Such A Piece of Shit Night, on So Many Levels

Really - no, really - please let me count the ways that last night was a piece of shit:

1. I showed up at 7 p.m. to a deserted no-man's land. The club would remain desolate, a chill wind whipping around the poles and into the VIP room, for several hours.

2. I was the only girl there for about an hour and a half. During that time I had the unprecedented pleasure of wasting my time by talking to an Austrian man who barely spoke English but could manage to articulate that before he could spend money on a lap dance, he would need "to see [my] strip tease."

3. The Austrian finally deigned to get a dance, then decided that it would be fine for him to pay me $21 instead of the whole $25, because he was going to come back tomorrow and pay me the rest. Yes! Of course he was!

4. Standing in the dressing room and bitching to Heaven, a stallion of a woman who was brushing out her long extensions mindlessly as I chattered about the lack of action on the floor, I knocked an entire glass of Jameson onto the counter and into my clothes bag. So now my brown fuzzy pajama pants and a few thongs smell even more like a bar than they did before.

5. I landed another lap dance from a tiny little man who could not have weighed more than 95 pounds. He seemed to be crazy at the outset but it wasn't until he told me that he would be keeping his name a secret from me that I realized how deep his crazy ran. And then...

6. Several hours later, out of nowhere, the Little Man slapped me in the stomach. So I slapped him across the face.

But I had still only made about $50 and it was already 11:30. I had wanted to leave at 12:00, and that was looking less and less likely. Until finally, thank the stripping gods, I bust open the money floodgates right at the stroke of midnight with a highly successful song choice (Led Zeppelin - know your audience) and then a well-timed two-for-one. All good...until...

7. I hit up an attractive man named Rick at the bar for a dance. Rick had just turned down a dance from my nemesis, which made it all the more satisfying when he agreed to get one from me. But little did I know that in the course of just one three-minute song, Rick would pin my hands down a little too forcefully, try to push me to "break some rules for him" (and his big-time $40 - do these people really have no concept of money?) and pull out all his "I prefer to dominate you" stops. As such, it was right around the second time he instructed, "Yeah...you're gonna rub that pussy for me...let me taste it," that he finally grabbed both my wrists and pulled my ass down hard onto his lap so that he could let me experience, first-hand, the busting of his nut.

At least I left with some sympathy and some words of wisdom from Heaven.

"Next time that happens," she said, "Just pretend you're going to cry. Act like you're having a panic attack, and threaten to get the management. They'll give you tons of money to get you to calm down."

If only I had thought of that in time.