if you don't have anything nice to say

hey. i have been getting weird comments, several of them, and it's weirding me out. so please don't leave them. you don't have to read this blog, in fact if you don't like it please don't. there are lots and lots of other things you could read, like war and peace or the twilight books. or sapphic love poems. or a battered thrift store copy of helter skelter. or an US weekly someone leaves on the plane. you could even just go to the library and ask the librarian for some good Young Adult fiction. whatever. but don't read this and then write weird shit to me. thank you in advance for your consideration in this matter.

no good stories this time.

i'm down south and i had planned to work while i was here, and i had a bunch of appointments set up for yesterday but i just didn't feel up to it. i never cancel appointments, but i canceled THREE yesterday. i've been really sick all week with my terrible digestion, and it has left me feeling fragile and insular like i'm just barely hanging in there and i don't want to touch anybody. i don't have much energy right now and i didn't feel like i could part with even a drop of it.

after i canceled my appointments yesterday, i went thrifting with my friend dionne and then we just hung out. she made a weird fancy dinner and she and her boyfriend john and i ate and drank wine and it was so nice. i felt a bit of anxiety because i should've been working, but i also felt truly happy for letting myself off the hook, something i rarely do.

so. i don't have any great stories to tell you. next time!

monday and wednesday

i worked on monday night. i was having INSANE pms. i felt totally grouchy and exhausted from the moment i got there. it wasn't very fun. i kept thinking, "how am i going to finish this shift?" and i had a customer who was tipping me to sit with him all night, which was great for money, but i find that sitting with someone talking can often be WAY more exhausting than dancing for them. this particular guy was super nice, but fielding his bragging/self-deprecating remarks/date requests was a lot of work. i didn't want him to leave because i wanted him to keep tipping me. but i was also bummed every time i got offstage to find that he was still there. he stayed till the very end. he must've drank like ten vodka tonics. it shocks me how much people can drink, i mean if i'd had ten drinks, i would've died of alcohol poisoning.

today i worked the day shift. slowest shift since i started working there, and so BORING. i worked with a girl i like, but that was the only good thing. oh the other good thing was that a guy came in and brought us cookies. i got my period yesterday and today just felt like one long game of "hide the tampon string." i don't love working whilst on the rag. i'm so listless and lethargic. disillusioned with the state of the world and my place in it. i get crazy right before my period, and then the first day or two i'm still not quite myself. tomorrow should be better, though.

nothing good to say today. goodnight.

so gay.

hi. i haven't written for a while. i worked last week, nothing very interesting happened. except that i worked with that real wacky girl, the one who likes to bring kitchen props and whatnot. she wasn't wacky, though, she was rather subdued. she's really really cute. i like her a lot. we worked a slow day shift, i think it was thursday. it was mellow. the best part of the day was when these two dykes came in on vacation from utah. they were RAD. they sat at the rack and weren't your normal dyke customers, who are careful not to stare too much at your cooch. these girls were like MENS. they could not get enough pussy in the face, they loved it! another thing that differentiated them from your normal dyke customer is that they were great tippers. they tipped me well over $150 while they sat at the rack. one of them was really cute, too, in a mean gym-teacher kind of way. you know she'd give you a good workout. the other one wasn't cute, but was the friendlier of the two.

the only other interesting customer who came in was this young boy who comes in to see me sometimes. i think i wrote about him before, the native american kid who moved here from north dakota? he's really nice. comes in, sits at the rack for one set, then wants one dance, during which time he pitches a giant tent and then promptly leaves to deal with it. i wonder where he goes. maybe he has a car and can go rub it out there. who cares. he's sweet, though. i like seeing him.

then i worked on saturday. it was fine. a bunch of metal dudes came in from a band i've never heard of called "overkill." they were pretty rad. they didn't buy any dances, but they were fun to dance for onstage. actually almost all of the customers were good on saturday. i hardly sold any dances, it was so weird. but i had a fun time dancing. near the end of my shift, some guys came in who were all so good-looking if i had seen them outside the club, i would have assumed they were gay. but they did seem to enjoy watching naked girls, so who knows. anyway one of them looked like an attractive fabio, if that's not too much of an oxymoron to imagine. he was super hunky and tan with these long flowing curls. he bought me a couple of drinks and instead of sneaking them down to the dressing room and dumping them out, as i sometimes do--BAD, I KNOW: ALCOHOL ABUSE!--i just drank them instead. i was enjoying the silly relaxed feeling of being slightly drunk. and i liked sitting at the bar for a bit with this weirdly hot guy.

sometimes i really do think guys are hot, and i worry that i might be !!!GASP!!! bisexual. but luckily then i have a day like today, where my hands smell amazing from a roll in the hay with a cute person, and i'm being super careful not to wash them too thoroughly because i want to sneak pussy sniffs when nobody's looking, and feel my stomach flutter. and i think about how totally 100% opposite this is from when i get man cum all over my hands and will scrub them with toothpaste or even comet to get the smell out. and then i'm like, NOPE: GAY. thank goddess.

"haha no, i am from the island"

i used to have a myspace blog. i'd write about all kinds of random stuff. i was closing that account today and i read through to see if there was anything i could share with you. here's a post from a night i spent working at one of manhattan's shittiest clubs.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

i know it's best to put on a brave face and pretend everything's okay. but right this minute i happen to have insane PMS, i'm broke and lonesome and it feels like the world's ending. my friend, will, said something to me the other day that i'm trying to keep in mind, "you've been taking care of yourself since you were born, and you're going to keep doing it." i know it's true, but right now things feel dire.

anyway, tonight sucked. i went to work at this filthy strip club (pussycat lounge, if you've been there you'll know what i mean when i say that it is a Total Dump). i went there in the first place because i heard it was the only place in new york with no house fee. well, have you ever heard the expression you can't draw blood from a turnip? as in, of COURSE they don't charge, the girls would have to be making money in order to be swindled out of a house fee.

the place itself is little and weird and could be charming if it had been in any way lucrative for me. the girls dance on a narrow platform behind the bar, and so basically every customer is sitting at the tip rail, only there's a bar in between. it's bizarre. you dance for half of every hour. the girls dance into two groups, one group goes up on the hour, and the other goes up on the half-hour. i said, "with all these girls dancing at once, how will you know which tips are yours?" they laughed at me. "oh, you'll know." they said.

i did see what they meant once i started working--you know the tip is yours because you have to dangle your leg precariously over the edge of the platform so the patron can put the dollar in your garter. or you can just reach over the bartender's head with your arm. not that i'd know from personal experience, though, since i DIDN'T EVEN MAKE ONE DOLLAR TONIGHT.

there were hardly any customers, and the few who were there already had girls sitting in their laps. there was one guy i danced in front of for a long time who had a stack of one-dollar bills (maybe 15 or 20) in front of him. clearly they were with which to tip the dancers, but he was such a stingy bastard. the way he was sitting there all drunk on the power of those one-dollar bills was positively nauseating. he COULDN'T use them to tip, because as soon as they were gone he'd shrink back to his actual size, becoming a little dried out raisin of a man.

when i got off "stage" i tried to get him to buy a dance. no go.

the next time i went up to dance there was a decently dressed guy who came and sat right where i was dancing. he didn't tip. at all. during the whole 30 minutes. not a good sign, but you have to try, so i went and sat with him and talked to him about nothing for a good ten minutes before i even offered him a dance, which felt downright charitable to me. he was chatty cathy till i brought up the dance, then he seemed annoyed and was like, "you know, on mondays, the guys who come in aren't really coming in for the girls. we're coming in to watch football and just unwind after work." oh right, the game must have been on a commercial break the whole time i've been listening to you blab, and the whole time you were watching dance. and it's important for you to watch the game HERE because there aren't a million other regular bars that show monday night football.

i've met this guy over and over and over. this is the kind of guy who goes to the hustler club and refuses to spend any money on the girls, claiming that he's here for the chicken wings. "there's just something about the sauce here," he'll say. you can find this same guy at any strip club anywhere in the country, nursing the same beer for hours, just one chair back from the tip rail, so he's still getting a prime view and never having to pay. the kind of cheap, smug asshole who wants to see naked girls for free and feels entitled to do so.

in the words of laurel frank, "oh! dear diary!"

there are so many ways to get someone to buy a lapdance, and so many, many ways for them to say no. the best one tonight came from a man with an intensely pockmarked face and the most bizarrely fucked up grill i've seen in a LONG TIME:

me (after two scant minutes of small talk, i cut to the chase): "so, i'm ready to dance for you now."
him: "oh no. it's too dangerous."
me: "dangerous? what do you mean?"
him: "i think you know what i mean."
me: "oh, you mean you might get an erection?"
him (embarassed that i've used the clinical term instead of alluding to it in vague references): "well. yes, that's right."
me (trying to snuggle him in the direction of the lap-dance area): "oh don't worry about it guy, it happens all the time. totally natural. let's go"
him (wiggling free from my embrace), firmly: "haha. no. i am from the island."

how could i argue with that? i wasn't even sure what it meant. or what island. i was guessing jamaica, but it could've been any number of other islands. haiti? barbados? aruba? iceland?

there weren't any new customers so i went into the dressing room for a minute, (and by "dressing room," i mean utility closet with a wall of lockers--all of them already claimed, btw, two stools, and a cracked mirror. the entire space is about five feet by five feet and absolutely grimy. you might think i'm exaggerating, that no dressing room could be that small and dingy, but i'm not. and it was) to read a few pages in the book i'd brought along. i finished the third teenage vampire novel yesterday. (it was only out in hardback so i bought it and then kept it in perfect condition so i could return it. i carried it around in a ziplock back without its dustcover, and was super careful not to dog-ear any of the pages or read it while eating. worked like a charm.) today i needed a new book to read so i chose one off jessi's bookshelf, "two girls, fat and thin," by mary gaitskill. i read "veronica," and loved it so i thought i'd give this one a try. well, when cracked it open today in the utility closet, i realized that i'd already read it. i liked the book, but not enough to read it twice. so then, with nothing to read i knew i should get out and hustle the same few straggly customers. instead, stalling, i chatted with the other girl who was hiding out in the "dressing room." she was nice: "jenny."

after a few minutes of chatting, it was time for us to go back on stage. i noticed that jenny danced with the languid complacency of a lusty lady employee. it used to drive me nuts when i worked there, but at least it sort of made sense--with an hourly wage, girls felt no need to hustle, or to even please the customer at all. (i thought this was annoying and short-sighted and that it would eventually drive the business straight into the ground.) but here, a little more effort seemed to be in order. but then... did it? i was dancing like a stripper and jenny was lolling about disinterestedly on the floor and both of us had made the same amount of money: ZERO DOLLARS. oddly, though, i looked over a little while later and jenny had a dollar in her garter. i wish i could say i thought, "well, good for her." but what i actually thought was, "wow, that's weird."

yeah. so. i worked for a little over two penniless hours, and then i was like, fucking fuck this. i can MAKE NOT EVEN ONE DOLLAR in the comfort of my own home. wearing CLOTHES, with SLIPPER SOCKS on instead of these stripper heels. (i'd like to say it was a matter of pride or self-preservation, but what it really ended up coming down to was slipper socks vs. stripper heels.)

i was like, "hey can i take off and come back tomorrow when maybe it's busier?" the manager, who was actually pretty nice as far as strip club managers go, goes, "naw honey. if you leave you're quitting." his tone was that of an actor who, in delivering his line, was hoping to convey a feeling of regrettable non-negotiableness, just one of those sad facts of life. "well, son..." in actuality, though, my leaving but not quitting probably WAS negotiable, but i just didn't have it in me. and i wanted to leave there and never go back. and so i was made to deliver the line: "okay, then: i quit." it's not something i've gotten to say very often and it wasn't as satisfying as you might think. especially given the fact that i was only under their employ for a couple hours. no fanfare. just a surprised, "oh," from the manager.

jeeeeeez. now what.

this ain't my first time at the rodeo, cowgirl

i'm home from a rather long day. let me begin by telling you that i went away last weekend to palm springs, a trip from which i am still recovering. i won't bore you with all the lurid details but i'll tell you that a character from this blog made an appearance. it was a girl i wrote about having met in nyc last summer, the one who looks like rachel maddow, who told me i was trouble and then persisted in jamming her hand up my skirt on repeat. annnnnyway, i had kind of forgotten how annoying she turned out so when she spotted me in the hotel bar, where i sat alone with my cocktail, and invited me out dancing with her, i agreed. it ended up being a super fun night, if a bit drug-fueled. she still has that same girlfriend from last summer and i'm happy to report i'm no home-wrecker. so. there wasn't any hanky-panky, but there was a lot of cocaine. such a gross drug.

the next night was also excessively druggy. i met these hot girls and ended up taking ecstacy with them. it was rad but then they wanted to have an orgy. i felt a twinge of obligation after having taken their drugs, but ultimately my aversion to group sex won out and i sweet-talked my way out of the orgy and back to my hotel room as the sun was coming up.

the point being that i was a total shit-head to my body this weekend and now i'm paying for it. besides the drugs, i also consumed wild amounts of booze and sugar. since i've returned, i've had a stomach-ache that just WILL NOT go away. i've had a few hours of respite, but for the most part: ouch. plus my serotonin is 100% fucked so i feel blue. DUMMY! DON'T DO IT.

i woke up this morning, had a wild bathroom experience that is beginning to feel almost normal. was then grouchy and exhausted, and napped and read till work.

when i got to the club there was only one customer. great. things were slow going for the first few hours. i did some dances for a guy named pete from fargo. he was nice.

also i danced for a guy named lauren from kansas city. i didn't ask WHICH kansas city, i knew he'd say "guess" and that i'd guess wrong. he had a tan and short blonde hair that was parted strictly down the middle. he had on tight, high-waisted levi's and a crisp vaurnet t-shirt (tucked in). he looked like an aging teenager from fast times at ridgemont high. the kind of person who finds a look that works for them early on in life, and then just keeps it forever. a walking time capsule. i asked his name and he said, "lauren." i'd never met a BOY named lauren, and i opened my mouth to say so but realized that was possibly rude and/or boner-killing so instead i just said, "that's a great name. very uncommon." he said, "i'm not common." i wasn't sure what he meant by that and was too lazy to find out.

when i sat him down in the little dance nook, he immediately threw his hands up against the wall behind him, making a giant, strained V. perhaps this is the customary pose in kansas city. i took his arms down off the wall and placed them on his knees. i said, "isn't that more comfortable?" he looked suspicious and said, "okay, but i better not have some bouncer come in here and shake me down for an extra 80 bux, okay?" i said, "why on earth would that happen?" (i didn't have the heart to tell him that we don't even HAVE a bouncer.) he guffawed in a way that implied i knew EXACTLY what he was talking about. he goes, "this ain't my first time at the rodeo, okay cowgirl?" it was hard for me not to laugh, but my gut told me to stifle my giggles so i did, but it was NOT EASY.

oh! the best part about lauren is that he was on vacation for his 40th birthday, and on friday he will realize his lifelong dream of snow-skiing and water-skiing on the same day! he's got it all lined up.

after that lauren came to sit at the rack whenever i was dancing and he was an enthusiastic customer and a good tipper, too. you might think these things go hand-in-hand, but let me assure you that they do not. the most entertained, enthusiastic, gushy customers are often the worst tippers, as though they think their praise and adoration is tip enough. also guys who feel like they have some sort of deep connection to you hate to sully things with money. pish posh. oddly, the most disaffected, zoned-out customers will often tip you very well.

case in point, my next dance. a guy named rob. i hate that name, just sayin. rob seemed disinterested, but was nonetheless tipping me well on stage. so when i finished a set i asked him whether he was ready for some private time with me. he mumbled, "i guess. oh why not," and i led him to the nook. he paid for the dance and then just sat there, staring straight ahead the whole time. he didn't look at my tits, or even my pussy when it was right in his face. it was like he was suffering through it. so strange. at the end of it i said, "there. now that wasn't so bad, was it?" and he said, "well it wasn't so good, either," and high-tailed it out of there like his ass was on fire. it was strange. and insulting.

i think i've mentioned how i hate it when guys sit down to eat a burrito at the tip rack. how it turns my stomach and fills me with ugly thoughts? well anyway there was this really good-looking guy who came in. he had cute little harry potter eyeglasses on and was well put together in his short burberry trenchcoat and hermes ascot. i was having fun dancing for him, and then here comes the waitress with a giant burrito platter. bummer. even the cute ones. but then, to my surprise, he rose from his chair and said, "i'll be back, i'm just gonna go eat this in the corner. i can't eat it here at the rack, how uncivilized." my mind was blown for a second. i felt like wait a minute did you just say that on your own, or did i somehow project those words out from your mouth?

oh jeez i'm so tired right now. i could ramble on and on but i'm falling asleep at the keys.

taco time.

yesterday i worked. i was suuuuper tired after a late-night date with a cute person, but i was in a good mood. i worked with a girl i like, she's really mellow. she's really really skinny, but still pretty. she kind of looks like a junkie version of brigitte bardot. not the same tits and ass, but same complexion and a very similar face and hair. also she does her makeup very mod.

this guy came in who seemed kind of special. as in, maybe a head injury or something. he was nice, though. he had a weird pageboy bob that made him look like a giant campbell soup kid. but with a large bulbous walter matthau nose. he tipped me a five on stage and said, "now will you show off for me?" it happened to be the third song anyway, where, keeping with tradition, i take off my thong. so i said, "yes. sure."

a little while later i noticed my co-worker helping the campbell soup guy read the menu. and then after a while here comes the waitress from the taco place next door with a two huge burrito platters. i couldn't picture my co-worker eating, but she sat down with this guy and totally ravaged a steak burrito. she looked really cute sitting there chowing down in her bikini. with her long hair and flat chest, she kind of looked like a kid eating after a long day of swimming. she had a placid little smile on her face.

i didn't have time to eat before work so i ate during my shift too, something i almost never do because my fucked up teeth make it hard for me to adequately chew my food, so whatever i've eaten just stays in my stomach in pretty much its original form for a while. like when a snake eats a mouse. it makes me self conscious to be naked in front of strangers with my belly protruding out in the shape of some dancing tacos or whatever. but my stomach demanded food so i got egg/avocado tacos from next door and they were fucking GOOD.

i did a bunch of dances for a guy named steve, why are they always named steve? i have five work steve's in my phone. it's almost as common as "mike" or "john." anyway this steve wore army pants and a patriotic trucker cap. i'm not sure why he took such a liking to me. but i was glad to do 6 dances for him. why not.

i don't remember who else i danced for. mostly i was looking forward to getting off work. i wanted to take a nap and then go country dancing, which is exactly what i did.