I love both my husbands...Isn't that big'o'me?

"Pretty Woman. Memoirs of a Geisha. Firefly. The Girlfriend Experience. Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Moulin Rouge. I began to see a trend: The media says that if you are a person in the sex industry, even one who consensually entered sex work, you will always have to make a choice between love and work. Sex workers, you see, cannot afford to love. Cue dramatic music and wistful looks into the long distance." Check this interesting discussion of loving and sex-working.

Cultural Capital

Below is one of the saddest, funniest, most fucked-up, succinct quotes from the mouth of a strip club customer (self conscious working class dude) reacting after I told him what I do when I'm not stripping. "Yeah, see, you sound like someone who goes to Columbier University. I sound like someone who got ass-raped on Queens Boulevard." Aaaaand...that's a wrap.

Isfahan-d Job

There's this 55-year old investment banker from Iran, who comes into the club every week or so in a suit and throws money around like it ain't no thing. I like his company a lot. He's handsome, generous, respectful, interesting, and generally just easy to be around. While he'll fondle and grope all the strippers who hang around him (many of them rub his little boner through his suit trousers), he always respectfully pulls out a barstool for me and talks to me about class stratification, Marjane Satrapi, or why the US is always trying to give Israel a huge blow job. (Ironic, since he's part of the devilish finance sector, that he's such a huge supporter of Occupy Wall Street. He told me several times that he appreciates my anti-capitalist stance and, while he's part of the problem, he's a die-hard critic of US neoliberal economic policy.)

Gradually, over the past six months or so, I've tried to break my "political firecracker" mold and get him to see me as a stripper too - talking to him about my favorite sexual positions or telling him about my Persian rug. (Yeah, I try to make "Iran"-nuendo with him - once, when I noted an erection through his pants, I said something to the effect of, "Well, what do you know, Iran does have a weapons program!") Finally, he has started talking more about my ass, tits, lips, hair, and less about whether I think the Occupy movement still has any steam left (my answer to that, by the way, is yes! Just wait'll May 1st, baby.) He said he was reluctant to do that before because he thought I was "too intimidating." (See, MrMike, you're not the only one who doesn't get into politics with their stripper pals!)

I'm on a little hiatus from work for a couple weeks, and on my last day there, he showed up and decided to take me and another girl for a 2-on-1 lapdance. Hurray! I had danced for him once before and knew him to be very generous and not gropey. Once back there, he told the other girl, "I need some help waking him up," and while I gave him a lapdance, she straight up took out his lil dick and started jerking him off! It took me a minute to realize what was happening, because I was straddling his chest and she was on the floor behind me; once I saw that we were in prostitution-territory, I jumped off his lap, told him I'd see him at the bar, and got myself dressed. The other girl gladly took my spot on his lap and started rubbing his bare dick against her crotch. Nice.

He met me at the bar a few minutes later, gave me $100, and said, "I'm sorry about that. I know that had nothing to do with me and that you probably just don't like that other girl. I should have asked you before taking you back there." I quickly corrected him - "It's not that I don't like that girl. It's that I don't like committing arrestable offenses with surveillance cameras overhead."

Really, though? Hand jobs during a lapdance? This girl is definitely not getting paid enough to do this, especially since I'm fairly sure Mr. I-banker would be happy to shell out for a hotel room and a handsome hourly rate for the very same handjob in private.

Strip Search

Ha! I was looking at my blog statistics, and one of the things available for me to view is what people Google search before they land at CivilUndressed. Check out the hilarity and/or name your band any one of these!

-Naked Indian Stripper
-What if I Busted a Nut During a Lapdance
-Came During Lapdance
-Undressed Gays
-Beat the Line at a Strip Club
-Blow Site
-Got off on the Right Foot Fetish
-Aaja Nachle Dress

What Can (Chris) Brown Do for You?

Rihanna just can't win, can she? (And by "can't win," I mean "make millions of dollars before hitting 30".) She's getting her skin lightened on November's Vogue (which Vogue vehemently denies, of course - but there's no denying that blonde wig, Ms. Wintour!), Dutch magazine editors are making overtly racist comments about her, the results of an ugly, abusive relationship are in the public spotlight, and finally, she gets critiqued for collaborating with her former abuser! Yes, everyone thinks Rihanna's an idiot for collaborating on Birthday Cake with Chris Brown, overlooking all the very real, nuanced, living dynamics of fucked up relationships, abusive or not.

Well, my friends, I'm no Rihanna, but I totally dig what the article linked above gets at. Thankfully, I've never been in a relationship that escalated to any physical violence (though I did hook up with a big-dicked guy who refused to use lube - ouch!), but in June this motherfucker basically finger-fucked me while I was giving him a dance and I had to pry myself off him...as soon as I got to the dressing room, I was all in runny-makeup tears yelling at management "Where the fuck were the bouncers while this fucking asshole tried to rape me?!" and caused a big scene. Two weeks ago, the same dude was back at the club, nursing his beer ("I get Budweisers here because the bottle is metal and so no one can tell when I've finished it so I just have to buy one drink the whole day.") and I totally hustled him for lapdances. On my walk back to the lapdance section, I gave the bouncer a stern look, letting him know I actually wanted him to watch me (yeah, the bouncers at our club don't do that unless specifically asked) and gave the guy two shitty "air dances" for $40. Is that bad? I have a knee jerk feminist response inside me telling me the best thing is to just walk away, that I don't need his $40, but for some reason, a savvier, stripper feminist in me tells me that, if possible, he should pay for that unwelcome finger-fuck for the rest of his miserable life. Yeah.

There's this other guy, "teacher nurse." (He used to be a teacher, and is now a nurse. I am considering revising the nickname to something more caustic, like "Rapist Molester," but then how would I tell him apart from the others?) He is fantastic for money. He doesn't want to talk; he finishes his drink and takes me for 6 or 7 dances, then leaves. His demeanor, though, is less than desirable. First, he always asks me to remove my lipstick before I dance for him "in case I get any on his shirt" or something. Bullshit. The reason he has me take off my lipstick is because, every time, without fail, he puts his hand behind my head and force-kisses me as I try my best to pull away. I hate it (mostly because he's old, ugly, and an asshole) and renegotiate space by putting my booty on his lap, or turning around for him, but he always manages to get me in a compromised position and uses his jabby little tongue to rape my face, chin, and cheeks.

I was in a bad mood when he last showed up and didn't feel like getting mouth-violated by him. I strapped a dark lipstick to my ankle in my rubberband stash (it was Mac's Matte Diva, for those interested - great under the blacklight on my tan complexion!), but approached him clean-lipped and took him back to the lapdance area. While he put his coat and drink down, I quickly applied two or three coats of Diva, turned around, sat on his lap, held him down by his hands and said, "You wanna kiss, rapist?" and proceeded to put my lips all over his face for a whole fucking song, leaving smeary burgundy all over his mouth. I'm sure he gave his face a good scrub-job before pathetically going home to his wife, but I'm also sure he was freaked when he saw my pouty dark lips coming at him.

In other news: After work yesterday I went to Duane Reade for some vitamins, and I had forgotten to change out my singles before leaving work. I paid for those $60 fucking pills in singles! The (cute, but too young) cashier looked at me, smiled, and said "coming from a strip club?" I smiled right back.

Also, and this is me on brand new territory, do people ever make friends with their customers? I know people date, fuck, and escort with guys they meet at the club, but how about just friends to shoot the shit and catch a movie with? I've met this guy a few times at the club and (in addition to being rather cute) him and I just have terrific friend chemistry! He's never explicitly asked me to hang out with him, but he always says stuff like "You're hella cool! If I hadn't met you here, we could totally have become friends." And I got to thinking, what's the big deal? So, he's seen me in a G-string (Elena, most NYC strip clubs are topless only) and thinks I'm 2 years younger than I am - does that rule out the possibility of being pals? This last time I saw him, I unabashedly told him to take my number down and smoke a joint with me sometime. Stay tuned...

Red Scare.

Ah, those damn tampon commercials! They always show a girl in white pants riding a horse, or someone in a leotard doing yoga. Here's a real tampon ad for you: a girl, freshly flow-ing, in nothing but a teeny tiny g-string, grinding her crotch hard on a dude in white linen pants. (Incidentally, this may also be a great way to get straight men interested in the range of Tampax products...)

Today, I got my (red)wings halfway through my shift, and I was more interested in the cash-flow than the one between my legs. Still, I managed to make my rounds and get that money: This one guy was like gushing over me during a lapdance, but little did he know I was gushing over him too! I mean, the DJ should have been playing 'rag'time, because that's what it was. (Puns runneth over, I know, now that the floodgates have opened...) This one customer who's on the production team for some hip-hop label came in - and I was thinking, the only flow he's gonna catch today is mine.

Meanwhile, dudes in the club didn't hear the rule about wearing white after Labor Day (though, I'm not sure I know that rule either - isn't it always technically after the previous Labor Day?. I guess the only time you could actually wear white was before 1882...). Man, I actually turned down a dude in pale khakis who I know likes hardcore grinding. And I was relieved that one of my regulars showed up in black track pants (normally, anathema to a respectful lapdance).

The girls in the dressing room were remarking that they think men tend to spend more cash on you at that time of the month - talk about blood money! Whew! I thought giving a lapdance was a 'no-strings-attached' kind of fun, but I guess not on the first day of the cycle!

You can't sink your (bell) hooks into me, man.

Yet another type of experience I've accumulated from my 3 years of stripping? I am (tooting my own horn-y guy radar here) extremely attuned to guys' bullshit, emotional immaturity, and possessiveness - even in the surprising guises they may take.

Something about being paid to fulfill club customers' fantasies - many of them not sexual in nature - has helped me, immensely, in dating situations in which I feel a guy is being disingenuous, sexist, or clingy (though those things often go together like oversized plastic glasses frames, jeans from Buffalo Exchange, and the Lorimer/Metropolitan stop in Williamsburg). Conversely, it's also enabled me to recognize those rare dudes who are emotionally mature, straightforward, and respectful of women (the only type of guy I've ever been lucky enough to fall in love with).

In the club, a man might put his hand on the back of your head during a dance to facilitate giving you an unwelcome kiss (and by kiss I mean, a face-raping suck job). In the rest of the world, a guy may subtly or explicitly censor what he tells you about himself or how he relates to other women so he can continue to kiss you. They're the same thing. They're both a big fucking hand on the back of my head that attempt to keep me trapped and powerless.

At the club, a dude might tell me I'm the most beautiful girl he's ever seen dancing; tell me I'm too smart to be doing this kind of work; assure me that I'm the first girl he's ever asked to meet him outside the club. Outside the club, (hollow-sounding) remarks about beauty and intellect stand, and a woman might enjoy a deep-tissue ego massage worthy of a top-ranked Groupon deal. They're both the same tactic - a deliberate strategy to give my ego a hand-job as a way to 'keep' me around. (Sort of like, in the first episode of "Peepshow," Jeremy says "If I laugh at her jokes hard enough, I'm sure to get at least a suck job.")

The stripper kung-fu (remember Lap-oeira?) I've described in the past - the sometimes-subtle (other times straight up violent) physical manipulations to violate boundaries (just because you're touching my breast with your forearm rather than just grabbing it with your hand doesn't make it any less of a fondle!) aren't that different than the ways a loverboy might try to subtly, without invitation, occupy extra space in your life outside the club. And when we're raised as women, we've been hard-wired to take these as signs of love and affection - after all, we're all expected to want the man who's ready to commit and be present, right?

The realization that masculinity and "taking up tons of space" are synonymous is a claim feminists have been making since...well, since there have been feminists. But realizing something academically (big ups to my undergrad "Roots of Feminism" prof from back in the day) is so different than coming to understand it from life experience. I wonder just how much the feminist canon has done to challenge masculinity on the part of men. I know that feminist literature (particularly the Third Wave, race/class centered stuff) has been immensely empowering for me as a woman; it's armed me with language to protect myself, to describe my world, and to experience sexuality. But what about for those hetero, male-bodied people who read this shit? Does their access to 'feminism' just give them an opportunity to get the attention of the fierce goddesses they desire by posting about the current birth control scandals on Facebook? (13 women "like" this post about how much you hate Mitt Romney - maybe one of them will even blow you!) Has the feminist canon actually done anything to change hetero-masculine subjectivities, those deeply-ingrained ways of just 'being' in the world?

In the way Tim Wise's career of railing against white privilege became as prominent as it did is because of his whiteness (for, people of color have been articulating the problems of white privilege ever since racial categories existed), feminist guys get distinctions on their qualifying exams, fierce-minded girls aroused, and ultimately, infinite other types of advantages for knowing the feminist canon and using it in deliberate, space-taking-up ways.

Thank you to all the grope-y, needy, clingy, jealous, and overeager strip club customers; spending time with you in black-lit strip clubs amply prepared me to identify your dopplegangers outside the club. If I can walk away from a champagne room customer dangling hundreds of dollars in front of my face because I get a bad feeling about him, I can most certainly run (not walk) away from a guy who's navigating insecurities, behaving duplicitously, or using his position as a feminist-minded man to enable and forgive these behaviors. And I can spot him from a mile away.

Apologies for the incoherence of this post; I hesitantly started this blog, but gained confidence when I stopped worrying about an audience or my readers and just wrote what was up instead. This post is largely my internal monologue rather than a well-thought out treatise.

Trafficking Report

Saw this interview on YouTube. I don't know who this dude is, but he totally breaks it down in terms of so-called anti-trafficking measures, labor rights, and sex worker rights.

Shit People Say...to Strippers

Too lazy to join the YouTube meme-ers, but here's a feeble attempt at a script nonetheless:

"You are way to smart to be a stripper."
"I'm not really a strip club guy."
"I'm a nice guy."
"I know you're lying to me."
"I know you're just after my money."
"You're the first stripper I ever asked out."
"How did a girl like you end up stripping?"
"We can meet outside; I promise, we don't have to have sex."
"Do you do full service?"
"If there are no other customers here, come sit with me."
"The other girl let me finger her in VIP."
"Earn this dollar."
"No thanks, I'm just here waiting for my friend."
"Can I get 2-for-1 with lapdances?"
"Can I touch it? Just from the outside?"
"You're always going to be this beautiful. At least until 35."
"You don't date customers? Fine, then I just won't spend any money on you."
"Yeah, sure, you're a grad student."
"How are you getting home after work?"
"I can tell we really connected today."
"Whatever you do, don't get any skinnier."
"Whatever you do, don't gain any weight."
"What are your rates for outcall?"
"I'm about to bust a nut."
"I'll come back after I get paid."
"I hate the way fake tits feel."
"You speak good English."
"Kiss me."

King of Clubs

Today was totally a reminder of why I love stripping so fucking much:

Money.
The chance to wear ludicrous - yet somehow, still sexy - outfits, makeup, and hair, and get paid for it.
Money.
Getting paid to flirt.
Money.
Having the crock of romantic monogamy repeatedly debunked while at the same time hearing guys spout ego-boosting expressions of romantic monogamy.
Oh, yeah, and...money.

This super-friendly, attractive (in an ordinary sort of way), moneyed dude immediately took a liking to me, and once I struck up a conversation with him, he pointed out that we'd met before. Yes, he's been a customer of mine at each of the three clubs I've worked at, and each time, we've gotten along fabulously! It's a small world, after all! Now, if only Disney would (in between putting ridiculous racially stereotypical comic relief and/or villainous characters in each animated film) make a ride featuring strip club customers! As soon as we began our banter, the memory of him came back to me like an eager housemom asking for house fee. We had a blast, and he promised to visit again next time he's in town.

His visit aside, I gave a marathon series of dances to this other dude who was filled with some of the best lapdance quotes of all time!
"You're, like, the freakiest Indian girl ever! You're giving the other billion of you a bad name! You're giving Hinduism a bad name!"
"Damn these boxers! I keep having to readjust my dick in these jeans. Next time I come, I'm going to wear slacks."
"Well, if you're going to hell I suppose you might as well take me down with you."
"Girl, the way you're grinding on me, it's like you know I just got paid today."

I had to keep turning around and putting my ass on him so he would(n't) see me crack(ing up)!