Just Say No

Wednesday was surreal. I pulled $600 and was incredibly inebriated the entire day. It really wasn't intentional. I was given a cigarette packed with weed and was so dunk on gin martinis that by the time a realized what it was I had smoked half of it. I don't smoke at work. It makes me paranoid.

My day in a nutshell: 2pm- Champagne room with regular.

Me: Sipping gin martinis on my costumer's lap

Him: Begging me to go out with him.

Me: guzzling my martinis

Him: Getting more annoying.

3pm- Another regular comes in. Hands me a cigarette full of weed which about ruins my day. I demand he buy dances from me every time I'm on rotation for main stage because I'm too paranoid to go up. He backs down and submits. The only problem is we're both too fucked up to properly follow what's going on and the next rotation he leaves for the bathroom right when I'm called up to stage. Lame. I almost slipped and fell out of my shoes about a dozen times. How I managed to climb the pole to take my top off on my last song I have no idea.

5pm- Another girl's regular comes up to me and demands to talk about Naom Chompsky for an hour. He tips me $40 bucks. I'm tired and just want to go home. I spend the rest of the evening hiding out in the dressing room. If I wasn't so inebriated I would have told him no.

Why Am I Here Still?

Work was awful today. Really, really bad. A cocktail waitress that I used to work with was murdered last week by a stalker. She had a husband. She had kids. The stalker shot himself after shooting her. We now have mandatory escorts to our cars. Even day-shift girls are now being pressured to valet our cars with the club. Is this a result of the economy? Perhaps not. Girls have ended up in dumpsters outside of strip clubs for decades. I feel horrible that it doesn't have to make sense. She was a sweet girl. Nice person with an okay disposition. I really didn't know her that well. I remember she looked tired most of the time. Probably because she was taking care of two kids and trying like hell to keep her house which was located outside of the city. Not easy to do these days in California.

The club was pretty much empty today. I left with one hundred dollars which made me want to cry. Living in the city is not cheap and rent was due yesterday. This of course was the direct result of the cops coming in earlier in the week showing pictures of the guy to see how many dancers/staff recognized him. Case closed assholes! The freak show is dead. What more do you want? Needless to say customers fled.

I have a funny feeling about it all. It brings me back to the saying 'believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see'. There has got to be something more to the case if the cops are still asking questions. Still, I feel incredibly guilty getting pissed over such mundane things as money when that poor girl is dead. She was a mother of two for fucks sake! Her murder is now a taboo subject in the club. I exchanged ideas with the bartender who gave me a few free shots of raspberry flavored vodka. There was a creepy guy who wore jeans and a dark hoody that stood in the alley way across from our club and watched the girls leave at night, but that was months ago. He only did it for a week or two. The bouncers and floor hosts scared him off after the girls started complaining.

I don't know. I'm broke, drunk, and still trying to process. I want to get my .22 Ruger I have stashed in Florida right now.

I Think I'm Getting Played

I've recently befriended a young girl at the club named Mandy. Mandy moved here from Seattle and started about a month ago. Mandy had already been dancing for 2 years. It's been slow. She's striking, beautiful and not that quick to pick up on subtle hints. My friend Sapphire has hated Mandy since she started but I think it's a jealousy issue. I've looked for guile in Mandy and I just don't see it. Mandy is a good dancer and has been working for 2 years now. Honestly, I think she's just dumb and I hate this big sis responsibility kick I'm on right now but boy did she luck out. 

Mandy has taken customers from the tip rail after being told not to, she has stepped on Sapphire's toes poaching Sapphire's customers more than a couple times and I really don't think it's intentional. I think that she's just not that smart. After warning Mandy to be careful about stealing guys from other people's tip rail I was dancing on the main stage with a full tip rail and heard someone go pssssst! I turned and saw that Mandy, who was dancing on the smaller stage near my tip rail was trying to poach a customer. I mentioned it to her once I got off stage and her eyes welled up with tears. I tried to ignore the tears and walked away and still felt bad. 10 minutes later she was downstairs throwing up in the bathroom. Mandy had drank way too much. 

I've had her sit with my regulars with me and they quickly became hers (or more appropriately 'ours') before the Johns got so fed up with her 21 year old naivety and her inability to handle her booze. Then they ask for more private time with me. Ruby minus Mandy. Am I a sucker for beautiful doll like girls or what?

Rinse and Repeat

It's like 4:30 in the morning and I wolk up sweating for no reason. It's probably because I've been drinking copious amounts of alcohol these last two days and now my body is trying to release the toxins. One can only hope. I worked out before work today (technically it was yesterday) and had to take it easy on the pole. I told myself I would only drink four glasses of champagne but that went out the window after the fourth and I had about five or six more. 

To work as a stripper you have to be either emotionally fucked up enough to crave abuse or have an ego made of titanium steel. Let me premise this next rant with the fact that I'm fucking hot. I have this job for a reason that has nothing to do with being surgically enhanced with jumbo double d jugs. I look good naked. I work out hard. I'm 5'8, toned and sculpted at 120 pounds and I have a pretty face. I've been told I look like Giselle Bundchen. So, with that said I've had guys go out of their way to take me down a notch while dancing for them. A guy paying me a compliment about my hair will in the same breath say to me, "You'd have the perfect body if you just lost a little more weight around the middle." The man who so eagerly handed out this advise is a trader who obviously stays sedentary for days on end given the fact that he's one bag of Cheetos away from obese. Thanks! You should be my personal trainer.

My favorite from today was "You're a sleeper." When I asked what a sleeper was he said that he didn't notice me at all and is surprised that I'm so good looking because from far away you'd never know. Is that why he called me over and asked me to sit down?

"You're actually really beautiful." 

"Thank you."

"This outfit is kind of frumpy on you." I'm wearing a black bra and panties made of french lace. I stare blankly at him.

"It's just that you're not at all my type. I never call girls like you over."

"Would you like a dance?"

"I'm feeling generous today. I'll let you give me a dance. I never get dances from girls like you."

Immediately after stepping off stage I was motioned over by a man in a suit in his mid-forties. Not a bad looking guy but not a good looking one either. 

"Did you just start dancing?"

"Did you see me climb the pole and hang upside down?"

"Is that hard?"

"Some might say it is."

"You look familiar. I used to get dances from you a year ago. You've gained weight."

"That's not possible. I've only been here six months. Would you like a dance?"

"No offense. You're pretty and all but I'm waiting for a stone cold fox."

Must not have seen anybody he liked because he didn't get any dances. Even my friend Elise didn't have any luck with him and after her boob job dropped (I'm told you have to wait for implants to settle in) she now models for playboy's lingerie catalogue. 

Some men come in here to escape into a fantasy world and some to share their hatred of the real world. They get off on fucking with dancers and feeling out their insecurities. Some girls, mostly really young ones, can't help but let it get to them. They go blonder, five pounds lighter and add to more sessions to their work out routine. Wash, rinse, repeat. I feel sorry for them. They usually end up overly surgically enhanced, in debt because of the surgery and bitter.

Where Has Your Mouth Been?

I have to reinstate my old rule. No more hard liquor. I wolk up this morning barely able to remember what happened yesterday. I was missing $600 and started flipping out. My roommate/landlord gently reminded me that I paid him rent in cash yesterday. I hate this feeling. I am now officially on a champagne diet. No more hard booze. 

I drink when I'm upset and my Grama passed on Halloween. She was like a second mom to me. I grew up with her a big part of my life. I ended up doing nothing this weekend because of it and today I'm going to the mortuary to give moral support to my mom as she signs the papers. As a result of all this emotional stuff my stupid mind has to process I have to drink to work and drink I do. I was in a champagne room with a friend of the day shift manager and he actually kissed me on the mouth. It was all I could do to keep from dry heaving right in front of him. I actually gagged, I'm not kidding. I never let guys even close to being able to do that. Men are more likely to get away with grabbing my breasts than kissing me. Kissing customers is disgusting. One of my friends got fired for making out with a customer and even thinking about it now makes me want to puke. No, he was not hot.

I think my manager broke up with his girlfriend Leslie. I haven't seen Leslie in the club in a long time and the girl that just got put on two week probation for fighting is Leslie's friend. Leslie rarely had to dance on stage and could come into work whenever she felt like it with out having to pay a fee. Every customer she had was a champagne room and she rarely gave floor dances.  She seems to be a taboo subject these days. I'm pretty sure she broke up with him.

I See You Damn It!

Why do guys think it's cool to come into a strip club, sit at the middle table closest to the tip rail, and pretend that they could care less about whats happening on stage? I hate hate hate that. I work during the day and at lunch hour like clockwork a group of suits will sit around a table and pretend to be really engrossed in some kind of discussion they're supposedly having with each other while they click away at their crackberrys. They don't tip and they think they're sneaky with their secret ninja glances but I see you damn it! It sucks. Everyone is so cheap now a days!

Topless women in plastic shoes have to make a living too. Unless my manager is on the floor I will not take my top off until some one tips me. Sorry but nothings free. Unless of course you're the aforementioned men in the group that are incessantly scrolling emails with their crackberrys. They wait until a guy with some class actually tips me and try to look and me when my back is turned. The back wall is mirrored morons. I can see you doing it. I work at the nicest club in San Francisco and still the guys can be so cheap. I'm sorry the economy is bad. I'm sorry you just got laid off from Goldman Sachs and now only have that measly 10million to help you figure out what your next step is gonna be. I know you wanted at least 20million by the time you hit 35. Really, seriously? I hate you people!

On a more dramatic note there was another fist fight in the dressing room this week. One older dancer (in terms of her longevity at the club, not her age) and a newer dancer were hanging out the previous weekend at a night club and the newer dancer tried to get in the other's boyfriend's pants by selling her up the river when she went to the bathroom. I could see the tension between them build through out the day until one of them took a cheap shot in the dressing room hitting the other one square in the jaw. The older girl is now on a two week probation. Go figure. I like the older girl better than the newer one. I hope she comes back.

I See Dead People

It really doesn't take long to get your feet wet in this industry. I haven't been stripping for very long and I've already had all kinds of weirdos with the most off the wall requests. I've had foot lickers, arm pit sniffers, butt sniffers, pantie buyers, biters, hair pullers you name it. It takes a lot to shock me and even more to make me uncomfortable enough not to fuck with you. With the exception of the guy who told me he paid a woman to castrate him, and then proved it to me (I don't need to go in to how) I've been able to handle it all.... until yesterday. 

I was on stage when I noticed a friendly looking attractive man sitting by himself dressed in a suit and tie. He motioned me over once I stepped off stage and bought me a glass of champagne. After some small talk he ordered a glass of ice. He asked me to hold the glass with both hands. I picked up the glass and asked him if he wanted a dance from me. He took a hundred dollar bill from his wallet.

"I'll pay you a hundred dollars to sit with me for ten minutes in the bubble lounge and pretend that you're dead. Don't move, try not to breath, and keep holding that glass of ice until right before we start our time."

Sure, why not? I figured it would be the easiest dance I'd give all day. However, you get what you pay for and he proved himself bat shit crazy by the time our ten minutes was up. 

"Do you have hair extensions?" He asked right before we started. By now my hands were starting to become numb and ache with cold.

"Yes."

"Is it real human hair?"

"Yes."

"Oh wow." he started to play with my hair his excitement inherently obvious. "You know where they get the hair?" he asked, his voice shaking with arousal."

"No, where?"

"Corpses... cadavers. This is probably some beautiful dead Indian woman's hair."

 

That did it. I set down the glass quickly signally the time was now starting. The entire session he played with my arms and legs, arranging them in different poses I thought about the hundred and tried not to think about where the extensions on my head really came from. 

Gross.

From Ball Parks To Small Penises

This is a shout out to the mother fucker that ripped me off last Thursday. This burly little Asian guy came into the club after a Giants game wearing a button down Giants shirt and he was drunk. I recognized him or, more accurately, he recognized me. He called me over and as I sat down with him I noticed he looked familiar. He used to come into the club twice a week when I was cocktailing. All the girls know him and his friends. He reminded me that he promised to buy a dance from me if I made my audition. I asked where he wanted the dance and he grabbed my hand and led me up to our VIP area upstairs. He's a regular so no need to get the money upfront.

That sneaky fucking bastard! After the required three dances he said he needed to go to the bathroom. Even though he took the longest fucking time I didn't let him out of my sight. When he came out he side stepped me saying he needed to go to the ATM which is by our front door. I followed him hurriedly and when he tried to open the front door I grabbed his arm. He shook me off and ran outside. I attempted to run after him but our door man grabbed me by the waist and pulled me back in as I swung my tip box in vain at the now running cheap bastard's head. Mind you I was in six inch plastic heals, a thong and a bra. My manager said there's nothing they can do. No matter who it is always get the money up front. Even if the bouncers did manage to catch the guy before he ran out the door what can they do to him? The customer can just say I was lying and that he already paid me. Shaking him down for the money is extortion. Towering over him menacingly until he pays me is totally legal but unless he actually assaults me the bouncers can't rough him up. Lame! Fucking Lame!!!

The insult to injury is that he's in the club all the time. My manager said if I see him again to let management know and they'll tell him he's not aloud back in until he pays me. Pretty much to just pay me or leave. I told all the girls who know him. When I see him again he's getting a swift kick in the balls before I even bother with management.

My First Foot Fetish Experience

Last Wednesday at work was slow, real slow. Dial-up slow. So when my favorite co-worker Jessie pointed out Sapphire's regular (Sapphire was not at the club that day) I was intrigued.

"He's a weirdo," Jessie warned. 

I remembered Sapphire telling me about him. He would pay Sapphire to sit with him and smell her feet. Sounds like money for nothing right? Still, I approached him cautiously due to the fact that Jessie wasn't the least bit inclined to go up to him (which usually meant the money was less than easy). A sly dancer named Ronnie suggested we go sit at his table together. We walked across the room to his table, cheerily introduced ourselves and sat down. He eyed us up and down slowly, eerily with a tight skeletal grin creeping up on his face. He then ran his finger tips lightly down my thigh. I forced myself not to shudder. He explained to Ronnie he only wanted one of us. Ronnie got up and left.

The man was Italian, in his early to mid sixties, and had a nasty huge boner the entire session. He wanted me to twist his nipples, when I refused he twisted them himself until I told him he had to stop. While sitting across from him I moved my bare feet up his leg and across his face, keeping them in motion and playing dumb while he kept trying to shove my toes in his mouth and my foot into his crotch. If I let my foot linger on his face or near his crotch he would start shaking in his chair in his chair like he was on the verge of orgasm. It was so embarrassing I had to tell him to stop that too. We were close to the D.J. booth and Mr. D.J. was eyeing us suspiciously. Sure enough after twenty minutes of sitting across from him and letting him kiss on my bare sweaty feet while he eyed my legs like a starving carnivore he handed me five folded up twenties and walked away. It wasn't easy. Each minute with him made me more anxious. Completely unrelated to his foot fetish he gave off such a perverse negative vibe that was so strong I was tempted to forgo the money and leave more than once during our encounter. 

If I see him in the club and Sapphire's not around I'm not sure I'll approach him again. It'll probably depend on how shitty a day I'm having.

Dressing Room Drama

Yesterday was the strangest day yet at the strip club and is partly what prompted me to start this blog in the first place. The rest of the impulse is a direct result of the fact I now know I'm not aloud to write about the club. A woman from the club was fired three days ago after our General Manager who religiously googles our club's name and location  discovered her dominatrix website which made reference to the club. Uncermoniously she was told to come to the club on her day off and clear out her locker. She explained  what had happened while shoving shoes and outfits into her carry-all her face void of any emotion.

After Diablo Cody's big hit with her memoir (and once daily blog) CANDY GIRL "A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper" and her even bigger Academy Award winning screenplay JUNO stripper blogs have been popping up on the internet like U.S. military bases in the Middle East. Two of my personal favorites being River City Kitty and Hobo Stripper. Both are thought provoking and racy reads. 

I've been at this club for three weeks and already four girls have been fired. That's not including the ones who have auditioned, worked one day and asked to leave. I witnessed one girl from Atlanta, GA get tossed after she took her top off during a lap dance. She was too intoxicated to remember the rules. Dancers have to have an inch wide thong and bra on at all times. Our breasts are only revealed on stage for one full song and always the last song of the set. Even then our breasts can only remain bare between the pole and the back wall. If we step in front of the pole we have to be within reaching distance of it at all times. When a customer wants to tip from the tip rail (meaning the front of the stage, there isn't an actual rail at our club) we have to cover our breasts before we approach them. To be frank it's a pain in the ass. Men from Georgia, Texas and Washigton are astounded at how prudent we are in the most liberal city in California. No clothes no booze. If the guys are that hard up to have tits in their face and stare at some twenty-one year old brazilian waxed poonany they have to give up their $8 beer and  go sip on a $12 sprite at the clubs on Broadway. Not that I'm judgmental in anyway mind you. To me there's little difference between giving an all nude air dance to grinding on a dude's hard-on fully clothed for three minutes.

These last three days I've been at the club the same dancer, we'll refer to her as boney, has been napalming my love jungle. She has worked at the club for a few years and is a great hustler. The problem is she deems every guy she has ever danced with as her regular if they approach me or I them. I'm the new girl and it's been pitifully slow this week. I'll be in the middle of a conversation, chatting up a customer for ten minutes and she'll run up screaming and jump in his lap while he winces in pain, his eardrums rattling from her super sonic mating call while her boney ass slams into his crotch. She's a problem because 1. She's always drunk 2. She talks shit and can't remember the next day. Already there has been more than one instance of her cursing me one evening and greeting me sweetly the next day. I couldn't take it anymore and yesterday after she pulled the squealing into my customers lap move I did it right back to her. I waited for her to sit down with some one and I hoped right into the man's lap shoving by breasts high (mine are big only in comparison, she's a member of the itty bitty titty committee) into his face. 

"Hey stranger! It's been weeks." I giggle. The boney drunk's eyes narrow suspisiously. She had made so much money this week from me being too polite letting her walk all over me and I hadn't sold one dance that day. 

"I don't know what you mean but I like where this is going." said the man and with that she stood up and stormed off walking straight to the house mom. The funny part is I tip the house mom and she doesn't. I was told by a dancer sitting with them the house mom suggested to boney that she switch to water. That did it. Boney went back to the dressing room to wait for me telling anyone who would listen that I gave head for a hundred dollars and let guys finger me in the champagne room. I guess she was waiting to get in my face and try to fight me, to bad I was giving dances to that guy I stole from her. Boney threw all my stuff on my dressing room table, make-up, accessories and curling iron on to the floor and left early. House mom told me boney would receive a warning for it and told to stay away from me. I don't care at this point. She's on my last nerve. It's on.

The Audition

I'm a closet peeler. The only people that know are my boyfriend and close friends and family. I.E. those who are on a need to know bases. Why cause needless worry? Family drama is already unavoidable in my upper middle class liberal bubble. Don't burst the bubble man! I already have the reputation of the family bubble burster. If I told them all at Thanks Giving I'm a peeler I doubt they would bat an eyelash. Why do I strip? Money. duh.

        

 I auditioned for the day shift manager who said he’d ‘take me on’. I had never stripped before. The day shift manager said since I lacked experience he would only commit to giving me three shifts a week. Two slow days and one really good day. I was hoping the situation wouldn't last long and I could prove myself as a competent sales person quickly. I’d heard some real nasty rumors about the day shift girls and the day shift clientele from the night shift girls. Ah, well…I have to start some where and dancing is where the money is.

My audition went by so fast. Getting ready in the dressing room I felt like I was going to throw up. The day shift house mom wasn’t that supportive either. I think she kept forgetting that I already worked at the club since I never worked a dayshift as a cocktail waitress. She went over the rules of my audition briefly and then ignored me leaving me shaking infront of my dressing room mirror until it was time to approach the main stage. She walked me up to the DJ Booth and made a hand gesture to go up and talk to him.

“What kind of music do you like?" He asked.

“Can you play something fast by Nelly Fertado for the first song and the second song can you play Heartbeats by The Knife.” The second song was important to me because that was the song I had to dance topless to.

“I can’t do any more Nelly today but Heartbeats hasn’t been played yet so you’re in luck.”

The house mom then walked me up to the stage entrance and instructed me to meet her on the other side after I was finished. 

“Remember, she said, do not leave the stage until the next girl has arrived and do not except tips from the tip rail without putting your top back on.” Then she left me standing there alone waiting my turn watching the amazing dancer before me spin around the stage and crawl up and down the pole showing off her amazing boob job. I was hoping there wouldn’t be many customers that early but for 6pm on a Tuesday the house was packed.

“Everybody put down your drink and clap your hands for our newest auditioning dancer, the lovely Ruby!” 

At least the DJ thinks I’m lovely, I thought miserably as a took a shaky step onto the stage in my dangerously high strappy heels.

It was over before I knew it. You know how people say time just stops when your nervous? Well, once I got on stage and strutted around the pole I just had fun. Erotic dancing is just real slow with your body weight centered around your ass and your pelvis. It's not hard to do. Men aren't that complicated. They just want you to bend over until your top comes off. All the butterflies in my stomach  managed to fly away and before I knew it my last song was over. One more week as a cocktail server and it was official. I was Ruby.