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