i obsess.

Top 10 Reasons Why Bloggers Are = Strippers

1. Nicknames/Monikers

They sound nothing like traditional names given by adoring, (semi) rational parents at birth, rather, are noun-based "names" used to attract attention and better ranking through SEO, while simultaneously describing specifically what/who the person is. You say "something mommy" I say "Jasmine St. James."

2. Buttons/Widgets/Blog Jewels

Synonymous with stripper make-up, clothing, heels and other general costumery. All design elements of blog/twitter page/avatars which demonstrate to audience who "something mommy" is. This can even include quality/style of photography or lack of photos altogether (sort of a peek-a-boo alternative; akin to traditional, no-nudity burlesque vs. modern in-the-altogether muff-baring variety).

I knew strippers who wore designer clothing they worked themselves out of during their three-song set, while others wore rocker-chick gear they'd acquired at the local Wild Pair, a really trashy/awesome local chain that sold the shoes all the girls wore, total late-eighties/early-nineties shiny stilettos with 4 1/2" heels and replete with buckles/tassles/random fetish-y accoutrements. We all mourned when we heard they'd be going out of business, but it coincided with several sharp-eyed business-types opening stores, where they drove to the Hollywood location of Frederick's of Hollywood to pick up loads of their crazy shoes and sell them for extremely jacked prices here and in other small towns around the northwest. Hence my insistence at stopping in at the Hollywood store whenever I was in LA, so I could both avoid paying through the nose for the local seller's outrageous 200% commission on the shoes, and have the most fashion-forward stripper footwear while impressing all of my stripper friends with their fanciness and my obvious not-like-you-all style (I always made sure to pick the shoes I knew no one owned in Portland). I'M DIFFERENT! UNIQUE! ETC.!.

Some girls even wore thrift store stuff they'd taken apart and put back together. Totally gifted seamstresses, those chicks. And there were girls who bought the "Aljo" bejeweled/be-mirrored nylon-lycra flare-leg catsuits in all the more garish colors of the rainbow, and that white halter-top full-length body-skimming dress, oh, the ubiquity. OH, THE TIRESOME UBIQUITY of that dress. Every third dancer had it, and it weren't cheap. I think it ran about $180. Which not so many of us could afford, but MON DIEU the pressure! to look! like everyone! else!

3. Music

Twitter/blogger soundtracks, or blip.fm vs. the stripper's case of cds. Or lately, the ipod. My GOD, strippers these days have it good. In our day, we trekked miles in our hunt to find the good shoes, the good music, the good clothes, and then we had to haul it all into the club in gigantic trunks. Now they can just hand off their entire music collection, coin-purse-sized, to the DJ and that's that. No more trundling. And as to having easy access to any of the world's greatest costumes; woo-boy. What I would've done for that hook-up. I used to haunt weird vintage stores and drag-queen shops from SF to San Diego to pick up my odd garb. I often got into trouble for wearing what I did, for listening to the music I chose - once, at my all-time favorite joint that shall go unnamed but rhymes with "chassy," the hulking biker-man guy who booked the girls, S, called me on the dressing-room payphone (oh, yes, they did too have a payphone in the dressing room, though I'm sure the rationale was that a payphone would keep the shiftless dancers from remaining on it for too long with their stupid boyfriends or their childrens' sitter or whatever nonsense thing that kept them away from the patrons) to inform me that if I EVER played jazz (ftr, Billie Holiday) in his club AGAIN, I'd be better off just refraining from coming back, blankety-blank, ever. That was fun.

I suppose, though, I could even compare that to the current insta-published blogger vs. the traditional writer, the ease of access to a kajillion everything, sources and research and ideas and and and, where the old-school writer had to actually get in a vehicle of some kind and make their way to the library, GO OUT IN PUBLIC, and pull old documents from shelves and sneeze dustily while poring over masses of information so as to cull that one perfect idea and implement it into their work.

4. Attitude

Yes. Bloggers have them, too. (Okay. This one is filler. But it's no less true for being such. It's okay, number 4, I still love you. *pets number 4 adoringly*)

5. Exhibitionism

Both bloggers and strippers are exhibitors of themselves to varying degrees, the variety itself which I find fascinating when I compare blogging to stripping. I was the self-proclaimed Prudiest-Stripper-Ever, no matter the club, and I worked, during my career, all along the west coast, from Portland to LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, Seattle (for about 1/2 hour), to Anchorage, AK, so I can say with confidence that I really plumbed the depths of my rightful title. I am certainly far less prudish in my revelations through blogging than my stripping. However, I am still as much of a 'fraidy-cat of proffering my wares in exchange for money as ever, which brings me to

6. Selling It, or Cashing In

Described in any number of terms, it still boils down to this: you're good at getting people to give you money for what you do, or you suck at it. You're proud to offer what you've got in exchange for the highest-possible trade value, or you're embarrassed and ashamed, you're unworthy. You're a blogger who gives something that some, or a lot, or 2,346,754 and counting find worth looking at the advertising in your sidebar, with serious coin involved, or you're a blogger who gives something that some, or a lot, find worth looking at and would not object to looking at the sidebar advertising, only you haven't, for various reasons, got any.

In my case, purportedly, it's because I don't want my performance-art style cramped by advertisers. But it's a lie. Mostly. Mostly I'm afraid, because then I'd have to commit to it, and I suck at commitment, what with my mental derangement and that I'm a totally overgrown oppositional-loving toddler, or, I (probably) have co-morbid adhd + cyclothymia (bipolar-spectrum disorder) (or adhd + schizophrenia, maybe, but who really fucking knows, as the whole mental scape and its varying disarray of disorders isn't defined by what they refer to as an -- big finger quotes -- "exact science," yes, my fingers are coated thickly with sarcasm) and don't know how to grapple with those things and simultaneously commit to adult-blogger responsibility, a real bummer, as it's why I was the brokest-ass stripper you'd have ever met. I said it was because I was an artist and didn't need to market myself, because we ALL know that when you make REALLY, REALLY AWESOME art, people manage to find it eventually. Sans marketing. (The theory of which I could poke a million holes in if I wanted to.)

I know, now, that it was really because I was afraid to. Afraid of slammed doors, of cold, blank faces and folded arms and NOOOOO echoing in my ears. (What? Am I not good enough, pretty enough? Am I ugly? Weird? Unlikeable?) Rejection of your SELF is total shit. RIGHT, Bloggers?

7. Trolls

They exist in the stripping world, too. Only they say the mean things to your face. And they? CAN BE REAL MEAN CUSSES. I'm not just referring to the mostly-male customers; the things some of the strippers said to and about each other were mind-bogglingly cruel. And they disdained holding back (sound familiar?). It was a rare week where we didn't see people fight in the dressing room, sometimes physical battles, with fists and (boa) feathers flying, or more often just really, really ugly words exchanged while lipstick and shadow were calmly applied. I never once got into a physical fight, of which I'm proud, but I have a loose, flappy jaw on occasion and I certainly had my work cut out for me in being forced to sidestep a physical altercation if I'd said something cheeky. (Fortunately, I was mostly clever enough to keep things from getting too outta hand. Fortunate, because I haven't an inkling as to how to throw a proper punch). I think my avoidance of fights was aided by a general perception of me as eccentric and book-smart (I could often be found reading something smarty-pants in the dressing room in my downtime). Kind of a weirdo. Not a threat. Phew.

8. Alcohol (Or: Intoxicant of Choice)

Bloggers and strippers enjoy it in equal measure. It makes for good discussion material in and of itself. It's trouble. It implicates the user, lends them edge, smooths their social anxiety, identifies them with a certain, desirable demographic (whiskey vs. appletini, where whiskey is bad-ass and appletini is nice, sweet girlified).

Where bloggers favor prescription meds, particularly anti-depressants, strippers had easier access to the street stuff. But it all kinda works out to about the same thing in the end, don't you agree? (That is, a trip, or multiples of them, to the loony ward for rehabbing toward eventual re-entrance into "normal" society.)

9. Competition

It's dog-eat-dog. If you're a big player, you're friends with the other top-dogs. (If you're a self-cast eccentric, no one really bothers with you much, except to occasionally acknowledge you and say, oh, you're lovely. Bless you for not making us have to fight for the top-heap scraps with you, too!) The top strippers were scary (by which I mean, impressive. Threatening. Nerve-y. Confident. Brassy). It was impossible to know their subtler alliances amongst their own ranks, but woe to the one who would mess with any of them. The whole gang would come down on you in a heap. (While I was friends with a lot of the best-known strippers, I didn't see myself as a member of their faction. I wasn't. I didn't have blonde, blown-out hair and big boobs and perfectly manicured nails and the ubiquitous bejeweled costumes and the de rigueur clear-plastic Grecian-strap platforms. I didn't have the right tools, the proper, most popular look, the success-assured one. And I didn't have the drive to succeed. I didn't want those things. Looking back, I regret having not thrown myself into that role, because otherwise, WHAT THE RIGHTEOUS HELL WAS I DOING THERE?, though of course I reassured myself that I was researching characters and experience on which I would eventually base a book. HAHAHAHAHA. Good one, me. I'm glad to note Diablo Cody at least figured out how to make that work.)

10. Envy

While envy seems to drive some of us to be better (it could probably be folded into the competition category), it certainly drives others of us to heaps of self-loathing. The top strippers had the nicest cars, the coolest regulars, the ear of the club's booking agent and owner and DJ and bartenders and bouncers, they had it (seemingly) easy. The rest of us made do, but it was difficult to sit next to the girl at the table whose customer had just handed her a stack of Bens ($100 bills) and said, "no, babe, I don't want a dance. Just sit there and talk with me. I love talking to you." And then hand me or one of the other girls next to her a consolation $20. And make us dance for it. And not ask for a follow-up.

It was hard to resist turning myself into that other girl, the one with the boobs/blonde/nails/Aljo costume so I could profit similarly. I'm not at all certain I won any prizes for having not done so.

(I suppose I could argue that I supported feminism's cause by standing my unique ground, keeping my unique look, being a performance artist surrounded by strippers, but looking from here to there, the argument sounds tinny. Whiny.

I don't think there's any shame in self-promotion, be it for stripping *or* for blogging. If you've made something good, or you can do something compelling and worthy of being witnessed, why not demand equitable payment for it?

And I would've made an excellent blonde.)

not to be read if you possess a blueprint for enjoying your life.

The thing is, I'm going through a mid-life crisis, but it's kind of precious since it's my first one of what is certain to be a regular item on the menu of my life for the next, oh, fourteen-odd years.  It's kind of sweet and darling and golden in its twirly, twirly petticoats and its first-serious-wrinkles way.  It's adorable in its holy-shit-that-old-broad-in-the-mirror-is-me kinda fashion.  The genuine taken-aback by the quasi-unrecognizable element - it's nothing short of bizarre.

I was never traditionally gorgeous.  I wasn't a looker in high school.  Allow me to qualify that statement: I was not asked out on dates.  This was possibly more a lethal-to-sexual-development combination of an older, protective brother who was a well-known senior upon my arrival as a freshman, who most likely warned everyone of ugly mishaps if they so much as dared to turn their head while I bounced in blissful unawareness down a locker-filled hallway, and my being a gigantic fucking nerd.  I wasn't nerdy in dress, but I was nerdy in reputation, having been a member of the TAG (talented and gifted) program for all of grade school, etc., bla-dee-blowhard-blah.  I got academic awards and achieved - uh, stuff.  Good grades.  High marks in fitness, even.  Presidential fitness award.  Played classical piano for school assemblies.  Was in choir.  Church-attender.  "Good girl."  You know.  Typical hallmarks of your classic nerd.  (That and I have adhd and don't edit my thoughts super-well and was much, much verbally stumblier than I am now, and I am now very stupid in social settings so you can guess at how gawky and stumbly and unpleasant I was in all my excited, bubbly dorkiness.

Big-ass sigh.)

So.  Threatening older-brother who was a decorated athlete and over six feet tall in high school, x nerd signs all over my personal front yard = devestating lack of courting from all but the most annoying male members of the society of my high school for the bulk of my participation in its circumference, unwilling as I mostly was.  This informed my theory of How I Looked To People, Both Male and Female.  I.e., unattractive.

(A year in Brasil as an exchange student during my junior year, as a sixteen-, and then seventeen-year-old horny-ass girl in a foreign locale rife with seriously hot, very willing protagonists, UNaware of my nerdy persona nos Estados Unidos and aWARE that I was a horny-ass Americana, gave me a new perspective on my appearance.  I still chalked up the interest in my sexual wares as my being foreign, being American, sort of like how boys at my school would've probably behaved toward the female French exchange student, no matter how mildly attractive, if we'd ever had one, simply because of the stereotype about how sexy French girls are.  There sure as hell was a stereotype about American girls in Brasil, thanks to American cinema.  I was a disappointment to an awful lotta fellas who assumed we'd be fucking within seconds of an embrace based on the myth.  So I had enough sense to recognize I wasn't merely attractive as a result of my physical merits.  I just wasn't sure what the balance was.  I got that I was taken more at my current value than I would have been if I were still at home, attending my regular school, allotted all of the baggage of having grown up alongside the people there.  Still - a somewhat muddy reflection of me, in the end.)

Once my sentence at public school had been served, with time off in the foreign spot for good behavior, etc., I began to have a better idea of my appeal.  I wasn't sure, despite that, because the adhd is so off-putting and socially crippling.  I'd assess the mirror for hours, turning this way and that, smiling, pouting, mincing, but it never gave me that final assent: yes, you are pretty.  No, you are not pretty.

I just wanted to finalize it, just nail it down, so I could carry on and walk through my day either confident that I was, and behaving accordingly (whatever that fucking would've entailed), or not.  I settled on -- feeling unsettled.

I had a few boyfriends after high school, between the years of nineteen and twenty-one, one of whom was very outdoors-adoring, and once I'd been on enough adventure-dates with him I realized I hated a) makeup and b) him.  (He was an utter ass; lovable, but really, just as ass as a human can be.)  The important thing I took from the relationship was how stupid and pointless makeup is (I'd already come to this conclusion about bras that give the appearance of larger, rounder breasts) - the deception is just embarrassing once the moment of truth arrives, and then you feel like you owe the lucky person an explanation, which sort of totally sucks the sexy out of a moment like nothing else. 

So I was determined to discover the level of my attractiveness to those-who-would-be-attracted based on my natural appearance.  (Also, I figured out just how much I genuinely liked sex, having it, and not allowing stupid shiz like embarrassing, oh!, my breasts are NOT double-Ds! moments to complicate or, truly, dilute the pleasure potential.  HEY, YOU, EMBARRASSMENT: GET OUTTA MY ORGASM.)

Enter stripping.  (I know, it ain't classy-sounding, like "burlesque."  I don't sugarcoat.  As already explained w regards to the makeup and bra business.  You will eventually adjust.)  The convoluted beginnings of the stripping I may have already explained in some prior post, but I don't remember, and I don't much care.  That was that story, this one is this.  And I cannot pinpoint just what it is making me so pissy about refusing to extrapolate that part.  Guess it's my dislike of the imagined audience giving me a scolding look.  Your scolding looks are angering me.  Especially the imaginary portion of the (imaginary) audience, which, btw, includes you.  Yes.  You.  Stop smirking.  Let's un-de-rail this thing, shall we?

It took a while, and some coaxing on the part of many acquaintances/friends made in those cloying strip-club dressing rooms that were sometimes closets with a mirror and a low shelf and a bulb dangling from a string, to recognize the validity in costume for the role of stripper.  I had to be almost held down at one point, by a woman who viewed herself sort of club-queen at the Pure Platinumb (the "b" in that is my clever addition) marched me over to her chair, who plopped me down and proceeded to clown my face out of existence under several trowels-full of heavy makeup.  The works.  Then she shoo'd me out of the dressing room where I'd been dithering and into the dark club, where I was suddenly reacted to by SEVERAL customers at once.  As in, more than two.  Possibly as many as three.  It was weird.

After that, I got more comfortable with the idea that I was attractive.  I got used to being whistled at or looked at as a pretty, a beautiful, woman, though -- not really.  I was always sort of surprised by it when it wasn't at a strip club.  If someone spoke to me on the street or wherever people say random things or make animal noises at pretty people, it always sent a shock of color to my face and a mumbled thanks or stupid thing that would burble helplessly from my lips.  The reason this is kind of amazing is because, if I were dressed in a two-inch skirt and fishnet half-shirt minus any undergarments, with a full face of makeup and hair pinched and prodded and six-inch stilettoes, I had no difficulty firing back immediately if someone said something to me regarding my appearance, or really, anything at all.  It was the costume - it empowered me to be bold in my response to an approach by a strange person, woman or man.  In my day-to-day, where I wore large, balloon-ish, clown-y clothes that never alluded to my job, I was incognito, and as such, unequipped to respond to comments about my looks.  Shocked, even, when people would hit on me when I was dressed - goofily, in thrifted, sloppy, ill-fitting things that hid my shape, my hair in a low bun, my fifties-librarian glasses with no lenses masking my face.  Why would they? - I wasn't pretty.  I didn't have any of the markers of a pretty girl on my person.  Surely it was fool-proof (it wasn't). 

So looks are mostly about markers, I figured out, especially because I leapt from dancing to acting school, and got even more into costumes and props and markers and what does and does not conspire to make someone react to one's appearance.

At a certain point, I realized that there was an element of basic, good genetic shape to my physique and my facial structure that made people think I was pretty or good-looking or whatever, but that I could disguise it, mask it, or I could appeal to a certain sub-set of people based on the costume I was wearing at that moment.  Some days, I deliberately appealed to the crowd, because I needed it.  I needed them to tell me I was pretty, good looking.  I needed them to approve of me without knowing me, without learning about my tics and my dorky, shivery-lapdog behavior that would out me if I were sans costume, because I needed the ease of approval from strangers.

Some days, I did not want that approval.  I would go as far as I was allowed (particularly at work, where, uh, looking ugly and unappealing was rather frowned-upon, but I pushed it as far as I could, just to test the people around me, test them to see if they would discover an attractive person beneath the ugly, crusty, off-putting exterior, because I wanted to believe that if *they* could find that attractive person in there, maybe she really did exist).

(This was all very organic, very indirect.  I wasn't aware of all of this on a conscious level.  I can see it now, plain as day, natch, but back then it was just some foggy feeling I intuited about how I should operate, some weird, ingrown vibe that I found irrestible and was obedient to.  No better explanation for the behavior than that, which seems sad, somehow.)

And then some good and bad things happened, and I quit acting and I quit life, sort of, at least, I seriously tried, and would have succeeded but this dude who eventually became my husband intrigued me and then insisted that he wanted me to stick around and have his babies and be his incredibly argumentative wife who refuses to do or be anything he would really view as "dream girl" quality but then be horribly contrary and work tirelessly to do and be all of the things that constitute that person when he isn't expecting it, and oh!, did I mention, my husband's a (medal pending) saint?  Because he is.  A grumpy, mostly perfect saint.

So here I am.  Thirty-six and grabbing the last dregs of these days of what I finally realize are pretty ones.  But get this: it's already nearly gone.  The sands have shifted downward, they have slipped trickily out of my grasp even as I scrabble over the surface of my body of my face of my head of my sanity and clutch, clutch, clutch.  The costume days are drawing to screechingly abrupt halt.  I am - aging.  I am not pretty any longer.

I wouldn't resent it so goddam much if I could have ever, just for one goddam day, really believed it in the first place.  I didn't know I had it 'til it was gone.   And - make no mistake.  It is GONE.  Irrevocably, irretrievably departed.  My costumes now will involve ridiculous old ladies.  How much costume they'll be is anyone's guess.

I reach out for old age and I beg for it.  I am no pious patient.

*attempts to leap over yawning chasm onto opposite shelf where old age rests, refusing to acknowledge how that maneuver has never yet worked, that cutting in the line is impossible and the growth necessary in the interim is vital, and in fact the attempt to cheat somehow seems to delay the growth so much that it will arrive later than it does for everyone else and she will be left, standing, alone, behind, ashamed of her attempted circumvention of the necessary route through painful reality and its resultant pain will lacerate her more as it is coupled with shame*

Eat me, oh, young, oh, youth, oh, offspring.  Pierce me with a skewer and devour me.  Save me from this slow, wretched amble into obscurity, into the dust, into ever-deepening madness.  I am not so dried and hollowed that I won't still make an excellent meal. 

Just be sure to put some gravy on the table.  In case.

some like it lukewarm.

It's so weird to wake up every day and feel it, feel the thirty-six years all settled into me, pressing down on me, and to rise and stumble because the years don't just feel heavy, they also have wreaked serious fucking havoc on my ability to walk gracefully.  And this breath, my GOD, my mouth, it's truly like I am renting a pet hostel from an extended family of miniaturized nutrias, that, while I've slept, have done nothing but have stinky nutria-sex all night, in my mouth, and it's warm and rancid and dry and my teeth feel like small, cheap, generic Legos, all clattery and clumsy.  But that isn't the worst part.  The worst part is my hair.  Not the gray chunks (which used to be, even up until several weeks ago, merely strands.  Separate strands of gray kind of quietly spreading throughout my hair.  Turning into a fucking gray-hair army, it seems; they're uniting in a subtle-yet-discernibly hostile takeover of my scalp.  I don't care as much I thought I would, though).  It's the FRIZZ.  The curly hair that has always been my bane, oh, it continues.  Not the curls.  The old-lady frizz.  It's AWFUL.  It's like Einstein and

oh who the FUCK am I misleading with this?  This lunacy.  It ain't me.  I'm not writing it for me.  I'm writing it for you, today, and it feels like complete bullshit.  I have to just face facts:  I can't make myself write.  I thought I'd try, but all the trying is doing is giving me a pain in my gut, and there's a streak of bile headed for my mouth as I clatter these stupid horrid words out.

I can only write when I can.  No matter how hard I try to convince myself that I'm in charge of this thing, this setting-down-of-words in long, pale strands, I cannot cheat. 

It doesn't seem fair.  So many seem to be in such firm control of their writerly parts.  I am in as little control of them as I am of my hair going gray, the skin on the backs of my hands growing thin and the veins there looking more luminous and blue and traveled all the time, the apparent transparency of this aging and of my participation in its full-throated bloody rapacious scream, and that's fine, I suppose.  It has to be.  Seriously, I could kind of care less, because I'm so caught up in the minute scrap of control I have over my writing, after all of these bloody evidenced years.  So many stories I ache to release in a sublime thrust all over the page, so many stories I want to vomit and shriek and spurt and shatter and whisper and they're all holed up inside me like so many useless children I'll never birth and I'll be gasping my last stupid breaths and the only thing I'll leave as evidence of my existence, finally, is the terrifically bad nutria-sex stank.

When all I ever wanted to do was write.  (Well, and sing and dance and fuck and strip and gyrate and snowboard and drink and carouse and bust up assholes with my sharp fists and get high and talk high-falutin' multi-layered trippy nonsense with all them stupid fuckers.)

(And drink good, black tea and climb into the hills and smell the damp under the trees and examine the underside of a fern, acknowledge its curly edges and the wee rust-brown spores gracing the lengths of each branch, and read the classics and consider just what so-and-so meant while staring down a bloody sunset with glittering eyes, then finding someplace simple to rest and eat my little sandwich on hearty bread and a hearty lunch of William Carlos Williams or Vonnegut or Salinger or Dostoyevsky or, oh, beloved Fitzgerald.  Rising, strong in my body and fortified, enriched, in mind.  And THEN off to the strip club for a night of hilarious banter with drunks after -- and during -- my silly stripper antics.  Sometimes accosted by a frisky friend in the dressing room, sometimes pleased by it, sometimes annoyed, always intrigued.  Who would want to touch me, embrace me, kiss ME?  Why?  It's all so strange, our mingling, as people.  As creatures.)

I've stored up enough experience to get me through the early to middling years of parenting, I think, but - will I drag it out and kick it into some kind of literary shape as I would do if I could but MAKE IT SO?

I must bear with myself in this unquixotic struggle, this banal battle of unholy proportions, while I fight to dare my muse to strip, while I use all my wiles to convince her to pull those drawers down around her ankles and shove her naked ass against some stranger's steamed glasses.

And I'm gonna do it, no matter the shame coursing through her now.  She'll get used to it.  Grow to like the feeling, even.

*clique, clique*

Or:  The Road to Success is Paved with Assholes.

We would sit on the bench along the rear wall of the dressing room lockers and discuss books and music and film while waiting for our turn at "up-time" - a horrible cat-walk get-the-evening-going system devised by the pimpy manager of the club where we worked, Pure Platinum (yes, that was the real name *gags*).  There were two locations; one sort of along the freeway in the middle of a random strata of San Diego burroughs, and one near the airport.  We worked at the one along the freeway.  It was considered the better of the two, which was laughable to us.  Sometimes, during a table dance (and they meant it, at this joint; the dancing was done in a little circular cut-out on the top of the tables) one would cling to the ceiling for balance during the routine, often meaning that bits of decrepit ceiling would flake off and drift down into one's locks.  Picking them out later was a true delight.

There were several dancers who would sit in the same seats, night after night, in front of the mirror that stretched along the wall just beyond the door into the dressing room. It was as if those seats belonged to them.  They were senior dancers in the club and also usually the best money-makers, and they were entitled, somehow, and no one else dared sit there.  Well, there were nights where those girls weren't working and then a second-tier dancer would take her seat; but otherwise, it was understood.  They got those spots.

We called them the mirror-girls.  When we were together and away from the club, we'd mimic them and their almost-ghoulish behavior while putting on their faces; how they spoke to one another, how they flipped their hair, how much rouge they applied to their decolletage. 

They had a name for us, too.  One night, one of the girls flipped her hair and, turning to give us the once-over while we mused quietly on Hemingway and feminism, said something pointed about our being "the nerd group."

We all laughed, genuinely laughed, laughed so hard the three of us were laying about on the floor in choking spasms.  It was such a filthy floor, too, with anyone's guess as to when it had last been cleaned.  But we couldn't help it.  We really *were* the nerd group.

I was so proud of that.

(I was also proud of the fact that, on an almost-nightly basis, I flashed the bouncer, ready to walk me to my car, and the dancers still waiting in the queue to be escorted out, with my regular bikini underwear, that they all referred to as "granny panties."  The other girls wore g-strings, without exception.  This was in ancient times, or about twelve years ago, so it's funny to think of g-strings being so edgy.  But they were.  Going commando wouldn't become a thing until at least a few years later on.)

I'm pleased when I'm not associated with what everyone else is doing in a large group.  To be different, to be able to distinguish myself from the rest of the inhabitants of a scene, it makes me feel alive. 

As a blogger, I'm glad to not play at being a hipster.  I don't know anymore what's cool in the music world, in film, or the realm of fashion, really, though once upon a time, it was the most important thing I could fathom. 

It's an honor to be friends with other bloggers who, while possibly not the edgiest, are the most genuine, the most sincere.  I'm humbled by their continued search for their truth, whether it means their traffic fluctuates or just plain plummets.  It's what makes them the very most edgy of us all.

And FUCK you if you think you're so cool you can't speak to something because it's beneath you.  Even when it's presented by someone who is lovely and genuine and a hundred times the writer, a thousand times the person, that you could ever be.  Especially then.

May your beloved mirror give you the unending pleasure and validation you apparently seek.  But don't assume there aren't people mocking your every move while you absorb yourself into its depths.

Oh, there are.

sales-pitch, with new! improved! prologue! from my long-ago days of debauchery.

Back in my burlesque (read: stripper) days, I hated the moment when I had to ask the guy I'd just thrilled with a private dance to ante up with the money he owed.  Generally, they were good enough in just handing it to me up front, before the big event, and not requiring any verbal nudging.  I would cringe as the song drew to a close and, while collecting my bits and bobs and climbing, rather unsexily, back into my glittery costume, the customer in question would simply sit there, blank look on his face.  I would imagine with trepidation how, given that slight semi-scowl, he was probably trying to intimidate me into not asking for the amount we'd agreed upon prior to the performance.  About how he was a massive asshole, one of the chumps we got in the clubs often enough, the ones who felt, somehow, they were the ones owed something, that the six bucks they'd dropped on a whiskey-and-tonic ought to have been sufficient.  Once in a great while, of course, that really was the case; the guy was a flat tire who genuinely didn't want to cough up the money, or would pretend he didn't have enough, or would suggest we'd agreed to a lesser amount.  And, especially in my earlier years at the game, I would take it.  As I got more accustomed to that kind of thing, of course, I grew more callous in my demand that they provide me with the previously agreed-upon rate, and when that still didn't budge the fella, I'd summon the bouncer and have him summarily dismissed from the building (although that was usually enough to convince a guy to cough up the correctly-numbered bank notes).

Generally, of course, he had a blank look on his face because he was kind of in a sexy-duh-zone, and it simply took a little smile/wink/outstretched paw from me for him to wake up a little and, smiling back, hand me the money.

I still never liked that part of the business.  I hate asking for money.

H.A.T.E.

*****

I'm going to post a widget in my sidebar today that is essentially a breaking-down-and-begging, very humbly, for donations from any of you who can throw a few bones (like five, or six, or eight, if you can manage it, and nothing but love and well-wishes if you can't) our way.  The getting-there is basically covered (airline miles sure don't stretch as far as they used to, I've recently discovered), but the hotel fee is unnerving even with the fact that we're bunking together in minimums of three to save on costs.  They jack the (hotel/food/breathing space) prices up ridiculously for this kind of event.  Which, of course, leads me to the fact of food to cover.  (Beer's part of the action -- *phew* --, evidently, in this tent-thingy we're getting some passes for, it's a blogger-press-specific function that's semi-covered by corporate-y groups, and the rest of it is money we've come up with to pay for the limited number of passes we'll be trading around in order to get in and have some boxed lunches and sodas and the aforementioned jesus'-blessed-gift-of-beer, and mingle with the other supa-sexy blogger-press.  Which makes me wonder - how is everyone going to feel, these superbloggers, being forced to evacuate from their pajamas to blog the gig?  Should be interesting.  There's certain to be a lot of clothes-tugging and awkward stances.  I'm gonna have to try and snatch some sneaky body pics for evidence of general clothing discomfort. 

I'm kind of a rude bastard.)

So, uh, yeah.  If you can help out, that would kick ass.  In exchange, you'll get the inside track from yours truly, along with my fellow hot MOMos, on the goings-on from the press-box at the Democratic National Convention.

Seriously.  A coupla bucks.  If you can spare it.  And if you can't, just send me off by shoving a buck(et) of confidence down my pants.  I'll need it.

(Who knows; maybe, next time I see you, I'll stoke you with a private dance as payback.  Although I'm much more likely to mix you up a darn fine whiskey-and-soda.

And *then* dance.

But I'm not alluding to the quality, nor the nudity, of said dancing.  Mainly a terrible collusion of Michael-Jackson-meets-Patsy-Cline multiplied by Chaka Khan's hair.

I know.  You just ran away.

I feel for yoooooo.)

smut blogging.

I refrain from posting really often, because there are so many smutty items of business that dance like wee, naked gingerbread hookers across my mental screen that I just really don't think you, yes, you, care to read about.

You're welcome.

(unless -- ?)

(cough you love smut cough?)

(cough please debbie post more smut more often hack?)

You know.  Feel free to - discuss.  With me.  Here.

I'm (really obviously) pretty open.

the current dem candidacy smackdown, as viewed through the lense of an ex-stripper.

Back in the dark ages when I was, indeed, a stripper - and I happened to be one for several years, so it wasn't as though I just dabbled; I know from whence I speak - I encountered loads of conflict.  From every arena, in every gender-on-gender way.  I saw men fight men; once, when Jay, my best gay boyfriend, drove me to work for an evening shift, he kind of didn't really want me to go in because right before I got out of the car, we watched a stream of dudes exiting the rear of the building, the first of whom was badly bloodied from face to groin.  The second was carrying aloft what appeared to be a javelin, but was, in fact, I kind of remember, a closet pole dowel thingy (you love me for my scientific specificity, huh).  The first guy had evidently stabbed some dude, boyfriend to one of the other dancers, and then got walloped by some yokels.  It was dumb.  Another friend of ours, along for the ride, happened to be an EMT and was all, "do you think I should *gulp* go in?"  I said, sure, yeah, alrighty.  The subtext of that statement was YES PLEASE DO NOT MAKE ME GO IN THERE ON MY OWN.  It ended up fine, and I danced the night away to fun tunes like "Rock and Roll All Night (and Party Every Day)" - it has been my humble opinion for the last few years that the title of that song ought to be altered to "Walk and Crawl All Night, and Potty Every Day," but then, I'm the mother to a toddler who has lately made me want to chew through my chains and bolt.  But that's just this week.

a shnore-y for you. or: hi! i have adhd! what would you like for dinner? let's go to the zoo!

Once upon a time, I considered in great seriousness the idea of becoming a pop-tart music star, and in order to flesh out the exact-right image of what I had in mind in *your* mind, allow me to say the following:  neon. yellow. pvc. hot. pants. with. matching. crop. top.

Oh.  And also matching knee-high stiletto boots.

But I'm not done.  You see, the idea was to build on my experiences as an exchange student in Brazil, with requisite fluency in Portuguese and a whole lotta nothin' to do with it afterward except flash it around at cocktail soirées and the like, or, rather, just flash it around at cocktail parties, 'cause there really is no like, other than maybe when, say, shopping at the mall and randomly blurting something out in portuguese.  You know.  That.  And the other thing I was planning on using as a cornerstone of my musically pop-tart-letted persona of grandiosity and plastic-bottomed squeakiness was, natch, the stripper-ease.  I figured, hell.  I learned how to shake it so well that Justin Timberlake, yeah, that one, hit on me one night when he was probably around seventeen years old, and I was an ancient (for strippers) lady of twenty-five-ish, I think, *scratches head because who really effing knows,* and I thought he seemed incredibly dorky with his bright-ass jew-fro and his nerdy way of trying to convince me he was fabulous because he had been accompanied into said club by his bodyguard and had driven to said club in a "really hot car" (did he mean he'd stolen it?), and I smiled patronizingly and, motivated mainly by how very tired I was, given that it was almost quittin' time (a little after 2 a.m.) and my feet had been strapped into very high, very narrow shoes for several hours and had been carrying my body around in pirouette-y movements and other various stripper-ish antics that you can probably imagine on your own without my worded aid, and, well, I was just too exhausted to amuse this dumb seventeen-year-old kid with his jew-fro and his catholic-school-boy cross-on-a-chain necklace worn so prominently above the black v-neck t-shirt and his pretentious attitude.  I mean, who the hell did he think he was?  I'm serious.  I don't care what he's done since then.  I know he must've had a sense that he was gonna blow up.  Fine.  But at that point, he was just some dumb kid with an overblown sense of importance, and I had no friggin' clue that he was anyone other than a local rich brat out on the town after curfew.  With some obvious connections to be able to get into a strip club when so obviously underage, or just a really big wad of bills to waft under the bouncer's nose.  Either way?  I only thought he was annoying.  And I was tired.  I felt the tired waving up through the bottoms of my soles and into my chest, and in my neck, even in my teeth, and I remember it was hard to smile at him, even though it was my practice to usually be nice to people unless they compelled me to break out the asshole and make them go the hell away.  Which took a lot.  I was a tough cookie back then.  It surprises me to remember how tough I was.

Anyway.  So that kid hit on me and I laughed him off and went home and smoked a doob and went to bed.  And the next day my friend/roommate and I went to the mall and I saw his band's poster on the wall of that hilariously cheesy costume-jewelry store for teens, you know, Claire's, and I stopped short.  And looked close.  Examined the hair.  The necklace, the one grazing the t-shirt's neck.  His nose was definitely that guy's nose.  Wow.  I felt really - weird.  Surprised.  A little insulted.  A little flattered. 

Then we went and got coffee and had a good laugh about the whole thing, my old friend and I.

So the GENIUS idea for me to use my singing/stripping/language skills and become a cross-over pop star in Brazil, with an album in portuguese and english, garbed in small bits of neon-yellow plastic, well, I might have just done it.

If it weren't one of the SERIOUSLY dumbest ideas I've ever had.  And I've had some doozies.  In other words, approximately twenty minutes after the idea had been conceived, it had been discarded.  But it lived large in my mind for those twenty minutes.  (How could it not have?  I was wearing bright-yellow plastic hot pants and matching bra in it.  It was a loud outfit.  I've been effectively scarred by my own, treacherous imagination.)

*********

Am I the only one who, prior to shaving, when it's already been a few weeks, kind of thinks, oh, but for all of this leg hair goeth my shapely, porcelain-skinned limbs of beauty?  Only to actually shave and discover that what lies beneath the hair is, gasp, not porcelain, but rather man-eating-pores-of-horror and more veins than last time I looked, and bigger ones, too, and also all those old damn scars from being a Tasmanian devil as a kid, and also the ever-wobblier knee-flesh?  Is that just me?

maybe i should just twist shrink-wrap around my head.

Then I wouldn't have to bother with therapy.  And that would be a relief. 

Not that I don't love and adore talking about myself on and on, ad naseum, because, oh lordy, but do I ever.

It's just - oh, hell.  I feel as though I've been down this road so many goddamn times already.  Though, of course, not as a parent, which is truly what is taking me back down the avenue of "uh-hum, and why do you think that is?" (and other equally vague, mind-numbingly frustrating statements spoken through pursed lips of that ilk).

So much is surfacing right now, as we paint and paint and tear out and remove and visit the hardware store enough times to know many of the employees on sight, and receive sometimes-daily visits from the electrician and the general contractor, and write checks for obscene amounts of money for ridiculously exciting things like furnaces and flooring and cabinets (because, yes, we're throwing in that trite, hole-ridden towel on salvaging the cabinets, the object of so much back-and-forthing and hemming/hawing that has borne witness to my varied attempts to remove the paint and nasty, inches-deep stains of god-knows-what on both the insides and the outsides of the old kitchen cupboards, where I've removed more flesh than paint, and revealed more ugly soul-worms and sundry other unpleasant spiritual nastiness in the process).  Also, we've done some painting, and there's been the fun of J's massive anxiety over having started daycare part-time, it's been tough on him, all of this, and I want to sympathize, but I also need the sanity that results from a little time to work on all the jobs I've got and not be forced to do so during his incredibly-shrinking naptimes and after he's in bed, when I'd prefer to do things like, oh, sleep, and relax, and have five minutes of conversation with my husband that is not limited to child rearing or home repairs or the business or money or other similarly bloody fucking I'd-rather-die-now-please topics of hellish soul-sucking pleah. 

Don't get me wrong.  I heart our new home.  I will heart it much more when it resembles our home and not a factory for broken dreams.  Which is currently its state.  Ai.  Seriously.  Kill me now.

But, no, please don't, because I'm gonna git fixed, I'm going to the doctor, and I'm gonna get heaaaalthy, going to the doctor and I'm gonna get heaaaalthy.  Gonna get me some focus, is what I'm fixing to do.  Gonna get me some brain-glue.  Kick that frontal lobe in the balls.  Til it pukes.  I'm gonna toss it in the horse's water barrel, and then make it drink eight pots of rocket-fuel-coffee.  And spit in its eye.  Hear that, frontal lobe?  Get ready for head to roll.  (Ha.  I'm really just that amusing.  Say you're amused.  Amazed?  Amassed?  Amorous?  Ambiguous?  Ambidextrous?  Amicable?  Amorphous?  Amway?  Uh.)

The stuff that's really been busting up through the top of my skull these last few work-y days is my history in regards to le burlesque.  Now that I've uncorked the bottle, it's all pushing up, crowding through the neck all together, loud and crackly.  I can barely keep it all sorted, in fact I can't really at all, and I want to find some time and a wee corner in which to seat myself and write write write 'til my hand cramps in the weird claw that I'm becoming familiar with of late, but when?  And it wants to be written, I'm feeling it in my jaw and the itch is strong, when?  And one of the weirder aspects of this nascent push to purge the shivery, black scrawl of words is that I'm seeing them again, seeing them everywhere, the women who I know have had racy histories of their own, only, am I imagining it again?  Like I used to do, when I knew in my bitty bones that so many bands had written certain lyrics with shamelessly racy burlesque babes in their heads as inspiration?

So if you're offended and must skulk off, permanent-like, I will do my best to keep my head up and write it despite the disappearance of people I've grown so accustomed to in this layer of world (kind of like one of the filling layers in a cake, really - raspberry-jam).

I have to keep my head up, keep writing it, keep prodding the frontal lobe, fixing, working, toiling, laboring.

I owe it to - myself?  Sure, yes, for today, that's who I owe.

(Although for the rest of the week I've gotta toil for the other joints.  Bummer.  I really long to press the words into place on pages, make their lacy shapes appear lest I forget them, in permanent displays of equal parts silliness and horrific stupidity and shambles and shams I'm such a sham.  I'll be at it for a long while despite that wretched truth, something tells me.  I wish it would shut up.)

questions that beget more damn questions.

I overheard a woman who was dressed, well, not "up," per se, but dressed better than casually - her pumps were classic granny wedges, in a sensible navy (although they may have been gray, or possibly dark beige; the light was dim), and she sort of potentially had deliberately made her garment choices according to a very specific style-bent.  However, the lighting in the media section of the appliance store was purposely poor, and I was busy keeping my toddler from physically adhering himself to the giant screen that contained the moving! and fascinating! voice of Eddie Murphy, as portrayed magically through the image of a cg ass.  So my attempt to interpret her wardrobe selection/period/genre/style/mish-mash/amalgam or whatever was limited at best.  Although I was not so impaired as to be unable to overhear her conversation with the salesperson she had engaged.  She knew her stuff, too; she quizzed him on sizes and shapes and numbers and letters and I was duly impressed by her seemingly vast, endless, depthless prowess in the field of knowledge in regards to television electronics.  It sparked a memory, reminded me suddenly of something, something strong, something redolent of my own past, my own historical treadmarks, and I had to work out just what that was in a super-sped-up manner, because of my son's having suddenly deserted the movie in which he'd been so recently engrossed, tongue lolling.  I had to push all my mental energy into a furious genius-ball and roll it directly into the pins, crack!, and knock down at least eight, or even nine.  But I struck solid gold in those pins; they came crashing down around my ears in the form of the clear memory, the sudden vision surrounding my skull, vice-like.  I was dressed in a similarly campy fashion, along the lines of the young, wedge-wearing, electronics-genius girl who had clung my memory bell.  I had swooped in on electric wings of energy to the upscale department store in downtown, I was in the shoe department, it was midday, but not really lunch time, and there more sales people than shoppers.  I was buying things, I was acting out my impressively vast knowledge of fashion and footwear and flashing my fat wad of cash and the sales guys were duly impressed, not by my vast knowledge, but my bankroll.  And I was not dressed like a stripper, but I felt certain they could see beyond my campy, overconservative vestiges and into my stripper-layer, and I was convinced that they were utterly disgusted but simultaneously fascinated, and also hungry for that money gracing the lining of my grandma-skirt-pocket.

And that girl.  What was she doing in that store in the middle of the day but *not* a lunchbreak-slice of it, dressed kind of like a secretary, only one from the late seventies?  ?  Asking questions about plasma screens that cost far more than the average administrative assistant earns in a month?

What?

And, so, yes, maybe I *did* immediately hoist my casually-paint-and-food-stained trousers up and leap directly to the conclusion that she was me from ten years before.

Is that a bad thing?  Is it?

Also, I used to dance to Motley Crue and The Pet Shop Boys.  And Sex Dwarf, by Soft Cell, and also Superchunk and The Supersuckers and Operation Ivy, and even bands like My Bloody Valentine and Yo La Tengo and Rocket from the Crypt and *of course* The Pixies and, naturally, Hall and Oates and occasionally The Doors and Jimi and Blondie and Zep and Patsy Cline and -- that was a very important facet of the whole thing, believe it or not.  We identified ourselves through our music.  I identified myself through my music so very far beyond the strip club.  It was my entire life, kind of, during that time.

It's so strange to have lost that piece, that element, of my sense of self.  P, you know what I mean.  It hurts way down in that tiny corner of my gut that I almost never approach anymore, for fear of how desperately oozy and green the wound has become, and how woozy I would become if I poked it.

I miss the music.

taking naked blogging to new heights. or new lows. something.

I asked; you nodded your beaming approval; prepare yourselves for the onslaught of information re: my sordid-ish past.

But know this: I regarded myself, always, from the moment I began my $trip-tease career, to the moment I stepped off the stage for the last, very last time, as a prude (in fact, and this may -- or may not -- surprise you; I still think of myself as such, even with the being an ex-$tripper and all).  Because, just as in any other microcosm of life, there are the hussies, and there are the un-hussies.  The opposite end of the spectrum from my prudish-stripper-self, naturally, was the prostitute.  The girl who used her stage persona as simply an advertisement for her services outside of the $trip club.   (Or, to be even more specific: the person who was willing to do anything and everything for money.)

This is an important facet of the lens through which I viewed myself for the several years that I was in and out of the industry.  I want you to be thoroughly versed in my angle of that lens prior to opening any chapters on this subject.  Even just a page of one chapter.  It's crucial.  I think.

Or not (?).

Let's see, shall we?

staring down my brain in a dark alley.

Hey.  So - I have this kinda awkward question I want to ask you.  See, I have suddenly developed a mad penchant to write a post or two about my experiences as a $tripper.  But usually when I bring up the topic to a few of my friends, it's as though someone killed the jukebox, there's sudden quiet, and nary a bird is tweeting in the background; just a big, foreboding hush, and then everyone starts up again like I never spoke.  So I'm kind of wondering whether I'm going to get a similar response when we're not in a vis-a-vis, i.e., a potentially ridiculously uncomfortable if you disapprove of my past sort of scenario, or if the truth will out itself and people will admit to being somewhere in the mildly curious to insatiably, desperately intrigued category.   And actually, if you disapprove, please explain.  I'm curious, too.  I want to know the truth, the whole damn, ruthless truth, is what I'm saying, I want it.  I want to know all of the whys and wherefores.  If that means you need to post a comment anonymously, I'm cool with that.  I just have this desire to hear the reality of people's feelings about me, this person they genuinely like, having slummed it on such a shady, needle-and-turgid-sleaze(y) street for quite a little while.  Someone who still has so many reservations about having done so, but is also proud and glad and a little nostalgic, and absolutely confused as hell about the whole thing.

Use your voice in the comments.  Just, um, be diplomatic (i.e., don't be too rough on me) if you really *do* disapprove.  I'm a little, um, sensitive.

*****

Wow.  I'm sitting here, just awed, really, over how much support you are all willing to give me, how much compassion, how much care.  Damn.  Dayum, as Mel would say.

Your comments make me feel brave, and like I could write anything, never mind merely the fluffy (only, not-so-much) topic of le strip.

Thank you.  Thank you for giving me the sense that I am not the abysmal, bottom-dwelling poo-on-a-stick-head that I'd credited myself to be for so long, so long.  So long to that feeling.  I'm trying to kick its cloying, throat-tightening ass to the proverbial curb.  You're helping.  You help so much.  As it has been duly noted a thousand-hundred times over; the people in my blogerhood are like the firemen holding the trampoline.  The kids with the biggest paper-and-doily valentines and the nicest phrases on them.  You're my friends.

*grabs a hunk of kleenex, mops up*

(And a special thanks to Jenny and Binky, my first two blogging friends to whom I came out, for having made me feel so at ease about eventually cracking the subject open wide here.)