black friday

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.