Strippr

I knew exactly who I’d write about, before I even finished reading the question. And because I wrote about it in a personal journal I kept before beginning to blog (can blog be used as a verb?), I think I’ll just type what I wrote then. It was all more fresh then.

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Friday, 12-04-2009, 7:45 a.m.

Michael (The Guy from Ohio) left for good today. I didn’t realize how attached I’d become to him—as a…like a friend? He taught me magic tricks, and brought me McDonald’s without asking, and consoled me on bad nights. He shared his life-stuff with me, and I with him. We never did dances, but he always slipped me money. Tonight, he gave me a cheeseburger, $19, a hug, and then immediately turned around and left and wouldn’t turn back. I think he probably cried. I did. I can’t believe I’ll never see him again. He was familiar. Pleasant. Jovial. Somehow, loveable. And lonely, stuck in this godforsaken town for work.

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I’ll never forget that guy. I was pretty much still a brand-new dancer when he first started coming in three or four days a week. It’s hard to explain just how much he meant to me.

In those first rough months, he was kind to me. He didn’t want anything but conversation from me. He listened as much as I did. He was consistency among the absolute chaos that often runs loose in the club, the chaos that I wasn’t yet used to and was still pretty afraid of. He wasn’t someone I had to hustle or work or lie to, and I was pretty lonely at that point in my own life. I’d just dumped my boyfriend, my only real friend was a heroin addict and I was still trying to stay away from drugs, absolutely none of my drinking buddies could understand my new worldview and I withdrew from them, and I’d long dropped out of school already.

He didn’t have the money, but somehow, I feel like he really did pay me in comfort. Perhaps more than I gave him in the amount of time I spent watching goofy magic tricks (which I honestly and secretly loved, despite other girls’ reaction as bored or indifferent).

I learned from Michael that it’s the one phone number or email address that I didn’t get that will still ache a little way down the road. I learned that sometimes I get what I need from patrons, too. The humanity of the customers I interact with came fully into light. I learned how reciprocal the relationship can be with customers.

I learned not to get that close to a customer, ever again. I developed a larger split (perhaps a split that didn’t fully exist before) between my Self and “Piper”, and especially developed a line not to cross in what I tell customers. Any customers. I became a little more callous, and much less open to letting the usual customer/dancer interaction slip into something less casual.

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I did. I cried when I wrote this. It was a pretty big turning point in dancing for me, when one day, he was just gone. Forever. I’ll never see him again; I don’t know his last name, and only know that he works some sort of construction and lives in Columbus. And even so, it will never be exactly the same as those nights sitting on the smoking patio. It never could be.

Hey, hey! I love finding new strippers wandering about Tumblr. Have you checked out AvaAdore’s list of Tumblr strippers? If you haven’t, you’ll be surprised that it’s a fairly long list. Long enough to make our own virtual dressing room, surely.

Thanks. The honesty was the point of starting this blog, way back before I knew other strippers blogged and cared to do the same. I realized soon after I started dancing, two years ago, that people just had no fucking clue. And not being able to do anything about public ignorance (of anything) is sort of like a personal torture. It bothers me immensely.

And, I thought for the longest time that women working in bigger cities and on coasts made triple or more what I make in an average night. It turns out that the distribution of stripper dollars is just not quite like the average cost of living, and that I’m quite fortunate to make what I do…and I don’t come close to pulling in a grand every night. I had a streak for awhile last year when I did once a week, and it sure as shit felt like a million dollars (and left my body feeling like a sack of potatoes for at least two days).

;) Pleasure to meet you!

As far as tasks I perform? It depends entirely on who I’m dealing with.

A great customer who treats me nicely means a fantastic VIP dance that I legitimately enjoy and don’t want to end. I have gotten off in VIP more than once…and I say that counts for enjoyment.

Dancing on stage can be a fucking blast, so long as the stage is full and people are really into having fun and tossing dollars out. There’s a stage vibe that is only quite right for me once in awhile. When that certain vibe is there, I feel like a star (cheesy enough?). I feel like a princess, unstoppable, beautiful. It’s a high. It’s surreal: I can’t picture myself on stage outside of work this way, it’s like being on acid and trying to describe the trip to someone sober. Moving comes more naturally, less awkwardly. With that high, I feel like I can actually dance.

Last night I was thinking about how much I actually do enjoy the comaraderie between many of the girls. Going for drinks in the upstairs office/cat petting station/”CSI”-watching room. Lazy nights on the couch, stretching. Long talks on the smoking patio. Listening to women who’ve danced for years talk about their experiences. The in-between-working things. The filler. I like the filler.

That he saw my dancing as art. He just kept repeating it. I felt like a million dollars the rest of the night.

GFE is a sex industry term meaning “Girlfriend Experience.” It’s used in prostitution, escorting, strip clubs…etc.

Some guys are go to strip clubs to feel like there is a woman who very deeply cares for them, who remembers them, who they can fantasize about as their girlfriend or lover for a little while.

There are guys who want us to go the whole nine yards on the fantasy and pretend we’re more like girlfriends than strippers-they’re-paying. They want to talk longer, they confess secrets, sometimes gifts are brought, and they usually see us more frequently than “It’s-a-buddy’s-bachelor-party night.” We’re expected to remember details about kid’s hobbies and other obscure personal details. It’s more intimate than it is a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am-for-the-dance.

xoxo <3

Physically, I have days where I feel over forty, with very stiff and sore movement. My knees and hips are the worst, and they definitely don’t make me feel young.

There are days where I look under eighteen, and I do have a youngish face. After a long night of work and little sleep, I look closer to thirty.

I still throw four-year-old tantrums on occasion (er, privately). I’m not, emotionally, an adult, even though I appear that way to most people. I often give the appearance of trusting, and yet, I struggle with it and can’t fathom giving more to the people I love the most. I don’t cry in front of people, and I never let myself “go” and just let someone in, fully. There is no one person that knows the whole story. And for that, I still have very childlike emotions.

I’ve lived a very full life. In twenty-three years, I’ve packed in more experiences than most thirty-five-year-olds. I’ve got a grasp on what a few of the harder things in life are like, and I’ve experienced inexplicably beautiful moments and places. I’ve spent many years observing, and thinking, and reading, and writing, and talking and talking and talking.

I talk too much—a trait of pubescent girl. And I whine.

Perhaps I’d think I was in my mid twenties. I don’t have a great emotional grasp on the world and I don’t appear to be much older than about my early twenties, but I’ve packed what years I’ve had with all kinds of experience and the constant quest for more knowledge.

Then again, I really like to/am quite good at counting and keeping track of things. I’m organized. If I weren’t to know for sure, I’d have a good idea of the passage of time for many, many years now and I’d be pretty close, out of curiosity.

Yes, my family—parents, sister, cousins, most of my aunts and uncles—know that I dance.

My mother found out first, about three weeks into my stripping escapade. She was using my laptop for something, and ran across the spreadsheet that I had left up with my earnings on it. She knew. She told my dad, and my sister found out in the mix somehow. My mother blabbed to my aunts, who told my cousins on my mother’s side (even though my mother cried and cried and told me how she didn’t want anyone to find out…it was her who spread it around). I told my male cousins on my father’s side, because I know that once in a great while, they do go to strip clubs. And after awhile, I sort of just didn’t care anymore.

Yeah, I dance. And yeah, I post photos on Facebook of pole tricks (clothed, and never at the club—only at the pole studio, my house, and free poling). And my occupation is listed as “Aerial Ninja Extraordinaire (Self-Employed).”

And yeah, I tell people.

And I still attempt to talk about it with my parents, who still insist that I quit and get a ‘more reasonable’ job. Occasionally they still call me, having found a job that pays $10/hour or so that I could take instead.

I originally gave them a choice: pay the difference between what I make and my actual expenses for a very humble lifestyle and I’ll work a different job, OR get over it. They’re not willing to front the $2000+/month difference (though they could afford it). And that’s fine with me—I prefer it that way. I prefer to do things on my own, and always have.

It was probably a good thing that I didn’t have the opportunity to tell them myself. I doubt I would have done it and they only would have found out through someone else, much later.

I don’t regret the way it went down at all. I only regret that I have the kind of parents who choose to believe that their public image is more important than their daughter’s interests, health, safety, and education. They’ve let me down on most things that matter, emotionally, by refusing to deal with them in any appropriate manner, for most of my post-pubescent life. If money isn’t the answer (and it isn’t, because I wish to remain in my job), then they don’t know what the fuck to do with themselves and are completely distraught.

I mostly avoid my family. But then again, I’ve mostly avoided my family for over a decade as is.

[Damn tumblebeasts ate my first draft of my answer…]

I absolutely understand what you’re saying.

There are still rare days when a customer asks me if I can do X for him, and I have to sort of scratch my head and wonder, “Can I? I mean, is it allowed? Is it legal? Will I get fined (by the bouncers) or fired for that?”

Things do blur. Action A is okay, but action D is clearly not allowed by law or rule. But where, exactly, do B and C fit in? And how the fuck am I supposed to know, when half the girls do B and C (as observed), but none will discuss it or admit to it (or even go so far as to vehemently deny doing one or the other), there is no punishment or specific rule against it, and bouncers don’t yell at girls for it?

It’s confusing. I was handed a sheet with very basic rules when I started, that amounted to “No sucking, fucking, or letting them touch your pussy in any way, with any part of their bodies.” That’s it. That is the entire collection of rules I received, which is basically the law against prostitution, and the things we are not allowed to sell, accept money for, or solicit customers to pay us for.**

Things like whether men can kiss/lick our breasts (and what about our necks?), and whether they can kiss us, and whether touching their penis (or groin region in general?) with our hands OVER their pants (we are definitely allowed/encouraged to grind on them, naked, so…?), and whether unbuttoning a shirt to be chest-to-chest with a customer is okay, and on and on.

No one wants to talk about the specifics and the play-by-play details of what is legal/acceptable at my club. Rumors are thrown around regarding one thing or another, and it changes biweekly. The manager will throw down the official rule, only to change it later, and then change it back, and so on. And nearly none of the rules are enforced, save for blatant prostitution (the sucking and fucking). And there’s no written or posted rules. And when the rules are changed/changed back/amended/clarified, it’s to one girl, or one bouncer, one time (and who do you trust?)…and then the next time, it very well may be different (and/or a very slight variation on the previous action). It’s not made known to all of the dancers/staff what the actual rule IS.

I’m so confused that I have my own general set of rules. I play the game legally, as far as I know.

But until someone with some authority makes it crystal-fucking-clear what the rules are, play by play, I only have my own boundaries and the general set of rules I was given to go on.

I have a feeling this applies at quite a few clubs.

**I work in a club that allows dancers to be fully nude, that allows touch from customer to dancer AND dancer to customer.

Thanks! Interesting to hear it from your end. ;)

<3

I pretty much made this link below just for you. You’re the last question I’ve received recently, and rather than taking the time to explain it over and over and over again for a particular girl wanting to get into dancing, I thought I’d just explain it one more time. It took me a week…

http://strippr.tumblr.com/strip » So You Think You Want to Strip?

No, I didn’t. It’s not in the best interest of my own relationship, nor is it in the best interest of the business side of things.

I’m not sure why you’re posting as anonymous.