get your eyes checked

i've been working at the club a lot, but nothing too exciting has happened. i've had some really good shifts, and one bad one, and now i'm down south again. yesterday i had a client who came while i was massaging his back. just out of nowhere, blew his wad, face down, into the table. then we had almost an hour left. it was boring. when he was, at long last, leaving, i told him he looked like a thinner james gandolfini (who i actually find to be incredibly sexy)(this guy wasn't that sexy. but the resemblance was STRIKING). he appeared to be very offended and goes, "tony soprano?! usually people tell me i look like rob lowe." at first i thought he was kidding, i mean this guy looks as much like rob lowe as i look like cindy crawford. which is to say NOT AT ALL ALIKE. but then i realized he was serious so all i could say was, "oh yeah! i can see that!" HILARIOUS.

the next time someone tells me i look like katy perry, i'm going to get super offended, look at the person like they're crazy, and say, "huh! well! usually people say tyra banks."

shit my mom says, or, "ALL SNEAKY AND GOTH"

so i'm down south, i haven't felt like working very much. i did see a client today, a new guy. he was actually really hot! it was a fun time.

but since i don't have very much work to write about, i'm going to start a new segment for this blog called "shit my mom says," where i will either quote her directly, or copy and paste things from her facebook page for your perusal.

my mom really loves facebook and posts there a lot, at all hours. whenever i'm bored i'll have a short visit to her page and let the laughs begin. i'm not laughing AT her, by the way. she knows she's a weirdo and she loves attention. and she loves to make all her friends laugh. another thing i'll tell you is that she's very flamboyant, loud, and charming. she's really poor, and only finished the 8th grade so her grammar and spelling are kinda fucked, but she's actually really smart.

today she left a comment on my 22 year-old step-sister's page (i'm leaving out the names):

"LMAO remebering how you and [other stepsister] Tatooed the neighbor boy Mitchell ....you were all like 11-12 yrs old ....his mom was po'd ....lol ! He grew up kinda WEIRD ....I am almost positive he is the one stole [brother's] bike ....he cant even look me in the eyes ...all sneaky and GOTH ....hope he still has that tat !"

then a little later my cousin's status update stated that she hated her new boss, to which my mom replied:

HONEY MY LAST BOSS WAS LIKE THAT ....A ST8 UP BIOTCH ...I WORKED FRONT DESK DENTAL CKINIC ...SHE WAS UNFAIR, AWFUL AND I EVEN FANTASIZED WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF I ROLLED A GRENADE IN HER OFFICE ....JUST A BRIEF THOUGHT ...SHE WAS THAT BAD COS SHE FIRED ALMOST EVERYONE BUT ME AND NO FLOATS WOULD EVEN COME THERE EVEN WHEN I QUIT I WAS SO SCARED OF HER BIG BUTT MY ROOMIE HAD TO CALL AND QUIT FOR ME ...WONT B USING HER FOR A REFERENCE ..THE BIOTCH

PS. SHE CALLED ME IN HER OFFICE ,THE FEW OTHER EMPLOYEES LEFT LOOKED SOOO SCARED FOR ME ....SHE WROTE ME UP FOR DRESSING TOO FLAMBOYUNT ,( ITS CALLED STYLE) ANYHO WHEN I CAME OUT WITH THE WRITE UP SLIP EVERYONE WAS LIKE "OH SORRY..." i SAID U R KIDDING I AM 50 AND GET A WRITE UP FOR BEING FLAMBOYUNT ...i AM FRAMIN THIS WITH PRIDE( IT WAS THE NAILS AND HAIR AND CLOTHES NOT AGE APPROPRIATE....BUT THE BOSSES PET WHO WORE CLOGS WITH XMAS SOCKS YEAR ROUND WAS OKAY ???

p.s. lol.....and the bosses pet ( related to like the regional manager ) the xmas socks yr round chick had ocd not tryin to hate but they warned us she loved to get into other folks lunches squeeze or eat whatever she wanted WTH?....I was like ...Hello ,I would have like to hav known about her sandwich squezin ,lord knows whatt esle ? yea sumthin I would have liked to have known like the past 4 months shed been working with me ? I then thought HMmmm I do seem to remeber a few flat sandwiches ?...urghhh After that my lunch stayed in my car ...and how fair was that we were told even if u catch her in the act ....do not confront after all she was like sister in law or sumthin to the head honcho ....and a few RHINESTONE on your nails and some big hair and leopard print glasses were a problem? Go figure ! lol"

that's it for now. xo andi

freaky friday

(from yesterday)

i'm not a huge fan of working friday nights. give me thursday or saturday, but friday is almost always weird. last night was no exception.

first of all, i wasn't feeling very well so things already felt a bit surreal. and then weird things kept happening. like i was on stage dancing to a slow song and the place was packed but oddly quiet and out of nowhere this guy bursts in yelling, "i'm mama gia's son! i'm mama gia's son!" and then throws himself onto the floor FACE FIRST, raises his head to vomit, and then jumps up and leaves. it was truly bizarre.

another thing was this busty blonde. busty blondes are almost always trouble in a strip club when they're being customers instead of working. a lot of hooting, screaming, grabbing, etc., and not very much tipping. plus they always want to show you THEIR tits. it's like, "if you need this much attention just, like, get a job here."

so the blonde the other night was just terrible. kept standing up and dancing in front of the stage. it was embarrassing, desperate. at one point she tossed her whole drink on stage and it spilled everywhere. the glass didn't break, though, that was lucky. but it was weird. it was so obviously a purposeful act, and then she acted like it was an accident and went on and on.

oh blah blah blah. who cares. more another day. xo

ghost stories

last night was super windy and stormy. i don't like going to work when it's all stormy out because it will almost certainly be dead in the club. last night was no exception. i didn't sell even one dance all night. but i had an okay time anyway. i just sat at the bar chatting with my co-workers and bar regulars. i tried not to look at the clock, because whenever i thought it was almost time for me to get off, about 15 minutes would have passed, which can feel disheartening.

finally i was done working and i went next door to eat a taco. i think i've told you the club is attached to a mexican restaurant and the basement is shared with them.

i sat at the counter, eating my taco and talking with the guy who was working. he looked a little bedraggled. i was like, "you look tired, how you doing?" he told me he'd been up since six AM and that he and his partner had done a spirtual cleansing of the basement that morning. for five hours. then he told he all about the different spirits they came in contact with. he said he learned a lot about the shanghai tunnels from talking with these spirits.

of course, i KNOW it's a bad idea to listen to detailed ghost stories at 3am, especially when you live alone, but i was fascinated. i'm sensitive to spirits and i can sometimes feel that there's a lady down in the dressing room of the club. i didn't know who she was and i tried not to think about it. i mentioned this to the guy, he said the lady had been shanghaied, and sold as a sex slave, and was down there in a holding cell waiting for her ship she was gonna work on to set sail when she died. causes unclear. but he helped her find a light that morning and she was gone now. he said i wouldn't feel her down there anymore, but if i did i should let him know because sometimes they think they've helped someone into the light, but the spirit has just tricked them and is still holding their ground. oh great.

then we traded some more ghost stories. i told him about the hundred+ year-old house i lived in in oregon city when i was a kid, how my sister and brother and i would always see and hear this one scary ghost, and how our mom was so super scared of it that she just stopped coming home for a while. and i told him about the man-ghost who used to wedge himself into the bed with me and an ex-girlfriend in san francisco and we'd both wake up and exclaim to each other that there was a man in the bed. he told me about some little kid ghosts he'd met. finally when all the hair follicles on my body felt tickly and sore from my hair standing straight up on end, i had to go home. i didn't like driving through the wind after that, it sounded like the world was howling at me. and when i got home, i took a shower and the gusts of wind were so strong, they were pulling to roof off of my porch but it sounded like someone was trying to break in.

then i crawled into bed and couldn't sleep, though i was very very tired. so i obsessively googled the shanghai tunnels, there isn't that much online about them but i probably read it all. wild dreams after all that, i'll tell you what.

i hate tyler.

last night sucked! i did a party through this bachelor party company i used to work for down south. they're expanding to portland and seattle. anyway the girl they set me up to work with, niki, was half an hour late but didn't tell me she was running late till she was already late and i was sitting in front of the client's house in my car. so i just waited and waited for her. it was pretty annoying. right before she got there, she texted me, "can you call them and say we're gonna be late?" i texted back, "I'M not late. YOU call them."

she finally arrived and she said sorry for being late, i told her i knew my text was grouchy but i was just cold. so then we were friends and we went into the house. the guy who hired us, tyler, was creepy from the very start. he grabbed my ass as niki and i were going into the bathroom to change. it's hard to explain why this felt gross, but it did. i guess i felt like, "there's going to be a lot of opportunities for you to grab my ass tonight but i'm still in my regular clothes, can you at least wait till i'm in a stripper outfit?" also it was just kind of a weird aggressive thing to do. like, "i bought you for this hour, i'm entitled to have as much access to your body as i want."

so. we changed and went into the main room. they had deep, filthy carpet. i don't like walking around in stilettos on carpet, or rolling around naked on dirty carpet. also they had a pool table, which they'd covered in a grubby tiger blanket, which led me to assume they were expecting a toy show. i had just gotten my period and was 100% not going to do a toy show. plus, i never do them anyway. simulated lesbian sex for a room full of men just doesn't seem worth the extra hundred bucks.

turns out it wasn't a bachelor party. or anyone's birthday. just a party of 21-25 year-old guys who wanted some girls to show up and take off their clothes.

we did the party games we usually do. tried to do everything slowly to fill up the hour. most of the guys were really nice but that fucking asshole tyler just kept on grabbing me. i told him, "do NOT put your hand in my asscrack. if you do it again, we are leaving." he was like, "oh, why you gotta be scared of me? aren't we tipping you well? aren't you getting what you came here for?" i hated him then. i said, "i came here for a party. but the way you keep grabbing me isn't making it very fun," and moved on to dancing for someone else.

finally an hour had gone by and we said we had a good time, we were going to leave now. tyler grabbed my partner's arm and was like, "we have money. we want a toy show. why you gotta rush off?" i told him we had another show to get to and had to leave. he was weird and menacing and we went and locked ourselves in the bathroom to change fast. when we were dressed, we made a bee-line for the door, but of course he blocked the way and went on and on about how much money they had for a show, blah blah blah. at this point, niki, who had seemed impervious to this guy's creep factor, was suddenly freaked out. "please get out of the way," she said. "we need to get to our other gig." he moved.

we left, and on our way out the door he put his hand up my skirt, gave my ass a last super rough squeeze and goes, "well if you're not gonna stay, mind if i grab your ass on your way out?" if i was bigger i would've fucking killed him. instead, i just said, "you're an asshole, which is probably why you couldn't get any girls to come to your party for free. have a fun night with your bros."

wiggy hair, yummy tits, grody geezer

sometimes i'll straighten my hair with super thorough tiny strand by tiny strand precision and give it a little height in the roots with a thickening spray before blowdrying, then put a gloss on it and trim the bangs so they're way very straight and just the tiniest bit too short. the effect is a wiggy one. (i've actually always thought if people think your real hair is a wig, then you're doing something right.)

last night three different customers made wig comments to me. one was a guy i was sitting with at the bar, he said, "yeah. that's a good idea, to wear a wig to work. then crazy guys can't recognize you out in the world." and then another guy said, "your wig's so cute. makes you look like katy perry." and, my favorite: "what's your REAL hair look like?" (this one was said in the same tone as the classic, "yeah, but what's your REAL name [as opposed to your stripper name]?" but this wasn't annoying at all because instead of saying something like, "well, andi is my REAL STRIPPER name," i just got to yank on my hair satisfyingly, showing that this glossy mane is not only 100% human hair, but it's 100% human hair that has grown out of my very own human head.

lately i've had intense PMS, accompanied by grouchiness, feelings of social isolation, lack of interest in fun things, and general annoyance at the world. but one thing that always cheers me up is to make my hair look fucking perfect. so. now you know.

last night was an okay night. i worked with this girl i adore (who is the person who cuts my hair, actually, and is also the one who taught me the trick of a bit of spray to the roots). i really enjoy watching her dance. she has huge tits and when she's bored she'll do things like taking one in her hand, licking it, and then saying in a perfect deadpan, "yummy." or if it's someone's birthday she'll do this, look at them with the world's boredest expression, and say, "yummy. tastes like birthday cake." i've seen her do this many, many times but it never gets old. maybe it's a slight crush that keeps her jokes freshly hilarious to me.

last night during an extremely boring stretch of hours, she stopped dancing in the middle of her set and asked the crowd, "does anybody have a dull knife?" ...crickets.

sometimes i make my money from the most surprising of sources. last night it was a kid celebrating his 21st birthday. he was so cute! i liked him a lot. i said, "we should do a birthday shot, what should we have?" and he said, "uh, um, uh, i don't know, i'm NEW to this, remember?" cute. we had tequila. then he wanted a lot of dances and mostly just wanted me to sit on his lap and chat with him about his job at netflix.

only one gross thing happened last night but it was a dooooozy. this guy bought a dance for his old dad who was about 75, and near the end i had my back to him and he coughed suddenly and expelled a tiny wad of phlegm onto my back. i screamed, i couldn't help myself. i didn't want to embarass him, but sometimes you can't help screaming in horrified shock when gross shit like that happens. i almost started crying, but instead i sensibly scrambled out of there before the song was even over and went and washed my back with antibacterial soap and slathered hand sanitizer on it, which somehow made me feel better. fucking gross, though! it was yellow!

two days off now. stoked! xo andi.

boozey

god this work is unpredictable in terms of $$$. yesterday was THE slowest shift EVER. but i did get to chat with a co-worker i hardly ever work with, who is also a portland native (an oddity, believe me! it always seems like nobody else is "from here"). she used to know my sister and my sister's ex-girlfriend. i thought that was so cute.

this girl had given up drinking recently and i got that feeling i often get when people tell me that: happy for them, but also a tiny bit jealous. i have been starting to wish i didn't drink so often. i keep thinking i will take some time off, but then i find myself at work with guys buying me drinks left and right. or in some unpleasant social situation. which is to say just about ANY social situation here in portland. and then i have a drink to put myself a little more at ease. i don't even usually get drunk, but i find myself drinking more and more often in a medicinal "nerve calming" sense. i used to be so self-assured without a drop of booze, but in SF my fashion was my social lubricant. here people don't care as much about that.

hmm what else. oh! well last night i went to see stand-up comedy and i knew i'd see people who i feel awkward or bad around but i challenged myself not to drink and i didn't. not even when my ex-girlfriend and her new gf showed up. so there! (p.s. i'd like to mention that kat from katstories blog did stand up and was hilarious! yes!)

now i feel like i wanna tell you that i drink to chill out and feel less socially awkward about half of the time. the other 50% of my drinking time is comprised of just plain LOVING TO DRINK. like playing cards with a glass of wine: perfect.

tahiti pt.2

oh hey remember how i wrote about the guy who wanted to take me to tahiti? well the other night i was in the dressing room getting ready for work and a co-worker was stretching on the floor looking super tan and mellow. "wow," i said, "you're really tan." "oh yeah, i got a lot of sun on my trip," she said. "really? where'd you go?" "TAHITI," she said. i asked her if it was with this certain customer, YES IT WAS. and she's so smart she totally navigated it in such a way that she didn't have to make out with him or anything. a lot of girls would say that and i'd be like, "yeah, sure you didn't," but this girl is not the type to lie. she told me about the trip, how it was almost unbelievably lavish and amazing, like fancier than anything she ever dreamed of. and i was happy she went instead of me. because, for one thing, she really worked it out and also i would never have been able to relax enough to enjoy vacationing with a dude stranger. i've become increasingly high-strung of late.

in other news, a different customer hounded me for weeks to go on a trip with him to scottsdale, arizona. by car. when he asked me at first, i almost thought he was kidding. i mean, i really can imagine very few things less appealing than driving through desert wasteland with a retired white-wine sipping medical accoutrement salesman in an aging mercedes bound for SCOTTSDALE. what's even IN scottsdale? a "very nice resort" where he enjoys free stays courtesy of an old business connection. blech! no!

i'll tell you what, though, i told him no right from the start, but i was sure to sound a bit wishy-washy about it, like there was a chance i could suddenly change my mind in the three weeks till it came time for the trip. i wanted him to keep buying tons of dances from me right up until he left, because i was sure that all those solitary hours on hwy 95-S would convince him that it had been a mistake to ever waste his money (and affections) on me.

i got an email from him today saying he had taken a detour and was lunching in palm springs, alone. boy am i missing out.

what else? i've been working kind of A LOT, and i've had some super great shifts, like pre-recession stripping. that makes me feel hopeful.

something that does NOT make me feel hopeful, however, are fucked up customers, like this guy on saturday night who was super manhandly while i was giving him a private dance, and then fucking scratched my back with all his fingernails from my shoulders to my tailbone. it happened fast, and yet also excrutiatingly slowly. i screamed, "OUCH DON'T SCRATCH ME!" and he goes, "chill out." in that moment, if i could've hit him over the head with a giant object, i would definitely have done so. he left after that, but i had eight (the thumbs didn't scratch, just the fingers. duh.) bright red lines down my back for the rest of the night. my co-worker dabbed them with ice and hand sanitizer and that was sweet.

after that happened, i totally did not have any hustle in me for the rest of the night. i sat at the end of the bar with this really sweet customer who likes to be dominated and i ordered him to face all my ones and put them in bundles of $25. when he'd finished the job and i saw i'd made over $600, i called it good and just chilled out for the rest of the night with my striped back.

hmm. what else. i don't know. everybody is blending together these days.

i'm working tomorrow and the next night. i will jot down some notes if anybody's funny.

xo andi

oh hey p.s. i just stumbled onto a new blog you might like: http://titsandsass.com