Sleepy Eye

The last thing I want to be doing is writing a blog on no sleep at 7 AM.  This is a slight exaggeration, but pretty much.  I've been wondering why, despite my promise to myself to make up for the years of dancing and not writing about it, I almost always refuse to do just that.  I wonder if it's because I've begun to dissociate.  I wonder if that can be reversed.  I wonder if it's because I'm afraid to awaken the parts of me that have become deadened inside as I make idiotic banter with customers so far below my intelligence level that it's literally unbelievable sometimes.

I'm awake because I made a bad decision to tune into the raging debate that is occurring on my now possibly favorite website: http://titsandsass.com/ re: "extras girls," or girls who engage in varying levels of prostitution in strip clubs where that is illegal.  A word that is thrown around a lot in the comment threads, almost to a comedic degree, is "whorephobic."  "Slut-shaming," too.  I just rubbed my face for a split second out of exasperation.  Someone told me recently (no clue who, probably a customer;) that as our bodies develop in the womb, the hands actually come out of the brain, and thus is why we touch our heads with our hands in times of distress.  Man, I love how customers come up with crazy shit like that.  Who knows, it could be true, I simply don't care to Google it yet.  Customers (I like seeing it abbreviated as custys on Twitter;) seriously say the craziest of all crazy things.  I remember one guy telling me there were caves in South America wherein people live to be 600+ years old, but of course it's being carefully covered up by the government as part of a massive conspiracy.

Let's talk more about customers.  Wait- back to disassociating for a second.  I stopped taking notes at work, and I wonder if that's because I don't want to feel things?  I work in one of the least mentally taxing of all environments I've ever worked in.  The club is, by all standards of decorum, ASTONISHINGLY clean.  I no longer work at Deja Vu, where I was repeatedly groped/bitten, etc. and in constant competition with aforementioned "extras girls," who therefore brought in custys that absolutely constantly solicited me for sex.  I can't really figure out then, why, I can't/don't want to write about it.  I've got strip club fatigue.  I have literal fatigue, as well.  After being diagnosed with two concurrent sleep disorders, I now understand why I constantly operate at a level of functioning that is just slightly above "constant exhaustion."  I no longer bound out of the backstage, a shiny young 19-21 year old, dazzling the crowd with my genuine giddiness.  Well that, and I was also on drugs, but that's for another time.  I adapt to how tired I am, and I play up the "bedroom eyes" (LOL, what a stupid term,) and sultry sensuality.  It works for me.  I feel I've grown into my sexuality to a place where I'm very comfortable, and I love that.

Let's all listen to "Glory Box" by Portishead and hold hands while she sings "I just wanna be a woman," ok???

Portishead - "Glory Box"

"For this is the beginning of forever... and ever... ohhh"

Impermanence

I say "YOLO" sometimes because people hate it, but mostly because it's fucking true.
You do only live once that we know of, and that sentiment is no more profoundly felt than at a strip club.
That ultra-cliché of "live like you're going to die tomorrow" or whatever... It's almost palpable backstage.  Girls getting shitty tattoos and eating fast food daily, because consequences for any and all of this seems so abstract and nebulous.
The very act of wearing 6-8" stilettos and contorting our bodies onstage and during dances defines this. Eventually, there will be a price to pay.  Not in a creepy, religious doomsday way, but physiologically, our bodies won't come out of this unscathed after years of doing it.  All of the torquing of spines, the shortening of achilles tendons... not all the yoga in the world can save us.

I don't have a savings account, and I have almost nothing to show for years of dancing except lots of stories and some likely permanent damage to parts of my body.
Some strippers are smart and have retirement funds, own real estate, etc., but they are the minority.
We share this feeling, that even though we make (usually,) a lot of money quickly, it's never enough.
I've posited that stripping, being like gambling, is my replacement addiction for drugs and alcohol.
I try sometimes to explain to customers that this income is very hit or miss.
Last night I left with hardly anything, and tonight I made a lot.
I love the thrill of the uncertainty.

My back and my feet kill, but I don't want to stop.
Even though I spend the majority of my shift waiting for things to end (stage sets when no one's tipping, dances for creeps, long VIP sets for creeps, etc.), I don't want to leave this work.
I love the women.
I love the freedom.
This is who I am.  Sexual.  Open.

I don't have a significant other, but I find solace in the money I take home.  The cash that *I* earned.  Just me.  Knowing I don't need anyone to provide for me.  I swear I could go to sleep cuddling my money.  I think that's a matter that deserves some future psychoanalysis, but not at the moment.

I deal with people trying to touch me without my permission.  I deal with breath that almost makes me gag.  I deal with comments that range from obscenely offensive to wildly inappropriate.  I'm proud of all the skills I've honed that all work harmoniously to make me better at this.

Today a guy was looking at my ass while I was giving him a table dance.  "I love that butt floss you have going on," he said of my standard-issue black stripper thong, that in all fairness is probably not much thicker than floss.  He had on some shitty 80s hair metal shirt, and had just finished telling me about the high rate of suicide at his high school.  He graduated in 1986.  "This one girl.. she had only been there a few months... she came up from Iowa..."  Why he told me all this, I don't know.  Stories like that are easily forgotten, strangely, but those like which follows are what stick.


Last week, I was giddily telling my manager about my new Hello Kitty press-on nails (that came in a pack that said "for ages 6+") and my HK earrings, and I suddenly voiced my self-consciousness at the childishness of it all.  He replied with a toothy grin in utmost seriousness: "It's OK sweetie!  Don't worry!  My house is literally COVERED in Legos.  Covered."