just another manic monday

yesterday i worked with a new girl. she was INTENSE. i was first on the schedule, meaning i started at 11:30 and then the other girl starts at 11:45. i got to work only 10 mins early, went downstairs and put on some lipstick and was up on stage on time. i still needed to straighten my hair, do my eye makeup, etc, but i figured i'd just do it at 11:45 when the other girl started. well at 11:42 the girl shows up dragging this big clunky tool-chest thing and tells me she's running late so i'll just have to cover for her for a little while and then she'll be right up. i was like, "i actually don't have to cover for you. please just get on stage at the right time and then do your makeup on your break." she was like, "oh well i'll just be a few minutes," and clunked the tool chest down the stairs. CLONK! CLONK! CLONKCLONKCLONKCLONK! CLONK! finally a little after NOON i went downstairs. "you need to get on stage. it's empty. your shift started 20 minutes ago. you don't get to decide to make me keep dancing for you while you get ready." annoying.

so i did my hair and makeup and then went up and danced again. a couple hours went by without incident. she basically started talking the moment she arrived and then just never stopped for the whole rest of the day. i responded politely for a while, but then just tuned her out. she seemed speedy to me. i wondered whether i was that clueless and grating when i did speed. i don't remember how i was then because i was out of my head. but people tell me i talked a lot.

then a regular of mine came in, the italian guy with the short little lap. he bought a bunch of dances. the girl kept playing songs and then leaving long gaps between them, which is annoying because all that time is just time you have to hang out naked with a customer, not dancing, just hanging out. it can be awkward. often i'll just keep dancing, sans music, because i don't want to hear anymore about the guy's frigid wife or whatever and would rather keep him blissed out and quiet.

annnnnnyway, my guy was about to leave but i got him to stay for one more set of dances. the girl played two songs and then just stopped. after several minutes i stuck my head out, "hey hon, you need some money for the jukebox?"

"nah. i'm done," she said. i noticed she was fully clothed. as in, she had jeans on and everything.

"no, honey, you have one more."

"nope! that was three!" she demanded.

my customer was like, "that was definitely two. i'm 100% positive that that was two." so i gave him $20 back, but he gentlemanly let me keep it, although i could tell he was a little bummed to miss out on his last pre-paid dance of the day. "merry christmas," he said.

it was clear that the girl was not going to dance anymore, that she was chomping at the bit to go out for a smoke. i went up to dance. she goes, "yeah, that was totally three, girl! you must've been having so much fun in there you just lost count."

"actually. it was two. i am 100% positive about it, as was my customer. but since you're dressed and my customer's gone let's just forget about it."

"well, i'll dance another song if you NEED ME TO, but that would make FOUR IN A ROW, and you're NOT supposed to do that here, i already got yelled at for that!" she started undoing her jeans, the unlit cigarette in her mouth dangling precariously as she wobbled on one stiletto.

there were finally customers in the club, and they were all staring at the drama unfolding. "i'm going on stage now and i'll dance. i'm done talking about this now," i said, quietly.

then she just exploded, "i've NEVER been treated so rudely as here! the girls in this club are SO RUDE!" she rifled through her purse for her lighter. "i don't know why everybody always has to pick on me! i've only been stripping for three months, give me a break! SO RUDE. just MEAN!!!" she was still exclaiming as she made for the door.

of course my boss was in the back this entire time, putting away the liquor order. plus she's a bit hard of hearing. i wish she'd seen this hubbub. she frowns upon temper tantrums and yelling at other dancers in front of customers.

the girl's attitude with me oscillated between injured and bullying for the rest of the day, but at least she stopped talking to me. she continued to talk to the customers a lot, though. her voice is really loud. every time a new customer would come in, she'd go, "and for those of you just getting here, i'm ___ _____." i won't tell you her name, but i will say that it seems a short-sighted name to choose. oh that doesn't even make sense unless i tell you what it is! but i can't! arg.

hmm. what else. well, i didn't make even a dollar till 1pm, but then between 1 and 4 i made $400. pretty great for a rainy monday afternoon, if i do say so.

a guy came in who seemed super normal. an accountant and medical biller at a clinic downtown. he knocked off work early and took "three E's," which is a lot of ecstacy. that would've been too much for me. although i don't really know how much that is since i've only ever snorted it. anyway he appeared to be high, and then just got higher and higher as the day wore on. he bought several dances from me. i asked him why he had so heavily drugged himself in the middle of the workday. he told me he was reporting to jail on wednesday morning for speeding three times and then failing to do the community service in time, and that he wanted to have as much fun as possible before then. i think reporting to jail all cracked out and coming down off drugs is a prescription for a week-long inescapable panic attack. but we all do things differently.

he said something that was both sad and funny. he told me he was bummed and terrified about being in jail for 90 days, but that on the bright side maybe the little girl ghost who had been haunting him will have moved on by the time he gets out. "i just picked her up randomly a week ago, i think at this wild solstice party i was at, and she's been making my life hell." he showed me a deep scratch on his shoulder. "i woke up yesterday morning and she was sitting on my chest, making it hard for me to breathe. then she just reached down and scratched me with her little nails, and she laughed and laughed." he shuddered. "and she's not even in old-timey clothes. she's wearing, like, a carebears sweatsuit from the 80's."

"well, she's not here right now, at least," i said. "otherwise i would be able to feel her and probably see her." (which is true, btw.)

"yeah. she really likes it inside my apartment, for some reason. she's been staying there all the time. i just hope she gets bored and leaves while i'm in jail. it would be nice to get out and have her gone."

i thought for a minute, "oh no! what if she follows you to jail?!" but then i thought, "little girls don't want to hang out in jail."

when i was getting off work, there was a note from the new girl on my makeup bag. "i'm sorry about before," it read. "i'm new at all this and i take things too personal sometimes."

a prime real-life example of a joke of pretend that my mom likes to call "I'M NEW HERE." it's where she does something annoying or says something totally rude, or fails to follow through on a promise or whatever, and then makes this vacant doe-eyed expression and goes, "oh? i'm not supposed to do that/i did that wrong/i was supposed to fix that/i hurt your feelings? i'm sorry, I'M NEW HERE!" and then nobody's mad anymore about whatever it was and we're all laughing instead. because haven't we all worked with some obnoxious asshole who does stupid shit and then feigns innocent ignorance and wants you to keep doing their work/cutting them breaks under the guise of being NEW HERE? i'm not sure why it always works as a joke for my mom getting off the hook, it just one of those mysterious things that always keeps being too funny NOT to work.

well i guess that's it. gonna go to the movies and out for sushi. rainy day times.

ho ho ho

well. i haven't written in a while because to tell you the truth, i'm fucking bored as hell. people are seeming less and less interesting to me. "annoyance" has taken up residence in the space usually marked "amusement." maybe it's the rain. and the short gray days and long, dark, glamourless nights. but i'm experiencing a level of discontent that is, frankly, frightening.

even my writing is boring. look, i just said, "to tell you the truth," and "frankly." oh jeez.

well. yesterday was christmas. i was going to go out to my family's party in beaverton, but my car was emitting some mysterious, strong smelling smoke. there seemed to be enough coolant and oil. i don't know what the problem is. my uncle's going to fix it on tuesday but as far as xmas was concerned, i was stuck in portland. i was going to catch a ride with my mom but my little brother woke up with the stomach flu so they weren't going. and my grandma would've come to get me but she can't drive in the dark so i would've had to spend the night. except i was working last night. and so.

i lit a fire in the fireplace and just hung around all day in my pj's reading. i bickered with my housemate for a minute and then things in the house felt really tense so i went out for a walk. i thought i was bundled up, but the icy wind cut right through my layers and then i was cold. also i was hungry. i wanted turkey! i got super bummed about missing the party and i had a nice long cry as i walked thru the quiet streets toward my house. laughter and yummy food smells wafted out from some houses and that only made me cry more. i have food scarcity issues from growing up so poor and when other people are eating and there's none for me, i'll always burst into tears. what a baby.

when i got home it was almost time to leave for work. my stomach was rumbling but i felt really stubborn about eating. like if i didn't get to have turkey, then i didn't want anything. i couldn't go to work with nothing in there, so i finally choked down a toaster waffle slathered in peanut butter, a treat i usually enjoy but yesterday it may as well have been cardboard.

i got to work and it was super dead. and i looked at next week's schedule, i'm only working monday MORNING and new year's day. not even one night shift. and there are a bunch of new girls scheduled for all the night shifts. pretty annoying. so then i was even MORE CRABBY.

but i went upstairs. danced a while and then this guy was motioning me over so i went to sit with him. he was a little developmentally delayed, he reminded me of corky on "life goes on." he was really sweet and seemed hell-bent on getting wasted. i don't mean to discriminate, but i just didn't feel right about hustling him for dances. i felt totally fine letting him buy me drinks, though. i had two drinks, one right after the other, and then i was drunk and i felt so much better.

there was a kid sitting on the other side of me at the bar who was doing a lot of bummed-out texting. turns out it was his 21st birthday and a bunch of his friends were supposed to be meeting him but not even one of them showed up! he'd already been at the club for FIVE HOURS. his phone died and he kept watching the door, everytime someone walked in he'd look up with hopeful little eyes. finally about an hour later, his MOM showed up. i was sitting with the kid when his mom walked in and the look on his face, of total relief at someone who loves him showing up to celebrate, brought a tear to my eye.

the mom was pretty young. at one point she told a story about being on a school trip to NYC for new year's eve 1980, and she was 15 at the time. which would make her... oh i guess she's 45. not as young as i thought. i did the math wrong last night and thought she was 35. haha. well, she looked really good. she had on a fancy red dress with good-looking cleavage, naturally blonde hair that would've looked great had it not been so frizzy, super pretty face, and a little patricia arquette tooth, which is always TOPS in my book. the mom and son were so sweet together. eventually the son was so drunk he really couldn't drink another drop so she took him home.

nobody else interesting. oh except for a couple who wasn't at all gross. they were in their late 40's, i'd say, and were extra ordinary looking but something about them was super charming and when i did a few dances for them i actually got a little turned on. if they made an xtube video, i'd totally watch it. i wish i could say the same for most of my couples customers but it's just not the case.

i liked the girls i was working with. we had a nice night together. i hardly did ANY dances, but still managed to make $300. i had thought it would be more, that people would be extra generous on christmas. i was wrong, but it could've been a lot worse.

diamond in the rough.

hi. i haven't written in a while. i'll catch up a bit:

last wednesday i had a really good night at work. i got another one of those guys who want you to "run away" with them. because surely, since you're a stripper, you're deeply troubled and have a lot to run away from. all you need is a rich guy to find you, to see that through your excessive layers of grime, you're actually a diamond in the rough. i'm pretty good at playing into this dumb game and seeming as if i do, in fact, need a bit of saving.

several hundred dollars later, the guy got way too drunk, left, and was quickly replaced by another good customer who wanted a petite brunette in his lap for a good long time.

then i worked on friday and it was extraordinarily slow. (i don't even know why i say "extraordinarily" anymore, since it's actually NOT very out of the ordinary to have a shift so slow that you barely break a bill.) as i was leaving work, though, this big guy i like a lot was coming in. i felt immediately bummed since i would've been leaving $100 richer if our paths had crossed half an hour earlier. but he goes "hey andi! you leaving? well here's 20 bux for ya."

"thanks," i said.

"no strings attached!" he yelled. "i hate it when people attach strings to their christmas presents!"

i wondered what kind of strings he could've attached to $20, had he been the type to attach strings. pre-paid lapdance? what? hmm. anyway it was nice to get $2o for doing absolutely nothing. especially since i was leaving with a paltry $92, and at least now my evening's total was over a hundred, which just seems so much more civilized.

sunday was our club's christmas party. it was really sweet and fun. i like all the girls a lot. i brought my sweetie with me and he dressed up SO CUTE. i got tipsy on white wine and bbq ribs. a lovely affair. really. a lush peach tree on my otherwise barren social landscape of late.

after the party i took a quick nap to sober up a bit and let some of the meat settle and then i went to work. the club was very dead at first. i was doing like $5 sets for the first hour or so. i spent a lot of time sitting with this guy named doug. he seemed like a good investment, but turned out not to be. he said something early on that endeared me to him. he told me his wife had left him after 21 years, and he couldn't believe it. he goes, "every morning i looked at myself in the mirror and said, it's not about YOU! and then i went to work. and did whatever i could do to make my wife happy. but it didn't work."

i sat with him for way too long but i didn't have anything else to do and he kept ordering us drinks. plus, his stories were WILD. he talked really fast and included TONS of details of partying with the Stones and what they ate and drank and what the hookers looked like, but then he'd gloss over kind of important things, like "oh yeah well that was the year i got shot so my foot wasn't working too good..." so, you're gonna tell me that bonnie raitt likes shrimp cocktail, the baby shrimp kind not the jumbo, but then you're not going to say how you got shot, or who did it or why. strange. he bought one dance after i hassled him a bit and then it was time for me to bid him farewell and go find my money.

i danced for some random guys.

then a really cute dyke came in and sat at the rack for an hour or so. just happy and content in her little samantha ronson outfit. super flirty. i thought it might be fun to dance for her but i had this regular who came in and kept wanting dances between my sets. then eventually he left and i was gonna hustle the dyke for a dance but right then her girlfriend showed up looking exasperated. she sat down and tried to appear to have fun for a while, but it wasn't very convincing. it's pretty rare that someone who loves strip clubs has a girlfriend who also loves strip clubs. i mean, it totally happens. but more often it's a bit contentious.

then i had ANOTHER guy who wanted a million dances and wanted me to run off with him. these guys happen a lot around the holidays. keep 'em coming!

finally i was off work and i was pretty surprised when i counted my money. there was a lot of it! yay!

why you invite strippers to the bachelor party, not the wedding