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.

Proof that the world is fundamentally UNFAIR

Just got home from work.  Left work because I was too royally pissed off to try and smile at people and sell them dances anymore.

Why?  Because I give shitty dances.  Why do I give shitty dances?  Because when I got my license to work, the very first thing I did was ask the lady who worked at the licensing board:

ME: "Durr, what's legal and what isn't according to Nashville law?"
LICENSING OFFICIAL: "Blah blah blah... blah blah blah and no physical contact during dances."
ME: "None?"
LICENSING OFFICIAL: "None."

So I give shitty dances that no one likes, because all I can legally do is stand in front of these guys and dance in front of them.  I've been doing this for two years now, and every guy I dance for complains to me, but life's a bitch like that so I deal with it.

They love me onstage.  They think I'm awesome onstage.  But then they buy a dance from me and immediately ask for their money back.  I've gotten so very good at asking for my money before I give a dance, because every time I give these poor motherfuckers a "legal" dance, they immediately want their money back.

So, we had a staff meeting on Sunday discussing the slight (yeah right) discrepancy between what is "legal" and what is outrageously illegal in a dance.  The head manager said we needed to clean up our act.  He said only two girls were following the law on their dances: me and a girl we'll call "B".

I was really excited.  Gee, I thought to myself.  You know what this means?  This means that I'm gonna be on an even footing with the other girls.  At long last, I'll be able to sell dances in this club without practically having to break someone's arm to do it.  Because I'll finally be giving the same dances that all the other girls are giving.

Nope.  Nope.  Doesn't work that way.

Today, I asked B to tell me how she gives dances, because she doesn't have trouble selling them and the manager said they were "legal".  She said she just does what she always does.  Okay.  So toward the end of the night, she told me that she was going to give me a dance to demonstrate how she dances.

ME: Thank you.  I know nobody likes my dances.
B: Yeah.  All the guys you've been giving dances to tonight have been complaining about you to me.
ME: I'm not surprised.

So B takes me to one of the rooms and proceeds to give me her typical "legal" lap dance.  And just about the point where her boobs are rubbing across my face, I start thinking, "Gee, I never thought any of this stuff was legal."

So afterward, I asked her if it was.  She told me that, technically it wasn't.  She also told me that if the inspector ever drops in I need to dance the way I've been dancing or just not sell any dances while she's there.  She then proceeded to tell me when the inspector usually comes in so I'll be duly forewarned.

I was like, "So, really, it's not legal."  B was like, "Well, if you want to get technical, it's not 100% legal."

So... yeah.  I thanked B and went to the manager.  I told him that everybody's been complaining about my dances, and I'm pissed off because (apparently) I'm the only girl in there following the letter of the law.  I told him that I feel like I'm punished because I'm doing the right thing.  Because I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, I'm making far less money, and the customers bitch about me to all the other girls in the club.

The manager (not the head manager) was caught between a rock and a hard place with me.  He couldn't really tell me to go ahead and break the law "just a little" but at the same time, that was probably the only good advice left available to him.  I thanked him for at least listening to me bitch about my problem, then got dressed and checked out.

Outside, I told another dancer named M about my problem and immediately she was like, "Oh, so you're the girl everyone's been complaining about."  Yeah.  That's me.  I'm the girl that everybody regrets buying a dance from.

So there you have it.  Proof that the world is fundamentally unfair.  I can either start breaking the law so that I won't have people bitching about me "cheating" them all the time.  Or I can keep obeying the law and just deal with the fact that I'm working twice as hard for half the money.

Right now I'm thinking I'll just keep obeying the law, but I have no idea what I'm gonna do.  I'm angry that I have to make this decision.  I SHOULDN'T FUCKING HAVE TO MAKE THESE KINDS OF DECISIONS.

So fuck the fucking world right now.  I'm mad.  I hope you all have a good night, and I will post again when I no longer feel like screaming at somebody.

Stripping Pros and Cons

Worked last night.  Made exactly half what I'm used to making in the club.  This was on a Friday night, which makes it particularly depressing.

It seemed to be a bad night for everyone all around.  The bouncers had to herd some guy out the back door because he kept breaking our rigorous local laws.  And speaking of local laws, I managed to break one of those myself.  I thought I was following the rules through the normal course of my stage set, but I found out very quickly that I wasn't.  The bouncer told me right away that I shouldn't do that again, and then as soon as I got offstage, the manager was waiting for me in the back.  "I know you probably didn't know better, but if you ever do that again I'm throwing you out of here."

Message recieved.  Will not do that thing again.

It kind of startled me.  After four years of dancing, it's been awhile since I've blown it.  Of course, when I went to the manager to apologize once again and see if everything was cool, he told me that if there'd been a cop in the club, they would've shut us all down for a solid week.  Have I ever mentioned that the local government would use an excuse to get rid of us for good?

The good news is, everyone knows me there.  Everyone knows I don't cause trouble, break rules or even bend rules.  Which might be why I'm not out of a job as we speak.  It was kind of a startle for me, though.

So the night proceeded with its noticeable lack of money.  At one point the manager called us all to the changing room to remind us that the bathroom is for numbers one and two and not for shooting up or snorting coke.

And then, when my shift was up, I started to get dressed in the back room and happened to be there right at the time the managers came back there to scour a girl's bags for... drugs?  A stolen wallet?  I didn't hang around to find out.

REASONS TO QUIT STRIPPING: I'm tired of the crime.  I'm tired of girls I know getting drugged.  I'm tired of always keeping my eyes open to avoid getting drugged myself.  I'm tired of thieves, cheats, druggies, liars, prostitutes, etc.  I'm tired of chatting up people who assume I'm all of these things and stupid on top of it.  I'm tired of the shadow of the law hanging over every little thing I do at work.  I'm tired of being literal, physical inches from criminal charges.  And of course, the system is pretty unforgiving, because most of the people who operate in it will take any bit of slack they're given and stretch as far as they can and then some.

So that's today's rant.  There's plenty that's bad about my job and maybe if I write it all out and have it down on a piece of paper, when that day comes that I feel any slight nostalgia for my job, I can pull out that piece of paper and remember all the bad that came with the good.

However-- so as not to forget the good:

WHY I LIKE STRIPPING: The pole dancing.

Because I haven't been working as much, I'm terribly out of shape, but it still felt wonderful to be back onstage.  I miss the club in New Orleans with its thirteen foot brass poles, but the poles at the club are still slightly better than the battered practice pole I've got at home.

There's a pole competition coming up and our best dancer asked me if I'd be participating this year.  Last year I was first runner up, and I dare say she might consider me to be competition.  We both use some of the same moves, although her form's much better than mine.  I told her I wouldn't be competing since I believe the competition will be after April 1st.

And at the same time... it might be fun to try.