Burnout!

In the land of Lusty, we must be wary of many things. Beware of cheapskate custies that want to cram 3 or 4 guys into a booth only to save themselves from having to spent an extra dollar. Beware of custies with cameras (which, by the way, are strictly forbidden in the theatre) who will try to run off with a naked picture of you. Beware of walking to your car alone at night. If it's an issue, be sure that every Lusty, new and seasoned, has had the point beaten into her head. But the cardinale warning, the one thing which is practically guaranteed to effect every Lusty at some point: Beware of burnout!

While most of us love our jobs, our co-workers and our customers, it's not enough to save us from occasionally feeling consumed by the sex industry. There are signs posted in the dressing room warning us to watch out for it, even a poster with specific examples for how to combat the evil monster. I don't know when exactly it happened, how it crept up on me with such stealth but here I am, fed up, exhausted and completely burned out.

It kind of started occuring to me last week when late nights at the Lusty coupled with the 9-5 job I have 3 days a week caused me to be away from home for two days straight. Thursday I worked from 9-5, took a mandatory class from 6-8 and then started work at the Lusty at 11, closing at 3 am. The next morning I went to my day job again from 9-5 and then started my shift at Lusty at 8:30, closing again. On Saturday, when I was finally back to my own bed, I slept into the late afternoon before I worked again at 6:30. Rhys picked me up at 11 and we went out for drinks with a friend. I felt fine drinking beer and hanging out. I was going strong and enjoying my company when last call came and they turned the lights on. We walked hand in hand to the car, me drunk as a skunk. At some point, Rhys says something in passing about stripping, something innocuous, something I have no memory of, something that really shouldn't spark a nervous breakdown. But within minutes I am sobbing, wondering why I bothered with college at all, why I thought working a job that keeps me away from home for days at a time was a good idea, wondering when I will ever feel like an adult. After my hysterics in the car have ended, we are finally home. I am ready to crawl into bed and let sleep do the job that the alcohol was supposed to do and make me forget about all of this. But Rhys insists I take off my makeup. This seems odd to me but when I concede and get a look at myself in the bathroom mirror I understand his insistence. Running from my right eye, down my cheek and spreading across my throat is a very unattractive black tear stain. I have to laugh; goth teenagers would kill for this kind of realism. I wash my face and finally climb in bed.

Since that night I have quietly endured my burnout, always quite aware of its presence but unsure what can be done about it. While the bulk of my income does not come from stripping, its addition to it is completely necessary right now. I would love to take some time off to regroup and remind myself why I love working as a Lusty. A year ago I would have told my mother about this and she would have insisted that I take a break while she supplemented my income. As guilty as I might have felt, I would have accepted. But what excuse do I have any more? This chaotic schedule is the bed I've made and now I must lie in it. This is real life and in real life the rent is due on the first of the month.

What's the color of laughter?

I'm sitting in a cafe, trying for the life of me to concentrate while an overall-clad mother and her litter of screaming children order caffeinated beverages, quite unnecessarily. A farmer's market is taking place across the street. I desperately want to partake in this gathering but I have promised myself that today I will write. For days now, writing has come second, along with just about everything else (more often than not this includes sleep) to day trips up the coast, movies at the drive-in and too many glasses of red wine. These weeks race past me in an intangible hurry. I feed off of single moments, clutching the last until I can get my hands on the next. In many ways, everything is simplified. There's no room to dissect or question and no need to either. But every so often my inner LabelMaker rears its troublesome head. I manage to push it back before the weight of its questions can descend on me but those questions always resurface. What is this? What could cause my finely-tuned focus and drive, not to mention my guarded walls, to fall to pieces?

Maybe the increased blood flow to other body parts (I'm talking about my heart, in case some of you have dirty minds) is impeding the blood flow to my brain. I can't recall crucial vocabulary, remember to bring my cell phone and oh yeah, GET TO WORK ON TIME. Last night I did, what is at least to me, the unforgivable: I showed up an hour and a half late to work. In my defense I wasn't aware that I was missing work until 15 minutes into my shift and the drive from my house to the Lusty is quite sizable. But really, there is no excuse. My head has been in the clouds for days. Certainly the fact that I keep choosing sex over sleep isn't helping the matter. But more than that, this man has done my brain in.

We went out for Mexican yesterday on his lunch hour. We sat across from each other in monumental wooden chairs in front of an equally monumental wooden table, making physical contact nearly impossible. Sitting across from him like that, feeling confined like a toddler in a high-chair, I came upon a new understanding of the word attraction. In general, I use the word to describe someone good-looking, as in "I'm attracted to that hot guy in my fiction class and I want to bone him". But I've never thought about the word in its most literal context. Being drawn to something or in my case, someone. I am attracted to Rhys, drawn to him. On only our second meeting I remember feeling this strange new sensation for the first time. We sat on opposite ends of my living room, smoking a bowl and listening to only fragments of good songs. It was all I could do to stop myself from walking across the room, sitting on his lap and pressing myself to him. I wrote it off, attributing it to the pot. But everytime I am face to face with him, that same magnetic tug grips me and reels me to him. This happened again at lunch yesterday, but this time it hurt. I didn't want to be sitting 3 feet from him. Even straddling him in front of other diners and shoving my tongue down his throat wouldn't have sufficed. What does it mean when touching someone, kissing them, even fucking them doesn't bring you close enough?

Writing this, I think of Rhys' reaction. He will laugh, I am sure. Like when I told him the tarot card reader I saw last year predicted that I would meet him. Magnetic soul connection? Please. I'm pretty positive this will not jive with his rational existential ideology. But I will sit back, resist the urge to defend my hippy tendencies and keep mum. It is what it is. I can certainly agree with the existentialists on that one. Whatever this phenomenon is, it reminds me that of all the beautiful things to be witnessed in this life, the best of those will defy all logic.

Ladybugs

I have been trying for days to formulate a blog entry on the topic everyone loves to talk about: sex. But every angle I tried to come in from came out wrong. Chalk it up to my considerable dry spell (who would have guessed a Lusty would subject herself to such undue torment) or the fact that I am bombarded with the sexual proclivities of others at work. Either way, despite being in such a hyper-sexual environment all the time, I can't seem to formulate a worthwhile discussion about sex in the sex industry. In the mean time I write about the things I can't seem to stop talking about.

Lately the dressing room of the Lusty Lady is abuzz with summer romance. If it's not a booth book entry (our collective journal, kept in Private Pleasures) about some Lusty-on-Lusty romance it's one of the ladies in the dressing room, nervously preparing for a date with her newest love interest. This comes as no surprise to me now. How could these beautiful, intelligent, fierce and sexy women not have a million people knocking down their doors for dates? But I didn't always imagine the love life of a stripper to be quite so active. When I started working at the Lusty Lady two months ago I couldn't help but question how my new line of work would affect my love life. At this point I had adopted what I saw as a necessarily apathetic view on relationships. It seemed to me that the more I thought about or wanted someone special in my life, the further my path would stray from it. So I stopped giving a shit about meeting someone. Furthermore, it seemed silly to make an important decision based on the opinion of someone I hadn't even met yet. I decided that my life could not be lived in fear of what someone, someday might think of my decisions. When any one of my friends asked about the impact the choice might have on potential dating partners, as many have, I would tell them that it was a choice made for me and anyone who couldn't accept it ultimately wouldn't be able to accept all of me. Maybe this sounds selfish but I stand by this logic. I have seen the consequences of living one's life for someone else. I've seen more than one girl from my high school graduating class flee her out-of-state college to be with her boyfriend back home or alienate her friends to devote herself to him. Maybe I am wrong, but I think the stakes are higher for women. We live in a world that encourages us to be good wives, girlfriends, caretakers. Not that these roles are bad ones but they threaten to be when they become our only roles. My stance may seem stubborn but I think a less stubborn outlook would have much larger implications for my life than are apparent at the moment.

There's this part in the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun" when the eccentric blonde woman tells Diane Lane's character how she used to hunt for ladybugs as a girl. She would search and search in the grass and find none, eventually get tired and fall asleep. But when she woke up the ladybugs were crawling all over her. That story popped into my head today as I was trying to focus on writing this blog. But I can't seem to focus on much of anything today. Well, that is other than when I'll get to see him next, how his hair smells when it's still damp from the shower or how my scalp starts to tingle when he kisses me very very slowly. Yes, I met someone. Someone whom though I've only just met him seems worthy of more than just a mention in my blog. Someone who makes me laugh when we're together and smile stupidly when we're apart. Someone who surprises me, who intrigues me more and more every time I talk to him. Someone who didn't run for the hills when I told him that I work at a peepshow. That will have to be all for now as I'm sure I could easily get ahead of myself. But I feel as if I have just woken up from a very restful sleep and now there are ladybugs, lots and lots of ladybugs

I Guess This is Growing Up

I will start this posting with a disclaimer: this particular entry has very little to do with stripping. Yes, the blog is named "The Introspective Stripper" and yes, I intend to explore my own experience of the sex industry in writing it but that's was never the only thing this blog was meant to be. It is not just the experience of stripping that I find worthy of documenting, it's everything about this moment in time and my place in it. I hope for my job at the Lusty to be a feature of my post-collegiate story but not its raison d'etre. I also hope that this will not deter you from reading further.

My parents, being the hippy recluses that they are, decided to move from the bay area, to a small community much east of here, when I went away to college. I took this in stride considering I have always harbored a dispassion for my hometown anyways. Who wouldn't rather visit a majestic lake house than a house in Redneck, USA? That being said, I see them on a regular though not constant basis. Yesterday, this time being the middle-aged rockers that they also are, the two of them took the day off of work and drove to Oakland to see Aerosmith and Sammy Hagar at the Oracle Arena. Unfortunately I had to work ( last night being another blog entry entirely) so I could not partake. My mother left me a voice message during Aerosmith's performance of "Dream On", which was a nice consolation. I left the key under the mat for them and they crashed at my place.

In the morning we enjoyed a leisurely coffee on the back patio. My mother and I invented a story about some fundraiser event that I promised Kira I would go to, which prevented me from going to the concert with them; the cover story I told my still-out-of-the-loop father. I expected that we would spend the day together, go out for lunch, maybe spent some time just exploring record stores and head shops in Berkeley, things we used to do when I lived at home.

For lunch we went to an old standby, a Chinese restaurant in Orinda that we've been frequenting since I was in diapers. We sit in a booth in the back of the restaurant, ordering hot tea and three different prawn dishes. The huge French windows overlook the golf course across the street where the old money of Orinda spends its weekends. We talk about things trivial and profound, the stage antics of Steven Tyler and my aunt's progressive cancer. I feel wrapped in the security of our trio. As an only child, I've become accustomed to my parents' peer-like company but, contrary to popular opinion about only children, never their undivided attention. My parents are the sort of fifty-somethings that you might be surprised to hear are actually parents. Their physically demanding and time-consuming professions coupled with their propensity for things like classic rock concerts, waterskiing and cave spelunking tend to make them appear ageless, which I'm sure to some must also equate to childless. The truth is, their lives have never been defined by parenthood. As much as both of them will tell me the opposite, that having me gave their life profound direction, I still don't believe it. I am reminded of this when my father says they will be heading back home after lunch. I try to convince them to stay but the more I negotiate with him the more I feel like a child asking for a later bedtime. This is fucking ridiculous, I say. Shouldn't it be them wanting more of my time and not the other way around? Though I try not to show it, I am indignant as my father explains how exhausted they are and how much they need proper restful weekends at their age. I think of them rocking out at the Oracle the night before and the regular grueling Sunday hike that they will take the next morning and I grow even angrier. Since moving back to the bay this is the first time my father has come to visit me and it took his favorite band being within a 30 mile radius for that to happen.

My mother returns from the bathroom and I guess some strange maternal spidey-sense kicks on because she can tell I am pissed off. "What's wrong, what's the matter?" she keeps saying while pinching my side, trying to make me laugh. I excuse myself to the bathroom and can't even hold back the tears until I reach the door. I'm crying and feeling sorry for myself when I realize the irony of where we are. When I was a kid my father and I went on semi-regular outing, presumably to give my mother a reprieve from both of us. One night we were at this very same restaurant seated next to those giant windows, when I told my father nonchalantly, in the way only a 5-year-old can, that I thought he hated me. My father, ever the wordsmith, sat speechless. I don't remember what happened afterwards or even why I thought such a thing but the crystal clear memory clings on tightly. Looking at my tear-stained reflection, I feel like that 5-year-old again.

I return to the table and make some lame excuse for why it took me so long. They drop me off back home and I thank them for lunch and for taking the time to see me. When they drive off I make a childish vow not to answer their phonecalls. It's both funny and sad to me that even after graduating college and becoming financially independent, some of my childhood demons refuse to leave and all I can think to do at the moment is put them in writing.

Good Company

**Unless otherwise noted, all names have been changed to protect the identities of my nearest and dearest.



On Tuesday evening I shuttled myself and an enormous bag of groceries, including a zucchini the size of a newborn child, to Kira and Michael's apartment. I'd been dying to try out this risotto recipe but hesitant for the reason I'm hesitant to try out any recipe that threatens to be incredibly delicious: I'll eat the whole damn thing by myself. So I managed to convince Kira (my co-worker at the Lusty Lady, the one responsible for my induction whom I've known since childhood) her live-in boyfriend Michael and our mutual friend from high school, Bree, to allow me to test my experiment on their taste buds. I start chopping things, trying to acquaint myself with the narrow kitchen without smashing too many elbows or glass cabinets. It's just me and Michael for a while, both of us working on our contribution to the meal (his being this boxed cookie/brownie thing that I would almost rather fast forward to and skip this risotto business).

In an hour everyone sits around the table nibbling french bread and drinking wine. That is, everyone but me. I have somehow underestimated just how long this dish will take so while the other four (Bree brought her new beau, Kip) wait patiently, I continue stirring the stubborn rice , getting drunk on an empty stomach and from barely two glasses on wine. I walk back into their dining room/living room and it occurs to me that I am the fifth wheel. Kira walks over to John, who is seated, puts her arms around his neck and he buries his face in her shirt. Bree is sitting on Kip's lap.

"So I hear you and Michael have been together for 3 or 4 months" Kip says to Kira. He is joking, of course. I'm sure most people have forgotten exactly how long the two of them have been together, though I know it's over 8 years; forever when you're only 22. We all laugh. It's then that my lack of partner becomes apparent to everyone else so Kira and Bree sandwich me in a double-hug. Despite the obvious imbalance, I feel very much unlike a third wheel.

"So I guess you and I have a history now," Kira says. At this point, not a week after the fact, I am still unsure how to feel about this. We exchange looks, both of us amused by the bizarre truth of her statement. Bree's ears perk

"Wait, what?" The three of them are now looking at me and Kira.

"Yeah, we told you. I trained Eve to work in Private Pleasures. We had a Double-Trouble last Wednesday." Bree has that look on her face, the one I've known since high school, the one that says she's intrigued but gearing up to be shocked. I can't disappoint her.

"Yup, Kira fucked me with a giant dildo," I say, and return to the risotto. I hear a screech back at the table and when I go back Bree is pacing the apartment in a very entertaining panic. Precisely the reaction I was hoping for.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she says. "I just got this immediate visual and I needed to walk away from it." Normally I might feel bad for Kip, seeing as this is our first meeting and I'm already revealing the unusual nature of my profession but he seems unfazed, as if normal people have these sorts of conversations at dinner parties. But I have decided that I am indeed, not a normal person. I say this very thing to Kira a few days later and she doesn't disagree. But instead of unnerving me, the thought comforts me. I have made it this far in my life, living in a world that does not condone the abnormal, and have not caved in to doing that which is expected of me. I am happy to have friends who, despite brief yet high-pitched reactions to certain oddities of mine, can actually revel in those oddities with me.

On BART going home I get a text from Bree. I'm pretty sure you left your underwear in the backseat of the car. My friends definitely deserve some type of medal.

The Great Divide

I write this blog in the most decadent of summer hazes. On this day, birthday of our great nation, I am spending the day with my family on the lake. We move between the house and dock, eating watermelon and avocado by the handful and staying in the water until our fingertips prune and our skin burns. The adults sneak off to the guest house at night to smoke pot while the kids play boardgames and pretend not to notice. I am the only one without the designated role to play. I am daughter, niece, granddaughter, yes, but I am not child or parent. I can hole up in my mother's office, reading my book or napping and it will be hours before anyone notices I am gone. I mention this not with self-pity or sadness but with fascination. I am not responsible for anyone nor is anyone responsible for me. There is something incredibly liberating about that idea but also something slightly terrifying.

When I visited here two weeks ago I came with the mission of telling my mother that I've been working at the Lusty Lady. It took me nearly the whole trip to work up the courage to say it yet her reaction was exactly what I had expected. "It's your life" she said, "You need to do what you need to do." I hate this. My parents are notorious for their neutral reactions, their dispassionate approval of whatever I choose to do. Most children, I realize, would thank their lucky stars that their mother didn't write them out of the family will or question what she did wrong as a parent but not me. Even when I confess that with my college degree I have decided to work as a stripper, I still cannot illicit more than moderate approval from her. When I was younger I was convinced that these reactions were either some neo-hippy parenting technique or a genuine disinterest in me. Now I know neither of those is the case. I think more than a well-considered method of child-rearing or failing to give a shit, my parents have just surrendered to the fact that they will never quite understand me. Like my decision to live in the UK, like my compulsive wanderlust, like my preference for intellectual rather than physical labor, the two of them probably figured long ago that the differences between us are too much for them to pass judgement on or to try to change and they have merely decided that to do so would be pointless. Whether this is just another misreading of their actions or not, I don't know. But I am content with this for now.

Last night my mother and I brought our Scrabble game out on the porch to watch the sun set on the water. The pink sky silhouetted the pines and we could hear squeels of laughter from the neighbor's dock. "I'm training to be in Private Pleasures this week. You know, the one-on-one booth," I told her. She just looked at her tiles. "I'll make a lot more money," I said, hoping that this might make it sound better. "I don't want to think of men jerking off to you. How would you feel if it was your daughter?" She says this without scorn or even annoyance. "I don't know, I'm not a P-A-R-E-N-T," I say, and lay down the tiles. Double word score. 16 points. She laughs. "Besides, men are going to jerk off thinking about me anyway. At least this way, I'm getting paid for it, right?" I think in some odd way this is logical to her, maybe it even consoles her, because her face changes a little and she says," You're right." It may not be much but I'll take it.

A Little's Enough

I'm sitting in my room, trying to fit as many domestic tasks into my night before I am off to work. On these nights, when my roommates are home from their nine-to-five jobs, settling in for some HBO or quality time with their significant others, I feel unnerved. In a few hours I will drive to the BART station, pay a substantial portion of the money I will make tonight for my ticket, and head into the city. At first I could not shake the unsettling feeling which accompanied these tranquil yet desolate nights. Instead of my own bed, I would collapse on a hard futon, used by countless women for countless years. Instead of a lover, I would only have my own exhaustion to pull me into sleep. But now these nights mean something different. While reading my book on the train I will sometimes glance up to find someone looking at me and the entirely irrational question comes to mind: "Do they know?" And then I remember that this experience, this secret, this...job, belongs to me. While others sleep I continue to go into the strange and beautiful night and come home the next morning with something just as strange and beautiful, something all my own.