(no subject)

Yesterday I got three file boxes condensed down to one. There are still two large (like, the kind that you get ten reams of paper in) boxes of stuff to sort out. Considering that I now have two smallish containers (one of papers, one of not-papers) where I used to have two smallish and three medium containers, I have great hopes for throwing out a lot of trash. Still, the remainder is daunting. I think I'll probably be applying for a tax filing extension again this year.

On the other hand, my savings program (to wit: put all change in the turtle bank. when it's full, take out money, roll what can be rolled, and take to the bank) is going well: I deposited $27.50 yesterday.

I'm So Blogging This!

Did you ever do something just to see what would happen? Just to have a story to tell someone? Just to be able to say, I did it, (and now I know for sure I don't want to do that)?

I did. In fact, I probably do it a lot. But a few years ago, I tried to get a job at a strip club. I went in because a guy at my gym recommended it, and gave me a business card. It's all the way down to I-20 on the west side. There's an actual job application, and then you just come in and do the thing. I was probably pretty naive.

I didn't have any clothes... I had a wraparound skirt and a g-string, but I was pretty much not snapping off sexy little lycra bits. In fact, there was a girl there selling the sexy little lycra bits, but I didn't have any money.

I'd been told (by boyfriends and the like) that I was sexy when I danced, and that I put on a pretty good strip tease, so I tried it. It really felt naked. I mean, naked not like, people are staring at my boobs, but naked like, is this skirt too short, am I showing my underwear? I felt like I was going to have pubic hair coming out of the wrong place, or my labia were going to pop out of my g-string, and that my "costume" was exposing all my figure flaws. One of the bouncers told me to pull up the top of my g-string over my hips to make my legs look longer, which made me think I looked short and dumpy, even though I know every stripper does it, but it led straight to that "something's going to show/pop out" feeling.

Every few years, I hear about the new styles that girls are wearing, and people saying it makes them look easy, or like sluts. I'm often the one saying it! But it appears that as far as sluttiness goes, the 80s were the decade of the strippers. Everyone is dressed like they came out of a slinkier version of Olivia Newton-John's "Let's Get Physical." Lycra, with the aforementioned high-on-the-thigh look, big hair, lots of eye makeup. Then again, this bar looked like it was suffering from arrested development, too.

I knew I wasn't very good at it, but I was really appalled at what was "good at it." There were these two girls there, bleached blonde and tiny, who looked like they could have come out of "Penthouse" or something. Everyone was paying to get the two of them, snuggling up and bumping and grinding each other. Now, it's not like I've never played the hot-lesbian-action card, but these two were so much better looking than anyone else, it hardly seemed fair. Simultaneously, they seemed to be selling themselves short. As pretty as they were, they could have been Hooters girls or even pharmaceutical reps!

Really, I never realized, until I did it, how many flaws are hidden by the dim lights of a strip bar. And did you know that cellulite disappears entirely under black light?

The fact of it is, working in a strip club is just like being in an AOL chat room. I know that people talk about freedom to do what you want, and I think that prostitution should be legal, and all that, but for me, it was exactly finding out what the word "exploitation" means. It was like I wasn't a person at all, that everyone who looked at me shopped my body and found me wanting. It's one thing to say it's not personal, it's another to think that these men were getting off on it not being personal. It was as if they all KNEW you were a person, but it really made them hot to think of you as a thing. Which may explain why I ended up talking to this poor loser who kept tipping me 20s. See, there's something worse than people treating you like a thing -- there's buying the illusion of having someone like you.

Apparently, this guy was more than one kind of loser. I left him to do something. I don' t know what. Dance, go to the bathroom, walk around the room, something. But suddenly, I'm aware that there's a commotion in the front, and there's a flicker of blue light bouncing in from somewhere. I go forward, and sure enough, there's police in the parking lot packing some guy up, and the front door is all over the ground in shards. The loser had touched one of the dancers and refused to take "no" for an answer. So the bouncer had thrown him out. Without opening the door first.

That was my last day as a stripper.