let me give you a hand with that

awesome.

2012-02-12T12:24:00.000-08:00

this past work-week was awesome. i had my period all week, and i just often make a ton of money when i'm bleeding. pheromones! also i'm usually in a great mood because finally getting my period is such a relief after a week of PMS.

monday night i worked at the newer club, i'm not really new there anymore so i guess i should give it a name. let's call it the Lil Guy. it was pretty dead, i think maybe people were hungover from watching the superbowl? i dunno. but it was sooo slooow. i ended up doing okay, though. it just takes one good customer.

tuesday, after a bit of drama, i saw my bodybuilder massage client. the bit of drama was that he keeps wanting more and more mutual action, and i'm not into it. i don't want his finders inside me, i don't want him sucking on my tits, i don't want him begging me for sex, i don't actually want any of it. i thought i had communicated that the last time i saw him, i told him that i liked him, and was available for relaxing massage with a sexy ending, and that's all. well on tuesday i got a text from him saying wanting to know whether we could spend three hours together, and if i could bring a lot of toys and have multiple orgasms for him. also he mentioned that he would like many as well. i know that could be a very lucrative situation, but i didn't feel up for a three-hour jerk-off marathon with him. i already think he takes viagra and it's borderline carpal tunnel time as it is. so i thought about it for a moment and decided i had to break up with him, so to speak. i texted back that it's been super great getting to know him, but that i feel he wants a lot more sexy fun than i'm up for, and that there are tons of hot girls interested in that so he should find one who's a better match. he texted back, apologizing profusely, and promising to stop asking me for things and to just relax and enjoy a massage. so i saw him and it was fine, plus he tipped $100.

after that i worked at my regular club. it was bonkers busy and it was a super fun night.

then wednesday and thursday were my days off. two in a row! super rad. and friday i worked at the Lil Guy. i was super hungover but it's warm and dark in there, so i didn't mind working. i had a couple great customers. pretty mellow.

last night i worked and it was bonkers again. i danced for a lot of computer guys in for some software conference. and also this guy bought his adorable girlfriend some dances, and didn't even want to come in and watch, which was sweet. i only had one asshole, who kept telling me to "be real. quit being fake with me." i was like, "what are you talking about?" he goes, "you've called me 'sweetie' twice! it's so fake." i said, "well would you rather me call you a 'rude, demanding, red-headed asshole?" that shut him up.

now it's sunday and i don't have to be anywhere or do anything except take a long bath, read, and eat. i'm going to go buy some new jeans, too. xoxoxox

not awesome.

2012-02-05T14:15:00.000-08:00

usually i love working saturday nights, but last night was one of those nights where the place is packed with huge groups of people, and hardly anybody is tipping. take, for example, the bachelor party of 10 who seemed to have very little to talk about amongst themselves and sat with their eyes glued to the stage for an hour without tipping even a dollar. this is a small club, and they were taking up a significant portion of it. i finally walked over to them, held out my g-string, and said, "hi guys! you've been watching me dance for an hour, and haven't tipped yet. time for titty tax." one of them grudgingly put a dollar in my g-string, then they all just looked at me like, "go away." but fuck that. "thanks," i said, to the lone tipper. "now i'm sure the rest of you cuties can find at least a dollar each, right? i mean who comes to a strip club without bringing any dollars?" they hated it, but each did cough up a dollar.

all night i had to politely remind people sitting AT THE RACK to tip. so annoying. one guy told me he'd start tipping when i started dancing "more enthusiastically." i suggested that he do it now, instead, as he and his girlfriend been sitting there for two sets already without tipping. he said, "nope." i asked them to move and make room for tipping customers, then. they declined. we don't have a bouncer, so this guy and his girlfriend were able to just continue to sit there for like an hour without tipping. awesome.

and then there were the non-tipping blonde girls who kept demanding more pole tricks. and the guy who told me i'd make more money if i cut my hair into a bob and also if i got a boob job. (wait, i'd make more money if i got a boob job?!!! OMG i NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT. ...DUH, i know i'd make more $ but the the thing is that i actually LOVE my tiny, perky, extremely sensitive tits, and i don't want foreign objects stuck to my chest and i don't want to possibly lose even one tiny bit of nipple sensation, as my own sexual fulfillment is actually super important to me--weird, right? and then there's also this little thing called MINDING YOUR OWN MF BUSINESS.)

then there was the guy who kept yell-purring like the world's drunkest cat until fell off his barstool, and just laid there till his friend dragged him away. there was the regular who kept begging me to let him eat me out. and telling me how obsessed he is, and how he thinks we could have a lot of fun if i'd just go home with him, and how he's a sadist and would love to tie me up and test the limits of my psyche. i got SO CREEPED OUT. i told him that's never gonna happen and please not to ask me for a dance again, ever.

OH and did i mention that a pipe burst downstairs, rendering the dressing room off limits for the whole night? people seem so much more annoying when there's nowhere you can go to escape them/get yourself together between sets.

well the good thing is that often when there's a super annoying night, it's followed up by an awesome one. i'll let you know.

chili-dog day afternoon.

2012-01-25T23:15:00.000-08:00

when i got to work today, there was a naked tweeker girl in the dressing room. she started talking the moment she saw me and did not stop till she was dressed and on her way out into the world, spilling the contents of her broken-zippered backpack all the way. she was sooo skinny. just all ribs and elbows and pelvic bone. i'm tiny, but i wouldn't describe myself as "skinny," as i have tits and ass and muscles and even a lil' potbelly at christmastime. anyway i was changing out of my street clothes and she goes, "oh, are those gap jeans?"

"yes," i said, preparing myself to ignore whatever rambling anti-capitalist sweatshop speech i was about to receive.

"i love gap jeans," she said. "what size are they?"

"i like them too. these are a size 0."

she goes, "oh. zero? well i wear a DOUBLE ZERO. i tried the zero's on before and they were just hanging off. i'm 10 kindsa tiny."

"yeah, you're pretty slender," i said just for something to say, since she was looking at me like, "what do you have to say about that?!" and i wanted her to look away.

"yep. i'm only 105 pounds," she said, and then repeated, "i'm 10 kindsa tiny."

have you ever heard that expression, "ten kinds of tiny?" yeah, me neither. i imagine it was something a customer said to her once. must've struck a chord with her and now she's using it as her repetitive self-descriptive.

"how much do YOU weigh?" she asked, rather smugly.

i thought about lying, saying something like 125 or whatever so she could relax into her role as the Skinniest Person in the Room and shut up already. but i dunno, why should i lie to this random tweeker? so i said, "108."

"you only weight three pounds more than me?" she asked, skeptically. "well how tall are you?"

"5'2.''"

"okay, see: i only weigh 105 but i'm 5'6''. so yeah, i mean i'm just TINY."

"emaciated," "deathly thin," "precariously bony," was more like it. but i'd never say that. i don't want to be on a tweeker's bad side. or their good side, either. i just wanted her to STOP TALKING TO ME. then finally she got dressed and left.

i went and danced for a while, then sat at the bar, drinking water. i'm trying to lay off the sauce for a while, till my stomach stops hurting. it's been exactly one week now. one week and one day, actually. so i am not as bubbly as usual.

this guy sat down next to me and was talking and kept spitting a little. a sizable dollop of spit landed on my arm and then i couldn't even hear what he was saying, because i was fixated on this glob of spit on my arm. it was not that huge, but i felt sober and irritable, and i wanted it off. before i realized what i was doing, i kind of wiped my arm on his sleeve.

he goes, "what are you doing?"

i couldn't think of any good lie so the truth would have to suffice. "um. well... you spit on me and i was just wiping it on your shirt."

"oh. okay," he said, and continued on with whatever he was saying. i felt relieved that he wasn't offended. i'm not usually rude like that. or maybe i am? no. usually i'm sweet.

later i was sitting at the bar playing scrabble on my phone and just really enjoying how toasty warm the club is, i mean the heater is on truly and totally full-blast (i know i mention this a lot when talking about the tiny new dive i'm working at, but i just want you to know how unbelievably FUCKING COZY it feels to be so warm in the middle of winter, especially when you're mostly naked). a guy was sitting next to me, but we weren't hanging out or talking. anyway my co-worker played that otis redding song, "try a little tenderness," and i said, "oh. this reminds me of Pretty In Pink." then suddenly the guy started lip-synching and doing a crazy ducky dale dance on his barstool. it would've been cute, but he was about two inches from my face, and something about it was just too dramatic too close. plus that's one of my all time favorite movies and i'd have been content to just close my eyes and watch the record store scene in my mind. i smiled and offered a few polite chuckles. he didn't stop till the whole song was over, though, which i found so annoying. if i had been tipsy, i'd probably have loved it and joined in. but drunk people just aren't as entertaining to me when i'm sober. i'm sort of a drag.

hmm what else. well a canadian guy came in and wanted 4 lapdances without asking my name or seeing me dance at all. absolutely no pre-amble, just walked in and asked for a dance before he even took off his parka. i'd like for that to happen more often.

i guess that's all for now. oh, except you might be interested to know that there's a lunch special at my new club, and today it was a chili-dog with fries and a PBR for $6. does a chili-dog seem like a particularly strange thing to eat at a strip club, or is it just me? just wondering.

ying yang

2012-01-25T12:07:00.000-08:00

last night this guy at my rack was looking at me super lasciviously. i mean, people look at me like that a lot, but this was that big bad wolfish way, like "i wanna eat you for dinner." i immediately disliked him, but i was totally certain that he'd buy dances. so after my stage set, i kinda nosed around among the club and made sure there wasn't anybody else who wanted my attention, then sat down with him for a minute. after a moment or two of small talk, i asked if he wanted a dance. he said, "well, tell me about your lapdances..."

i said, "i'd rather show you."

he goes, "okay, but i want you to tell me about it first."

even with cute, nice customers, i'm not inclined to go into tons of details to sell a dance. my feeling is: you either want one or you don't. take a chance dude, it's only $20 and 4 minutes of your life. (i'll hustle a lot more in a big club, but in my tiny little club the stage tips are good and so i don't feel the need for the hard sell.)

i said, "okay. well. it's a good time. i'll get naked and dance in your lap. feel like it?"

time for quick decisions, you're not buying a house. he goes, "okay! let's do it!"

i led him back to the dance nook, and danced for him. he kept trying to kiss me and i told him i don't like kisses at work. he expressed shock and dismay, "not even on your tummy? how about your arm? can't i kiss you on your arm?"

"no thank you," i said.

the song ended and i felt really done leaning away from his smooches. but he said, "can i have another dance? if i give you $25 instead of $20 will you put your tongue in my ear?"

"EWWWWWW NO!" i exclaimed.

"okay. well can i have a dance anyway?"

he was annoying but not so annoying i couldn't dance 3 or 4 more minutes for him.

this time it was just question after question. i realized that that must just be his "thing"--needling you with questions to which he already knows the answer is "no." i'm always happy to indulge a fantasy by doing basically nothing at all, and i obliged with many no's.

"can i have one taste of your pussy?"
"can i wait till you get off then drive you home?"
"will rub your face in my crotch now?"
"will you nibble my earlobes?"
"will you sit on my face?"
"can i just have one kiss on the lips?"

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, and absolutely not.

then he wanted more dances, and i would've kept dancing for him but he quite randomly pulled my hair really hard and laughed, and i got a glimpse of him as a possible serial killer.

after that i had a really rad customer. he had curly hair and thick glasses and was 6'8''. something about him was just so cute and fun, and i liked dancing for him. he wanted 5 or 6 dances, and then when i came out of the dance nook, the other guy was gone. :)

it's funny how if one customer is creepy and annoying, the next one will almost always be exceptionally rad. i mean it--the extremes come in pairs.

snow night

2012-01-18T23:04:00.000-08:00

last night as i drove to work, huge snowflakes started falling from the sky. tons of them. suddenly there was a light dust of snow on the ground. i wished i had had time to turn around, leave my car at home, and take a cab. i was in a hurry to get to work on time, though, so i just kept driving to work, and by the time i got downtown it had started blizzarding. i mean giant amounts of snow just fluffing down. i felt nervous about having to drive home in the snow later. i just learned how to drive last year, and i've never driven in snow. i really started freaking out for a minute, but then i decided to work first, worry later.

it ended up being such a good night. the place was bizarrely packed, and it was one of those rare nights where almost every single guy i offered dances to actually wanted one (or several). the boss cranked the heat up so it was nice and toasty, and the club took on a sort of lodgey feel. guys were coming in with snow in their hair and everyone was in a good mood.

right around 1:30 i poked my head out the door just to check on things. there were 4 or 5 inches of snow on the ground. i decided i'd drive super slowly to the parking garage up the street and leave my car there, then try and get a cab. but then an hour later when i was leaving, the snowstorm had become a crazy rainstorm and the snow was getting quickly washed away down the gutters. so i just drove home.

brokeback lapdance.

2012-01-11T23:27:00.001-08:00

last night was a pretty great night at work. except that this awkward thing happened. five guys came in from longview, washington, where they all work at the same paper mill together. they were all in their early 50's except for one guy, who was celebrating his 35th birthday. the young guy wanted a lot of birthday dances from me. then after a while he gave me $20 and said, "go get the bald guy i'm with, he needs a lapdance. he's so confused, he's been in a relationship with a man for a few years but he's finally over that. doing good now, he's got a girlfriend and all that. anyway, i'm gonna treat him to a lapdance with you." ...uh... so i didn't really know what to do, i mean this guy's sexuality is not my business, and it's not really my job to advocate for him with his co-worker/friend. but on the other hand, it's not that fun to give a dance to a gay guy who is going through the motions in order to appear straight to his co-workers. anyway i gave the guy a dance. it was uncomfortable. he was very stiff and appeared uninterested and miserable, though polite. so. then the young guy wanted more dances, and after those dances, he gave me more $ and goes, "okay now i'm gonna treat the guy with the mustache to a lapdance. he's the guy the bald guy was in the relationship with. he's straight now, too." whaaaat. i mean, what do you say? i'm just trying to make a living here, please don't put me in awkward situations. the mustachioed man was even more reserved than his boyfriend. he put his hands in his lap, as if guarding his man parts from my dancing. i wanted to be like, "hey it's ok, i'm a lesbian. let's just sit this one out," but that would've been so presumptuous and weird. so i just kind of air-danced and then a million years later the song finally ended. other than that it was a stellar night, just one of those nights where i feel in a great mood and the customers are good, etc.

warm, cozy

2012-01-09T22:03:00.000-08:00

hi! i just got home from a mid-shift at one of my new clubs. there are a few things i like about the club:
first of all, it's super warm and cozy. it's nice not to be covered in goosebumps for 5 or 6 hours straight.
the clientele is mostly attractive hipster dudes who tip fine, and then blue-collar guys getting off work and wanting dances.
the dressing room is clean and you get your own little station.
the bartenders are nice so far.
they give you a shift meal, which i don't usually eat but i think it's a cute gesture.
it's easy to park right in front of the club, and the meters are 3 hours, so i don't have to keep putting my clothes on and running outside to avoid parking tickets.

i really hope i continue to like this club. goodnight. xo andi

i'm boring and pooped out.

2012-01-02T23:24:00.000-08:00

i keep not getting enough shifts at my club, so i got a job at two additional clubs. one is a tiny cozy little dive. i've only worked there twice, but i had good luck both times. the other is a bigger club, "the world's first and only vegan strip club." i ate a huge bowl of chicken soup before my first shift. nobody seemed to be able to tell. i've only worked there twice so far, as well. i did well the first night, but then i worked during the afternoon/evening on new year's eve, and it wasn't very great AT ALL. i made enough money that it wasn't a total waste, but i just had a miserable time being there. it was freezing cold and it's hard to hustle when you're walking around with goosebumps and icy feet, and you're too grouchy and cold to be charming. almost all the girls wear legwarmers there, and i thought it was their club fashion fad, but now i realize it's actually just to keep their LEGS WARM. i am bringing a pair to my next shift. when i got home i had to thaw out in the bath for an hour before i didn't feel like i wanted to cry.

i had a day off today, my first in over a week. 'twas grand. i went thrifting with a friend and ate and drank and was merry.

i'll try and write more. i can't think of anything super interesting. i did finally buy a little notebook to keep in my stripper purse, so i'm sure in will get around to using it soon-ish. xo andi

dear diary

2011-12-15T22:03:00.000-08:00

i'm down south. i'm supposed to be working, but my phone just IS NOT ringing. i keep checking it to make sure it's on. yep: it's on.

since i've not been working, i've just been lolling around, pleasantly. i went and got a pedicure yesterday with a friend and then walked around thrifting. i found a suicidal journal at the thrift store, and could not help reading it. poor lady was super depressed about her daughter graduating from high school, because she'd miss her and also because she knew her husband was gonna leave her as soon as the daughter moved out.

totally sad. i don't know why i couldn't stop reading it. at the end she starts talking in the past tense, which is never a good sign. "i kept waiting for my ship to come in," she says, "but somebody forgot to tell me there aren't any ships for the nobody's."

then a cryptic poem, then nothing. maybe she won the lottery and moved to fiji. but i dunno...

well after thrifting i got a call and went to see one of my regular clients. it was fine. i'm only saying it was fine because i have this terrible feeling he's been internet stalking me so i don't want to make it worse by writing about him... actually you know what? fuck it. i've told you about him before, the guy with the really messy apartment who always has delicious wine and chocolates? sometimes he's been totally pleasant, fun even. but then other times he gossips a lot about all the other massage girls i know and it really bothers me. i try to steer the conversation to other topics, but it always comes back to these girls and what trainwrecks they are and how fat everybody is getting. i also always had this weird feeling he was videotaping our sessions. i looked all over the ceiling and walls and shelves for a camera, but he just had so much random electronic equipment that it was impossible for me to tell. i had totally written him off the last time i saw him because the gossiping and the possible videotaping just really put me on edge. but then he called yesterday and agreed to come to my place instead of me going to his, and i thought it might be okay since he definitely wouldn't be able to videotape me. but he gossiped just as much as always, and then to top it off he instilled total paranoia in me by referencing a picture of me and my sister on facebook, when i've specifically not told him i even have a sister and also my pics are private on there. just weird. totally weird. also he said several other things that creeped me out and made me think he just knows too much about me. so i'm definitely DEFINITELY not seeing him again. i don't need that kind of weird energy in my life.

then i went and snuggled in bed with my friend and told stories. that was nice.

today i planned to work all day, but again the phone just did not want to ring, so i only saw one client. he is an older regular who likes to be sissy-fied. he begs you to put a pair of tiny pink panties on him, and then when you wrangle them onto his giant frame, he immediately explodes. i've asked him before if i should refuse to do what he wants, in the interest of drawing things out a bit instead of letting him cum after only half an hour. he said he's really busy and usually short on time, and the way we do things suits him just fine. he's really quite an ideal client.

after that i dined alone at my favorite vegetarian restaurant. it's run by a guru and his cult of followers. strange place, but really soothing and pretty inside. also, the workers are kind of robotic and pay fastidious attention to details, so you know you're not going to find a hair in your food or a pebble in your salad. unlike SOME places, which shall remain nameless.

well. now i'm home and i'm gonna drink some wine and read my new book. "1Q84," by haruki murakami. i love his books so much. love love love.

sunday

2011-12-12T18:10:00.001-08:00

last night there were a lot of solo businessmen who wanted dances: my kind of night. i love when i can make the same amount of money just kind of lolling around lazily on stage and doing a lot of mellow lapdances as i'd make busting my ass putting on a show and dealing with drunk crowds.

at the end of the night the place had pretty much emptied out when two college-aged dude-bro's came in dressed in head-to-to abercrombie & fitch. one was tall, the other short. they were horsing around, hugging on each other, and the short one kept picking up the tall one, then dropping him. they sat down at the rack and were basically canoodling and out-tipping each other. one would tip a dollar and say to me, "wow you're really hot!" and then the other one would go, "yeah! totally!" and put down a 5. it escalated from there. i couldn't tell whether they were gay, or just deep in the throes of an epic bromance. either way, i really liked them.

black friday

2011-11-26T12:47:00.000-08:00

yesterday there was a crazy old dude sitting at the rack almost all day who was brain-damaged from LSD. he was really nice, but suuuuuper fried. he bought me a spanish coffee and then i was just cracked out enough to really enjoy his bizarre musings. he told me about the time his sister gave him a handful of advil for a bad headache and it turned out to be LSD. he took 17 hits all at once. deciding to ignore the story-hole where anybody thinks it a good idea to take 17 advil at once for any reason, i said, "wow i didn't know they had advil back in the 70's." he said, "what are you talking about? this happened 2 months ago." i think i assumed it happend a long time ago because it seems like something that would happen back then, and also seemed like something that would happen to someone way younger. plus, imagining him tooling around on a sunny brady bunch day in a lemon yellow VW bug all tripped out on way too much acid was such a prettier picture than the actual scenario of a 60 year-old homeless aging hippy wandering around out of his head, looking for shelter from the rain.

he also said, "do you ever see something but it's something else?" "like what?" i said. "well, like i used to be in the pizza shop all the time, and i'd see paula abdul dancing on top of my pizza." i said, "wow! i love paula abdul!" he said, "well, if you look real close, you can see her right now," he held up a cigarette. "see? she's dancing." i wanted to see a tiny paula abdul, dancing, but the cigarette appeared to me to be a cigarette, which was doing nothing but holding still.

i WISH i could remember the other things he was saying. he was truly entertaining. a glimpse into the mind of a person whose brain is full of pop culture images, all scrambled up. Your Brain On Drugs.

other than that guy, it was just a lot of other random guys with girls and shopping bags. snooze.

craptastic.

2011-11-23T14:07:00.000-08:00

last night was one of the crappiest shifts i've ever had. the first thing that happened was that a guy wanted a dance, and after the first dance he wanted a couple more so i asked that he pay first so we could just relax. he said he'd have to visit the atm. i was like, "okay. no problem." he was well dressed and totally seemed like he'd have at least $60 measly dollars in the bank, i didn't even think twice about it. so then after the dances, he went to the atm and was there forEVER. i glanced over his shoulder and saw the dreaded words "insufficient funds." oh great. then instead of explaining anything to me, he just sat back down in his seat and ordered a beer. i went over to him, "so?" he said his card wasn't working in the atm. i told him he could charge the dances on his card at the bar. he tried that, same story. then he just sat back down and drank a beer. then just sat there FOREVER. he claims he'll come back tomorrow and leave the money for me. FAT CHANCE. it filled me with rage that he just sat in the club for another two hours after he had ripped me off. it's always the super grabby assholes who will stiff you. he should have been thrown out. what are you doing in a strip club without any money? this isn't the YMCA or some kind of community center for the broke and horny.

later there was a customer who tipped me three twenties on stage, and then when i turned around to put my panties back on at the end of my set, he took them back and high-tailed it out the door. i had been careful to kind of nudge them off the rail and onto the actual stage with my shoe, so he had to lean over and really REACH to retrieve them. ASSHOLES.

then there were hardly any other customers all night. it was torrentially raining with high howling winds. maybe people just didn't want to get wet? anyway crappy night.

sat and sun.

2011-11-21T23:27:00.000-08:00

on saturday i saw my regular massage client, the bodybuilder. he might be the world's easiest client: polite, clean, relaxed, gets really turned on and cums easily, tips, says thank you, leaves.

then i went to work and it was the slowest saturday night i think i've ever worked. plus there were just a lot of jerks. there was a big group of foxy black guys and their haggard white girlfriends. they took up ten chairs for HOURS and didn't tip even one dollar. in fact, the girls were so wildly bitchy they scared customers off. the biggest and toughest-seeming of the girls mad-dogged me the entire time she was there. she was about six feet tall, wearing a chintzy charlotte russe dress that barely covered her ass, no stockings or tights though it was cold, and severely scuffed gold pumps. her yellow-blonde hair had two inches of brown roots, and had never been introduced to a bottle of toner. she had doused her spiral perm with so much gel it looked like top ramen. her makeup: HARSH. black eyeliner applied with a heavy and unsteady hand. no blush, frosty lips. i would usually have felt some compassion for any girl who was trying so hard to look like a pretty woman and was, yet, so clueless and inept. but she was SO RUDE that i didn't feel even one ounce of tenderness.

she had her giant feet out in the walkway, where the cocktail waitress needs to walk and serve drinks. the waitress goes, "excuse me honey, can you move your chair back?" the girl goes, "bitch i will bust your HEAD with this chair. don't you TELL me what to DO." the waitress is so hard of hearing she's practically deaf, and since she wasn't looking directly at the girl, she didn't seem to hear what she said. "mmm hmm," she murmured.

later the girl started mouthing things to me. i tried not to look at her, because she was so bizarrely and openly hostile and it was freaking me out. so then instead of mouthing things, she said them aloud, to her friend. "oh i will snap that skinny little ass in two, don't think you can give ME attitude. thinking she's so sexy.. etc etc."

alright. first of all, why bother calling someone a skinny white bitch when you, too, are white? it's kind of a weird thing to say. usually when a person talks about someone's race hatefully, it's a race that's different than their own. second of all, my ass isn't skinny. i am a thin person, but my actual ass is quite round for my size. AND YES I DO think i'm hella sexy. and even when i don't feel hella sexy, i at least pretend i am because i'm doing a job that is ABOUT ACTING HELLA SEXY. go get your GED and then come back and hurl insults.

so. that was saturday night. it was mostly just that group of people and hardly anyone else all night. bummer.

yesterday was a good day, though. i lounged around all morning. made a fancy brunch for myself, went downtown and did a bit of shopping, then went to see a client who was in from down south. i met him at his hotel bar. we had manhattans with weird awesome super fancy vermouth, then went to his room and hung out for a while. he's an attractive guy and in great shape, i usually have a really nice time with him. he tipped super generously so after the massage when he asked if i'd go have something to eat with him, i was like, why not? i was meeting a friend later, so i didn't want to go somewhere that would take forever. it was his first time in portland, so i took him to the club where i work because i feel like it's pretty quintessentially portland. we ate, and tipped the girls, had a drink. i've been seeing him for several years now, so it was cool to have a little hang-out time outside of whatever hotel he's staying in. just out in the regular world, i guess.

so. that was the weekend. xo andi

thursday.

2011-11-11T00:46:00.001-08:00

i'm going to tell you something, but first, allow me to provide a bit of backstory. i have a little book swap going on with one of my co-workers, and last month she loaned me "the graveyard book," by neil gaiman. i loved it and remembered how much i like him as an author. i had read "anansi boys" and "neverwhere," and OF COURSE "stardust," but hadn't read "american gods," so i picked it up at the airport last week, on the sale table at powell's. well then i fell asleep reading it the other night and had a dream that i met neil gaiman and became BFF's with him. in the dream i was super giddy about knowing him, and had to keep reminding myself not to name-drop or brag. when i woke up i kept laughing about it all day. how someone like neil gaiman is a total rock star to me, but when i meet actual rock stars i don't care that much.

so. today i went to work and my co-worker texted me that neil gaiman had been at the club the other night, and that we had missed it! i was so bummed. i asked around and nobody knew anything about it, but then i remembered the the girl at the restaurant next door likes sci-fi/fantasy and so i asked if she knew anything about it. she was like, "yeah! he was rad!" my heart sank with that terrible feeling of having super missed out.

it reminded me of the time it was my friend brande's birthday and we woke up super early to go down to macy's and meet sarah jessica parker, who was there signing bottles of her new perfume. we got drunk on mimosas first and then got in the line. when we met her she seemed quite taken with us, she loved our outfits and weird hair, and when brande gave her an invitation to her birthday party that night, she looked almost like she might come. we got excited. well then i was all woozy and tired from lack of sleep and too much champagne, so i went home to nap before the party. i ended up accidentally sleeping straight through it! i woke up at 5am to ten missed calls and several frantic texts, all saying that SJP was there and where the fuck was i?! the voicemails were so convincing, i really believed she had shown up. i pictured her stepping out of her limo and having one polite cocktail with the glamorous cast of weirdos i call "friends," and then leaving. this was before everyone had camera-phones with which to document every tidbit of their inane lives for immediate facebook posting. this was back when i had just recently heard of "friendster," and was reluctant and dubious at the lack of privacy such a thing would inspire. my point is that there wasn't an internet trail to disprove the story. i believed it for YEARS. FOR YEARS i believed i had missed out on "the night that SJP showed up at brande's birthday party." and then kind of recently my friends revealed they had made it up, and that they never thought i would actually believe the story in the first place, and that when i did they just kind of forgot to ever tell me the truth. i was pissed.

well this time the story was real. one of my fave authors had come into the club and i had missed it. i could've had him sign my book, it's in my purse. and the graveyard book is still in my locker so he could've signed that for my co-worker. ARG. plus, i just would've really liked to have given him a lapdance.

other than that, today was a great day. a guy came in who was rad and crazy and then he won a bunch of money on the poker machine. instead of plugging it all back in to those stupid fucking machines, he quit while he was ahead. he bought me and my co-worker champagne, a long island ice tea for himself, and took the rest out in ones. MY KINDA GUY. he delighted in having us girls sit at the rack with him and tip the girl on stage. he only wanted one lapdance, and during the dance he said, "this is the kind of thing that used to make me fall in love. now it just makes me hard." eww. that was kind of the only gross thing he said all day. mostly he was hilarious.

one time he wanted to go to the bathroom, but his wad of ones was too big to fit in his pocket. he goes, "hey will you hold these for me?" i put my hand out. he started handing them to me, then goes, "psych!" and split them in two, stuffing half into each pocket. not laughing, i said, "ha. that was a funny joke." he goes, "i'm full of 'em." i said, "you're full of something." "AHAHAHAHA YEP!" he yelled.

when he came back from the bathroom, the guy goes, "hey, where's desiree?" i said, "who?" he insisted that he had been at this very bar the day before and that there had been a girl named desiree working. i said, "nobody called desiree works here." he looked at me like i was pulling his leg. he asked the girl on stage and the bartender, both said No Desiree Here. he insisted that he was right, and that these three women shaking their heads at him were wrong-a-dong. "i'll just ask patty when she comes in," he said. i told him he was probably thinking about magic gardens, where the bartender/owner is named patty. he was like, "no! it was here! you guys are pulling a twilight zone on me! but ok, ok, i'll play along," and then he stopped asking about it. imagine getting so drunk every day that you just wander around not knowing where you are or who anybody is. well, i guess i used to get that drunk every year for the entire week of gay pride. i'd pass out on the sidewalk, wake up slung over some foxy bulldagger's shoulder. "i couldn't just leave you there," she'd say.

the only other person i danced for was this guy who comes in and is super rich, but seems to be gambling away his fortune on those stupid poker machines. anyway once in a while you can get him to buy dances. he's very awkward and kind of condescending. when he says rude, awkward things to me, i try to cut him a break because i think maybe he has aspergers. also, i'm not sure why but i kind of like him. i spend a lot of time alone, and i think i'm sometimes kindredly drawn to loners. not like i want to hang out with them, but just like i understand them a bit or something.

working tonight. gimme gimme $$$

halloweener etc.

2011-11-08T20:25:00.000-08:00

hi! i've been working a lot. it's been good after the south dakota fail. it hasn't been super interesting, or maybe i've just been breezing through without paying a lot of attention to the interesting parts. i'll pay closer attention this week and write you something good. in the meantime, here are a few tidbits:

--i worked halloween. i had several costumes (the best one was a "hippy chick," which involved a black bikini with a hot pink pot leaf design, hot pink peace-sign medallion, headband, lots of pink hair feathers, and pink john lennon glasses). my co-workers didn't dress up at all, so it was basically like any customer with even a little bit of holiday spirit just got handed to me on a silver platter. $$$$$$$

--i did a bachelor party the other night and the wife-to-be was there, which at first seemed like it would SUCK, but ended up being awesome. she was a super hot polish girl with huge tits and was just all happy and frisky. no complaints.

--today i saw my bodybuilder massage client. he keeps asking me to find him a girlfriend. he's really sweet and handsome, good job, big dick, so i'd like to oblige. but i just really don't know how to accomplish this task. i asked him what his type was and he said, "well, someone like YOU, andi." awwww.

wow, is that really all i can come up with? maybe i'll bring a little tiny notebook with me to work for a while so i can remember interesting things.

working. working.

2011-10-26T22:48:00.000-07:00

i'm really happy to be back in portland, but coming home isn't the same when your sweetie isn't waiting for you. seeing him was always the best part of coming home. but things are different now! get used to it!

i worked on sunday night and it was terribly slow, but totally ok. i didn't make very much money, but i was still feeling so happy to be home that i didn't mind too much. of course i would have really liked to be making money, but since i wasn't i just read a book in the dressing room. "outliers," by malcolm gladwell. a book about successful people, what makes a successful person, how some people are born successful, etc. i like narrative non-fiction.

i also just sat at the bar chatting and drinking with customers. one guy is a regular who i've never bothered getting to know because he never ever buys dances. but he struck up a conversation with me and he was actually quite sweet. he mentioned that he hadn't had sex since february. 8 MONTHS!!! he's not an unattractive guy, well-groomed. a little dorky, but nothing extreme. i tried to suggest some places he could meet girls. he said he can't talk to them, he just gets to nervous. i said, "well you're talking to ME and you don't seem nervous." he goes, "yes, but you're..." he trailed off. i said, "a stripper?" his silence made me think that wasn't it. hmmm. anyway i felt bad for the guy. i think he'd be a great boyfriend for some random slightly dorky girl. i suggested he try match.com. i hear people have a lot of luck on there.

there was a new girl working. she was a terrible dancer, lots of wild pelvic thrusts, which did nothing for her tiny pancake butt. she had a lot of children's bikini's she was using as costumes. she fit into them just fine, as she was so skinny you could see every one of her bones. i was listening to a "savage love" podcast and dan had a guest on, some guy who'd just completed the biggest sex study since the kinsey report. one of their findings was that when given the option porn or sex with a woman who was a little overweight or a little underweight, 90% of men will pick the chubby one when the test is anonymous. but when there's an administrator asking the questions directly and it's not anonymous, that number shrinks to something like 50%. very interesting. so i was doing my own little test. i wanted to see who would be super interested in watching an extremely emaciated girl dancing on stage at a strip club. would it be single guys out alone, guys in groups, old guys, young guys? turned out it was nobody. whenever the girl got up on stage, the tip rack totally cleared. i felt bad for her, and it's sad to see someone starving themselves till they're a skeleton. but i also don't want to watch the girl dance naked.

when i was getting off work, i offered my co-worker ten bucks to drive me, and she totally did. that was a treat, not having to wait for a cab. as we drove over the fremont bridge i really just hugely missed my car. i used to love to get off work and just zip over the bridge, look out over the water at the city all sleepy and twinkly. i need to figure out whether i'm staying here or going, because if i'm staying i have to buy a car immediately, if not sooner.

cute girls of south dakota

2011-10-23T13:18:00.001-07:00

oh! i remembered that i wanted to write about the cute girls i met in south dakota. there were two of them. the first one was named tyanna. she was super sweet and totally GORGEOUS. she looked like the disney princess version of pocahantas. huge eyes, button nose, perfect pouty lips, high cheekbones. long, crazy thick black hair. petite on top, tiny waist, and then THE MOST AMAZING ASS i've ever seen in person. EVER. in my entire life. giant and perfectly round. like kim kardashian's but bigger and REAL. i told her she should go work someplace where she could be a superstar, like king of diamonds in miami. in fact, speaking of king of diamonds, the person whose ass this girl's most closely resembles would be BlacChyna.

/\---------------------------------------------

the other girl i really liked there was named bentley. she lives in town there and seems really burnt out on living there. she hides in the dressing room a lot. i, too, was hiding in the dressing room so we started chatting one night. she mentioned she was sick of it in sioux falls and really wanted to move. i asked her what was keeping her there, a boyfriend? she said, "no. i'm celibate." !!! she is super hot. i asked why and she said there just wasn't anybody she wanted to have sex with, and that meaningless sex depressed her so she decided to just stop doing it till she meets a truly special guy. "i have a feeling it's not gonna happen here, though," she said, and looked around the grubby dressing room. she asked whether i had a boyfriend. i told her i didn't, that i got dumped, and am queer. "oh. i'm sorry to hear that," she said, then after a pause added, "i've been with women." the way she said it made me think she'd BEEN with women, not just had drunken party times with them to get some guy excited. but who knows. i liked to picture her with women! she was hot.

SIOUX FALLS CAN KISS MY ASS

2011-10-20T19:06:00.000-07:00

last night was a doozy. there were 15 girls working in the little tiny one-stage club. the shift is 9 hours, so with that many girls, each girl only does 3 stage sets all night. fine by me, as you're lucky to make any money on stage at all, and each dollar entails rubbing your tits directly onto a customer's face and then holding your g-string out for them to tuck a dollar. sometimes even when you do that, the customer declines to tip. infuriating. the girl who made the most stage tips, a voluptuous curly-haired brunette from england, actually made out with each customer, literally rubbed her face all over theirs and open-mouthed kissed them.

the club was super dead all night long. girls were moping around looking for a place to sit, as at many points in the night there were more girls than customers. whenever a girl would get up from sitting with a cheap-ass customer (i.e. give up on getting any dances out of him), another girl would immediately plop down in the still-warm seat and turn on the desperate charm. it felt like a fucked up game of musical chairs.

most of the girls seemed to be having a really hard time making money. from what i could tell, the club's top earner was a 45 year-old MILF from fargo. she was really nice, and pretty too. classic bone structure, big doe eyes. she has the same birthday as me, so of course we liked each other right away. she was pretty old for a stripper, i mean i think you can still be super sexual and hot at 45, but it's a little surprising to still be stripping. when i first met her, it never occurred to me that she'd be raking in the bucks. she just seemed so totally drunk and train-wrecky. but she had a lot of regulars and was in the VIP literally all night long, every night. mostly old guys whose laps her ass had probably been gracing since about 1985. at least one half of the guys i approached on any of the nights i was there told me, "oh honey you're cute as a button but i'm waiting to spend time with barb."

barb had a real take-charge attitude about her. lots of vague unsolicited advice like "keep your chin up," as though keeping one's chin up was going to make any customers materialize. one afternoon when we were all putting on our makeup, barb said, "whose flat iron is smoking?" i hadn't smelled smoke, but right then i began to. it was a burning plastic smell. we couldn't find where it was coming from, but then it just started billowing from the ceiling in huge toxic clouds. barb said, "okay everybody: stop what you're doing. put your coats on, we are going to evacuate. i'll call the fire department." so we did. i mean, there was suddenly just SO MUCH SMOKE.

so. we went outside. a bunch of fire trucks came. firemen tramped around the building and onto the roof, looking for the fire. turns out it was something to do with the club's brand new heating unit. eventually we went back inside, but while we were out, i had the opportunity to see many of my new co-workers in daylight. there was a pair of english girls in for the week. they were both very intense looking inside the dark club, and they were 10x MORE INTENSE in daylight. the brunette looked okay. orange face, but okay. the blonde, however, looked downright NUTS. like a caricature of an ugly girl in a hollywood romantic comedy high-school flashback scene before she later becomes all hot. super awkward, chubby 35 year-old in full pre-teen barbie makeup. orange foundation and robin's egg blue eyeshadow. tiny close-set eyes totally obscured by fake lashes on top and bottom, bulbous nose, tiny thin down-turned lips totally over-drawn with neon pink lipstick. wild. just WILD. you want to know something, though? she seemed to be the club's #2 top earner. she'd sit with a guy for a minute, whisper in his ear a bunch, and then whisk him off to the VIP. lord only knows what her sell was. i don't mean to be a bitch, she seemed nice and all, but it was just surprising to see someone so conventionally unattractive having so much good luck in the club.

i, personally, was having terrible luck. so many lascivious time-wasters. one guy seemed promising but then he started talking about how much he disliked that the club had two black girls working. only he didn't say "black girls," he another word that i don't even want to write. he said they were just too pushy and they should go somewhere where their own people were. i said, "well isn't this the only strip club in town?" he said, "well maybe they shouldn't be IN this town at all." ...next.

then i danced for a guy for a while who seemed a little creepy, but polite. until he said, "you know, i'm very very wealthy." i said, "haha then maybe you should start tipping for these lapdances." he said, "well. i didn't become this wealthy by giving my money away to every little money-grubbing whore i meet." LOVELY. ...next.

the next guy was okay. until he told me he, too, was super wealthy, and that his personal fortune came from being one of the pioneering masterminds of genetically engineered chickens. GROSS.

THEN i sat at the bar for a while with a guy who seemed nice at first till he started telling me what a long time he'd been coming to the club, and how he has nicknames for everyone. he calls the giant black security guard "Big Nig." i gasped a little when he told me that. i said, "you are not serious. do you think he likes you to call him that? that's pretty fucked up." and he said, "oh we go way back. he loves it." sick.

then i just went into the dressing room for a good long time. i counted my money and realized i really had no choice but to get back on the floor. i danced for a couple of rich entitled farmboys. and then trolled around pointlessly for another hour till it was time to go to bed.

it was supposed to be super busy because of pheasant hunting season, but where were the hunters?! i only met 3 or 4. all the rest were rude locals. i just felt more and more like i was wasting my life in that club. 9 and a half hours is such a long shift. and the place was too dark, i hated it there. when we finally got off work and were walking across the street to the hotel, i had the overwhelming feeling like this HAD to be the last time i worked there. i knew it would get busier over the weekend, but i just didn't want to see that club or any of the people in it EVER AGAIN.

so i paid a ridiculous amount of money to change my ticket. and i'm writing this in the denver airport on a stopover on my way back to portland. i miss my town, my friends, my life. i even miss my club! a lot! xo andi.

high hopes: dashed.

2011-10-19T10:32:00.000-07:00

i'm away on a stripping trip. i wasn't going to mention where i was because i didn't wanna blow up the spot, i'd heard it was such a special secret gem. but now that i'm here it's all too clear that the spot has been blown, so i'll go ahead and tell ya: i'm in sioux falls, south dakota. i came here with a co-worker who usually makes a shit-ton of money coming out here during pheasant hunting season.

but, that was in years past. of course. THIS year is "freakishly slow," "never seen it slow like this before," etc. etc.

so. i'm stuck out here in south dakota. making hardly any money. working 9-hour shifts in a club with WAY too many girls and a shortage of customers. everyone is telling me it will get lots better as the week goes on. the last two nights have been so dismal, though, that i am already worn down. i tried booking a flight out of here for today but it was obnoxiously expensive. so i'm just going to finish out my booking, then never come back here again ever.

opposites

2011-10-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

(the internet is down at my house, so this is from Sunday)

i often see customers all around town, but there are two specific regulars i just see EVERYWHERE.

one is a hipster dyke, diesel jeans, $100 flannel, perfectly coiffed justin beiber hairdo. etc. a little more storebought-polished than the girls i usually go out with, but when i first saw her i did think she was hot, although now i dislike her to intensely that i can't imagine ever thinking she was anything but a skeevy little perv. she's a good customer, a great tipper, usually buys dances, but out of the club she is proving to be a nightmare.

i keep seeing her whenever i go to a queer dance party or event, and she always makes creepy eyes at me and does something inappropriate. like instead of being like, "hi how are you? can i buy you a drink?" or anything you'd say to a regular girl out in the regular world, she treats me like she's a customer and i'm working. i wanna be like, "HELLO. welcome to the idea of strippers as complex people who have a life outside of their job." like if you saw your favorite waitress at a party, would you ask her to go get you some more ketchup?

i don't mind the creepy lecherous staring that much, but the last two times i've seen her she has gotten really jerky. i was performing (music, not sexy stuff) at a party last month, and after i was done i was just milling around and she walked past me and smacked my ass so hard i fell against my ex-date. i was so pissed and offended, but also drunk and embroiled in lesbian drama of my own. i felt like chasing her down and beating the shit out of her, i was so mad. but she disappeared into the crowd. i decided if i saw her again that night i was going to have her thrown out. but i didn't see her again.

i saw her again last night, though, at another party where i was performing. i was having a SUPER great night and i didn't want to give any energy into letting her possibly ruin it so i just totally steered clear of her all night. somehow, though, she found me AGAIN and she went to smack my ass but i yelled, "DO! NOT! DO! IT!" she acted like i was being funny, like we are in on some joke together. but she did go away. if she ever shows up at my club again, i'm going to bitch her out. p.s. i hope she realllly enjoyed the lapdances she's bought from me over the past 2 years, because she is NEVER EVER getting another.

the other regular customer who i see whenever i go out lately is a super cute effeminate straight boy who works at new seasons. he's not a big $ customer or anything, but he comes in and tips decently, and whenever he gets paid he buys a few dances. i actually really LIKE seeing him out, because he's just so nice. i saw him last night about five minutes after i saw the douchey girl, and i was like, "WOW. if this isn't a case of opposites, i don't know what is." i mean, usually it would be the dude who would be all skeezy and entitled, and the girl would be the one you'd enjoy running into. sometimes things are switched, i guess.

weekend times.

2011-10-10T16:31:00.000-07:00

hi. i am back up in portland. i worked on friday and saturday nights.

friday was great. it was busy, i had a few really great customers. and then when i got done working my friend bob came to get me to take me to an after-party. i loved having something fun to do in the middle of the night after work. she and another friend were waiting for me in front of the club in their station wagon, blaring super loud salsa music. a party on wheels! they dropped me off at the party, and went around the corner to smoke some weed. they were supposed to come right back, but never did. it was ok. i danced for a while by myself. and the person i love was there. it was sad to see him, but i miss him so even just being in the same place feels sorta comforting.

then on saturday i worked again. it was busy. people were fun. except for one guy, who was a total scary creep. he was movie-star handsome, with super light blue eyes that looked almost white/blue. he had a bleached perma-grin. he wanted a lot of lapdances so i danced for him, and he was nice at first, but became increasingly handsy and aggressive. at one point, i had my back to him and he reached up into my hair and wound it all up in his fingers until my head was in his giant palm like a basketball. he pulled my head back and said, "let's have some fun." it was fucking creepy. i panicked, i mean he really had me trapped for a second. i said, "you're hurting me, stop!" he untangled my hair and looked at me disgustedly. i said i didn't want to dance for him anymore and went to give him some of his money back, as he had pre-paid for 10 dances, but had only gotten 7 so far. he waved his hand dismissively, "keep it," he said. then he left. something WAS NOT RIGHT with that guy.

yesterday and today are my days off. woo hoo. just relaxing and making new fall/winter dresses.

rainy day.

2011-10-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

yesterday i was going to walk around and shop, etc, but it was raining all day so i decided to work instead. i saw two clients. the first one smelled like he had just rolled around in an ashtray. i put him in the shower, but the smell didn't wash off. it was not just your average "smoker" smell, it was like he had been in the world's smokiest bar and then smoked in his car and then sat for a while in a cigarette smoke sauna. the shower did help a little. but his poofy head of moppy curls really retained a lot of smell. he was a nice guy, though. so.

the next one was a young-ish spanish guy. he was good looking and very polite, and he had a cute lispy spanish accent. he had a hard time coming, saying i was too cute and it made him nervous. i could understand that, as when i think someone is super hot, it's sometimes hard for me to get off because i, too, get a little nervous.

but he just kept not coming, and not coming and not coming. i asked him if he'd like to extend our time together. he said, "oh, ab-tho-lutely."

so he extended for a half hour. and then when that half hour was done, he wanted to extend for another half hour. but by that point i was so bored and my arm was about to fall off, and it would've taken A LOT more than another hundred bucks to keep me on that table with his cock in my hand. so i told him i had another client and wasn't able to extend any longer. he jerked himself off in like two seconds and was on his way. i had a moment of feeling a little guilty for not finishing the job, but it passed quickly.

when i left the studio to go eat sushi with a friend, the air smelled so fresh and perfect. i love the rain smell. especially when it's stopped raining.

manifest your wishes, say them aloud.

2011-10-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

wow, sometimes getting specific about what you want and then putting it out into the universe really works! like when i said i didn't want to dance for a million randoms, and preferred one or two good customers to keep me busy all night. that's exactly what happened after i wrote that. i went to work and right away met someone and danced for him till midnight. then at midnight he left and another guy came in and said, "can i monopolize your time for the rest of the night?" it's like he was reading off a script WRITTEN BY ME!

that second guy was really hot, i might add. he looked just like taylor lautner, the werewolf from the "twilight" saga. he groaned when i told him this, i guess he hears it a lot and is sick of it. i pointed out that there are worse things than constantly being compared to a teenage heart-throb. he laughed and told me he was just being gracious, and that he actually loves the comparison. i liked that guy a lot, i hope he comes in again.

now i'm down south again for a few days! maybe i'll work. i'm not sure. xo

back from vaycay.

2011-09-30T16:21:00.001-07:00

hi there. i went away to NYC for a week, and it was so good to remember there's a whole big world out there that has nothing to do with portland or my heartbreak. so good to get some perspective, ya know? i hung out with friends, and with my sister. i went out dancing. i took a lot of super-long late-night walks. one night i walked 3 miles home from a club, in high-heeled doc martens, all the way from the tip-top of chelsea to the bottom of the lower east side, right near the brooklyn bridge. i could've taken a cab, but the night air felt so warm and balmy, so romantic. at first i really wished my ex-sweetheart was with me, but then i had a moment of "well, this is how things are right now: you're alone," and it felt okay and sort of lovely to have a romantic walk with myself.

(i mean, i have had YEARS of being alone, and lots of that time was ecstatic singlehood, but then you meet the person you think you're supposed to be with etc etc blah blah blah, and then you wind up alone again and it feels different and tragic.)

so now i'm back. i worked last night. it was busy-ish. i only got pissed off two times all night, both times it was girls. what is it with girls and their shitty strip club etiquette? anyway, the first girl came up to me with a dollar and said, "i will give you this if you'll play lady gaga." i told her she should be tipping anyway, since she had been there for hours and not yet parted with even one dollar. she goes, "okay, well i'm tipping now but only if you'll dance to lady gaga." i said she should to keep her buck.

another (non-tipping) girl kept telling me to "work that pole," and yelling that she wanted to see me upside down. i told her to shut up. you know i'm drinking tequila when i just yell "SHUT UP" at someone while i'm in the middle of dancing all sexy. ha.

other than that it was a good night until the very end when for whatever dumb reason i entered a heart-wrenching text-off with my ex. i was doing so great not texting or calling him, but being back in town and missing him and then getting a little drunk was just a recipe for a few moments of desperation. never again, it just makes me feel too sad. i hereby proclaim that i'm not texting him ever, ever again. it feels good to decide that. let's hope i can keep feeling this resolved about it.

i'm working again tonight. my hope for tonight: instead of doing a zillion dances for a zillion different people, one or two super great customers come in and keep me busy all night. i'd like to BANK tonight. yep. okay. more later. xo andi

tear$

2011-09-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

i worked tonight after crying all day, and i fucking BANKED. i got on stage for my first set, all puffy-faced and bedraggled, and every person in the club crowded to my tip rail. i didn't have even one minute all night to go downstairs and wallow in my heartache, i was busy giving a million dances all night. it's so weird how guys can, like, smell the vulnerability on you. i'm not 100% sure what's attractive about it, other than maybe they think you will give a generous dance. or maybe they just see you open, and want to shimmy in for a minute.

so. bummed as hell. but $$$ always makes me feel at least a little bit better.

sex nerd hot wings bodybuilder times

2011-09-19T21:50:00.001-07:00

i worked this weekend, but not a lot.

on saturday i did a bachelor party. it was pretty run of the mill. there was a bachelor, and a bunch of his friends. and a lot of sticky money. there was this one really cute guy there, though. it's not often that i think a random guy is hot, but i have been thinking about doing it with a dude so maybe that's why i've been noticing when guys are hot. anyway. the only other things that were interesting about this party is that it took place in the fully loaded basement dungeon of an otherwise totally normal house. it had a medieval theme, stone walls, shields, swords, etc. but then there was actual functional s&m dungeon stuff. it looked just like the medieval room of the dungeon i worked at for a hot minute in new york. (i wasn't a very good domina-in-training. i got squeamish hitting people and torturing their cocks and balls, plus during the part where they get to meet each girl who's working, i was very rarely able to come up with a compelling reason for them to choose me instead of any of the other girls. i did like learning some rope bondage, though. it's so pretty.) someday i will have a house with a sex nerd room, with a swing and all that.

the other thing i thought was interesting actually isn't very interesting now that i'm writing about it, and that is the hot wings buffet. the party was right around dinnertime, but my partner had both neglected to eat beforehand so we were very hungry. when we went to use the bathroom and all the guys were still downstairs in the dungeon, we helped ourselves to some of their hot-wings, and they were THE HOTTEST hot wings i've ever eaten. we were both choking and gagging, they were so stupidly spicy. our eyes were watering so bad we both had mascara running all down our faces. after we stopped freaking out, we had a strangely cathartic giggle fit, which felt nice since i've been so fucking depressed.

then on sunday i saw the bodybuilder massage client i've been seeing lately. he's really really nice. but i have to tell you: it feels weird when you're not getting laid in your regular life, and your only sexual interactions are with clients. i'm still working out my feelings on that, more later.

xo andi

booo hooooo

2011-09-16T23:06:00.000-07:00

oh man. today was a long-ass day. i worked the dayshift, which was fine since it was sushi friday. i didn't make very much money, though, and near the end of my shift someone called wanting me to cover her mid-shift. i agreed to do it, since i was already there and i wanted to make more money. as soon as i got off the phone, though, i had this weird wave of intense nausea and dizziness. i went downstairs and got my period in a big way. great.

so then i tried to give the shift back but it was too late so i just worked.

it continued to be slow all day. i will admit that i moped a little bit. my co-workers are sick of my broken-hearted listlessness. i know i need to just pretend to have gotten over it already. i couldn't do it today, but i will on my next shift.

hmm did anyone interesting come in... well, not really. i barely did any dances during the 10 hours i worked. the first few were in the morning for a guy who was nice, but then just stayed all day and into the night, getting drunker and more annoying with each passing hour. he asked me no fewer than 15 times whether i'd be his date tonight to bob log III. i said no. he didn't want to hear that, so he just kept on asking. he was tipping okay so i felt the need to stay polite, but it bugged me.

another guy i danced for was developmentally delayed. i felt kinda bad taking his money, but don't dd people have just as much right as anybody else to spend their money on strippers? it's not like i was swindling him, pushing him down and taking his lunch money on the playground. he was nice, but smelled TERRIBLE like he'd peed his pants earlier. suffice to say it was an "air dance." i didn't want any residual pee on me. he told me he was very sad because the bus from where he lives to downtown is changing its route so he won't be able to come downtown ever again. so sad! when the dance was done, he said, "i gotta go. you made me very horny."

i don't remember who else i danced for. i don't care. i got off work and went next door for tacos. i wasn't even hungry, i just wasn't ready to go home and couldn't think of anywhere else to go or anybody to call. i was so exhausted and lonesome, i just wanted to be around someone who loves me but right now there isn't anyone so i just sat in the taqueria for an hour or so looking at pictures of my ex on my phone until i started to feel totally nuts. then i biked home and even the fresh air on my face didn't make me feel any better.

i need to find a new girlfriend, but i don't want to. i only want the old one. boo hoo.

sushi friday

2011-09-10T03:47:00.000-07:00

on friday afternoons my co-worker and i order sushi from across the street. i was sitting at the bar today enjoying "sushi friday" when a customer walked in and announced to me and the bartender, "i'm visiting portland!" it's so funny when people are a totally obvious tourist with their little guidebook and khaki shorts, and yet tell you like you didn't already know. like someone with their bus pass in a lanyard around their neck telling you they don't have a car. or a little kid saying, "i'm a kid!"

he sat down next to me at the bar. "where you visiting from?" i asked with a mouth full of seaweed salad.

"boston."

"cool," chomp chomp chomp. "i've been there."

"i'm visiting my facebook friend," he said.

"oh yeah?"

"it's a weird story. i mean, i want to tell you but i'm worried you'll think i'm a weirdo."

"ha! i already think that," i said. "so you don't have to worry! ...just kidding?"

"ok. well. i met her because she saw me on tv, and wrote to me on facebook."

"oh yeah?" hard to talk a lot while you're eating. easier to ask open-ended questions and just listen, and then when the person's done talking you'll probably be done eating and can suggest they buy a lapdance.

"yeah. well i have this friend, you may have heard of her. the college professor from alabama who shot six colleagues, killing three of them?"

"i did. something about her not getting tenure?"

"something like that. anyway we've been friends for 20 years. i was on CNN talking about her, saying she was a loving amazing person for whom this was totally out of character. well annie, my new facebook friend, saw the story and was really moved that there was someone like me in the world who would stand by my good friend, even after they had committed such an atrocity. she wanted to get to know me."

"whoa. wow." (i wanted to ask, aren't you worried she only wants to be friends with you because she's planning out her own workplace massacre and wants to know she'll have someone who'll visit her in prison?)

"so we began a very deep facebook friendship and a year later, here i am visiting portland for a week!"

[very deep facebook friendship.]

"wow you never met her in person till now, and you're staying with her for a week?"

"oh i'm not staying with her. she's in AA and i'm a heavy drinker. i'm staying at the ___ hotel, down the street. it's really funny. annie hates strip clubs, she was telling me yesterday how there are more strip clubs here than anywhere else in the country, and how terrible it is. she said, 'why, there's even one right down the street from your hotel!' so of course, i had to come check it out."

i was done eating. "wow. that's some story! well, i guess you should really experience the club by getting a few lapdances."

"ok."

a little while later the club was dead again, except for this one guy who was playing the video poker. i saw him getting super stoked, and then cashing out at the bar. he'd won 500 dollars off of just ten. it's kind of hard sometimes to be nice to someone when they've just won a bunch of money and you want some of it, but at the same time act like you're not just being nice because they've just had a windfall. it's a fine line. i didn't get any of that guy's money.

slow slow slow, then a regular came in and saved the day right before i got off work, so that was nice.

and then i ate dinner and went to an art & performance thing that is part of the TBA (time-based art) festival here in portland. i was standing around with a few people, and this guy told a story about the time he and his boyfriend were laying in bed stoned, watching a movie and eating flaming hot cheetos. he got horny and his boyfriend started blowing him but after a little while his dick was ON FIRE. he had to wash his boner in cold water for 20 minutes. pretty sick. then this girl said how one time she masturbated after eating a burrito and didn't realize she had habanero hot sauce on her hands. another lengthy genital rinsing. and the other girl who was standing there told a story of having a bruise around her wrist from fisting someone who was not her girlfriend, and her girlfriend asked her, what's that bruise? and i guess she figured it out and they broke up. so i, being the fourth person standing around in a little crowd of 4, piped up and told them how one time i was at the movies after doing an outcall and i kept getting really strong whiffs of cum all through the movie till i finally realized there was a dried cumwad in my hair, dangling quite near my face. as soon as i said it, i wished i had thought of something else or just stayed quiet, because the wrist bruise girl looked so grossed out, and the other two people were awkwardly silent. oh well.

don't dutch me.

2011-09-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

well. i got dumped. again. by the same person. and would you believe me when i tell you that i totally didn't see it coming? what a dummy!

the day after i got dumped, my friend came to visit and she flopped down on my bed, on my sweetie's side. she put her head down on his pillow. it happened in slow motion, like "noooooo," but also too quick to stop. so now his pillow smells like hippy hair oil, instead of like him. it's terrible.

then, of course, i worked a million days in a row. nobody will ever have the courtesy to dump me on my day off, when i don't actually have to go get naked in front of strangers all night. each day something fucked up happened, and i don't even want to think about it right now but i will share one of the more annoying examples. an indian guy came in and wanted a lapdance. as soon as i got him back in the lapdance nook, he started rubbing me all over. i moved his hands off of me. "can i dutch you?" he said, only he asked it three times really fast: "canidutchyoucanidutchyoucanidutchyou?"

"can you dutch me? oh, TOUCH me. no."

"please?"

"no. " (i actually do allow a fair amount of touching in my lapdances, but this guy was being a creep so i didn't want his hands on me at all.)

"please?"

PLEASE. NO. x 10.

and just when i was feeling sorry for him since he obviously has a verbal tic, he reached around my leg and jammed two fingers UP MY PUSSY. knuckle and all. it felt all gross and rapey.

"FUCK OFF! your dance is over. give me $40!"

"but you said a dance is only 20."

"give me 40! NOW! AND THEN GET THE FUCK OUT!"

he did. charging an extra 20 really didn't help me feel any better. i just felt really grossed out and angry. and then of course there was the weird self-blame/shame spiral, like why do i have the kind of job where getting sexually assaulted is an occupational hazard that's just gonna keep on happening over and over and over? but eventually i just drank some champagne and kept working. i mean, what else was i going to do?

i'm still a little mad about it, though. and i feel like the universe should be watching out for me a little better while i'm all tender and broken-hearted.

get a light.

2011-08-12T21:58:00.001-07:00

i saw two clients yesterday. the first one was a bodybuilder. it was like rubbing a bunch of smooth large rocks. he had a giant dick: HUGE. kind of a lot of work. but he was nice. the second one seemed REALLY GAY. like, extreeeeeeeeemely gay. i couldn't understand what he was doing there. he was sweet and gentle. when he came, he cried. it felt a touch too intimate. i don't think i'll see him again.

then i biked home and realized i didn't have my bike light. it was dark. scary. i should have left my bike and taken a cab. silly girl. this super butch lady passed me in the bike lane and dished out some tough love: "are you TRYING to DIE?!" she screamed. "because i'll tell ya, CUPCAKE: you don't GLOW in the DARK!" i was like, "i know. thanks. uhh..." and she yelled over her shoulder, "GET A LIGHT!!!"

i will. get a light. or, better yet: A CAR.

haiku for a sexy chiropractor

2011-08-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

hugging adjustment

so good. my back: crack crack crack.

stomach: butterflies

free money, and MEAT house.

2011-07-30T19:41:00.000-07:00

i'm in NYC for a little bit, hanging out with friends and going to museums (mainly i came to see the alexander mcqueen exhibit at the met before it closes next week). also i'm working a bit.

this morning i woke up super late and put up an ad. i was out for coffee with a friend and i got a lot of calls, but it was all out-calls to faraway places and i just didn't feel like taking the train all day. i'm staying on the lower east side, and i decided if anybody called that wanted me to come over and they were nearby, or a few train stops away, i'd go see them but otherwise i'd just sunbathe on my friend's roof. no sooner had i announced my lazy plan to my friend, than i got a call from a guy who was only two blocks away.

so i took a shower and went over. when i got there, a model-looking guy was pulling up on a vespa. i climbed the stairs of the stoop, and the guy did, too. he said, "are you here for 4c?" i said yes. he looked at me really strangely, then said, "i have to go to the bank." but didn't move. i said okay, i'll wait here. i sat down on his stoop and watched him as he walked back down the stairs very, very slowly. he crossed the street, and then ambled down the sidewalk at a superhumanly slow pace and disappeared around the corner. and i felt like maybe i should just leave, that maybe these were my last moments before something bad happened. there had been something Not Right about this guy. i wondered whether i'd look back on this moment and wish i had listened to my gut and left. i decided to leave, but right when i was bent down to gather up my purse, the guy reappeared.

he said, "can you come in here with me?" and pointed to the door. i still felt like: LEAVE, DUMMY. but my feet followed the guy into his building's landing area. he goes, "i thought you'd be asian. in your pictures, that's how you looked...so...um...can i just give you $100 for coming all the way out here, and then you can go?"

STOKED! free money.

i was happy he didn't know i had only walked two blocks. i said, "sure. thanks."

hahahahahahaha!!!!!! i think this might be what they mean when they talk about "WINNING."

so then i just meandered about for a while. lunched at whole foods. worked out. got a bunch more calls from people who wanted a discount, or wanted me to send a bunch of pics, etc. then a call from a guy who sounded really really nice. he was in park slope, which sounded far until i looked up how to get there and realized it would only take me 17 minutes. so went to see him.

you really never do know what someone's going to look like AT ALL from how they sound on the phone. i mean, you can make guesses and sometimes you're right, but really you just don't know. a good example of this would be my friend libby, whose high pitched voice sounds like a blonde valley girl, but who is actually a chubby brunette bulldagger. another example would be my client today, who sounded kind of small and 80's movie nerdy, but was actually about 6 feet tall and very very large. bigger than my client last week, even.

the guy was super nice. he had his own playlist on his ipod and it was a lot of cheesy starbucks chick music. like natasha beddingfield, sara bareilles, regina spector. and then halfway through the massage, "the language or the kiss" came on by the indigo girls. then some more stuff, natalie merchant, etc. then as i was finishing the massage and he was coming, fucking "both hands" by ani difranco came on. it was rather bizarre. sweet, endearing, and bizarre to jack a guy off at the lilith fair.

his house smelled very meaty, by the way. the olfactory soundtrack: meat. when i was leaving, i really had to know what was up with that and i said, "are you cooking something?"

"wow you have a good nose," he said. "yeah, i'm cooking a pot roast."

i stifled a giggle. i mean, really the smell was VERY intense. you didn't need to have a good nose, it was heavy and savory and hanging in the air so thick you could taste it, and my hair actually still smells like meat.

then i got on the subway and met up with my sweetie and had BOMB-ASS thai food and now we're going to go have a fancy cocktail. more later! xo andi

breathy.

2011-07-22T20:47:00.000-07:00

besides dancing and massage, i have another job that keeps me busy sometimes so i've been traveling a bit doing that. i'm down south right now working on that stuff, and today i was off so i decided to work at the massage parlour. i had two clients. the first one was the biggest, largest client i've ever seen. 6'4'' and just, like, GIANT. if i had to guess, i'd say he weighed around 350lbs. he was really nice, but pushy. he insisted that i climb up on the massage table, on top of him. he was fine on the table by himself, they hold up to 400lbs, but when we were both on it, i worried a little that it might break. he offered me an extra $300 to eat my pussy. i said no. he said, "how about just 10 licks of it for $500?" that's a lot of money for ten licks of your pussy, and i may have said yes if his breath hadn't been bad. i'm just not interested in that.

my next client was a repeat client who is really nice, but who always smokes pot halfway through the session and then has a hard time coming. it's like carpal tunnel time, man. he also had bad breath. i must have pms because i'm really feeling sensitive to smells right now! other than that, though, he's an ideal client. clean. polite. good-looking.

then i took a shower and scrubbed my hands with toothpaste so they wouldn't smell like cum. i went and had a sushi feast. super delish!

xo andi

hamburgersssss!

2011-07-18T19:41:00.001-07:00

fireworks.

2011-07-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

wow hi. i haven't written in a really long time!

i went down south. i didn't work. i just didn't feel like it. well, actually, i DID feel like it but when it was difficult to procure time in the massage parlour, i threw in the cum-covered towel right away and just said, "fuck it." instead, i tooled around town on my red bike. i lunched with friends. i ran out of money.

then i came back up to portland and got right to work but it's not been that interesting so i haven't written. allow me to share some highlights of the last week or so:

friday night. usual antics. decent cash.

saturday night. bachelor party all the way down in bend, four hours south of portland. this was a doozy for many reasons, but i don't want to write too much about it because it would involve a lot of complaining. but here's one thing: we had to go there AND BACK all in one night for reasons that were totally infuriating to me. the party itself was rad, though. the guys could not have been nicer.

let's see, then i worked the 4th of july. which SUCKED. BAD. it was beyond dead. just totally BEYOND. and the girls weren't fun to work with. it was the most random girls working. if i had at least had a buddy working i could have salvaged a bit of fun from the night, but as it was i had a bit of a dark night of the soul. that whole, "what am i doing with my life that i'm sitting around in a strip club WITH AN EMPTY PURSE on the 4th of july while all my friends are shooting off fireworks?" thing. i was so happy to finally get off work and come home, but i'm STILL experiencing a bit of FOMO all these days later. today, for example, i was stalking my girlfriend on facebook and saw that someone had proclaimed him "THE KING OF FIREWORKS."

xo andi

(p.s. i know my lover's gender pronouns are inconsistent in this blog, so you don't need to write comments telling me about it. i'm dating someone who's genderqueer and i don't like the sound of "boyfriend," but i also don't call him "she." we all get to do and say whatever we want in our blogs and our lives: what a lovely thing!)

googling

2011-06-13T00:10:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-06-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-06-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-05-23T01:27:00.000-07:00

last night blew. i couldn't stop coughing, i was really tired, and there weren't any good customers. i did have a guy ask me whether my tits were real, though, which was pretty funny. if you've ever seen me without a push-up bra you know that my tits are tiny. as in A cup. i said to him, "who would pay for tits this small?!" he responded that they were just so perfectly shaped, it was hard to believe they were real. well, now, that's true.

i was telling the story to a co-worker in the dressing room. she has really good looking fake tits. she goes, "hahaha! if i woke up with your tits i'd sue my doctor for malpractice!" you know how sometimes someone is *technically* agreeing with/adding to whatever you've just said, and yet at the same time they're taking it to a whole 'nother level? she was dying laughing at the wild hilarity of it all. finally i was like, "ok ok. it wasn't THAT funny."

later on that same customer said, "your body looks very young."

um. you mean in spite of my witchy old face? what a bizarre thing to say. i mean, a compliment about your body isn't really a compliment when it's to the exclusion of your face.

a couple of college girls came in. were shrieking and yelling the way girls will do when they come in and realize they're not the center of attention. one of them tipped a dollar and goes, "show us your boobies!" i just looked at her and walked the other way. then she waved me over and goes, "don't you cater to women? if they're tipping?" i said, "when they're yelling and being obnoxious and tipping ONE DOLLAR? no. i do not cater to them." she went and complained to the bartender, who could not have given a smaller shit, and then left. i was really surprised she didn't scoop her dollar up on her way out.

many weirdos. all night long. i was very happy to rush home to bed.

stripper-gram/strip-o-gram?

2011-05-21T23:44:00.000-07:00

last night i did a stripper-gram or strip-o-gram or whatEVER you want to call it. (i can't decide which it is, and the agency i work for goes back and forth using both all the time, so they're of no help.)

anyway i went to a bar way out in beaverton where some bar employees wanted to surprise their boss at his birthday party. i got there and they couldn't locate the boss so they kept stalling me. i sat at the bar and a customer, who was in on the secret, offered to buy me a cocktail. i said i'd have a margarita. i felt weird specifying that i don't drink well liquor, so the bartender made it with don pancho or whatever the world's cheapest tequila is. i had one polite sip and immediately had a headache. i'm just too delicate a flower for cheap booze.

finally they found the boss. i danced to rihanna's "S&M," tied the guy up, rode him like a pony, etc. and then left with the easiest couple hundred bux i've ever made, probably.

i realized i was right down the street from my aunt's house, where my brother is staying this week while he's in town from san diego. i knew they'd all be up playing video games and whatnot, they never go to bed over there till at least 2am, and i wanted to stop by but i really couldn't think of any reason to say as to why i just happened in the neighborhood. so i just drove back into town, and on my way home a friend called and wanted to meet for a drink. i felt really happy about that, like i should be out drinking with my peers on a friday night, you know? so i did that. then went to bed. the end.

sunday

2011-05-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

i worked on sunday night, too. it's been a long while since i worked that many days/nights in a row. i still feel tired from it!

so. i went to work grouchy. i had had a frustrating/depressing/annoying conversation with a family member that day and couldn't seem to shake the bad way it left me feeling. then when i got to work it was totally dead and after only five minutes i felt like, "get me outta here!"

but then a little while later a bulldagger bought me a margarita and i felt a lot better. or was that on saturday? well, SOMEBODY bought me a margarita.

i was too lazy to hustle even a little tiny bit, but this lucky thing happened where people kept coming up to me at the bar and asking for dances. i felt like, "what planet am i on?" i went with it. i kind of hated to actually get out of my chair, but $20 for 3.5 minutes of work is hard to pass up.

one guy was really cute and he wanted like 10 dances. so after that i really relaxed, because my money goal for a sunday night is pretty low and i had just met it.

another guy was having his bachelor party. his friends bought him a few dances from me, but once we got back in the dance area he didn't want me touching him at all. he's promised his fiance he'd be a "good boy," so instead he taught me an intricate pattycake game. i caught on right away, as i was a tap dancer and have a natural aptitude for percussiony games, it was HE who kept drunkenly fucking up the game. that was the first time i've played a hand-clap game in lieu of dances, and it was a fun departure from the norm, for sure.

then my favorite bar regular came in and i sat with him for a long while. he's funny.

after that i was off work. i love when the night passes quickly. i went home and scrubbed the club off, then indulged in my sunday post-work ritual which is dorky but comfy: big snack and watching the new episode of desperate housewives on my computer, followed by zzzzzzz.

friday n saturday

2011-05-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

on friday, i worked again down south. on my way up to the studio, i saw two male footwear disasters. first, there was an otherwise attractive young fag waiting in the lobby wearing a totally normal outfit with UGGS. bizarre. truly.

then in the elevator there was a man wearing socks with sandals. now this, to most people, is a faux pas. but i happen to think it's brilliant for men since they seem to be lax when it comes to foot maintenance and beautification. their toenails are often thick and gross, too long, crooked, yellowish, and it's like their cuticles have never even seen a clipper. plus their actual feet aren't pretty like women's . and their toes are hairy: yuck! so, in my opinion, go ahead and keep that shit covered. socks with sandals look great on you dude, keep it up.

anyway. after i got done with my male footwear critique, i went upstairs to work. i saw a regular, who is usually really cool. but that day he was so grabby. i always take off my panties for the sexytimes portion of the massage, but he had been grabbing at me so aggressively that i declined to do so. at one point he asked if he could give me a massage. i had somehow forgotten about the last "massage" he gave me, wherein he pinched at my shoulders a few times and then rubbed his dick all over my back, so i was like, "okay."

(how did i forget that, btw? i guess i blocked it out?)

anyway so he gave me a rough, unskilled massage for a couple minutes, and then i kept feeling his dick on my back so i told him it was time to switch back. ew.

the next guy i saw was really nice. uncut, which is not my favorite thing by ANY stretch of the imagination. but he was pretty clean and was just a pleasant person, plus he left a generous tip.

after that i felt tired. i had a bunch of calls and emails to answer, but instead of working into the night i turned off my phone. feels good sometimes to make that executive decision. to just decide your own desires (to eat and go to bed) are more important than making any more money that night.

then i came back to portland on saturday (yesterday). i worked at the club, it was okay except our pole was broken. loose, and leaning a little bit against the mirrored ceiling... hard to describe but let's just say it was out of commission. so boring to dance without use of the pole. i'm not an acrobat, but i do enjoy a few little crowd-pleasing tricks. and also it just breaks up the monotony of sexily pacing back and forth on the stage. i hardly ever get bored dancing when there's a pole. last night, without one, i became despondently bored, and i got all tired and cranky. somehow people still wanted dances so i ended up doing fine in terms of money. i can't believe i have to go back tonight, though. i'm feeling POOPED!

more working.

2011-05-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

just been working a bunch. i saw a few regulars and two more new guys. did an outcall to a fancy hotel, always fun to see the kinds of overpriced rooms people get on the company dime. i, personally, can't really tell the difference in quality when it comes to a $200 room vs. a $400 room. nice big tempurpedic bed, cushy robe. seems the same. anyway. so that was nice.

also do you remember the guy who came and saw me last month but then got dizzy and left and paid me anyway? well i was bummed because he was such a good client and i figured i'd never see him again after that because you know how men are when they get embarrassed. but he came to see me, and was as sweet as ever.

my tiny little chef came to see me, too. i like him a lot but i think he gets high before coming to see me because he talks SO MUCH, and there's a kinda frantic edge to his musings.. he doesn't have the telltale coke dick, though, so who knows.

hmm what else. i've just been having a really great trip. working a bunch, but also just eating fancy food, drinking good wine, riding my bike, seeing friends, busy busy but awesome.

workin my fingers to the bone(r)

2011-05-11T15:36:00.000-07:00

well, i'm down south. i got here monday and went straight from the airport to the massage studio. i had booked an appointment a couple hours after i was supposed to land, but then my flight was delayed so i had to scramble. i got there just in time, though, and my first client was this sweet guy i used to see when i first started working. he's nice. i'm trying to think of some interesting way to describe him, but he's just really really regular. a college bro type who now works in finance. youngish in a fancy suit, a little goofy, sweet.

then i saw a new guy. he was also a business type. very polite. quiet. you know how i like 'em quiet.

my last client was an old regular who i hadn't seen in a while. he is really nice, but extra hairy. i don't mind body hair, but this would definitely classify as "excessive." and even that would be cool if he'd just trim his pubic region. his hair there is, like, SO LONG, i almost can't deal, but he's just so nice otherwise. he's a zenned out new age type. often these guys can seem annoying out in the world, but they make great customers. so respectful. so present in their bodies. i always feel really calm after seeing this guy.

after that i chatted with my girlfriends who were finishing up work too. they recently bought a car, and just when i was dreading dragging my suitcase down and hailing a cab, they offered me a ride home. sweet!

i dropped off my stuff, then went out walking because it was so nice out and also i was starving. it was late so hardly anything was open. i ended up going to this taqueria that's been one of my top 3 favorites for ten years. i love the way it feels to sit by myself and enjoy comfort food with a big wad of cash in my pocket.

no porky piggin! NO FEATHER BOAS!

2011-05-08T12:40:00.001-07:00

i'm a little bit tired of working saturday nights. the good thing is that you can make a lot of money on stage. but the bad thing is that you can often ONLY make money on stage, since people are in groups and don't end up getting very many lapdances. it's hard to hustle when every single chair is filled. and i don't like to just go sit on a guy's lap when his girlfriend is sitting right there. tuesdays or thursdays are so much better. lots of solo businessmen. i've gotta start working more during the week.

last night the girl i write about sometimes, the super uncouth one, was getting off-shift as i was coming on. i passed her on my way to the dressing room as she was sitting on some guy's lap wearing a red tank top, red feather boa, chunky platform boots, and no bottoms of any sort! not even a thong. i figured i was just seeing things. surely she wasn't actually splayed out all porky pig style (you know how he wears a shirt but no pants? eww) across some customer's lap.

a little while later she came into the dressing room to get her stuff. i was doing my makeup and looked over expecting to see that i had been mistaken and that she was, in fact, wearing bottoms. NOPE. i knew if i said anything she'd pull her innocent "i'm new here" crap, though it's been at least 6 months which actually makes her NOT NEW AT ALL. so i just kept my mouth shut.

then this other dancer who has been working at the club for a zillion years stormed into the dressing room and let her have it. "you are so lucky i didn't yell at you on the floor!" she yelled. "don't you EVER walk around like that while i'm on stage again!" etc etc. and the best part was when the girl was like, "i'm new, i didn't know," and the older dancer goes, "YOU ARE NOT NEW! GET WITH IT!!!"

hmm. so. the night was okay. mostly decent customers. hardly any lapdances. but two things really got me down: first, my whole body was ravaged on and off all night by the worst hiccups EVER. the kind that start way down in your diaphragm and just, like, take over. oddly, i will get these sometimes after indulging in even small amounts of anal sex. is there a correlation? sounds like a question for dan savage.

secondly, all night i was peeling little red feathers off of my sweaty ass. the next time i see UNCOUTH (which is how i shall hithertoforth refer to the not-new girl) i'm gonna go all joan crawford/mommie dearest on her ass and scream "NO! FEATHER! BOAS!" while beating her about the head and shoulders with the most scraggliest boa i can find. which is to say, her own feather boa.

oh saturday.

2011-05-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

what IS IT with the wildly rude dykes lately? last night i had the worst one EVER. i think she must've been in a blackout. nobody could be that rude if they were actually inhabiting their body and mind in real-time. this lady was about 45, she came in with a couple of guy friends of mine from waaaaay back. they didn't know i was working, it was a nice surprise to see them until their bratty friend piped up. she was sitting at the rack, running her fingers through her silver hair instead of tipping, and going "I'M BORED! WHY ARE THESE GIRLS ALL SO BORING?!" she was being so loud and so disgruntled and my friends weren't ushering her away or anything. it was very obnoxious all around. i said to her, "what a bummer that you're shackled to that chair. it must suck to be terribly bored and yet UNABLE TO LEAVE." it seemed to occur to her, then, that she could leave. so she did. with some parting words for the whole club, "THIS IS ALL SO BORING! YOU ARE ALLLLL BOOOORING!"

it really sucks how when my boss is working, you can't tell people to fuck off.

there were lots of other assorted girls last night. most were rad, but i dislike when gaggles of girls from pole-dancing classes come in and critique your moves amongst themselves. i'm like, "go home and give your husband a lapdance."

this guy i have been playing "words with friends" (iphone scrabble) with came in and got some dances. he has kicked my ass 5x in a row, so it was a little hard to be sweet to him. i just pretended he was a random customer, instead of a random customer who keeps beating me at scrabble. to his credit, he didn't act smug at all, just happy to see me.

well. it's sunny out! for once! i'm going to lay in the park all day and do nothing. xo

p.s.

2011-04-28T21:35:00.000-07:00

will someone please make me these shoes? i need them. i'm not good at making shoes. i wear size 8 in stripper shoes, size 6 in converse. if you make me these shoes, i will give you 3 lapdances and a pair of panties if you so desire. or i will just say thank you. either way.

BABY GIRL

2011-04-28T21:20:00.001-07:00

it's raining a lot and very cold today, but i'm making new summer clothes. when the sun comes, i'm gonna be ready for it!

a tale of two dykes

2011-04-25T13:34:00.001-07:00

dykes are just like everybody else: sometimes they are awesome customers, sometimes they suck. last night i had one of each.

first was the bummer one. she looked like the poet eileen myles, except not hot. same hairdo, she was even wearing clothes that eileen would wear, like plain well-made clothes that fit nicely and feature some subtle bit of flair. so as you could imagine, i was hopeful at first. but this woman turned out to be a pain in the ass. first of all, she didn't tip even one dollar during her THREE HOURS sitting in the club. she just sat against the back wall with a lascivious grin on her face the whole time, and whenever she'd get up to pee or just take a tour, she'd walk past the stage and say things like, "oh the things i'd do to you...." so. all of that was fine, whatever. but the thing the kept doing that was really annoying was that she'd zero in, try with intensity to achieve eye contact, and then make this spinning motion with her index finger, indicating that she'd like to see more pole tricks. i imagined her making similarly master-ish hand motions when she wanted her dog to roll over, and i made a mental note to not even do ONE pole trick as long as she sat there. but then i was bored and i forgot and did a couple, and she hooted and hollered, "that's what i'm talking about!" and then i remembered to be sure and keep both heels on the floor for the rest of the night. FUCK OFF.

the other dyke came in as the first one was leaving. she was with a sweet hipster boy who pops in sometimes. he checks the club's website to see when i'm working, which i think is cute. anyway his lezzie friend wasn't hot, but was a great customer. sat at the rack for a long while, tipping fives and saying how pretty my hair is, and what well-defined calf muscles i have. i'm not mad when people pay me sweet/odd compliments, particularly when they're paired with $. when i wasn't on stage, she came over to me at the bar and goes, "wow! you're tiny in real life." that struck me as so funny. i got this image in my mind, like the stage is a little diorama tv set where i'm a giant dancing doll, but then when i climb out of there, i'm my tiny self again. that kept me entertained for the rest of the night, actually, climbing in and out of my tv set dollhouse stage.

well, so long for now. i'm gonna go buy some new shoes! it's almost summer!

happy easter.

2011-04-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

things have been going just fine. not amazingly, just really really O.K., so i haven't written. because that's not super interesting.

last week i didn't work for 6 days straight. it was really nice. my grandma was in the hospital getting her cancerous kidney removed and so i was able to spend a lot of time with her since i wasn't working. a weird thing happened when i went to see her the first day she was there. she was staying in the recovery wing of the hospital and there are these huge windows. she was kind of out of it, and she started naming off all the different family members, in order of age, i'm not sure why. and then after that it was quiet for a long time. i was sitting next to her bed, looking out the window at the spiky criss-crossing tree branches outside and i suddenly had the distinct feeling of having been in exactly that spot before. a hugely sad feeling washed over me.

i have several aunts, but there's one who is my favorite and she was sitting on the other side of my grandma's bed. we've always had random synergetic moments (is that the right word? when you're thinking/feeling the same thing as someone else without trying to, like your energy is blending together into a shared thought?). anyway she looked over at me as i stared out the window and she goes, "you know, that time you were in this hospital for your eye, your room was either this one or the one next to it."

i said, "i remember."

she goes, "it was so sad. your mother didn't come. we didn't know where she was. and they wouldn't let any of us stay the night with you, so we stayed as long as we could, but then we had to leave. we were walking down the hall and you were saying gramma? aunt kathy? aunt amy?"

i said, "you guys didn't even turn around. i was really scared, i didn't understand why you were just leaving me here."

"we couldn't turn around. they wouldn't let us stay, and we just had to leave. i can't believe you remember that. you were only three."

crazy how a smell or a place can take you right back. luckily i don't remember a lot about that ordeal, just being alone there and afraid, and then waking up and looking at those tree branches all day with my good eye.

i got really mad and sad, thinking about my mom and how she was such a fuck-up that she ignored an ordinary case of pink-eye until it was so gross and infected that my whole face was swollen and red, and my eye was bulging from its socket and almost had to be removed. and then to not even come to the hospital to see me? who DOES that? and who gives a little kid back to that kind of mom? arg. crappy.

anyway. that was a bit of a downer tip. but that's what i did this week, hang out in the hospital and get all bummy.

my grandma's gonna be ok! so that's the good news. and i worked last night but nobody was very interesting. except for one super dorky charmer from connecticut.

biker birthday party

2011-04-10T00:23:00.000-07:00

tonight i worked a mid-shift at the club and afterward i did a strip-o-gram for a bunch of bikers way out in east vancouver. i thought it was just regular vancouver, where you hop on I-5 and are there in a jiff, but it was actually kind of far.

i have been thinking about how it's kind of risky how i always go out on outcalls and one-girl shows by myself. i've been thinking it might be a good idea to get someone to go with me sometimes, and a while ago this boy i don't really know put a thing up on facebook saying he was broke and would do basically any kind of work. he seems nice enough, so i asked if he would ride out there with me and then just sit in the car while i did the show, and if i didn't come out in half an hour, come pound on the door. he was like, "sure." and i thought, "wow. this is how easy it is to take safety precautions. stoked."

so we drove out to the bikers' house. i got there and the wife of the birthday guy met me outside, paid me, and brought me inside. i should mention that the wife, peggy, was super rad. her husband works all the time, and has never had a birthday party even ONCE in his adult life. that just about broke my heart.

their house was pretty bitchin'. it was like a clubhouse, all kinds of harley davidson decorations, several stocky, well-behaved pitbulls, a lot of food and booze, and a bunch of cute biker dudes. i was immediately able to pick the birthday boy out of the crowd because he was wearing a t-shirt with a sparkly "50" on it. i went up to him and wished him happy birthday, and said i was a friend of peggy's from work. he was like, good to meet you, etc. and i said, "did you already open all your presents?" he was like, "haha this party is my present!" and i said, "but didn't you have even one to open?" and he said no. i was talking super close and being overly friendly and touchy, which made him blush and also seemed to puzzle him a tiny bit.

i said, "i think there might be one present for you to open." i took his hand and wrapped the belt of my trenchcoat around it, then spun away from him so it came untied. he looked REALLY surprised to see that i was almost naked underneath. he hadn't seemed to suspect that i was a stripper AT ALL. i love when people are surprised! it's so rad!

so then i gave him a lapdance, let him lick whip cream off of me, do body shots, etc., and before i knew it, the agreed-upon 20 minutes was done. all the people at the party were great tippers, and fun in general. the birthday guy said to me, "you made my birthday! thanks!" and when i was leaving peggy gave me an extra $50 tip. sweet.

i made more money in 20 minutes than i made in my whole shift last night at the club. AND it was more fun. rad.

size matters

2011-04-02T01:14:00.000-07:00

today i kept getting calls all day long from guys with no references. i don't see them because i don't want to be assaulted, arrested, or compromise my incall location. but after like 5 calls, i'd be lying if i said i wasn't tempted to just take my chances.

i ended up only having one client all day. he didn't have a ho reference, but he had an email address that was .edu, and gave me a website of the school where he works. his name, picture, and and email he emailed me from was all listed. plus he sounded really nice on the phone, which might sound weird to say. but i'm telling you: creeps usually sound... well, CREEPY. sometimes nice guys sound creepy, and sometimes creeps sound nice (hello ted bundy). but more often people sound the way they ARE. and so a positive intuitive response to this guy's voice, paired with his work website was fine.

additionally, his hotel was very near sephora, where i had some shopping to do.

so i went, and when i got there i was surprised to see that he was almost the same size as me! a tiny! he was cute and friendly, and i felt immediately at ease. the safe feeling i got from being almost the same size as this guy provided me a novelty glimpse into what it must feel like to be a larger woman. i used to work with this girl and she'd go on almost any outcall, she wasn't ever very nervous. she was tall and sturdy. she'd gotten into some scrapes but these stories usually ended with, "and then i punched him and took off."

i guess that's it for now. i'm so sleepy i can't take two breaths without yawning. goodnight!

get your eyes checked

2011-03-31T11:03:00.000-07:00

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"

2011-03-23T00:36:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-20T14:15:00.000-07:00

(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

2011-03-14T15:13:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-03-13T18:31:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-11T11:33:00.000-08:00

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

2011-03-10T11:05:00.000-08:00

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

2011-03-08T20:54:00.001-08:00

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

twas a long week!

2011-02-12T09:12:00.001-08:00

hi. i've been working a whole bunch. the other day a guy came in who i had just met a week and a half ago, and who had bought $300 in table dances. he sat at my rack for three whole songs before i recognized him, and that's only because i was like, "why is this guy looking so dejected and radiating such extreme badtitude?" then i was like, oh shit. "hi ryan! how are you?" luckily he had on brand new glasses, which were much different from the ones he'd worn before. whew. when guys buy like 15 dances in a row from you and then come in to do it again, it only really works if you recognize them. i won him over a tiny bit, but not completely. he was butthurt and only stayed for 3 dances. maybe he'll come in again, but i'd be kinda surprised.

i worked with that uncouth girl AGAIN the other day. i have to avert my eyes when she's on stage, her dancing style is just too unsettling. it's like one long grandpa-butt pelvic thrust, with several legs-akimbo crotch squats thrown in at awkward intervals. truly bizarre. at least she finally got a cute outfit, though. still wearing chunky thrift store platforms, but whatever. at the end of the day, the bartender said to me, "wow. that girl really needs to dance in front of a mirror. WOW."

oh hey did i mention that that other girl i didn't like got fired? for stealing a pair of boots and didn't even bother trying to remove the "MISSING BOOTS" sign from the dressing room before selling them to another new dancer, who showed up at work in the boots. what a weird thing to do. why would you do something like that, for which you were surely 100% going to get caught?

apart from those two, the girls at work are the best thing about my job. i mean, of course, besides the money. the other night i came to work and i was super upset. i tried to hold it together but i was listless and bummy. but just dishing with the girls made me feel so much better. i know i always get all misty about this, but i just really love strippers.

i can't think of anything else to tell you about. i've just been plugging along. i have lived in my new apartment for a month now and i still haven't gotten a couch or any furniture. i keep saying i just haven't found the right stuff, but perhaps i'm hesitant to settle in? anybody have a cute couch? or some bowls? a chair? or a little shelf?

cheap bastard and talking shoe

2011-02-08T10:24:00.001-08:00

i'm back up north. i worked on sunday. i was so tired i fell asleep in the dressing room. twice. the only other interesting things that happened were a guy who paid for a lapdance and a half, stating that the first dance had begun after the song started. which was true. it was only 5 or 7 seconds after the song started, but i just didn't feel like arguing. i felt like, "whatever. get the fuck out of my face so i can go back to watching the clock in anticipation of my release from this joint." and then the other thing is that the gummy sole started peeling back from my shoe, causing it to flap around a bit for the rest of my shift. i had other shoes with me that i could've changed into, but i was just too lazy. the end.

free day

2011-02-05T20:30:00.000-08:00

today i only had one client. a regular of mine, the one who i see sometimes on the street when he's working at his vegetable delivery job. he's always surprised, every time, to the point where he almost drops a box of tomatoes or whatever he's carrying.

today he took a shower, then came out of the shower and laid on the table, then two minutes later sat up and said he felt dizzy. that he had gotten dizzy in the shower and it was only getting worse. he looked green. poor guy. he staggered around, getting dressed as quickly as he could, looking worse and more miserable with each passing second.

i felt bad for him, but i also felt really off the hook. you know when you have to work and then all of a sudden you don't? so. i took my ad down and went for a walk.

all the girls from work are gonna come out dancing with me tonight. i'm pretty stoked!

down south for a bit

2011-02-04T14:03:00.001-08:00

i worked yesterday at the massage parlor. i saw an old regular of mine who is so sweet and easy to get off. he always tells me i'm really pretty and he loves to see what lingerie i'll be wearing. plus he always tips, and doesn't talk a lot, just kind of relaxes into the table and makes happy little noises here and there. so. that was nice.

then i saw a new client, who my co-worker referred to me. i called ahead and told her i was coming to town and that i was super broke, and asked if she would keep me in mind if anybody wanted a petite brunette for a double. i didn't think she's just loan me some of her own clients to see on my own. but that's just how she is: sweet. so anyway i saw her client, an extremely polite hawaiian guy. he was gigantic. i wondered whether the massage table might crumble under his weight, but it was fine. he had the smoothest skin i've ever felt on a guy. it was positively pore-less.

it's almost like my first clients were best case scenarios because the universe knew how terrible my last client would be and wanted to throw me some bones first.

so. my last client yesterday was nothing short of traumatizing. i've been seeing him regularly every time i come to town, and i've never liked him but he's so regular and always tips so well. plus he has fancy wine and those chocolates. i don't know if i can see him again, though. i'd like to say "i'll never see him again!" but who knows, i might be broke. well anyway, last night he was just so overly gropey and coked out. he was talking in circles, telling me stories he's told me over and over already. griping about other girls he hires. gossiping about our "mutual friends," which is to say, my beloved co-workers. i genuinely adore all three of the girls he gossiped about and i kept trying to steer the conversation in other directions. but he just kept up with it and it was such a bummer. i would've felt kind of treasonous not just leaving if i didn't think the other girls surely also endured these kind of lengthy diatribes about me.

all the coke talk was annoying enough. but he was also just so overly touchy. i am very touchy/feely with most of my clients but with him i just feel creeped out. and THEN he burped basically directly into my mouth! TWICE! both times i GAGGED and choked, and both times he pretended as if nothing had happened. it was so gross. he'd eaten something garlicky. i am almost gagging just thinking about it right now. i met my friend later for a cocktail and i gagged while telling her about it. i gagged in the cab on the way to meet my friend. it was that disgusting.

and then of course it was nearly impossible to get him off, but finally when my arm was about to break off, he came and i left. and i just felt very grossed out and disillusioned. and possibly drugged, like i was slogging through jello. i had only had half a glass of wine so i know i wasn't drunk. it was weird but i tried not to trip out on it too hard. instead, i tripped out on how his messy apartment had reached an all-time high in terms of messyness.

somebody had ordered a cab and i totally swiped it, i had to get out of there! i went to have a drink with my friends and i just had one cocktail and was suddenly in a blackout. today i feel sick and groggy. it's not awesome. i am not sure, i may have just been drunk? but this does feel somewhat similar to the time i was roofied.

okay well today i'm NOT working. i had a smoothie with a friend, laid in my other friend's bed and ate ruffles and gossiped, and now i'm just going to go lay in the park with my book. i'm reading a young adult sci-fi series called "the hunger games." it's engrossing.

boring boring boring boring boring boring

2011-01-31T23:47:00.000-08:00

nothing interesting to report. everything's boring! last night i worked and it was dead as a doornail. un-ideal. the good part was drinking with my co-workers. i don't have many friends in this town, so i actually really look forward to chatting with the girls at work.

i've started to intensely dislike living here. i feel terribly lonesome. i'm dating someone really rad, but i miss having friends. i'm going to give it another little bit, but if i continue to feel this isolated and bummy, i'm not going to stay here. and then i'll write about another city, To Be Determined, and won't that be exciting?

oooohkay. goodnight.

SUNDAY FUNDAY

2011-01-24T15:53:00.000-08:00

i was going through old photos in a shoebox and here's one from when i first started dancing. i feel like my body looks almost the same as it did 9 years ago, which is kind of rad. except my tits are a tiny bit bigger now. as you can see

<------- they used to be as small as a boy's.

so. hmmm. what else can i tell you. i worked last night and it was pretty dead. i made $200 all night. could've been worse, sure, but it was still somewhat disappointing, especially since last sunday i made about triple that.

i liked the girls last night, though. that's always good.

a guy pissed me off really bad right when i got to work, which can sort of color things for the rest of the night, y0u know? i was chatting with him and he offered to buy me a drink. i told him i wanted a vanilla vodka and soda water. he was like, "what?! pick a real cocktail." i said, "well i didn't realize that if you were paying for it that meant you got to choose." he goes, "well now you know. what do you want. BESIDES that froofy shit?" i said, "thanks anyway."

in the words of stephanie tanner, "HOW RUUUUDE." not that i have to justify myself, here, but i'll go ahead and do it anyway: i like to start off with something sweet, it's a treat that says to me, "yes, you are at work. but work can be fun!" and it's not like i drink ten of those. i'm a two cocktail sort of girl, three MAX and that's if i'm getting wild. and anyway WHOOOO CARES? i can drink what i want. fuck off.

i don't think guys realize this, but often times when they are super rude in front of other people, it doesn't SHAME the stripper as they intended, but, rather, the opposite occurs wherein gentlemanly bystanders feel bad for the poor lil thing and end up lavishing her with cocktails and attention. and shaming the asshole dude. which is what happened last night. the guy felt uncomfortable after this other customer told him off so he ended up leaving. good riddance.

PETTY BULLSHIT. okay? and usually i wouldn't have cared but once in a while, when i have PMS, peoples' rudeness touches a nerve.

then i danced for a while for an old lecherous dude from dallas. he kept trying to kiss me, it was so gross. i don't even MIND random kisses here and there but not on my MOUTH. and also not on my arm. i've got this sweet little spot on my arm where i liked to be kissed during sex times, and this old creep sniffed that out right away. his plump wet sausagey lips on my arm just about gagged me. i wanted to punch his lights out. even now, recounting it, my stomach is turning. blech.

and then i danced for a cute hipster guy who was kinda hot. that was nice.

after that i hardly sold any dances. but i had a library book. the end.

shakedown movie, do it!

2011-01-22T11:37:00.000-08:00

hey if you want to see what promises to be a fucking insanely hot movie about black lesbian strippers STRIPPING FOR WOMEN, click on this link and donate a few bucks toward the completion of this project.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1889777212/shakedown

i do want to go to tahiti, just not with you.

2011-01-17T10:46:00.001-08:00

(this is from monday, but i pushed "save" instead of "post." woopsie.)

last night i worked and made a good amount of money. it was rad. nobody was particularly interesting enough to write about, but just polite generous mens.

oh except one guy kept begging me to go on a free trip to tahiti with him. he says he won the trip for being among the top salespeople at his work. i didn't sense that he was lying, but i did sense that there's no way in hell i'd go on a week-long trip to tahiti with some random handsy customer. i'm never again taking a trip to a sexy locale with someone i don't want to have sex with or someone who doesn't want to have sex with me. been there, done that, got the miserable vacation photos to prove it.

[the first time i went on a tropical vacation it was with a girlfriend who had been cheating on me and wanted to break up. but before things started to suck, i had scrimped and saved to buy this non-refundable vacation package. unwisely, we decided to go anyway. i had bought an all-inclusive package, but when we got there they had us down for the "european plan," which is no food or cocktails. after i bought a phone card with which to harass the travel agent who had fucked up our reservation, we had about 600 pesos between us (roughly 60 bucks). our plan wasn't fixed till the 5th day of our 7 day stay, so before that we could only afford one meal a day. we starved ourselves until around 5pm and then walk downtown to the all-you-can-eat vegan buffet we had found and eat a whole day's worth of food in one sitting. then, stuffed, we'd take the bus back to the hotel instead of walking. i guess all of this is not central to the point here, which is that in addition to being hungry i was on a trip with a girl i was wildly in love with, but who had fallen out of love with me. she was just on some free trip with her soon-to-be ex-girlfriend, writing postcards to the new one and sneaking postage stamps out of my purse to send them. looking back, i'm glad i had the distraction of no money, if we just laid on the beach drinking cocktails i would've had a lot more time to feel miserable about how heartbroken i was. instead, i could be miserable about being hungry all the time and getting ripped off by a shady travel agent. oh, i should mention that it was my birthday.

the next time was with a girl i was also super in love with, and actually that was pretty great. we bickered some, but we also had some sweet times. like one day we were walking down the beach, topless, and there was a huge trampoline on the beach that someone had left for people to jump on. i LOVE jumping on trampolines. and i do like to see butch titties bouncing. that might sound gross, and i do not care. bouncing titties are just one of those things i enjoy A LOT in this world. especially those of a shirtless butch girlfriend on a trampoline on a white sand beach with nobody else around as far as the eye can see. ah, memories.

well the next two times were with a girl i used to date. the first time we went we were not dating anymore and i hated wanting to have sex every single moment with someone who was not even a little bit interested and therefore would not put out. so i was grouchy a lot and kinda bitchy. we still had fun, though. but i kept thinking it was a bad idea to go on a tropical vacation with someone i had a boner for who didn't have one for me. we went on vaycay again another time and it was beautiful, but lonesome at night.]

wow that was a tangent, huh? well the point is that i am not going on vacation with this guy. for a lot of reasons. mostly because i don't want to put out, but would surely be required to do so. ad nauseam. blech. no.

the other customer from last night who stands out in my mind is a chubby-cheeked business guy who was cute and sweet, wanted a million dances, and smelled good.

in other news, i've moved into a new apartment. which is HUGE and empty. i love it! but i need to buy some furniture. i love it, though!!!!!!! it's GINORMOUS. tons of space for good ideas, making things, projects, yoga, quiet times, loud sex, etc. I LOVE LIVING ALONE.

thank you, tough girl.

2011-01-12T15:52:00.001-08:00

i was going to write the other day but i forgot. anyway i worked on sunday night and it was a great night to work, i made a lot of money and didn't have to work too hard for it. it was a super mellow, enjoyable night except for this one crazy thing that happened. i was giving a lapdance and out of NOWHERE this woman comes barreling thru the curtain and smashes into me. she was so wasted she thought she was barreling herself into the door, to heft it open and leave the club. but instead she threw all her weight into me. i screamed, because it surprised me and also really hurt. then she was on top of me and i was on top of my customer, it was a very uncomfortable sandwich, and the lady was so wasted she was taking forever to get her bearings. i managed to scramble out from beneath her.

"get out of here!" i yelled.

her boyfriend was right behind her and started yelling at me, "fuck you! you two dollar whore!" he had some kind of accent i was too stressed out to try to place. "you're a piece of shit! don't yelling at my girlfriend!"

"who cares just get out!" i yelled.

then he started putting his fists up in my face, menacingly. "you want a piece of these you cheap skinny-ass ho?"

i have had my nose broken by a stranger before, just some regular drunk dude whose heterosexual privilege was threatened one new year's eve when i was giving my girl friend a new year's kiss and then wouldn't give him one when he demanded it. before that happened, i kind of assumed that if a stranger was going to hit me, it would be someone who wanted to rob me. you know, a mugger, not just some pissed off frat boy. but i learned firsthand that totally random men will surprise you by punching the shit out you if they are angry and feel entitled to do so. so this guy's fists waving in front of my face scared me.

there had been a hot dark-haired stripper from another club sitting at the rack earlier, and all of a sudden she was right there, pinning the guy's neck against the wall with her arm, which was broken and had a cast on it (from punching some other customer's lights out, btw). this girl had the guy and his girlfriend out in no time. what a sweetie.

well. then i was all shaky. and my neck felt out. turning my head was sending wild electric pains down my body. my customer claimed to be a massage therapist, and wouldn't you know it but he totally put my neck back in place. good as new! my back still hurts, but i think i'm gonna be okay.

i had decided not to drink that night. but i needed to calm my nerves. and also i wanted to do a shot with my impromptu bouncer. i asked her what we should have. i was hoping she wouldn't say a lemondrop or something. she goes, "tequila. duh!" so we had a shot. she goes, "to no more dumb mean guys!"

and i said, "NO WAY! this one's for tough-ass strippers!" she liked that. i don't know what this girl's name was, but if you see a hot girl at union jack's with long black hair and a black cast on her arm, treat her good! get a dance! make it rain!

uncouth

2011-01-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

i'm so tired of working with this endless stream of new girls at work. the one i worked with on monday was super annoying. i mean, seriously. brand new, just started dancing a week ago. constant questions. non-stop talking. horrible outfits. no makeup. how did she even get hired? plus just constant rude interrupting whenever you're trying to make money. here's an example that will encapsulate the experience: i was sitting with this guy. he will buy several dances if you let him buy you a cocktail, then sit with him for a bit. he likes to be the one to suggest the dance, instead of having you ask. so you just sit for maybe two songs chatting, then he will buy at least 3 dances, often 6. anyway i was sitting with him at the bar having a hot toddy and the other girl was dancing. instead of trying to engage with any of the other customers in the place, she has to come over and interrupt my hustle, "ooh, what are you drinking?" she asks. i tell her, "a hot toddy." she goes, "oh. yummy. what's in that? can i have a sip?" it disgusted me to watch her drinking off my straw. it was, as my mom would say, UNCOUTH. but what could i do? the guy still did buy dances, but it was just annoying to have her right in my face.

i wish i could make this sign and post it in the dressing room, but i never would. so i'll just write it here instead:

so. you're desperate for cash, you have a vagina, and you think, "i'll give stripping a try," here is some advice for you, brand new dancer:

1. try slightly arching your back. hunching over the way you've been doing gives you grandpa butt.

2. please don't put your vagina on the pole.

3. please don't touch the pink parts of your vagina and then touch ANYTHING that i also touch.

4. no feather boas! please! the feathers get EVERYWHERE. and what is this, anyway, moulin rouge? you're not a burlesque star in a movie. just wear a cute outfit and learn to dance. also: a-rhythmic pelvic thrusts aren't hot! please stop doing that!

5. quit putting on hand lotion before your sets! everything gets greasy.

6. if i'm talking with a customer, wait till i'm done before you try and hustle him. HELLO. so rude to come up to a guy i'm sitting with and ask for a dance.

7. NO YOU CANNOT HAVE A SIP OF MY COCKTAIL!!!

8. please go buy dancer shoes. it's just rude to wear street shoes on stage. i didn't even see you cleaning them with alcohol, you just wore them right off the street. i don't want to roll around in pavement grime. (plus they look terrible. those chunky 90's heels are ONE INCH HIGH. those are called "ugly flats.")

9. please don't wear ratty thrift store lingerie to work. it looks desperate. if the lace on your panties is pilly, it's not for work. if the bra used to be white and is now grayish, it's not for work. extra demerits for ratty SWIMSUITS.

10. please don't bombard your fellow dancers (ME) with tons of questions. i'll tell you where the bathroom is, give you a few helpful hints, but ultimately i'm here to make money, not to be your big sister/teacher/trainer. i'm not going to give you detailed instructions on how to hustle, teach you pole tricks, or chum around with you. be patient, watch and learn. LIKE EVERYONE ELSE DOES. you might be a really great stripper eventually, who knows, but for now you need to learn some things on your own, not all in one day FROM ME.

this is in no way an exhaustive list. but it's a nice start.

just another manic monday

2010-12-28T13:05:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-27T00:59:00.001-08:00

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.

2010-12-13T23:07:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-02T02:16:00.000-08:00

sat & sun

2010-11-30T18:25:00.000-08:00

hi. i worked on saturday and sunday nights. saturday was fine. it was semi-busy and i made a good amount of money. oddly, i don't remember much of anything about that night. i do know that i was super grouchy when i got off, something extraordinarily annoying happened but i can't remember what it was. i went to my sweetie's house after work and was basically useless. just grouchy and terrible. i was filthy from work, but there was a problem with his shower, where you can't adjust the temperature knobs once you're in the water or you'll get an electric shock. i thought i had the water just right, but once i got in, it ended up being ice-cold. and then i transcended my grouchiness and entered a semi-catatonic state. i felt guilty about my inability to be sweet. we went to sleep.

sunday was super slow but i was in a much better mood. i danced for this gross guy i'll only dance for if it's totally dead and there isn't anyone else. he has halitosis and is extremely grabby, a terrible combo. plus you can't put your tits in his face AT ALL or he'll open-mouth kiss them, and having that foul smelling mouth on my tits makes me feel both sad and murderous. i hadn't danced for this guy in a while, so i had forgotten that he also does this snapping turtle thing with his mouth, kind of an "i'm gonna bit your nipples" threat. it's sick. anyway i decided i'm not going to dance for him ever again, no matter how slow it is. it's just not worth it.

since there weren't any good customers, i mostly hung out in the dressing room reading patti smith's book, "just kids," between stage sets. i ended up making barely more than $100 all night. but at least i didn't have to work too hard for it. and i worked with two girls i like a lot.

hi.

2010-11-24T12:39:00.001-08:00

i'm down south for thanksgiving and also to work a bit. yesterday a friend of mine texted me to see if i'd do a double with her. it was an old client of mine that i'd referred to her last year because he wanted a lot of domination and i wasn't feeling it, and she's a dominatrix. anyway, he wanted two girls yesterday and happened to ask if i was still around. funny how that worked out since i'm hardly EVER around. so i went over to her place and did that. my friend is just about the best talker i've ever worked with. i mean, seriously, she's just really smart and quick. she talked a blue streak about him being our little pussy man, i did some cbt (cock n ball torture) with a bit of string, we jerked him off and sent him on his way. i love when an hour flies by and the client leaves happy.

after that i went to the apartment for an appointment with a regular. he arrived early and instead of waiting for me to buzz him in, he slipped in with some random tenant and just showed up at the door. this is ANNOYING. there's a specific way we do things, and everybody knows it, so to take it upon yourself to step outside of that and just show up early, knock on the door, and freak everyone out thinking there's a cop or nosy neighbor is just rude and disrespectful. i couldn't just let my client stand out in the hall, though, and i was tempted to send him away but he's been a good client thus far, and he always tips $50. so i let him in. the candles weren't lit. i was wearing a bra and no panties. there was a naked girl in the hallway, and another client in the shower. i dislike this kind of chaos. i wanted to scold him, but i knew he'd have a hard time getting off if he felt shamed so i said, "i'm really glad to see you, but you know how important it is to come at the specific time we've agreed upon. i like to be ready for you. so just wait till i buzz you next time, okay honey?"

other than that the session went fine. he wanted me to pee on him so i put him in the bathtub and he drank a bunch of my pee. he ended up tipping $100 for this pleasure, which was nice.

after that i sat around in the living room catching up with the girls. i really adore them. they are so fucking sweet and cute and tough and smart. and HOT.

then i had an outcall with the guy i write about sometimes who has the fancy chocolates. last night he had this bottle of wine that was the best wine i've ever tasted. it was a "cotes du rhone." whatever that means. delicious. anyway this guy is usually cool except that he talks about other girls i know, A LOT. and last night he was bragging about having slept with this girl i LOVE, who i used to dance with when i first started 8 years ago. she's one of only 2 girls i've kept up with from those days. a total carebear sweetheart. it grossed me out to hear him brag about banging her, mostly because he kept mentioning that her stomach had gotten fat. "wait till you see it," he said, i just felt like, "WHO CARES. look at YOUR stomach, dude!" i don't remember how i changed the subject, but finally he quit talking about her.

after that i went out with my good friend. we had wine and meatballs. i should've just gone home after that but i had all these friends waiting for me at a club so i went and danced and drank more and late-nite snacked and now i feel TERRIBLE.

MEATY ASS

2010-11-22T17:40:00.000-08:00

i worked saturday evening. it was dead as a doornail. i think everyone was watching football and maybe at the blazers game. i don't know. i made like $125. sorta not worth my time, you know?

a guy came in with two other guys. his friends didn't want to hang out, but he kept trying to get them to stay. he said, "ooh look at this one. she has a nice meaty ass." then he kept saying it different ways but never changing the word meaty. "look at the meaty ass on that one." "this girl's ass is nice and MEATY!" finally i was like, "hey you're being kinda gross. knock it off." he was offended, claimed he had been paying me a compliment. i said, "well how about you pay me some tips instead of compliments." he goes, "you're rude," and then they left. good riddance.

other annoying customers included a husband/wife duo who sat at the rack loudly dirty-talking each other and including me in their wild plans. as in, "yeah and then i'd lick her clit till she was screaming for your cock." NO THANKS.

also a blonde sorority-lookin girl who came in CARRYING HER SHOES a la prom nite 1997 and never tipped even one dollar but screamed "woooooo! i love you!!! you're so cute!!!" what that really means is, "woooo everyone look at me! i have a vagina too!"

i had a stomachache so everybody seemed even more annoying than they probably were. you know how that goes. arrrg.

now i'm down south. just got here this afternoon. i'm hoping to make some $$$ while i'm here. cross your fingers for me!

GFE

2010-11-17T03:42:00.000-08:00

work's been super boring lately. so instead, i'm gonna write a movie review.

i watched "the girlfriend experience" tonight, starring smoking hot real life pornstar sasha grey, who plays an upscale hooker named chelsea. her hair was so long and silky in the movie, i was truly inspired to just keep growing mine. and she had tons of super cute lingerie. she has a boyfriend who's a personal trainer. their relationship isn't that exciting to watch.

i remember hearing some girls talking about this movie when it first came out and saying that sasha grey wasn't a very good actress, that she was kind of flat. i can see how you could think that, but i think she was great in the movie. she is pretty subdued and maybe a bit flat, but i think it works for her character. she reminded me SO MUCH of a girl i used to work with, the girl who used to make SO MUCH MONEY. i mean, she was booked with back-to-back appointments and was charging $225/hr, in the worst part of the recession, when all the rest of us girls were running $160 specials. i remember doing the math and realizing that she was making like $900 per day, 4 days a week, so probably around ten grand per month. anyway, it was as if "chelsea" was totally based on this girl. same mannerisms, same style, same charming monotone.

there were a few parts of the movie that I LOVED because they were so relatable and believable. first off, the scenes with her and her clients were totally great. the guys would just talk and talk and she'd agree and be on their side, say whatever they wanted to hear, and then they'd talk some more. appear smart, but not too smart. they'd be talking, and then chelsea would do what my friend morgan calls, "flipping into vamp mode." this is when you start getting sexy, apropos of nothing that's occurring situationally, besides the fact that you are on the job. because sure, he wants to talk, but he also expects to receive the service that he's paying you for and it's your responsibility to move things along in that direction. i've started the sexy times while a guy's talking about the most mundane, LEAST SEXY things you could ever think of, and often they'll just keep talking about whatever random thing until they cum. this incongruity baffled me at first, but i must've gotten used to it because it stopped even striking me as strange for someone to be complaining about their boss while they were shooting into my hand.

another thing was when she has this client who seems to like her a lot and then for whatever reason stops booking appointments with her, and then she sees him out with another girl who she knows to be her competition, and her feelings are hurt. this has happened to every ho, i bet. i used to have this client i liked a lot, and then one day he canceled an appointment with me, only to show up at that same time slot at the apartment where i worked, to see a co-worker of mine. i felt embarassed and kind of tossed aside or something. although when i thought about it, i had to abandon those feelings because i mean, really? do i REALLY care about losing his esteem? no. do i care about losing his money? OF COURSE.

OH! and then she meets up with this guy who runs a message board with reviews and whatnot. and he gets her to let him test the goods for free, saying he'll write her a good review and it'll boost her business. WELL, then he writes her this terrible review. and it bums her out. that scene really hit home. one of the grossest guys i've ever seen, who was such a cheap scumbag, and who actually took the cost of parking OUT OF MY FEE because i'd told him it was easy to park near my incall and then he couldn't find a spot and had to park in a pay-lot. SO TACKY to nickel and dime this person who is servicing you sexually. anyway he smelled terrible and refused a shower, and was entitled and grouchy and hell-bent on complaining. he ended up writing a terrible review about me. and it totally affected my business. i still wish i hadn't read it. someone's dissatisfied play-by-play of their paid session with you is something i'd advise anyone against reading. it feels pretty gross to read disdainful descriptions of your body parts, voice, hair, written by someone who rented them for an hour. not to mention the demoralizing realization that this one unkempt disgruntled fucking loser knows he has the power to write something that will end up costing you thousands of dollars in lost business, and then does it. these guys take the reviews so seriously, it's insane. (OH, and p.s. this guy wrote to me later, offering me a "second chance" with him, saying he'd to write a new review if i wanted to give him a free session and try and do things "his way." i politely declined.)

the movie ended abruptly, kind of a "life goes on" ending. i wasn't super into it, it seemed like they ran out of money in production so just decided that scene would work as the movie's end.

"the girlfriend experience" is probably a totally sub-par movie with a dumb plot and mediocre acting, but i liked it a lot. i wish there were LOTS MORE movies about whores. i want to see movies where they're just regular people doing a job, not totally uncouth and tragically strung out, or a dead body lying anonymously in a ditch ("who's the killer?"), or basically flashy live scenery in an urban street scene.

11.11.10

2010-11-12T03:33:00.000-08:00

OMG i'm so tired but it's hard for me to sleep sometimes right when i get home from work. so i will say hello to you, dear blog reader, and write a bit.

tonight was okay. the club was sort of dead but one of my regulars came in (the really short italian guy) and wanted 20 dances, so i ended up doing okay. it's kind of a lot of time to spend with one guy, especially someone with such a short little lap area, but he's really nice and i do like not having to trawl around for dances while he's there. after he already bought 15 dances, i was on stage and i saw him in the corner, eating a burrito. i hoped he would still be eating it when i got off stage so i could just duck in the dressing room and avoid having to dance for him post-burrito. but he polished it off just in time and then wanted a few more dances before calling it a night. i dislike dancing for people who have recently eaten mexican food. his breath was intense, plus he burped twice and i thought i might throw up. somehow i got through it, though, and then i was $100 richer. so.

there's this guy who comes in and asks for me right when he steps in the club. he'll just come in and holler at the bartender, "is andi here?" i'm told if he asks for me and i'm not there, he'll just turn right around and leave. he's never bought a dance from me, but likes to sit at the rack at the very end of the night and throw handfuls of ones onstage while saying, "you're so beautiful andi! i love you andi!" he has a hilarious voice. kind of nasal and comedian-like. and loud. i assumed that he had suffered a head injury, but according to my co-worker, he's just a character. anyway he came in tonight and yelled his adoration. he gets on everybody's nerves but i like him a lot.

a trio of hot butch girls came in. i hadn't ever seen them before. they turned out to be from new york. i always want hot people to be great tippers, but they almost never are. these girls were no exception. they sat at the rack and tipped a dollar each per song, and that's totally fine. just unimpressive. it's the short, the round, the dorky loners who make the best customers. well, and the foxy businessmen. but young dyke hipsters? terrible.

hmm. what else. nothing really. i'm getting drowsy, i might be able to fall asleep! goodnight.

monday day shift, why you gotta treat me so bad?

2010-11-09T00:26:00.001-08:00

today was totally dumb. i got to work and the other girl wasn't there so i was the only girl for a few hours. ideal if there were any customers. but there weren't. i took breaks, but mostly i just sat around on the stage, chatting with the bartender.

finally another girl came in to cover the shift and i went downstairs for a while. there was a terrible smell downstairs. i can't even try to describe it to you because i will gag.

i did some dances with a cute young hipster guy. that was fine.

also i danced for a guy who was having a nervous tic jaw problem. he kept opening his mouth REALLY WIDE like macauley caulkin in "home alone," only WIDER than that, and with a terrible OCD grimace. it stressed me out. he wanted me to keep dancing for him but i simply could not.

another guy wanted a dance, but as soon as we got into the little private dance nook, he started groping at my crotch and tits. i didn't have it in me to deal with him. i gave him his $20 back and told him to fuck off.

when i got off work i had a cocktail across the street with my friend and then we gorged ourselves on discount sushi. just a coupla girls out on the town! after that it was super dark. it felt so late, i was ready for bed. i looked at the clock and it was only 5:55pm. it's gonna be a long-ass winter! thank god i've got me a hot little snuggle bear.

maybe mondays aren't so bad.

2010-11-02T13:44:00.000-07:00

i did NOT want to work last night.i was in the wild throes of PMS. bloated little tummy and grouchy personage. i texted a bunch of girls from the club, but nobody would take the shift. so it was with great reluctance and self pity that i dragged myself downtown to prance around naked for strangers.

the club was pretty quiet when i got there and i thought it would stay that way since it was super rainy and windy outside. but eventually there was a decent crowd.

i felt lazy about hustling, but i worked on friday night and barely made any money so i had to try and get it together.

i sat with a super tall business man for a while. he seemed disinterested at first but then started telling me all about his wife, who hasn't had sex with him in THREE YEARS. he was thinking he'd need to start cheating on her soon, but wanted to give her just a few more chances to put out first. i found his loyal restraint to be charming. not charming, however, was the mouth on this guy once he got drunk. he bought 6 dances and started telling me all about his wild sex fantasies, etc. i could kind of see how his wife didn't wanna open up that can of worms.

i did dances for a few random other guys. and then this kid came in who looked a little disheveled but cute. he didn't look like he was there to spend any money, but i went and sat with him anyway because you never know. he just got back from serving in afghanistan, and he ended up wanting ten dances. he was fun to dance for, mellow and polite.

i liked the girls i worked with and i made a good amount of money. it's funny how that can happen even when you feel extremely uncute. or, as TLC says, "unpretty."

hmm what else. oh, right before closing this homeless woman wandered in, disorientedly. she swayed around to the music for a moment with her eyes shut and then when she opened her eyes it was like she was waking up. she looked around and saw that she was in a strip club, so she hurried into the corner, dug around in her purse a bit, and then threw a wadded up dollar bill onstage. when i went downstairs and unfolded that dollar bill, two little pot nuggets fell out of it. good sized little buds, bra. i don't smoke, so i brought them home for my housemate.

today i still feel grouchy. but i don't have to work. and i'm not so broke.

i don't like working mondays.

2010-10-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

last night it was stormy and rainy as hell. i did okay in terms of money (only okay--by no means great) but it's only because i made a bunch right when i got there. after that, though, it was SLIM.

it was hard to even get anyone to pony up for a cocktail, let alone any dances. after one of my stage sets, i saw that there were some new guys sitting at the bar so i plopped down at an empty stool. "wow i'm so thirsty," i announced. 99% of the time that's when somebody will say, "oh! can i buy you a cocktail?" but this time, the three guys averted their eyes. i said, "anybody wanna buy me a cocktail? i'm so thirsty." the guy to my immediate left goes, "not particularly," but then the guy next to him goes, "oh! ok! let ME buy you a drink!" summoning the bartender, he said in a heroic, self-pleased tone, "anything the lady wants!"

i decided to just accept that this was not gonna be a big money night and take pleasure in the little things, like only having two more hours of work, and playing tetris on my iphone. i sipped on my vanilla vodka and OJ contentedly as the cocktail guy told me how he has developed software that allows him to log into the company network from his phone, but it will show that he's on premises and not that he's logging on from a mobile device. very clever, actually, and totally perfect for the kind of person who likes to swing by the strip club for a long lunch. he went on to say that his job is rad, he got them to pay for his monthly bus pass since he doesn't use the free parking space they provide for employees.

"that's rad," i said, "but why don't you drive? i mean, you have a good job so you could probably afford a decent car."

"i just never learned," he said. his parents died when he was 15 and he became a ward of the state, and none of his foster parents felt like teaching him. plus he was bereaved.

i told him how i just learned to drive two months ago and so if he wanted to learn it's not too late. i almost offered to teach him, but realized that would just be the cocktail talking so i kept my mouth shut.

"i don't mind taking the bus," he said. his cheerful tone was very convincing.

"that's great. i hated taking the bus, especially at night. but i guess it would be a lot easier if you were a dude."

the rude cheapskate guy piped up, "what?! how would it be easier? what a crazy thing to say!"

i really didn't feel like launching into a women's studies lecture with this guy. "girls get harassed ALL THE TIME on the bus, HELLO DUDE," i said.

"well what kind of neighborhoods were you going to?"

"it doesn't MATTER," i said. "guys will try and talk to you no matter where you are. and they will follow you. and they will say gross things. it's annoying and sometimes scary."

"well, what were you usually WEARING when you rode the bus," he demanded, looking me up and down accusingly.

"i didn't ride the bus in stripper outfits, you moron!"

"well, duh," he said. "but, i mean, what were you wearing?"

"JUST FUCK OFF," i said, angry that he was thwarting my money-less plan of enjoying the simple pleasures. and i didn't feel like it was my job to educate this asshole on how a girl could be riding the bus in a snuggie and a ski mask and she'd still be hit on mercilessly (i'm speaking from the place of a slender girl with long hair, but i'm pretty sure that girls of all shapes and sizes and hair lengths face the same ordeal on a constant basis), and how even if you ARE wearing a slutty outfit, you have just as much right as anybody else to utilize public transportation without feeling bothered or unsafe.

i polished off my cocktail and got back on stage. danced a few lackluster sets and then it was FINALLY time to make my escape.

ZZZZZZZ

2010-10-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

i worked on monday and it was insanely slow but i brought a book so it was fine. i think i made $100 ALL DAY, but at least it was better than last monday's $10 (after parking).

last night i worked and it was busy. really nothing to report, though. a regular came in and bought ten dances. he's really short so there's not much lap to sit on. really a quadricep workout, like doing squats for ten songs straight. well, actually it was five at once and then a five more a little later. but STILL. whew.

i think i'm going down south tomorrow. gonna see some massage clients and make some $$$. i'll let you know how it goes.

maps, porn, etc.

2010-10-17T12:49:00.000-07:00

work on thursday night was unremarkable except that i met an aquatic cartographer who was 6' 5'' and was super muscley like an action figure. he was in town for a mapmakers convention. i liked hearing about how they survey underwater planes. he says that thanks to the many satellites of google earth, cartography is a dying profession that doesn't even require aerial photography or anything like that anymore, but since he surveys underwaterscapes his job's still important. he went into a lot of technical, jargoney descriptions and i don't know how much of this i understood or even cared about, but it was definitely a nice departure from the usual strip club doldrum of frigid wives, meglomaniacal bosses, etc.

also he talked a lot about karate. he has a black belt. he just sat at the bar all night waiting for me to come sit with him between customers. it was kind of cute.

the sad part was that when i was getting off work, i could tell this guy was waiting for me thinking maybe i'd wanna hang out. and then when the doorguy walked me to my car, he looked a bit crestfallen when i gave him a little wave and just kept walking. i had to drive around the block to get going the right way and i passed him walking slumpedly back to his hotel. he looked lonesome. not my problem, but i still felt a little sad for him.

it's been RAD having three days off in a row. i'm dreading that monday morning shift tomorrow. i keep working it even though i rarely make any money because whenever i do my boss also gives me a couple really good shifts. so.

i've done some thrift store shopping, had some family time, and have been watching a lot of porn for whatever reason. i found my ideal clip yesterday on xtube. starts out with this girl on the floor getting banged from behind. she's got her ass in the air and her head and arms on a pillow, so her big natural tits are banging against the carpet in this bouncy motion that i found to be dreamy. apparently the person shooting the video also thought it was awesome so they focused in just on her tits, bouncing like that amazingly. i loved jerking off to that video. i'm gonna look for it again right now, in fact. SO GOOD. do you ever watch something and feel like it was made just for you?

cherries n dopplegangers

2010-10-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

guys like this cherries outfit for some reason. i find it to be cheesy, i never thought i would wear something with cherries on it, to me they say, "femme dyke sex nerd circa 2001." but i was outfit shopping one day and this little number called out to me. it said, "i'm the lowest common denominator! buy me, guys like this shit!" so i did and i'm telling you, whenever i put it on it's like instant $$$. i don't want to wreck its mojo by wearing it when it's totally dead and i'm not going to make money anyway. it's not the kind of outfit that will bring people in off the street. it's for when there are already customers and there are other cute girls working, but i want them to get dances from ME.

last night was a good night. i made all my money in the first two hours and then it was pretty slow but i felt relaxed. i worked with the hot over-accessorized russian girl and this other girl who has lots of tattoos. she always wears tiny flowered white underpants and they look kind of AMAZING. like, all those metal tattoos might suggest "bad girl," but then she's wearing little girl panties. somehow it doesn't read as pedophilic at all, just totally hot.

a guy came in who looked like the 60 year-old version of my sweet buddy sky. i couldn't deal. i stared at him too much. i think he liked the attention because he came up and tipped me a couple twenties on stage. he had almost the same glasses as my friend, and also the odd flowy faggy clothes, which on sky look smartly fashionable, but on this guy were just a little dumpy. he had a super glittery eagle earring in one ear and it was glinting at me from across the room. i went over to sit with him and noticed that, close up, he had similar eyelids to sky! germanically hooded! and rosebud lips. INSANE. it was his birthday, he was 57. i was sure he was gay, i mean his voice and everything about his countenance suggested it. but when i told his friends to buy him a birthday dance from me, they did and they guy got a giant boner that was clearly evident through his loose woven pants, so maybe not gay? the experience was surreal.

there was a lot of other random customers. i kind of don't remember them or care very much right now, actually. oh and i tried to hustle my boss's boyfriend. that's always rad. luckily he told me right away before i said anything possibly embarrassing. (the best lines are always the most embarrassing.)

it's my day off. i'm having anger and sadness about some things. i keep thinking it will pass, but the more i think about it, the madder and sadder i get! i'm going to go for a super long run and just pound it out!! GRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

the broke and the geriatric.

2010-10-12T12:12:00.001-07:00

omg yesterday was the world's slowest shift. EVER. i mean: ever in my life. i made $19. can you believe that? and when you minus the $9 i spent on parking, i made TEN DOLLARS. at least i didn't really have to dance very much, though, just sat around having Life Discussions with my co-worker and my boss. we're all having the same problem: two loves, and you only get to keep one. do you pick security and sweetness or hot sex? go!

a woman came in to audition. well, two did actually. monday's the day for it. anyway one was a tiny lil speedy thing, tried out in flip flops and a swimsuit. NEXT.

the other one was the kind of older woman who "looks good for her age." she had totally ripped abdominals and not a wrinkle on her whole body. and a very good boob job, although they were too big for her frame. she had a total grandma hairstyle, though--short and permed. dyed red. she danced to the beach boys "california dreamin." it was strange to watch, like do sexy moves go out of style? were her stiff gestures sexy a lot of years ago when she was a younger stripper? and how many years ago was that?

when she left my boss goes, "try and guess how old that woman was."

"51!" i said.

"no way," my co-worker said. "47!"

my boss goes, "she was FIFTY-NINE!"

stunned silence. followed by incredulity and depression. these are TOUGH TIMES when strippers are coming out of retirement mere DAYS before their 60th birthdays.

we're all gonna be that old one day if we're lucky. i've got to put some of my eggs in a different basket. or buy some chickens? or something. STAT!

10/9/10

2010-10-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

i had this regular for a few months but then he totally disappeared and i hadn't seen him for a long time till yesterday. i'm really glad he came in during my mid-shift because it was sloooooow. it really only takes one good customer to make your shift good, though. and by "good," i mean "$$$." duh.

i worked with the messy-haired puritanical ballerina. (i've written about her before.) she's nice or whatever, but she really gets on my nerves. i can't figure out whether her loud optimism is genuine and fueled by a really great life filled with naivete and support from loved ones, or whether it's the front for something darker. either way, it is Too Much. plus she does this thing where whenever she gets done dancing and is collecting her tips she goes, "thank you! thank you everybody!" in the overly gracious tone of someone winning a Tony award. it's a little depressing.

i got off work and wanted to drink but i had my car so i drove home and went to this whiskey bar close to my house with the intention of getting very drunk and stumbling home to pass out. i haven't been drunk like that in a while and it felt like the right time for it. but i still had a lot of makeup on, not the right get-up for sitting alone at a bar on a saturday night because guys see you're by yourself and that you went to all the effort of making your hair and makeup pretty so you must be wanting to meet someone, so they keep coming over and talking to you. this is perfect when you're broke and want drinks. but i had a lot of money on me, and i didn't feel like talking to anyone. this one really cute guy came over and was chatting with me and if i was straight it would've been the perfect opportunity for stranger sex. he had pretty eyes, wasn't too hairy, cute outfit, nice lips. tempting almost but, alas, i don't want anybody's dick in my mouth so i went home after only one drink.

my housemates were all going to a party around the corner from our house so i popped by and lasted for precisely 5 minutes. sometimes i feel suuuuuuper antisocial, like i just have absolutely nothing to say to anyone unless they're paying me. so i went back home and started watching SNL in the basement, but fell asleep after the opening monologue. i woke up down there totally freezing and disoriented and went upstairs and crawled into my freshly washed sheets, which felt really good.

today's going to be a good day. i have nothing on the docket at all besides reading, writing, eating, and maybe going to the movies. also i'm going to make a pumpkin pie.

hello. it's me again.

2010-10-06T20:01:00.000-07:00

i've worked a bunch lately but nothing too interesting has happened. last night was good. a guy came in and bought a lot of dances with me. and then his friends were like, "we gotta go, dude, come on or we're gonna leave you here." they were up from salem and he had no other way home. so, desperate for a momento, he bought my thong for $20. AND my hot shorts for $60. i really liked those shorts, though, so i told him i needed to go put something else on real quick because i couldn't just run around the club naked. i grabbed these other shorts that looked a lot like the original shorts and did a switcheroo. he totally didn't notice, just put the shorts on his head like a crown and scrambled outside to meet his friends.

i danced for a lot of random guys, i can't remember anything pertinent about any of them.

a pair of mountain dykes came in. the less butch of the two (i hesitate to say "femme," but you never know, i mean she was wearing lipstick) was really bossy. she kept saying, "come on, put your pussy in my face!" i didn't like her at all.

then some bartenders came in who thought they were really famous. i know this because they were super coked out and kept telling me how famous they were. "#1 mixologist" this, and "hot list" that. AS IF I CARE. one of them was in from new york, but the less annoying of the two works right down the street from my club. i got him to promise me free cocktails on friday. so. that's nice.

then the black keys came in. that's a band. i've never listened to them, but my co-worker is a big fan and had been at their show the night before. she was FREAKING OUT. it was fun to watch her try and act normal. they were really fun to hang out with and dance for. they brought a bunch of really good looking people with them, too.

hmmm what else. i want to go on a trip somewhere. where's a good place to strip?

picnic basket case

2010-09-28T10:20:00.001-07:00

1. sunday was the club picnic. it was at my boss's daughter's house and it was SO sweet. i loved seeing all the girls' kids and partners. i felt sad that i was there stag, but a few other girls were, too, so at least i didn't stand out.

[haha i can't believe i just used the word "stag." my mom used to use that word all the time and it drove me NUTS!!!

she'd go, "there's a dance at your school on friday night, are you going to go?"

"no."

"why NOT? you're supposed to be doing these kinds of things. you're in high school. why can'tcha be NORMAL?!"

"i don't have anyone to go with."

"just go STAG!" she'd say, exasperated. i could tell she thought i meant i didn't have a date to go with, not that i really didn't have even one friend to go with.]

anyway, the picnic: the food was really good. burgers and all that. the people who own the mexican restaurant next door to the club brought over the biggest container of guacamole i've ever seen. i over-ate. i'm not used to having that kind of access to guacamole.

my co-workers are truly rad. i felt kind of choked up looking around and feeling a part of things. like "these girls all like me and i'm not crashing this party, i was invited and people are glad i'm here." i don't feel that way ever lately.

there was a doughnut eating contest, where doughnuts were hung on a string from a clothesline. i thought that powdered doughnuts were an interesting choice for this, kind of an inhalation choking hazard, but still it was fun to watch the kids all trying to munch their doughnuts the fastest without using their hands. when it was the adults' turn, the creepy janitor/handyman was the first one to get in line. he always looks at me so lasciviously while i'm naked in the dressing room, i dunno i just didn't want to see him mouthing a doughnut so i went inside and picked the bacon off the top of a voodoo doughnut.

2. work yesterday was pretty good for a monday morning/afternoon. these two guys came in who were wild and fun. they seemed to have just been released from prison. they didn't say that, but they did say things like,

"i haven't been to a titty bar in 20 years!"

"i've been looking forward to this day for a long time."

"we got off the train, stopped at the bank, and came directly here!"

"he's shy around women."

also they were muscly, in the way that soldiers and convicts usually are from having lots of women-less hours to fill with bodybuilding endeavors.

the ex-cons were the only customers for the early part of the day. they got up and danced for us whenever we played a song they liked. they were clearly high out of their heads. there was an older one who was the boss, and a younger one who was the son type. the older one kept saying, "what do you need, son? to DRINK?" and the son would say, "uh..um... see if they got rootbeer schnapps!" "they don't got rootbeer schnapps." "oh, okay then uh... um... huh. ima need to think about it then." and then the older one would just bring him a long island iced tea. this happened a couple of times and by the time they left, the little one couldn't even sit up straight. i got a little sad to think of him waking up wherever he was going to wake up and starting his free life with a barfy hangover. but i can't think too much about these things. on their way out they gave us each $20, and said "thank you ladies. this was just what we needed!"

after that some girls came in and wanted to audition so i had a nice long break. i sat at the bar and a business guy came in and sat with me. the girls were wild. they were 40 if they were a day, and they looked and acted very speedy. it kind of stressed me out to watch them, all fast and toothless and jerky, so i turned my attention to the customer and got him to buy a couple of dances. and then when he left and the girls left, it was time for me to dance my last set of the day. whew.

i had plans to have sushi with my two friends who are in from out of town. but of course they flaked. they can't just flake outright, though, they have to barrage me with texts and change the plan a million times and ask me to do things they know i can't do, like go with them to a movie at 4:15 when i don't get off work till 4:30. it's the same thing every time. if you're going to flake just do it, don't try to disguise it with a giant amount of extreme annoyance.

so i took myself to sushi. and then came home. and was at a loss. NOW WHAT, you know? i have a million projects and books. but when i'm feeling lonesome it's hard to motivate. i feel like, "i don't want projects and books, i want hugs and kisses."

cry me a river. waaaa waaaaa. i'm just in a tunnel right now. it's not going to last forever. the thing that worries me, though, is that whenever i go into a lonesome tunnel, i end up coming back out more independent than before, and my heart gets a little less permeable each time too. i don't like to think of myself as a hard-hearted old spinster. on the bright side, if that happens i'll surely be well-read and have a lot of finished projects.

stripper coven

2010-09-22T14:01:00.000-07:00

last night i was feeling lonesome and tragic before work but then i got there and chatted with some of my favorite co-workers in the dressing room and i felt immediately better. all three of them complained at length about the boyfriends they are breaking up with, and while i'm not happy that they are all in the middle of break-ups, there is a certain comfort in knowing i'm not the only one with frayed and broken heartstrings. we all kind of decided that we'd try and forget about everything for the moment and have a fun night. and then it was as if we'd cast a spell because it WAS a fun night.

i was thinking about it and i realized that over the past ten years, whenever i've gone through a break-up or had drama with dates, it's been girls at work who've helped me through it. i tend to do this thing where i end up spending a lot of time with whoever i'm dating, and then when we break up i'm isolated and sad and i don't feel like i can call my friends because i've been neglecting them. (add to this the fact that i haven't even really gotten around to MAKING friends in portland yet. i'm friendly with a lot of people, but in terms of good friends who i can call for hang-outs, i'm Shit Out of Luck and it's totally my own fault.) but luckily i have co-workers who i like, and who talk my head off about their own shit so i feel comfortable talking about mine a little bit too.

...anyway back to last night... i had some really good customers. my campbell soup kid came in and bought a few dances, and when he left a super cute dyke couple came in and were really fun. they didn't want dances, but they sat at the rack for a long time and threw handfuls of ones for even the laziest of pole tricks. it was a butch/femme couple and as they got drunker and drunker, the butch got more and more rowdy and generous. good times.

also there was a cute frat-looking boy who just seemed totally regular until i danced to the xx song, "islands." then he got a super wistful look on his face and sang along with the song, tipped a twenty, and then left.

also there was carrie underwood's band. they had the best tennessee accents and they all bought dances.

and then lots of randoms.

it was a good night, but after work i couldn't sleep. i just laid awake for a long time until finally i turned on my laptop and watched 30 rock on netflix. i watched 3 or 4 episodes and then was even more awake. finally, when it was getting light outside, i went downstairs and glugged down a giant shot of brandy, straight from the bottle. that did the trick and i got back into bed, tied a scarf around my eyes, fell right to sleep, and didn't get up till NOON!

now what.

choose your own non-adventure.

2010-09-21T19:30:00.000-07:00

yesterday i worked. it was excrutiatingly slow and i barely made a hundred dollars all evening. i was feeling bored so i took the ritalin i had hidden from myself in the secret pouch of my makeup bag. that sure did make my shift fly by, and then before i knew it i was getting off work. i felt all cracked out and bummy. i couldn't understand why i had taken the speed since i had nothing to do AT ALL. nowhere to go dance after work, no fun to find.

i was reminded of the time i took the greyhound bus cross-country, from san francisco to NYC. every time the bus stopped at a travel plaza, everyone would pile off the bus and come back with these large coffees. i found it baffling that instead of trying to sleep the trip away, people would choose to be MORE AWAKE in order to sit on the bus for hours and hours and days on end doing NOTHING. were they punishing themselves? were they just bored and wanting to vary their experience slightly? (or could they, perhaps, merely have been seeking comfort in their favorite flavor of international delights non-dairy creamer?)

anyway, yesterday i was that pathetic ass-backwards budget traveler. and i'm not sure what my motivation was but i'm pretty sure it was either boredom, punishment, or adventure.

crazy, crazy on you.

2010-09-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

last night i got one of those customers who wants to "take you away from all of this." you know, that guy who drunkenly thinks he has found his diamond in the rough, at long last. like you're his miniature julia roberts (a la pretty woman) just waiting for your prince charming-moneybags. his name was tom. he looked like a campbell soup kid with his big saucer eyes, chubby cheeks, and curly blonde hair. he bought ten dances from me, that was nice but it started to feel a bit too intimate after a while. halfway through the fifth or sixth dance, my mind started to wander to my personal life, which is at present rife with bummy times. then all of a sudden i thought, "uh oh i'm about to fart in this guy's face." i took a bathroom break and before i could even dread it, i puked and had explosive diarrhea. it lasted for about two minutes, less than a whole song, and afterwards i was totally fine. a bit shaky, but otherwise not sick at all. so strange! maybe it was the new two-minute stomach flu.

i brushed my teeth and all that and went back up to keep dancing for tom. he kept saying things like, "i've been looking for you, waiting." "you're perfect. your hair and your smile. and your butt: perfect." and then it progressed to the only half-joking "will you marry me? we could have a nice little house." "i want to spoil you rotten." it was kind of condescending. i'm not waiting to be found. but it was easy for me to see how girls date customers, i mean who doesn't want to be spoiled rotten? it's probably really good that i'm a lesbian or i would have a revolving cast of customers performing the role of "temporary boyfriend." i'd probably also have a lot of fancy purses and shoes, which would be nice but likely not worth the hassle.

i had to get back up on stage for my last set of the night. tom sat at the rack with a wild grin on his face. it was kind of odd. he mouthed something to me, and i couldn't tell what he'd said, so i said, "what?"

"i'm CRAZY about you," he said, still grinning maniacally. on the one hand: eeek. on the other hand, will he turn out to be the obsessive regular customer of my dreams? only time will tell.

rainy day internetting

2010-09-18T14:00:00.001-07:00

MDMA / T.C.B. / xoxo

2010-09-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

today i drove to work for the very first time. i just got my drivers license a few weeks ago, for the first time in my life, and i bought a car from my uncle. when we talked about him selling it to me, it was at a family party. he made a big show of saying i was like a daughter to him so he was going to basically GIVE me the car for the cost of new tires and some paint. so i figured $300 or maybe $400 max. but then when i went to pick it up, he wanted $1200. i thought that being generous in front of everyone, and then changing the deal when it was just the two of us was kind of shitty. but i didn't know what to say, and i was already thinking of the car as MINE so i bought it anyway. it's annoying to me that everyone in the family is still gonna think that he did me this big favor, though, when actually $1200 for a 1990 honda civic with 290,000 miles on it isn't exactly a huge favor.

i do like the car, though. and i loved not taking the bus today.

work was fine. i made a little over $200, not amazing but totally decent especially given how slow it's been lately. i still owe my uncle $500 for the car, so i was hoping to make at least some of that tonight.

when i was getting off work, one of the girls from the next shift was in the dressing room putting on makeup. she was going on and on about how she'd just quit this other club because all the dancers and the bouncers would go to the owner's house and have big coked-out orgies at the end of the night. she's really young and kind of a goody-goody, and didn't like working somewhere where people treated her weirdly because she wasn't into the same shit as they were. fine, okay, but the funny part was that to end her story, she put one hand on her hip, and waved a hairbrush at me with her other hand and goes, "i mean, EXCUSE ME if i don't dabble in drugs and prostitution!"

then she went up on stage and another girl came in and started doing her makeup. she started telling me this long story about her boyfriend and how his friends don't like her blah blah, and how one of her boyfriend's friends came in the other night when he knew she'd be working, which is weird, and then tried to get her and this other dancer to go home with him and "party." she refused, and the other dancer went, and the friend offered the dancer MDMA and coke. my co-worker (the one telling the story) goes, "i mean, can you BELIEVE THAT?!" i go, "i wish I had been working that night, i would've loved some free MDMA. haha!" she didn't think that was very funny.

where did these puritanical strippers come from, anyway?

well this whole time that the girls were talking at me i was putting on my makeup, too, because i was going to the scissor sisters show across the street. i felt sad that i was going alone, i had bought two tickets thinking i'd bring someone cute but then i didn't. they were kind of expensive, too--$27. anyway i went to the show and i didn't realize it started so early, so i missed both opening acts and got there in time to see the second half of the scissor sisters set.

i'm feeling fragile and emotional lately and i ended up feeling super bummed out after a few songs. it was terrible to be friendless in such a huge crowd, watching a band i have seen with good friends. it's hard to be somewhere new after living somewhere else for ten years. i used to go out by myself all the time and i'd always run into people i liked. it's different here for me. going out alone really is going out and then being alone.

i used to gogo dance with ana matronic (the girl in scissor sisters) at a gay club a million years ago, and it felt a little pathetic to get off work at my little dive club and then cross the street and see her on a giant stage, really living her dream. i mean, good for her--absolutely--but i felt put in my place in this weird way. like, "get it together, girl!" dancing is fun, but i am really good at so many other things and i'm just being lazy.

i'm on a mission to stop being lazy. starting now. i'm going to finally make some friends in this town. and i'm going to make a whole bunch of new things. i'm going to write a lot. i'm going to get an additional job so i'm not broke. i'm going to TCB.

pep club

2010-09-11T00:18:00.000-07:00

yesterday i was feeling soooo and run-down tired before work. and then i remembered that my friend had slipped a couple ritalin into my pill bottle. so i decided to try one, just for kicks. i had that moment i always have before trying a new drug where i look at it in my hand, and scrutinize it, like "hmm, should i take this? what will it do/how will i feel?" and then i say "fuck it," and before i know it, it's down the hatch.

i used to take drugs that were way speedier than a lil' old ritalin, so i didn't expect much, if anything. but let me tell you: once it kicked in, i was downright PEPPY. chatty. optimistic. it was a great way to spend a thursday evening. toward the end of my shift, however, i started feeling extremely tired. like, so tired i could barely stand up. interesting.

overall, however, i give ritalin a B+ for spicing up a slow mid-shift.

the yellow rose

2010-09-06T20:07:00.000-07:00

i have been out of town for forever and a day. right now i'm in austin. i thought i'd work while i was here. i went to a club my first night here and after the lengthy rigamarole of paperwork and all that crap, i got out on the floor. i trawled around for an hour or so, but wasn't able to sell even one dance. it can be hard to sell dances in an empty club, especially when you haven't been up on stage even one time yet to hawk your wares. so i went and asked the dj if i was coming up in rotation anytime soon. he said, "i'll have you up in 45 minutes, darlin."

there were about 25 girls working. the club was big, but not THAT big. tons of girls everywhere, lolling around in the dressing room, making slow rounds of the club, leaning on the bar looking dejectedly around the empty chairs. i zoned out for a while and watched a girl on one of the stages doing clunky pole tricks and scrutinizing herself in the mirror like she knew she was clunky and wasn't sure how to fix it. i felt like saying, "try pointing your toes." her hair was in a bun! i can't even imagine. i would never wear my hair in a bun to work. also she wasn't wearing makeup. interesting. anyway she finished her set and then i looked around and, seeing more girls than customers, felt like it might be a lost cause.

the smoke in the club was bothering me, as was the club's decor. plus my hustle was on strike. i decided i would leave. i spoke with the manager, told him i didn't feel well, and that i hadn't made even one dollar and so couldn't pay my stage fee. he was surprisingly nice and didn't try to bully me into staying the way normal managers do.

i packed up my things in a jiffy. there was a huge storm outside, it was raining cats and dogs. i wanted to take a cab, but i had forgotten my lock and had bought one from the club for ten dollars so no one would steal my makeup or outfits. i only had one dollar left after that, and luckily that's what it costs to ride the bus in austin.

austin buses are a farce. they come very intermittently and don't seem to follow any sort of schedule. i waited in the rain for 45 minutes. i was sooooo happy to finally get to my friend's house and drink some rum with her. we lounged on the living room futon and watched "the proposal," starring sandra bullock. it was a terrible movie, but perfect for passing out to.

holy underwear

2010-08-29T12:06:00.001-07:00

last night in my dream, i was walking to work and i happened to pass by my old church. there was a free box on the steps so i stopped to rifle through it. there were a bunch of old dolls that were flat on the back and meant for hanging on the wall. i really wanted to take one home, i love old dolls, but each one was too scary looking in her own special way. i dug a little deeper in the free box and among the old crappy gap sweatshirts and dingy thermal underwear, there was a PERFECT little lingerie set that was pink with black and white polka dots. the bra was a 34A and the undies were small and ruffly with garters attached to them. DREAMY. the set screamed "quality!" i wondered if it was from the elle macpherson collection, but the tags had been removed. anyway it appeared never to have been worn. i crammed it in my purse, and kept walking to work. it tickled me that i was going to be wearing a fancy set from the church free box to roll around on stage at a strip club.

kittenz

2010-08-27T23:26:00.000-07:00

yesterday i was having a really good hair/makeup day at work and then when i got off i went downstairs, washed off all my makeup, put my hair in a ponytail, and put my regular clothes back on. i happened to be wearing a purple sweatshirt with big-eyed kittens on it and skin tight acid washed jeans. to get from the dressing room to the front door of the club, you have to emerge at stage right and then parade in front of all the customers. last night i learned that leaving the stage as a foxy sex kitten and then reappearing later as a dorky ponytailed cat-lovin twelve year-old is good for a laugh. the club was completely full and i swear every single person did a collective double-take followed by an eruption into laughter. good thing i have a sense of humor otherwise i may have felt badly.

full moon

2010-08-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

things got off to a slow start last night. there were, like, NO customers for the first hour. a girl i work with had come in for a glass of champagne before meeting up with her boyfriend, who works for melissa etheridge, who is in town. we said, "get him to bring her over!!!" then she left after a bit and since there weren't any customers we texted her a lot with our pleas. stranger things happen there all the time, so it wasn't a total stretch to think that melissa etheridge would be comin to my window at any moment over the course of the night. i found myself watching the door for her.

i worked with the foxy ukrainian girl again, and her outfits were even more fancy than ever. she's fun to work with. she's usually in a really good mood. the other girl i worked with was super cute but was in a weird mood where she seemed to feel that everyone had it out for her, cheap bastards. she collects her tips between each song and when there aren't enough of them she says, "thanks for TIPPING," in an pointed tone of indictment. but the weird thing is that she says it in the exact same tone of voice even when people actually ARE tipping. it's confusing.

around 10:30 things started to pick up. i met a guy with super cute chubby cheeks. he was with an insanely drunk bald guy who was acting crazy. the chubby cheek one kept threatening to call a cab for the bald one if he didn't settle down. then the bald one would go, "i'll call your MOM a cab," and then he'd die laughing while the chubby one looked on in disgust.

i got cheeks to buy a few dances and he was fun to dance for because he was clearly having a good time. i told him he was a cute snuggle bear. he said he was really sick of hearing that. i bet chubby guys get that all the time. the look on his face reminded me of when i used to tell my baby brother how cute he was and he'd say, "i'm not CUTE ANYMORE! i'm COOOOOL!" such an adorable exasperated look, which really only made him look cuter.

for the hour of 11 to 12, there was a tough looking dude sitting at the tip rail BARELY TIPPING, and yet with thuggy body language taking up THREE SEATS. this isn't the junior high lunchroom, and this isn't your table. go work out your shit elsewhere.

eventually cheeks and his drunk friend wedged in on either side of that dude. he wasn't pleased and told them to "move along." they laughed at him and he finally went away.

cheeks' drunk friend got way too drunker and he randomly got up from his chair and just stood there at the rack staring off into space. i go, "are you okay?" he didn't respond. then cheeks goes, "ooohkay, we're leaving now," and then the drunk guy goes, "shut up fatty! you're such a retard!" then he tried to sit back down but tripped over his chair and dropped his entire wad of cash on my stage. lots of it dropped on the floor, too, and in an effort to make it look like he'd done all of this on purpose, he bent over and scooped all the fallen money up and threw it onstage too. STOKED. it was probably only about $50, but rad nonetheless. then they left but came back later for a bit, got in a fight, and then left again for good.

i danced for a bunch of other guys, i can't remember much about them. oh except for there was this one guy who won a bunch of money playing video poker. he bought the whole bar a drink, so of course, sensing money, i went and sat with him for a bit at the poker machine. he said, "pick a card." i did and it was a good one i guess because it won him $12, which he printed out and gave to me. then he said, "let's get a drink," so we went and sat at the bar. then he said, "you know, i'm a pervert."

i was like, "oh yeah? what kind of pervert?"

"i like feet."

"really? i just painted my toenails today. want to see if i did a good job? i can't take off my shoes out here, though, come back with me for a dance."

so we had a dance and he rubbed my feet a bit. then he wanted me to slap him in the face, something i don't enjoy doing to strangers. it's hard to get that feeling off your hand, you know? the feeling of someone's whiskers and delicate cheekbones and then if you accidentally hit their cartilagey lil nose? faces aren't that big, in relation to hands. it's hard to ONLY smack someone's cheek. i was like, "no thanks."

he was extraordinarily bummed, acted like i had pulled some switcheroo on him. like he's just supposed to be able to make all these requests for his $20. bitch, please.

and then i danced for a super tall guy who had been really sweet with me on stage all night. very smiley and tippy. he wanted some dances and while i was dancing for him he said, "i really like those hot shorts, they look like they came from bebe."

i said, "well, they didn't, but they DO kind of look like that, huh? i love that store."

"you do?"

"yeah. they make really cute clothes, and their sizes are perfect for petites." (which is totally true. i know it's really hard for fat people to buy clothes in stores, and i'm not saying that i don't have all this skinny privilege in the world. but really to buy clothes at the mall, they just do not fit without alteration if you are smaller than a size 2. FANCY designer clothes fit, but regular mall clothes do not. except for bebe. even forever 21 is stupid if you want anything tight.)

so then i kept dancing for him and when i had to get back on stage, he said, "i have something for you." and he gave me a $100 gift card for bebe!!! i didn't see that coming, i was thinking he was just asking me about it in order to concoct a fantasy in his mind where we fuck in the dressing room or something.

i said, "wow. you seriously just made my night! thanks."

LUCKY!

p.s. melissa etheridge did not, in fact, make an appearance.

saturday

2010-08-23T23:50:00.000-07:00

i worked on saturday. i was a bit bedraggled, as i had gone on a camp out and had been around people a lot for a few days straight and then rushed home and had 20 minutes to shower, shave everything, and scramble to work. i felt super tired and grouchy for the first part of my shift, but then i started making money and that always cheers me right up.

i danced for a lot of different guys, but the only one who stands out in my memory was this young kid in an ill-fitting thriftstore business suit, white sneakers, and an oversized red corduroy chef hat. BIZARRE. he was quite taken with me. tipped me a couple $20's on stage, and then bought a bunch of dances. he smelled BAD and was just really really strange in general. he kept wanting to stand up and slow dance with me. i asked him if he was from portland. he said he was from salem. he was in town for a party later that night, to which he had been invited by mail. i couldn't get him to say what kind of party it was. i hope it was good since he rode the train up. i asked him random questions, but the only things i really found out about him is that he was still living at home with his mom and that his favorite band is evanescence. i wonder where he got all the money he was blowing on strippers. a job? SSI? who knows.

i was happy to get off work and then go work elsewhere, and then finally much later that night crawl into bed, pass out immediately, and sleep like a rock.