours. (now, don't get me wrong, sometimes i like being treated like a piece of meat--and even when i sit with guys who appreciate my intellect, there's still a certain amount of objectification that remains inherent. i'm okay with that because i can't change it, but i retain the power to utilize object status to my advantage. i just want to be appreciated along the way, and i felt really fucking appreciated the other night).

in contrast, here i am 2.5 years later, having found a balance between objectification and my subjectivity. i can fully engage with people who's company i enjoy, but set limits on those interactions. i know an asshole when i meet one, and instead have cultivated connections with regulars with whom i share mutual appreciation and respect. though i like all three of the guys from last night enough to feel bad about not getting to spend more time with each, as i would have gladly spent all night with any one, i maintained a good balance between hedonism and shrewd business sense. i successfully juggled my time and interactions, and everybody left happy--and THAT makes ME happy too.

so, yay. i have achieved a stunning victory over both the dollar sum and negative memories associated with my previous record income for a night. now, every time i think about the most i've made in a shift, i don't have to also feel twinges of guilt and shame. i can look back on my record shift as one of my favorite shifts, for so many reasons. thanks everybody, not only did you make my night, but you made the last 2.5 years worthwhile. my gratitude knows no bounds; i was glowing all day yesterday--and it's not just because i paid all my bills in a single night. i have come a long way since summer '06, and you helped me prove that to myself. thank you.

back in the dressing room, i invited five of my favorite stripper friends out to breakfast, we were loud, and it was fun. i picked up the tab, and gave the waiter a 40% tip ;-)

travelers

2009-01-13T13:23:00.003-06:00

the traveling business guys are my favorite customers, for so many reasons. allow me to enumerate. ahem:

1.) by definition, travelers are away from home, and thus also from curfew-imposing wives who are none too pleased when they come home stinking of booze, smoke, and fifteen kinds of perfume, possibly bearing visual signs of debauchery such as lipstick marks, hickies, or glitter (point in fact, this is why strippers rarely wear body glitter).

2.) the DFW strip club ghetto is about 15 minutes from the airport. the powers that be are fond of enacting zoning regulations that relegate adult businesses to lower income and/or industrial neighborhoods; in our case, this places us at a rather central and convenient location for travelers (take that, laura miller!). we are often the first stop these business guys make after getting off a plane, except maybe their hotel. even for non-travelers, we are a popular place to "wait out the traffic." (yeah, sure buddy, even though it's now...8:30. there's a reason our walls have no windows or clocks.)

3.) traveling business guys generally spend all day doing boring work stuff, networking at conventions, sitting in endless meetings, etc. they complete their obligations and instead of getting in their sedans and fighting traffic back to suburbia, they find themselves in a foreign land, having no idea where the action's at. but there's always action at the strip club. i wonder how many guys always go to strip clubs when they're traveling, just because they don't know what else to do except sit in the hotel room and watch cable television.

4.) many travelers come to DFW to see clients. going out to strip clubs is a great way to woo clients. they come to the club to make money while they spend money. on us. it works out.

the only thing that gets slightly annoying about these guys is the nearly constant offers for hot airport hotel room action. oh, if i had a dollar for every time someone has given me their room number.

and oh, the hangovers these guys endure throughout their trips. i've heard tell of such things, and i've made them come back into the club to nurse their hangovers on more than one occasion. thank you, traveling business guys, for enduring. thanks for getting up for that 6am conference call to india after drinking with me until 2 the previous night, and still coming back into the club to see me. thank you for making sure i know when you come back to town. you're the reason i love working on weeknights, so thank you, traveling business guys, for my free weekends. i love you guys. don't ever change.

back to the ol' bump n' grind

2009-01-08T14:17:00.005-06:00

going back to work after a vacation can be really tough, for a multitude of reasons. for one, i typically put on a few pounds during a vacation (especially the holidays...), and this job has made me more conscious of how i look than ever before (and i've always been vain, so that's saying something). vacation weight aside, there's also another physical aspect--stripping is hard on the legs, knees and feet in particular. during a trip, i get to the point where i no longer hear crunching in my knees when i squat down, and then going back to doing squats and wall-sits for a living (in heels no less) takes its toll. i know that, if i work a long shift that consists entirely of dance-by-dance income (as opposed to getting paid to sit on my ass and be entertaining), i'm going to be sore as fuck the next day. so i typically make my first shift back a short one, 4 hours instead of 8. vacations are also time off from stripper-associated body maintenance, like shaving my cunt. plus, i can give it a few weeks to grow into the requisite quarter inch length required to get waxed off, so that's at least nice. what's more, i don't have to dry and straighten my hair after each shower when i'm on vacation. showers can be enjoyed as something other than a pre-work activity. like, say, a post-sex activity instead ;-)

moreso than the physical aspects, it's the mental stuff that makes "getting back on the horse" difficult. i get used to relaxing and being myself, no pressure to be entertaining or agreeable, and then have to go back to work at the end. the thought of walking into the club and meeting new people and making them like me enough to give me money...well, it's daunting. the knowledge that my evenings are now spoken for, that i'll feel guilty if i take a night off and hang out with friends, that sucks too.

also, i fell onstage again. it was way worse than the first time, in terms of the WAY i fell (no, i didn't faceplant, and no, i didn't hurt myself), and the fact that NO ONE came up and tipped me afterwards. mortifying. completely wrecked my confidence on stage too, because i fell in my BACK UP SHOES. yes, the safe shoes. the modest, low heels. i fell in those. so i have some different shoes now, but i pretty much don't feel comfortable up there unless i'm wearing my boots. which means that i don't dance as much, i don't feel stable enough to really move. so my stage sets suck, i don't make anything, and i look like a dork. great. in short, the knowledge that i'll have to dance onstage again is daunting, and another reason i don't want to go back to work.

i typically put off going back to work as long as possible, and then when i do decide to go back, i make sure i've got either a customer or a good stripper buddy coming in to hold my hand. it makes it SO much easier to go in, knowing that i've got some guaranteed money coming my way, or at least a comrade to help me seek it out. moreso than the guaranteed money, it's the familiar face of a tried and true regular that's comforting after a vacation. i already know this person, he already likes me, i don't have to go through introductory bullshit and deal with explaining a.) where i'm from, b.) how i got to texas, c.) what the hell a smart girl like me is doing working in a strip club, which is typically what introductory conversation always consists of. it gets tiresome, having to constantly JUSTIFY myself to these strangers, because i want their money. but with a regular, there's no need for that, and i can relax. it makes it SO much easier to mentally prepare myself for going back to the bump and grind, when i at least know i have a pretty easy shift ahead of me.

well, last night i had both a customer and a dancer buddy coming in, but decided to go in early and risk being sore today. maryn canceled on me, but my customer came in. we had a nice hour or so at the beginning of my shift, talked about how excited we are that battlestar galactica is about to start back up, told holiday stories, and i made money and watched everyone else try and make money (it was deader than dead). i hit the locker room after he left, vowing to try and find someone to buy me off stage so i didn't have to face my fear of falling in these tried-but-not-necessarily-tested shoes i have now. (but man oh man, are they hot as all getup). i made a few laps around the club, thinking "damn, it's still dead," finally finding a table and doing a few for a *really* nice guy who seemed to get the reason why i'm there. quite non-judgmental, refreshing. i love it when that happens.

just as i'm getting him to pay me i spot my awesome local regular, the one from my previous blog entitled, "damn, sometimes i really love my job." i had fired off a text to him earlier in the week, hoping to get a nibble and set a date, but hadn't heard back. as i'd never texted with him before, i was sortof wondering if i had overstepped a line or something. but alas, there he is, looking around, and as i discovered, looking for me. he said that little "nudge" i gave him wasn't at all inappropriate, and besides, it worked, right? awesome. all of a sudden, i knew that my night was going to be relaxing, entertaining, engaging, AND highly profitable. what a rush. i was giddy. it's always the same when i sit with him: we get a cave upstairs (yes, we have caves upstairs), are waited upon by my favorite waitress, we drink (but not particularly heavily), he buys me off stage, we talk a lot and i do some dancing (but not a lot), we eat nachos around midnight, he leaves sometime before 2 and gives me a thousand bucks. he's wicked smart and has great stories. easy. as. pie.

moral to the story: don't put off going back to work, because it could be a $1300 night. but don't feel bad about putting it off, either, because...it could be a $1300 night, and those nights i missed while feeling sorry for myself might have sucked balls and made me feel even WORSE by wrecking my confidence even more. i feel much better about working now. today, the direct correlation between income and attitude/self-esteem is more palpable than ever. man, i can't wait to not do this anymore.

manipulators and assholes part deux

2008-12-11T11:13:00.002-06:00

last night i met a different breed of manipulator/asshole. on the 2nd stage, two guys who were sitting together each came and tipped me about 10 bucks each. having just concluded a dinner-and-some-dances encounter with one of my favorite regulars, doug, i was doing pretty well considering it was still early. that first stage set is usually pretty boring, and having 100% of a table come up and express interest is more than enough to bump them up to the top of my post-stage priority list.

so i finish dancing for dollars and go to sit with them, they're nice enough, and keep talking about going upstairs. i should have recognized the warning signs: when guys just TALK about going upstairs but nothing happens, this either means they're undecided or dicking the girls around. after last night, i'll assume the latter to be true whenever this happens again.

so i spend about an hour sitting with them, being altogether charming and supportive of their supposed-willingness to ascend to VIP. my friend rhiannon (who's an archer when she's not a stripper--how awesomepants is THAT?!) joins us, things are looking good. these guys tell a story about the last time they went up to VIP, an occasion in which their membership was revoked. apparently they had been sitting downstairs with some girls, one of whom promised she'd do "x for x amount of money" once upstairs. they go up, she doesn't do "x" but still demands "x amount of money." they refuse to pay up, as she doesn't pony up the goods (whatever that means), and she gets pissed and tells our head manager, mike, who then accosts them, kicks them out, and calls the cops. the next time they come to the club they discover the membership has been canceled.

now, like any good stripper, i'm taking their side in this story. not only am i appalled that some chick in my club is promising to do illegal things upstairs (my club prides itself on being VERY clean, and the main reason i wanted to work there was so handjobs wouldn't be the standard of service), i'm appalled that she flipped the story around when tattling on them to mike, and i'm surprised that mike didn't tell her off instead of them. generally speaking, managers do everything in their power to ensure the customers don't leave with a bad taste in their mouth, so to speak. girls will get fired for giving blowjobs upstairs, but the customers who received them are welcome to return. thus, i'm pretty shocked that having heard their side of the story, he kicked them out AND called the cops. we're all curious as to who the girl was, but they can't remember.

well, rhiannon and i waste about an hour trying to figure out if these guys are going to take us upstairs, and eventually get dismissed when they tell us they're going down the street to babydoll's (where handjobs (or gods know what else) are most decidedly the standard of service). back in the dressing room, rhiannon says, "i was that girl." my jaw DROPS, especially when she tells me HER side of the story. apparently the guy i was sitting with immediately demanded a blowjob upon reaching the VIP room, and when she refused, he pulled his dick out. she goes, "you just forfeited your money," and went and told mike. she and i had a good laugh about them not remembering her.

i saw their happy asses at the same table an hour later. so much for babydoll's, i guess they "just weren't that into us." but hey, thanks for wasting an hour of my time making me think we're going upstairs. nice, dude, real nice.

assholes.

in the end, it didn't matter. i found a very pleasant man who was just drunk enough to be cajoled into going to the bubbly room and paying me hourly. i walked with almost a grand, and got some blog fodder. go stripper, go!

manipulators and assholes

2008-11-19T18:49:00.001-06:00

one of the things i first learned from working in the strip club is, "everyone comes here for different reasons." there's a huge variety of motivations--some guys are blowing off steam after work, some are partying on business trips (those are my favorite), some are actively searching for a gf/wife, some are actively searching for a gf with whom to cheat on their wives, some are just straight up lonely, some are bored and have too much money, and some don't have lives outside of business travel and so they need easily accessible friends like us. to name a few.

most guys are nice, some don't know what they're doing, some have no idea what's going on, but some guys do--and some guys use that knowledge to manipulate us.

i had the misfortune of meeting one such manipulator shortly after i began working at the club. i call him donny the perv--yes, his real name is donny (he doesn't deserve anonynimity, not even here), and i don't mean perv in the sexy, tie-me-up-and-degrade-me sort of way.

recognizing me as a newbie, he took advantage of me: the first time i sat with him, we chatted for a while downstairs before he invited me up to VIP. there, he repeatedly tried to get in my pants (er, g-string), distracted me from dancing--which totally sucked, because when i got called onstage, he told me he'd give me my money during my set. so he comes up to the 2nd stage and hands me 40 bucks. even being as green as i was, i knew i deserved more. i had spent over an hour up there with him, fending off his advances and listening politely to his self-indulgent drivel. he said, "oh, but i only pay for dances. and you only danced twice." what a fucking asshole, intentionally trying to cheat me out of my time. all VIP customers know the score (we either get hourly or we count dances, and drawn-out conversation with dances means hourly, or at least a hefty tip), and he failed to mention he only paid for dances until after i had squandered an hour with him. had i known beforehand, i would have been dancing that entire time. i know what you're thinking--i'm an idiot. so what? i was new. there's not a fucking worker's manual for this shit, people. if you're lucky, stripperwisdom can be passed down through a mentor. if you're like me, and didn't make any friends until after a year in the business, you learn your lessons the hard way.

even if he'd mentioned he only paid for dances, he probably wouldn't have let me do more than 5 dances, since he's apparently a monumental cheapskate. and even though that incident absolutely incensed me, i learned an important tidbit of stripperwisdom: feel out the money situation before you waste your time. there have been a few occasions since that initial incident where i trusted my gut and didn't bring up money, and that ended up being a VERY good thing. but for the most part, i always make at least some small mention of payment before i invest an hour in a customer.

but i digress. donny the perv continued to accost me after that, usually when i was sitting at the bar having an early shift meal, an easy target. i still see him around, over 2 years later--last week he pissed me off royally. i was, as mentioned, sitting at the back bar having dinner and chatting with some girlfriends, and this motherfucker starts bothering me. every time i encounter him, he never fails to touch me in a way that pisses me off--not groping me or anything, but even worse--he pokes and pinches my sides. anyone who knows me for more than, say, two weeks knows my sides are *really* sensitive. if you even reach out like you're ABOUT to pinch me, i'll throw an elbow without thinking about it. donny knows this. he does that shit on purpose now, just to get a rise out of me so he can get all defensive--"what did i do? i didn't even touch you!"--fucking asshole.

another nasty habit of donny's is making presumptuous comments about my life (this happens alot when you're a stripper, but he's especially bad). one day about six months ago i decided, for some unknown reason, to work a 4 to midnight shift, thinking i'd make some early happy hour cash and end up staying until 2. this was not the case. at 4pm, there were two tables in the club. donny and a male friend of his were one of them, and were accompanied by a girl i could get along with. i thought, what the hell, maybe his friend isn't as big of a cheapskate, and sat down with them. well, pretty soon the friend left, and the girl got fed up with donny's shit. so there i am, sitting alone with him, when the most assinine, rude, and offensive stuff starts coming out of his mouth. he asked about school, i re-explained my women's studies program for probably the fifth time, prompting him to say, "oh, you're not a feminist." excuse me, misogynist fucktard? I'm not a feminist?! strike one.

strike two: "if he really loved you, he wouldn't let you do this for a living." no, i'm sorry, fucking assholes like YOU wouldn't let me do this for a living. thanks for trying to delegitimize my relationship, even though i happen to know i'm one of the girls who's lucky enough to find men who are fully supportive of my work.

strike three: "you're too smart to be doing this." what?! fuck off. how DARE you put down my coworkers? 90% of the chicks working in that club at LEAST have great street-smarts, and i can honestly say that most girls (at least at my club, admittedly high-end) are smart as hell. it takes brains to morph one's personality, and it takes mental armor to sluff off the emotional baggage that comes with being repeatedly rejected throughout a shift.

after three strikes, i stood up and walked off, since i would rather sit in the dressing room (which does not, unfortunately, yield income) than deal with donny's psychological abuse. walking off felt great. fucking asshole.

here's the kicker: donny has pictures of pussies on his phone. doesn't sound so bad? he's got dozens. he collects them from bitches who are stupid enough to let him digitally immortalize their cunts. still doesn't sound so bad? he's invented classification categories for his pussy pictures. he explained it to me once, i'm pretty sure his categories have to do with labia size and symmetry, but i can't remember exactly. the funniest part about it is, he doesn't have the imagination to come up with actual descriptors for his categories, so he just gives them numbers: "this is a 2. see how one side of her inner lips peeks out between the outer lips?" wtf.

now ask yourself, why would this guy have a collection of pussy pictures? they're not very good masturbation fodder. i mean, they can't be more than a megapixel or two, and it's just a cunt. i don't have a cock, but i'm pretty sure it takes more than a blurry picture of some labia to induce an orgasm. then again, maybe not. guys sure can be easy.

here's what i think: he collects pussies because he feels like he owns them once they're on his phone. he's obviously a control freak, as evidenced by his psychological warfare. also, i think his categorization tendency is the same mindset that propels other rich, white men to do things like write encyclopedias. "this is all the useful information in the world, we control it because we decide what goes in these books, we can categorize things because we are higher up on the food chain." in grad student speak, donny thinks he has epistemic power over the cunts in his phone because he classifies them.

did i mention i love wikipedia? non-heirarchical knowledge orgy FTW.

oh right, the reason i'm writing about donny today. so last night, on my way back into the dressing room to "go put on some lip gloss or something" before my stage set, i encountered donny the perv leaning against the back bar, nearly blocking the entrance to the dressing room. it was the first time i've been in proximity to him since he ruined my meal a week ago, so i wasn't exactly going to be polite. he pretended to block my path, before stepping aside and saying something smart, i don't remember exactly what. if a bartender hadn't been standing next to him at the time, he probably would have said something vulgar. i wasn't going to be polite, but i wasn't going to be overtly rude either--so i walked past without saying anything. he probably thinks i shot him a dirty look, but frankly, a lot of people think i look pissed off when i'm not (tell me to smile. i dare you).

i guess he took that as an affront, because he decided to fuck with me when i was on the mainstage a few minutes later. he walks up to the stage, money in hand, i mentally chuckle--shit, maybe he's a masochist and i have to be a bitch in order for him to want to give me money. or maybe he's just childish and ignoring him only makes him demand more attention.

i began sautering over to where he had paused at the front of the stage, but oh no. donny was playing a trick on me. he held the money up, but kept walking once he saw me notice him. that fucker faked me out. i smiled to myself, seeing right through his passive aggressive bullshit. donny's silly little plan backfired, because my mood levitated with the knowledge that he actually expelled mental energy on a childish plan designed to upset me.

and you know what? his money's no good here anymore. i don't want a tip from him--i'd rather tie him up and watch a drag queen crumple up those two dollars and forcibly insert them into donny's white, republican, presumptive, stripper-hating rectum. without lubricant.

security clearance

2008-11-18T02:20:00.002-06:00

i *really* didn't want to go to work last night, but since i didn't go the night before, them's the breaks. i pull up, and as i always do, i scan the customer parking lot--nearly empty. on a mediocre-->halfway decent night, there are at least 15 or 20 cars. tonight? less than 10. (i should really scan the valet lot instead, as that is a much better indicator of how many VIP members are in the club, but i don't. guess that's why i'm not on the A-Team).

either way, a relatively empty parking lot is not what you want to pull up to when you don't want to be there in the first place. plus, i'd literally been trying to psych myself up for this shift all day--the only thing that made me look forward to it in the FIRST place (other than making my rent and bills for next month, so that i may go back down to austin for a holiday weekend) was discovering a much-beloved item of stripperware in a random spot with all my burn event costume stuff. oh yeah baby, that g-string with the 3 ft long straps that i crisscross up my torso 3x? it's back.

so let's just say my hopelessly pessimistic attitude paid off immediately. i lucked out bigtime--either that, or i was just really smart about it. probably both. . . . nah, i just lucked out. fortune struck early when i second-guessed myself and accosted a nice looking man as we crossed paths; i usually don't talk to people if they're actively seeking out another area of the club, but after about 8 seconds, i'm upstairs doing an hour and some change of nearly constant dances. while all the other girls are talking to anyone and everyone they can, trying to get a dance or two before moving on, i'm knocking out several hundred dollars in one go. that felt *great*. what's more, that customer was waiting for a girl when i found him, and we were only supposed to do the few songs left before she was available, but i charmed my way into milking him of all the cash he'd intended to spend on her. what's MORE, the chick he was waiting for? that bitch has actively double-crossed TWO of my friends in the last few months. seriously, i used to think this girl was so sweet, but after hearing recent stories from my closest and most trusted friends in the club, i was happy to earn the money she expected to get from him.

i know. that's so classic-stripper-backstabby of me. but you know what? times are tough. the fucking economy collapsed, if nobody noticed--and while it may not be affecting our business TOO much (most people who could afford to come to our club before the bottom fell out of the market still can, it's mainly just the amateurs who are out of the game now), i've definately heard more complaints about bitches pulling stupid backstabbing bullshit in the last month than my 2.5 yrs in the business up to this point. total. combined.

in my eyes, it boils down to this: the bitches without scruples who are accustomed to breaking $1000/night are finding it more difficult to do so these days, so they're pulling bullshit on their comerades. in a transitory business like this, friends are difficult to make. but comeraderie? shit, we got that in spades. that dressing room is a place of solidarity, first and foremost. sure, there are cliques, but generally we all have a pretty good time. people like to work with their friends, but at least some minimum level of mutual respect is maintained--like, say, not going and sitting on a customer's lap when another girl is sitting next to him--and lately, even that least-common-denominator-sisterhood doesn't exist on the floor.

anyhoo, after i delighted in stealing someone's customer (though not from right in front of her very tits--i'm way too non-confrontational to ever do that), i regrouped in the dressing room for a minute, before heading out one of the three exits and onto the floor. the guy sitting closest to the exit i chose was who i stayed with for the rest of the night. i literally had to talk to three people before i found the two i made all my money from. on a slow monday, that's pretty remarkable.

so, this last guy was awesome. he was paramilitary, literally guarding the man sitting across the table, who didn't look a day over 25. all i'm allowed to say is mr. important government man was coming from the DC area, and my dude was based out of the DFW area. "just enough information to still be able to tell a story," he said. we chatted for a few minutes before i started dancing, taking breaks to talk some more, more dancing. nice balance--i still make money, but i'm not hounding him for hourly or something (because frankly, there wasn't much hourly cash to be made last night). and oh, i had such a great time talking with him. it's really rare that i meet military people who are, well, super fucking smart. we avoided the subject of politics, but of course i made him regail me with war stories.

AND he gave me tips on how to focus one's attention while being restrained and tortured. yay! i know those will come in handy one day when i'm tied up. kindof like the way i know that if i make it through my two bathroom books, "the worst case scenario handbook," and "the action heroine's handbook," someday, something from those books will save my life--or somebody else's.

all in all, pretty awesome shift. it's a great feeling, putting on my clothes at the end of the night, hearing girls complain about making 40 bucks--because i'm not part of the A-Team, i'm not accustomed to making $1000/night, so when i have a decent shift on a below-average shift? bad. ass.

sometimes, i really love my job

2008-10-29T12:30:00.004-05:00

well, i mean, i usually love my job. with rare exception, i make "enough" money, i.e. more than i would have made at my previous gig as a beer wench. it's always interesting, always entertaining in some way, and usually quite pleasant. i have burnt out moments, shifts, and weeks...but for the most part, it's okay.

i'm writing this to remind myself, during those burnt out moments, just how awesome it can be.

last night was a dream.

i got in early, needing to make a pile in 3 shifts this week, so i can take the next 10 days off and go to austin for halloween, election day, and other festivities the following weekend. starving, i sat at the bar and treated myself to a greek salad with chicken, and a tasty adult beverage. i finished my meal, chatted with a coworker for a minute, before spotting a dorky, eccentric-looking, well-dressed fellow at the ATM. timing my approach so as to catch him as he was exiting the money-dispensing cubbyhole, i turned on the charm and wit. and oh boy, did i meet my match in this guy. within 3 minutes i was becoming somewhat overwhelmed at his intelligence, quickness, and humor, and literally had to sit down.

so we sit. i hear my name 4 girls up on the list, giving me about 20 minutes (at 2 song sets) to charm this guy into buying me offstage. we go upstairs "to do some dances", i mention something about having to be up in a few, to which he replies, "oh well, we won't worry about that." he buys me off, doesn't indicate that i should even think about taking my dress off, and seems to know the waitress and VIP manager really well. when he calls the house mom (a fantastic, amazing, retired feature dancer) to come up for a glass of wine as her day shift is ending, i start to get the feeling that i might have stumbled onto something big.

the house mom stayed for probably 90 minutes, with our waitress (who also happens to be one of my favorites, the one i suggest to customers whenever possible) and the VIP manager (also a retired dancer, and literally my favorite manager) popping in and out to join in on the conversation. i still haven't taken my dress off, we're drinking, we're snacking, and i know that i'm getting paid for all of this. in fact, at the point where he's got good relationships with these people that seem to span at least a decade in some cases, i know i'm set. these savvy women would not like this guy so much if he was a cheap bastard who screws girls out of money. so i don't mention anything about it.

the night wares on, he buys me off stage again, we get some privacy eventually and mess around a bit, but he never crosses the boundaries of club rules (which are the strictest in town, and people get canned all the time for disobeying). the conversation never stalls once, i don't have to conceal my political views, this guy is hilarious, engaging, interesting. at one point it comes out that he recently purchased a giant corporate law firm, where one of my ex's used to work. (oh, the irony.)

the club begins to initiate shutdown procedure, he orders me credit card "funny money", again, nothing has been discussed. he tells the waitress, "you know how much to put down" on the order slip.

it turns out to be a thousand bucks.

i mean, it's not 3 or 400 an hour (the standard VIP rate), but for the entire night? of literally being as entertained by this guy as he is by me? for someone smart, polite, humorous, and liberal? shit. that's a fucking dream shift. i barely took my dress off, i never went downstairs, i had fun hanging out with some of my favorite coworkers, and i banked.

sometimes, i really love my job.

"i always wanted to see that waitress naked!"

2008-10-28T11:51:00.003-05:00

when people i know from the "real" world come into the club, funny shit always happens--especially if they didn't expect to find me there.

the first time this happened, it was a guy about my age whom i used to wait on at my previous job as a beer wench. that was back when i worked the day shift, and he had come in with some of his work buddies for a bite and some eye candy. i spotted him just before i had to go up for a set, sitting, of course, right in front of the main stage. i was nervous. but i quickly learned that being discovered in a strip club by someone who knew you before you were a stripper is almost ALWAYS more embarrassing for them than it is for you. customers have a lot of shame, too. and rightfully so--after all, they're also participating in this seedy underbelly of a social microcosm--but the only difference is, they're the ones blowing their cash on expensive, sexualized entertainment; at least we make piles of money in exchange for soiling our reputations.

anyhoo, so i get up onstage, he sees me, i give him a shit-eating grin. in classic biggest-bang-for-my-buck, typical-lunch-crowd form, he waited until my second song and i had taken my clothes off to come up and give me a dollar. i went and hung out with him for a few minutes after i got off stage, at which point he informed me that his first reaction to seeing me up there was, "holy shit! i always wanted to see that waitress naked!"

heh.

in fact, many of the "real" world people i've encountered in my club have known me from my gig at the bar. there was the lawyer, who's now dating one of my friends. there were tons of people who just looked familiar (and when i can't place where i know someone from, it's usually the bar. this is a bit more of a loaded sensation, now, walking through the grocery store, wondering if that guy who looks familiar has seen me naked). there was the husband of one of my professors (but again, i knew them before she taught me a class in grad school, from waiting on them). THAT was a funny one. it was a busy week night, and he looked like he had been dragged there by his work colleagues. i had spotted him before my set, sitting right up against the main stage with a big group. i walked out for my song, pointed right at him, and said, "hey, i know you!", much to his embarassment. a paralyzed-animal-in-floodlights expression came across his face, and he looked down into his drink like it was a time portal that could hopefully dispatch him from this hostile environment. his friends erupted, and quite a few of them came and tipped me, at which point they found it all the MORE hilarious when i told them his wife taught me a class in grad school. in women's studies.

heh.

then there was the rockstar wannabe, whom i had one of my top 3 worst sexual encounters with. ever. again, i met this guy in the bar, gone out for drinks with him the next week, and back to his shitty apartment, whereby he proceeded to fuck me in the most boring ways, with a semi-hard cock, on a futon. a futon he didn't even bother turning into a bed. that was during one of my boyfriendless sport-fucking phases, an early one, during which i failed to glean any quality partners and just became more sexually frustrated. anyhoo, so, 4 years later, here he is in the strip club. with a mixed group. i initially thought one of the hot chicks with them was going to turn out to be his girlfriend, and then i was going to delight in getting him in trouble by casually referring to "that night we hooked up" (if you could even call it that). alas, such was not the case, however i did get to dance for him, and made sure to really turn on the sexy. his dick got harder during that 3.5 min song than it EVER did in the 20 minutes i let him try to fuck me when i was 22. priceless.

like i said before, it's got to be the lights. my stripper aura just did it for him. not surprisingly, while "real" world acquaintences make for funny anecdotes and friendly conversation in a club full of strangers, they're not worth much money. they're in awe of the aura, perhaps, but they've seen the real person behind the slutty costume and the club persona, and they're not buying it. at most i get a dance out them, for novelty's sake.

when i have actual friends come into the club, sometimes they'll throw me some cash (since they know i'm still at work), but generally i just hang out at their table, let them buy me drinks, tell funny stories about the girls onstage, answer questions about my work, and recruit my hot (and anonymous) friends to dance for them. in order to spend serious amounts of cash on a stripper, it helps to not know her first. while i've gotten to know some of my regulars quite well, and had conversations with a few of them that were downright intimate, the fact remains they met me in the club. i had no pre-existing subjectivity, so they may project upon me whatever they like.

either way, strip club/"real" world crossovers never fail to be entertaining. i guess it helps that i'm not ashamed of what i do, and not concerned with anyone finding out. it'd be much worse if i was closeted or something.

promises and hookups

2008-10-24T12:34:00.002-05:00

i work in a high end club, and thus get a lot of high end customers. super rich fuckers with the black diamond amex, car collections worth more than some GDPs, and the reckless and/or tightwad spending habits that come along with those traits. building rapport with guys like this (and other generous, successful-but-not-necessarily-super-loaded dudes) can glean any and all manner of gifts: vacations, plastic surgery, cars, houses. while i have girlfriends who've been gifted those big-ticket items, so far the only perks i've received are plane tickets and hotel rooms bought with business travelers' excessive airline points, and extra cash. but oh, the promises. "is there anything i can do for you?" is a question that makes my stomach do a little flip when i hear it in the VIP room. "sure, you can pay off my student loans."

but that never happens. i think it's the lights. i think the surreal, casino-like environment (no windows or wallclocks, labrynthian layouts that make it difficult to exit the building, especially when intoxicated), augmented by decor and lighting, contributes significantly to the Stripper Aura. and the Stripper Aura is probably what makes men want to promise us fancy, shiny things: because in there, we are larger than life. i swear it's the lights.

anyhoo, so last night i encountered the 3rd bachelor party whose company i've actually enjoyed. generally speaking, working bachelor parties (or saturday night at all, ever) is like going out on new year's eve: it's amateur night. usually it's a bunch of dudes standing around holding their dicks (no, not literally), paying one girl at a time to dance for the bachelor, using their groupthink dynamic to make fun of strippers, or using us to make fun of each other, or just straight up making fun of each other. they're not worth much money, they're hostile, there's at least one guy who's a total douchebag, and one guy who REALLY doesn't want to be there, and...well, let's just say i don't like working bachelor parties. this is why i don't work on weekends--i like the business travelers that populate our wing-backed chairs on tue/wed/thur. they're way more polite.

but the guys last night? oh man, they were awesome. pleasant, good-natured, hilarious bunch, most from the bride's extended family, and most of whom worked for the patriarch and the son-in-law, who--wait for it--own a premium jeans company. uh huh, that's right. and they're bringing me jeans (as long as i tell anyone who asks how to buy them), they want to bring me to trade shows and get me free samples of stuff, make me their vegas booth girl so i can rub elbows with fashionistas, and--wait for it--drive the new porsche 911 on the local speedway next week. one of them likes fast cars, and supposedly received enough speeding tickets that require him to go to court, and has been invited to try out the new german rocket on the track. and he wants me to come. and drive.

vroom vroom, indeed.

but alas, this one still resides in the "promises yet to be fulfilled" column, though i am going to do my very very hardest to try and move it over to the "oh fuck yeah i get fashion hookups and get to drive 2x as fast as i've ever driven before" column. i've already sent text messages to my two girlfriends who are seemingly the most adept at getting guys to buy them things: one of them received TWO cars for her birthday, back in her vegas days; the other just bought a house and managed to furnish the entire thing without spending a dime of her own money. both of them have never paid for washer/dryer sets. how does that HAPPEN?! i'm not nearly on that level *yet, but gods dammit, i'm going to do my very best to get there before my stint in this crazy business is over.

let's hear it for fancy jeans and fancy cars! wheeeeee confetti!

falling onstage

2008-10-23T11:39:00.002-05:00

i knew it was bound to happen eventually; falling onstage is practically a mathematical certainty. frankly, i was surprised it had yet to happen...but after 2 years, 5 months, and 12 days in the business, i did it. i checked that box.

i fell onstage.

not just on "stage", which implies that there's only one--oh no, i fell on STAGE. like, on the big, shiny, main stage, about 5 seconds after i was announced, and not even twirling.

no, i was not attempting a super-extra-double-hard move on the international ho-bag degree of difficulty scale. i was not spinning, kicking, sliding, sashaying, or what the fuck ever--i was walking. walking. in new shoes. i blamed--and will continue to blame--the shoes. what the hell made me think it was okay to suddenly graduate to a platform, albeit a single inch? who approved the decommissioning of my training wheels? and who let me go up after i jinxed myself by telling the ladies in the dressing room that i was "not going to fall in the new shoes"? (uh huh, i said that. about 15 seconds before i fell.)

(oh yeah, right--nobody. because i'm an independent contractor, and i answer to no one! how silly of me to forget.)

but hey, it could have been worse: the club could have been 90% full (it was more like 75%--and they all stopped talking at once, lemme tell ya); i could have hurt myself, or fallen off the stage (as it happened, i went down rather gracefully onto a knee. i have not a bruise to show for it. too bad); i could have not been a good sport (i raised my arms in victory, received applause); and i could have been ignored afterwards--but suddenly the edge filled up with my girlfriends laughing at me and high fiving me, and pleasant customers cracking jokes (and everyone gave me money. the "pity tips" actually made for a damn good take on an early-evening stage set, for me at least).

so i changed into my backup shoes, resolved to teeter around my apartment in the new ones for another few weeks before i have the guts to sport them at work (emphasis on the sport, of course), and went about my shift. hell, at least they have nifty chrome heels, it'll give me greater incentive to train myself to wear them again. because everything i own would be chrome, if i had the cash.

in the end, my silver shoe debacle did garner a monumental silver lining: it was the final kick in the ass to start the stripper blog i've been meaning to begin for months. hooray for clumsy catalysts! hopefully my next entry will be about how i shattered my record income for a single shift.