Getting Fitter

Worked last night.  I've been working a lot more lately, and I can feel the difference.  I'm not nearly as tired when I get home from work, and I've been able to do more vigorous tricks later into the night.  (If I'd known it would work like this, I think I would've worked a lot more often a lot sooner.)

So, anyway, I had a customer ask me out of the blue last night if I studied contortion.  Yay!  I told him I've been doing some contortion training, but I'm really very much a beginner.  He said it showed, and that I looked more flexible than any of the other girls in the club.  So, again, yay.

Ooh, and while I'm thinking of it, I've been working on some new poses.  I used to twist one of my knees back and around to hook my foot against my rib cage.  While it looks cool, I've been doing it often enough now that my ribs are starting to hurt.  So now, instead of hooking it against my ribs, I stand up and pull my foot back, up and around to touch my head.  Really should be posting pictures instead of trying to describe this stuff...

I've been trying to challenge myself to do tricks I don't normally do while I'm onstage.  I've got an arsenal of very fancy regular tricks I pull out just about every time I'm onstage.  They're nice, but I know so many other really cool pole tricks, that I never do because I just never think about it.  Since I've been kind of working toward improving my overall strength and ability, I'm trying to pull out some of these moves, dust them off, and use them.

Particularly because I'm getting stronger.  Not just from the dancing, either.  I am bound and determined to learn how to do a handstand.  So I've been doing handstands against the wall on a very regular basis (not quite daily).  My shoulders feel ever so slightly bigger, and my forearms are getting a bit more solid, too.

Anyway, on to the fun stuff.

So, last night, I had the following conversation with a customer, and it kind of made me laugh.

Me: (All super-sparkly happy) "Hi!  We're doing a dance special.  Would you like a dance?"
Him: "No.  I'm not spending any money here tonight.  I brought thousands of dollars to spend here, but then you guys kicked my brother out."
Me: "Oh...kay.  Why did they kick your brother out?"
Him: "Because he opened my beers."
Me: "Umm, how old was your brother?"
Him: "He's twenty."
Me: "Well, there's nothing they could do about it then.  They have to obey the law, or this club will get shut down.  They shut down my old club, and everybody there lost their jobs because of it.  It's not like they've got any choice."
Him: "I own two liquor stores."

I don't understand how owning two liquor stores sudden makes you so crazy-blessed you can break the law anywhere else, but okay.  I got up; I walked away.  I kept trying to sell dances.  People confuse me.

Seriously, if anyone can answer this for me, I'd be thrilled.  We're a strip club in a city that doesn't like strip clubs.  (Not many cities do like strip clubs, but that's beside the point.)  This city has done everything they legally can to make our lives difficult.  I should be earning a hell of a lot more to work than I do, because there are so many crazy, illogical, stupid laws in place here.  (Laws that I obey because I just don't give a crap about money.)

But, let's say we do start breaking laws.  Little laws.  Let the kid drink.  He's almost twenty-one anyway, right?  In a city that HATES strip clubs and would close our doors the first chance they get.  All because this one guy brought "thousands of dollars" and he owns a liquor store-- oh, sorry, two liquor stores-- which somehow makes him the Great Panjandrum of the Ffordian Universe.

I... really can't see the logic.

I also can't see why he sat on his fat ass in the front row for the rest of the night, telling anyone who would talk to him that he wasn't going to spend a single dollar on anyone in the club (dancers, waiters, nobody) just because his brother got kicked out.  I mean, if he was so pissed off, why didn't he just leave?

Oh wait.  He was an asshole.  Sorry.  I forgot.

Anyway, people are funny.

Got a Good Feeling

...So there I was, with my fists jammed into the small of my back to support my lower spine while bending my middle spine, and I realized there was all this skin hanging off my back.  Me being me, I couldn't quite resist grabbing a handful of this stuff and just kind of squishing it around in my fingers...

Where was I now?  Let me back up.

I worked again last night.  Eight or nine hours.  This morning my husband woke me up with coffee and helped me build a little nest on the couch.  I didn't want to move.  My muscles are all sore.

I got a ton more stretching done.  Lots of middle back work, and that was mostly because I kept shoving my fists into the curve produced by my lower back and supporting that while trying to focus on the area of my rib cage.

I'm sure I made a weird sight, nearly bent in half in the wrong direction, taking careful breaths to pull my ribs up and apart, and allow my upper and middle back to relax and curve downward.

Just ordered a softball to shove into that gap so I can protect my lower spine from stress while working on my upper body.  Excited to get my hands on that.  I'd like to do some extreme contortions onstage.  People seem to be impressed by them and they tip me for it, not because it's particularly sexy, but because they've never seen anything quite like it before.

Didn't work on my pole-assisted one-armed handstand.  Forgot to for the first half of the night.  By the second half of the night I just didn't care much.  I spent the first four hours or so without much money.  I only managed to sell one dance, and I even asked the floor guy how much I'd owe for the night so I could estimate how much I'd have to pay in next time I came to work.

Then, all of a sudden, one guy bought a dance.  Then another.  And another.  I gave so many dances in a row that I became exhausted and had to go home an hour before closing.  (Gee, do I wish that was my complaint every day.)

One of the floor guys asked me if I'd employed any of B's dancing techniques and I told him I probably wouldn't.  He told me that was cool.  If it wasn't my style, it wasn't my style.  He said B likes to rub on guys, but not every girl at the club does.  He named a handful of other girls who don't touch guys in private dances, and I felt very encouraged.

It's nice not to feel be alone in something like this.  I'll still never win Miss Nude Tennessee, but at least, I'm not the only girl in the whole club who follows the letter of the law.

Today's got a weird feeling to it.  Probably because I'm so worn down physically, but I feel so light and airy. I feel intensely peaceful, too.

You'd think it would work differently.  People who are tired generally talk about feeling heavy, weighted down.  I feel that when I try to move.  But just sitting here, meditating and writing, I feel like I could float right up off the couch.  Everything is beautiful and magical, and I feel like I am part of it all.

And no, I didn't take any pain meds.  LOL.

I really do suspect it's just the exhaustion.  All the endorphin from all the muscle pain and stretching.  Natural highs anybody?  Just make yourself miserable enough, and you'll get there.  Yeah, I'm sure that's a drug that'll sell.  And yet, from what I've heard drugs always feel unclean in some way or another.  Right now I feel like I've been scrubbed inside out and made all shiny and squeaky-clean.

I think I'm going to soak up all this good feeling for a while.  Since I'm at it, I might as well add this wonderful floating sensation to the list of stripper pros and cons.  Extreme exercise will, occasionally, render extreme rewards.