Drowning

I just couldn't do it last night.

I COULD NOT DO IT. Didn't want to drink, stayed sober, and so, couldn't bring myself to talk to any of the motherfuckers. There were girls all around me getting dances. I felt like I was standing at the bottom of the ocean as waves pounded over me and I just didn't give a shit.

I half-assed went up to one or two guys, barely making eye contact: "Hi. You want a dance?"

"No, maybe later." Every rejection sent me further away from talking to the next person.

I went back into the dressing room. "This is bullshit. There are 6 new girls, and I can't make any money."

A couple of girls barely nodded, fixing their hair and makeup and not really caring. I was on the peripheral, I could barely see in, I kept watching other bitches going back and back and back, leading guys by the hand, guys I had just missed or looked and and thought, I should probably talk to that guy, and then just stayed posted up by the wall, arms crossed, simply unable to do it.

At 1:00 a.m. I left, with two dances and a lump in my throat, and I have no idea how I will go back and do it again. My bills are fucking due.

More Stripper Wisdom

Driving down Hollywood Blvd. at 2 a.m. after a shift, the signs for all the trendy clubs stuffed onto ten city blocks are flickering as the scant crowds of people who have been partying on a Wednesday night stumble out the doors into the streets. Girls in short black dresses trip over themselves and teeter on their heels (amateurs!) while classic douchebags with striped button-downs and spiky hair catch them, probably trying to cop a feel and hoping that their drunken chivalry will result in some 'tang.

The windows are rolled up so all I can do is watch the spectacle unfold like a silent movie as B. sits next to me in the passenger seat, animatedly unloading a rant.

"Sometimes I just get so mad at them I want to spit right in their faces. I mean, I can feel the spit forming right at the tip of my tongue." She'd had some asshole customers who talked down to her; not that unusual, but always offensive and irritating.

"I just want to tell them, hey, I'm not stupider than you. I just have a shittier job!"

The Ugly Girl Shift

I've always thought that B. was one of the cutest and sexiest girls I worked with. Perfect, perky tits, round hips and a completely flat stomach. Her face is all puppy dog perfection, an adorable little nose and huge brown eyes, with a tiny diamond stud on her upper lip to draw attention to her full lips.

So I was a little surprised to hear her relay her experience working in Vegas.

"I mean, I was fine working the 'ugly girl' shift," she said, referring to the afternoon shift at Spearmint Rhino. "Whatever. I don' t have the huge tits, the blond hair, and I still made 3 g's in one weekend."

Shit, if she's working the ugly girl shift, would I even have a hope in hell of getting hired? Yikes. It's always a bad scene to get turned down at the door of a strip club - it takes some thick-ass skin to walk away with even a shred of dignity left intact...

VACATION

I've been on vacation for all of three days now, and it has been GLORIOUS. I hadn't quite realized - although I had to some extent - how much working a regular schedule at the club was taking a toll on me. But for the past three days, after wrapping up a disastrous airline mishap (FUCK YOU, UNITED), I have done nothing but read, watch movies, and eat my face off. And it's been so fucking nice.

I haven't had to think, maybe I should hold off on that third desert because later I'll be all nekkid. Or, maybe I should hit this bikini line with a razor so my pubes aren't trailing down my thighs onstage.

But most of all, I haven't had to pretend to be nice to any douchebags, I haven't had to hustle any pervy assholes, and I haven't once on this vacation had to grab someone's hands and shove them back onto the couch next to them after they've tried to grope me without my consent. What a lovely few days it's been!

I'm hoping that I get my momentum back to return to work when I get home, since I probably will have to in order to, say, pay my electric bill and what-have-you, but in the meantime I am so happy to just sit back and enjoy the blue skies, no schedule, and some peace of mind.

With a few hours to kill

I was just reading through some of the writing I did when I first started stripping (it was a long flight) and I started to realize that back then, my eyes were so much more open to what was going on around me.

Back then, when it was all new, I spent a good amount of time perched on the Ms. Pacman table or peering over the edge of my glass of Jameson, swirling my little bar straw and watching and analyzing and thinking. I watched the girls, I watched their interactions with customers, I watched the customers interact with them. I sat in a dark corner of the club, sat at a table on the black leather couches with my feet up on the seat in front of me, watching. I didn't care about the money to be made around me, didn't really care about working or hustling or making any real cash. I wrote about what I thought it meant, how I felt about it, how I believed that it defined or didn't define us all.

Now, it's all about money - I go in early, I hustle each and every man that walks in, I do my best to get home and get a good night's sleep at the end of my shifts. I'm not paying any attention anymore to the politics, the other girls, the different kinds of men...and I'm not even sure I want to.

What the hell happened to my interest in observing? I want to be perfectly aware, taking in this part of my life and processing it...but on some nights I feel like if I don't disconnect, if I don't turn myself off, I won't make it through the shift - I might not even make it out of the dressing room.