Last night was weird. I got to the club around 8 as a walk-in, and it was just so dead. It's the least amount of money I've ever made in my tenure there, including that one day shift I randomly worked. Still, $220 isn't something you previously would have heard me complaining about back when waitressing was my only income.

There was this really old man there, and I know I've seen him in a bunch before but I've never interacted with him. I don't know whether to feel creeped out or sorry for him; it's a pretty level mixture of both. While I was doing my set on stage he put a $20 up on the rail and said he was pre-paying, that he wanted me to come give him a dance afterwards. His hat said "Korea Veteran." So I came down and found him, and walked him down to the couches under the raised stage. Before I could even start he pulled me close to him and said "I don't want you to dance dear, I just want to hold you." Okay. So this clearly violates the no touching rule. But there were no bouncers around and he wasn't touching me in any sort of vulgar way. Just hugging. And as we hugged for the duration of the song, he explained to me that he lost his wife 9 years ago, his "companion" 3 months ago, and two guys he was in the service with in within the past year. My heart absolutely shattered. It was all I could do not to cry and smear the electric blue eyeliner the makeup artist decided to experiment with that night. He stayed the entire night, literally from open until close, and I'm fairly positive he did this with every one of the 7 girls working.

The only other dances I sold were to a big group of guys that came in, all in their late 20's to early 30's. I caught them right when they came in the door, and honestly they looked normal enough and the most I was hoping for was people to sit with instead of sitting down in the locker room. There was maybe about six of them, and two are leaving for Afghanistan today. The friends bought one of the soldiers a dance from me, and when I finished he asked me to keep going for two more songs. Then later on I gave him a few more. When I was on stage they all came up to the front row and tipped me well there, too. I was a little conflicted because I could tell soldier guy liked me; he didn't buy dances from any of the girls that asked. And he even joked when I gave the old man a dance that I was "two timing" him. But then one of his friends, who truth be told was much cuter, started coming up to the front row every time I was on (which was a lot, considering the amount of girls on rotation), and asked me to dance for him. well, of course I did. Money is money and on a slow Tuesday being picky is not an option. But his soldier friend was definitely angry, and left without saying goodbye to me even though I told him to come find me before he left.

All in all it was a pretty lame night, and I spent almost everything I made on a new pair of Uggs today because it's freaking freezing and my old ones are destroyed. I justify this by saying I walked in on my off night, and it was money I wouldn't normally have anyway.

In other news, I'm doing my first bachelor party on Saturday night. One of the girls I work with, Kyla, asked me if I could. It's her cousin, so obviously she can't do it. She said they're all business guys and gentlemen, and some of the fiancee's family will be there so that's why she didn't ask any of the "nasty" girls to go. As of right now it's April and I. We're all going to meet at the club to get our stuff and meet her at 8:30, and she's going to drive us over, introduce us, and wait out in the car. It's $200 up front each, for only an hour, plus whatever we make in tips. I'll be out so early and I don't even think they want us to get fully nude.

The boy is nervous about this. I explained to him that Kyla is legit; she's honest, doesn't do drugs, and she has a normal day job. I trust her, and I will be with another girl from the club. He worries that in a more relaxed environment, and without any bouncers, they guys might be more apt to get aggressive. But for some reason I'm not worried about it at all. I trust the whole situation.

Went home for the weekend, and on the way back to the city the Boy and I decided to stop at a strip club near my town. We had had a few drinks while we were out to dinner (the most spectacular dinner I have had in a long time, I might add) and were both feeling a little frisky.

The club - or bar, rather - could not be more different than where I work. It was a dive. We knew what we were getting ourselves into, but still we were surprised. The stage was tiny, and was constructed out of what appeared to be particle board. They had maybe 5 girls on, and the quality actually wasn't completely terrible. I as expecting toothless crackheads. Okay, well maybe one of them fit that bill but we made sure to avoid her.

We couldn't have looked more unassuming. Him in a white polo, me in a crisp white tunic purchased at TJ's that day, dark skinny jeans, and leather flip flops. Flash forward to three vodka drinks and one kamikaze shot later, and with the Boy's encouragement I am being pulled on stage by a dancer we had gotten friendly with and stripped of my shirt. The guys went fucking nuts. I'm sure to them it looked like good, wholesome girl gets drunk and goes wild. Little did they know that it was just my night off.

Quote of the night

The signature “two-for-one” song played as it did every hour when we offer out specially priced lap dances. I approach two clean cut, but fun looking men.

“I can’t get a lap dance. My wife will know if I come home smelling like stripper.”

Me: “And what exactly does stripper smell like?”

His buddy, without missing a beat: “Heaven.”

Cast of Characters

I’m sure that throughout these postings I’ll be dropping some names here and there, so I think I should take some time to introduce these characters. And trust me, characters they indeed are.


***Side Note***: After finishing, I just realized how dreadfully boring this whole thing is to read through. Please feel free to use it solely as a reference.


Deena is my closest friend at the club, and I guess the only girl I would really refer to as a “friend” at all. Not that I don’t get along with the other girls; I don’t have any trouble with anyone. I just trust her, we get along and stick by each other. We both started at the same time, about a month ago, but Deena has danced before. I remember the first week into it she looked at me and said “you’re the only other normal girl here.” She has the build and look of a supermodel: 5’10”, lithe figure, olive skin with big brown doe-eyes. Her high pitched voice and giggly demeanor become endearing once you see hat a genuinely sweet person she really is. Deena’s two years older than me - 24 - and has a three year old. She nannies during the day and, like me, keeps her dancing a secret. Everyone thinks she waitresses at night. She doesn’t do any drugs, or even drink.

April is young. She just turned 21 the other day, but from what I gather she has been dancing since she was 18. On my first night, Jim (the manager) put her in charge of giving me the tour around and showing me the ropes. She also let me borrow one of her outfits, seeing as I didn’t really have any of my own yet. Like most girls she can go both ways with her demeanor; playful and friendly with me sometimes, but never forgets that I’m competition. She rarely comes in to work not stoned, but this seems to be kind of the standard with a lot of the girls. She jokes that her typical day is sleeping until 3, smoking a few bowls, and coming in to dance. The make up artist has also made references to a time where she did heavier drugs, but it wasn’t enough to damage her looks like some of the others. She lives with Ali, another one of the dancers who I get along with usually. One of the regulars has told me that Ali has a pimp, and that both April and Ali work together on the side as call girls. I try not to think about that too much.

There’s a few other girls that I’ve been told are “dirty”, but I need to take it with a grain of salt given the amount of locker room gossip that flies around. Barbie, who I will call such because she is doing her damnedest to resemble one, has a porn site and allegedly is known for her “extras”. She is over tanned to the point of ridiculousness, has white blonde hair extensions down her back, and ONLY wears neon orange and pink outfits. Krystal is another one that is rumored to have similar antics. On one of my first nights, I heard Jim yelling at her after coming out of the champagne room. I heard a few of the girls say she had gone to get a condom. She’s over tanned as well, but with dyed black hair. She’s pretty, I suppose, but definitely looks like she has some miles on her.

You can tell Lara used to be beautiful at one point. She still has a nice body and from far away, under the make up and blacklight of the stage you can see the lovely, sandy blonde girl she used to be. But drugs have sunken in her whole face, yellowed her skin, and ruined her teeth. She’s allegedly cleaning herself up; I hear her talk about it with the Tracy, the house mom - an ex-addict herself. The fact that she’s a single mom makes me all the more happy for her getting off drugs.

Bianca’s another one that seems to be struggling with some substance problems; my guess is heroin from the long lace sleeves she always wears as accessories on her arms. She’s young as well, maybe even younger than April but I don’t know for sure. She has a pretty, but blank face and a piercing below her lip and in her tongue. She was friendly at first, offering to let me use outfits and giving me tips. But she’s drifted just in the three weeks I’ve been around. I don’t think Bianca had a lot of friends there to begin with; Henry told me to stay away from her, that “there are certain people you don’t want to associate with, because other people will draw certain conclusions about you.” Cryptic, but succinct.

Christie, Jolene, and Amanda are our three foreign girls. Amanda is from England, Jolene from Israel, and Christie from Russia. Both Christie and Jolene speak perfect English. As a matter of fact, I thought Jolene’s accent was from New Jersey when I first met her. Christie gives the most sensual lap dances I’ve ever seen; not raunchy or explicit like some of the other girls, she just moves and looks in the eyes of the client in a way that makes them feel like she is theirs, and theirs only.

There’s way too many girls for me to keep going like this, but that’s a good chunk of them. People come and go so often that I’m sure a lot of them will disappear, and I am still so new that it's very possible that my perception is skewed.

Close Encounters

I had my first close call last night with running in to someone I know, and worse, someone that knows my dad well. There were a ton of girls on last night and I didn’t even get on stage until around 10 PM because the rotation was so long. And even then, I was on the little stage (we have three in the club) for my first set. Granted I had given a few dances, but the night was still very young and it was just beginning to pick up.

So I’m on the stage, doing my thing when three older businessmen walk in. Now, the club is not trashy by ANY means, but you could definitely tell these guys were very wealthy - in a subtle sort of way. They sat about one table back from my stage and were clearly celebrating some sort of business deal, cheers-ing with their first round of drinks. It wasn’t until almost the end of the last song that I got a good look at the one that had his back towards me, and I absolutely froze. It was a close friend and business buddy of my dad’s, who I’ve met several times but thankfully I don’t think just a glimpse at me with all that makeup, and in that setting of all places, would have enabled him to recognize me. I would have run off the stage if it wouldn’t have only drawn more attention to me, but I calmly waited for the next girl to get up there and ducked into the locker room. I explained the situation to the house mom who radioed the DJ to take me off rotation, and then relayed my request to the manager to leave and do a make-up shift during a weeknight next week. The only other option was to sit down in the locker room until they left, and who knows how long that would be? So the manager let me go. I changed out of my tiny gold dress and heels and into the yoga pants and Uggs I wore in, tipped out basically everything I had made, and as the bouncer walked me to my car I kissed the 600+ dollars I would have made that night goodbye. Oh well.

I thought I was being careful by picking a club so far outside the city, but it worries me that I’ve only been there three weeks and this has already happened. I guess I haven’t seriously considered what I would do if people (as in, my family) found out I was doing this; I think part of me is prepared to just hold my head high if it happens, and explain to them that the financial independence is not something I am willing to give up. My mom and dad watched me make the difficult decision to take the semester off to work, and because of the economic crash there wasn’t a thing they could do about it. My dad all but forced me to go to the school of his choosing - granted, it’s a wonderful school and I was grateful, under the pretense that if he was paying for it he had the right to pick. Had I known I would be financially accountable I would have chosen something much more affordable. Fast forward to three years later and his business is all but bankrupt and here I am at an outrageously expensive school, in an even more outrageously expensive city, with no means to pay for it.

So I guess it wouldn’t be the absolute end of the world if they found out, although it maybe feel like it temporarily. Only three people know right now: my boyfriend, and two of my best friends. As for everyone else, including our two other roommates, I tell them that my night job is working promotions. If I said I was bartending at another restaurant they would want to stop in. But even with promotions they always ask what bars or functions I had been working, and I’ve never been a good liar. I’m starting to think that keeping this a secret may be harder than I’d imagined.

She left behind nothing but her glass slipper...

I’ve started to adjust to using a name that is not my own every night, so you can call me Melissa. I am 22 years old, and I have just recently entered the world of exotic dancing. Entertaining. Stripping. Whatever you would like to call it, that's what I have been doing for a mere month.

I’m a normal girl, I swear. I’ve never done a recreational drug in my life, unless you count some all-nighters studying with the aid of adderall, and the occasional high school flirtation with marijuana. I’m not a single mom, although I have all the respect in the world for the girls I work with that are. I’m just a girl whose whole family and life were turned upside down by this economic crash, and is making the best of it.

I’m a country girl at heart who moved to the city for school; I work about 30 minutes outside of it to avoid any run ins with people I know. I have a steady, long term boyfriend who I have lived with for a year now. And yes, he knows, and supports me 100%. We have two roommates, a yellow lab, and a relatively normal life. I work another job waitressing and bartending on my off days and nights, and make frequent trips home or up to the mountains where he lives to visit our families. I was a student at a fairly prestigious college for the past three years - a writing major with hopes of breaking into journalism, until the crash happened. More on that later.

But every Thurs-Sat, when the clock strikes 7, I become someone else entirely - by both name and appearance. I change out of my jeans or sweatpants and in to a g-string, 5” clear heels, and whatever microscopic dress I pick out for the night. Sometimes I clip in long blonde hair extensions to add to my shoulder-length hair, and the make up artist proceeds to turn me into a man’s fantasy. Glossy lips, long (fake) eyelashes, the occasional spray tan; all the glamorous and perhaps borderline trashy details that men secretly and not-so-secretly love.

And then I dance. On stage, in private, a few times in the champagne room. I use the term “dancing” loosely; I’ve never been too great at it. I have the flexibility of an 80 year old man thanks to an old foot injury, though I’ve been assured that it will improve the longer I work there. It’s more winding and moving seductively than anything, and that I can do. There are girls that are immensely talented and can do all sorts of tricks and contortions on stage, I’m just not one of them. Yet.

When 2 A.M. rolls around it’s all over. The locker room becomes packed with girls counting out their money and tip-outs, changing into their normal clothes, grabbing their purses and waiting for the O.K. that the parking lot is cleared and it’s time for the bouncers to walk us out.

It’s been a whirlwind of a month in this new occupation of mine, and there certainly is a learning curve to it. I’m still learning the beautification tips of the trade, which I may venture into in a future post, as well as stripper etiquette, hustling techniques, etc. It’s still very new to me but I feel myself starting to get comfortable with it. Most importantly, I am making more money than I ever have in my life. In just the first two weeks I was able to pay off all my credit cards AND my rent. With some leftover. The feeling is unbeatable, my friends. I remember sitting in my car at the end of my first night, wide-eyed as I counted out $500. And I’ve been told that’s a bad night. So I will continue to dance, and write about it throughout, however long that may be.