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.

working. working.

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

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

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.

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

(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.