googling

last night i got to work and a co-worker of mine was in the dressing room, getting off-shift as i was coming on. she's nice, but talks about herself and the people in her life as if they're characters on a tv show that i'm super interested and invested in, when in actuality i am living out my own drama and care very little about hers. anyway she goes, "my ex was in here, the one who's dating that fat chick, and he was totally GOOGLING me for like 3 hours." i knew she meant ogling, but of course i didn't say so, i just stared at her with my mouth open. "yeah," she continued. "just totally GOOGLING all over me. and i don't mean the kind you do on the computer." at this she made a kind of wink-nudge gesture, as though she was being clever with homonyms. the only problem is that it's not clever when it's actually two totally different words that don't sound alike at all.

wow. the horror! (and i don't mean the kind who walks the street.)

annnyway. last night ended up being good. i didn't sell a ton of dances, but my stage sets were quite lucrative all night. it was one of those nights when people are feeling you.

i have been a lazy hustler lately. but often i'll make money off of the most random people. like i was sitting at the bar and this grubby skater dude was chatting with me. he was cute and i liked talking to him, but at a certain point i felt like it was time to go round up my money, so i said, "hey you're cute and i like talking to you but i've gotta go make some dough. bye." he said, "oh! i have money. want me to buy a dance?" and then he bought six.

a little while later i was sitting near the door and this other young guy came in. he didn't get a drink or anything, just came up to me and said, "you guys do lap-dances here?" i said yes, and he paid upfront for three, but after one he goes, "you keep the money. i gotta go jerk off," and then he left.

and then an assortment of bachelor lapdances and birthday boys. i prefer a guy who will get a bunch in a row, but the one here/one there kind of nickle and diming thing actually does add up as well over the course of a night.

hmm. what else? some funny things happened, but i really can't remember them now.

yuck.

i always have weird dreams about work, but the one i had the other night was epic. in the dream i was with a friend of mine who isn't a ho, but in the dream she was giving it a try. she had a client she needed to go meet and he'd requested that she bring an extra girl because he had a bro visiting.

here i must note that in real life, it has happened that a guy has come to see a co-worker at the massage parlour and treated their friend a session too. it feels strange when somebody buys you for someone else. i'm not complaining, i mean it doesn't feel terrible or anything, just a little odd. when it's one on one, the exchange feels totally natural. but when it's a coupla bros, it feels different. i have no idea how to describe what i mean, so i'm just going to stop trying and get on with the story.

so have you ever entered into business with someone even briefly and you realize right away that they do everything differently than you do? like the time i did a bachelor party with this girl and she was sitting on the bachelor's face with her bare vagina and then acted all put out that i wouldn't also do it, like i'm the hugest prude in the world because i didn't want a stranger's saliva all up in me in front of a room full of college dudes. "man! loosen up, andi!"

well in the dream i could tell that my friend, we'll call her T, was really on a different page than i was. first of all, i thought we were just giving the guys massages. but T insisted that with a massage you always include a compimentary blowjob. then, we had to meet the guys for dinner first and that wasn't included in out paid time at all. T was like, "why would they pay us for this time when they're buying us dinner?" there wasn't anything gluten free on the menu, not one thing. so i felt even more jilted about having to dine for free.

the guy that i was supposed to do whipped out his dick at dinner and it was the pastiest thing i'd ever seen. and uncut. and he was a redhead. EEK. i thought, "no fucking way is that thing going in my mouth," and after dinner i planned to duck out. i told T, "i don't need the money that bad," but she insisted she'd just tell him i didn't plan to blow him, and it would be fine. and also she was like, "this is going to be a TON of cash. these guys are LOADED." and also she said this was her favorite and best regular client, and if i flaked she'd lose him.

so. i went. the guys went to their hotel first and we were supposed to meet them there a few minutes later. we entered the lobby and T goes right up to the reception desk. "what is she doing?!" i thought. the clerk gave her the room key, which was wrapped in a wad of money. he goes, "oh man. are you guys prostitutes? well. make it quick or i'm gonna call the cops." GREAT. so then the dream was not only totally weird and annoying, there was now a sense of race-against-the-clock urgency to it.

T stashed the cash in her boot and we went up to the room. there were suddenly tons of guys instead of just two, and we had to give the massages in front of everyone. i tried to leave but wasn't allowed to. i ended up having to blow that redhead and it was terrible. i don't remember what all happened but it was, after all, a nightmare, so it wasn't that fun. and finally we escaped by the skin of our teeth. i was super bummed and also pissed off at T. "some client YOU have," i said to her, thinking that if that was her favorite regular, what must her lesser-favorite clients be like?

i wanted to get away from T, who was acting like i was a big baby for being upset about the fiasco. i asked for my half of the money. it was $80!!! i was FURIOUS. "i thought you said it was gonna be A LOT of money!" i screamed. "that IS a lot of money," T said. i started crying and ran away.

man. a dream like that can just fuck right off.

boo hoo.

this weekend was kind of stressful. on friday i drove out to seaside with another dancer, we'll call her "R," to do a bachelor party. the actual party was okay, we made a lot of money, but the drive was terrible. R wasn't feeling good so she wanted me to drive, which was fine but i have only been driving less than a year, and have only ever driven three different cars. so i had to get used to her car for a minute. i was a little jerky at first, i stalled at a stop sign, etc, and R kept getting grouchy with me. we bickered a bit and then she passed out. suddenly i realized we were pretty far from portland but really far from the beach, too, and we were almost out of gas. i felt kind of mad that R hadn't thought to put some gas in before a late-night drive to the coast. but then i realized i couldn't be mad since i hadn't exactly thought of it either.

i have been having a lot of anxiety lately, and as a result i have been feeling like i'm constantly talking myself down off the ledge of a panic attack. as in, all day every day right now. also when i have anxiety i am prone to "catastrophic thinking," a term i learned from R when i woke her up to say i was having a panic attack and was sure that we were going to run out of gas in the middle of the woods in the gigantic no-cell-reception zone between portland and the coast and there wouldn't be any way to call AAA so we'd have to flag down a stranger and there aren't any other cars on the road and we'll probably just have to spend the night in the car on the side of the road, except there aren't any turn offs so we'll be basically sitting ducks for a wide load or drunk driver to smash to smithereens. she said, "oh god, we'll be fine. you're having catastrophic thinking." and went right back to sleep.

i drove the rest of the way, 45 miles, with the needle hovering just below Empty and the gas light on. i felt the car truly running out of gas right as we pulled into a gas station in seaside. i don't know how we made it, but R and i were both pretty relieved.

we got to the party and it was at this beautiful cabin that the bachelor's family owns and visits about 4 weekends a year. i was like, "is it just empty the rest of the time? do you rent it out?" he was like, "no we lock it up." that made me sad. if i had a beach house i'd go there all the fucking time. also i felt sad because i had been trying to get my special guy to go to the beach with me but there was always some reason we couldn't go, and then he dumped me last week. it's like OF COURSE the only time i get to go to the beach is to work. aaaack. (i'm feeling kind of "poor me," right this minute, so bear with me, will ya.)

so. then we did the party and drove back to portland and i went to bed.

i worked last night at the club. i was feeling bummy and sad from being dumped. and also from shitty social interactions earlier in the day. i tried to buck up a little, put on a happy face to make my money. but there really wasn't any money in the club, at least none that i could see with my grouch goggles on. i had decided not to drink, so i was all sober and irritable and people seemed waaaaay drunker and more obnoxious than usual.

my coworker gave me a coconut water, an out of the blue gesture that was so sweet it cheered me up a lot and i was able to pretend to be at least somewhat charming and normal for the rest of the night.

i didn't meet anybody very interesting. a lot of people were rude. a guy and his girlfriend kept throwing wadded up dollars at me and laughing. assholes. i left them on the stage, i didn't even feel like uncrinkling them, and i didn't want them in my purse or in my life. sometimes not collecting dollars that are thrown at you like a circus peanuts can make you feel better. and also it's nice to see the next girl pick them up and have no negative feelings about them.

a guy stole a few dollars off my rack. i said, "hey that's rude, can you put those back?" he got very self-righteous and offended, saying he was just helping me pick them up. these two bike-geek hipsters in head-to-toe american apparel who were sitting next to him at the rack were like, "yeah, chill out. you don't have to be so racist." uhhhh... OKAY. because i see a man, who happens to be black, blatantly pocketing my hard earned tips, and call him out on it, i'm racist? i told them to shut the fuck up, and asked the man to give me back my dollars. he did give them back, while grumbling about how i'm very racist.

not working for a few days, which is a really good thing.