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.
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