5/01/00

I have bruises on my butt from Monique, the shameful thing...

I've been wearing a wig at work lately, and my money has gone up. It's the strangest thing. The way people treat you actually changes drastically with hair color. When you're a blonde (a thing that has happened only for a few brief moments in my life and then only with a wig), people's expressions soften and they pitch their voices higher. They tend to explain how much change they're expecting, too, and you can say really nasty things and they just keep smiling. Black hair makes them play at subservience, and red hair apparently means trouble. I've gone for the 'Pulp Fiction' black look. People ask me for spankings more often now. The one good thing is that all the people who have been warned not to gamble with the redhead at the pool table will still gamble with me.

One of my really good customers is sick with the flu. I think commuting finally did his immune system in. He's needed a rest and I've seen the stress taking its toll for a few months now. When I say 'good customer,' I mean this is one of the handful of people in over a decade that have actually become part of my personal life. He's a wonderful, polite, gentle guy whose life revolves around the teenaged son he raised alone. He and one other favorite customer are similar in that our conversation often concerns things like laser tag, Star Trek, Star Wars, and web design. Another one is my Civil War expert, and a couple of them really like all things Irish.

I met my doctor in there. He's a fantastic dancer who always smells terrific, and an operatic baritone who directed theatre in Chicago. Since he's spent time in the club and he's my friend, when it came time for a pelvic I went to someone else. He gives me free samples of my prescriptions when he knows money is tight - antibiotics and anti-inflammatories, for those who wonder - I've never been a fan of painkillers or sleeping pills, and I like my idiosyncrasies so I leave the anti-depressants alone. I think my creativity springs from angst and I don't want to mess with that...

I think people often assume that the stripper/customer relationship is always about power, or is always love/hate, or is always sick. It's not just dirty old men that go to strip joints. Almost all American men go to one at least once in their lives, so the chances of meeting any man from any walk of life is just as probable on any night. Judges, police officers, teachers, attorneys, radio DJ's, a city councilman. There's a trio of classical musicians that often stop by after a concert.

I've stopped to talk to someone for a brief moment and ended up spending 20 of the most vivid minutes of my life discussing the nature of God and man's purpose on earth. I've spent dance after dance with a timid, quiet man whose mother had just died, who smiled shyly and never broke down, but never wanted to stop dancing. That was 5 or more years ago, but I recognize him instantly and always feel a certain kinship with him. I've talked to a man about the deaths of his parents and the private time he spends at their graves, and how he speaks aloud to them even though he's an atheist. I gave a dance to a guy about my age the other night who had just been served with divorce papers. He had been expecting it for a while, but he hadn't anticipated how hard it would hit him. He looked a little lost.

I've danced with a young man a few times over the last few weeks and helped him finally figure out that the girl he works next to every day is trying to get him to ask her out. He's never been any good at seeing when someone is interested in him, and doesn't usually think about those things much. We talked about what he would say when he asked her out and where he would take her, how not to seem like he was trying too hard, and whether he had body odor. He doesn't. I did suggest that at some future time he might contemplate a slight update in his hairstyle.

I've enjoyed my relatively new acquaintance with Larry, a rather brusque sort who, in the first five minutes after we met, said, "you're not a beautiful woman, but you're sexy as hell." I had actually been inclined to dismiss him before that, since he seemed to want to keep to himself, but when he said that I liked him instantly and always sit with him when he comes in. He's never given me a dime, but I don't care. I don't sit with big spenders as a rule. I sit with people I like.

Geoff has lost something like 80 pounds since I first met him. He's a computer guru of some kind and never leaves the terminal, but a while back he decided to walk places instead of driving and to cut back little by little on most really delicious food. He always tips generously for table dances, but he never really looks at the dancer's body, and the conversation goes on just as it has been. He's one of the space movie/computer guys, so as I undulate my semi-naked body (my "bare shape," as my grandmother says) in front of him, we're usually talking about something like what a crappy Vulcan Kim Cottrall was in "Undiscovered Country." (No Vulcan is that smug. Smugness is an emotion - but I digress...) Geoff actually survived a rare form of cancer when he was just a teenager. He's also an amazing bowler. I'd sit with him even if he didn't tip at all. I'm not even his favorite dancer... that's Tess. I'm his friend. A few of us have that honor, and we cherish it.

I made brief, perfunctory eye contact with Rod for a very long time, but never spoke to him. I tend to be a little reticent when I wade into the crowd, and I don't get to know a lot of people. Crowds intimidate me a little bit. I also have terrible stage fright in the theatre as well, no matter how long I do it. One day, though, on some fleeting impulse, I sat down at Rod's table for a few minutes. In him I have discovered one of the sweetest-natured, most guileless individuals I have ever encountered. He's eternally optimistic, but occasionally lets me know when he's having a bad week. Even then, he never stops smiling. He's a computer webdesigner on some elevated, esoteric, godlike level that I can't comprehend, and he shaves his head and has a glistening scar that runs from the tops of his ears, temple to temple over the top of his head, from brain surgery he had when he was young. It's fascinating, and quite beautiful. He's a lovely friend.

I haven't seen Vince in years. He moved away to California long before I did and I lost track of him. I met him when I was 24 or something, over by the pool table - lots of the people I get to know I meet by the table. He was a good player. He said something inadvertently patronizing about pool and my gender and I retorted acidly, although the exchange has now been lost. After that we liked each other fine. I called him 'Vincenzo.' After a while he started coming to plays I was in and then he began to pay the majority of my rent some months, telling me that he wanted me to 'concentrate on things artistic and leave the mundane to others,' the sweetheart. He used to bring in the Victoria's Secret catalogue and let me mark the things I liked in my size and color and then he'd order them. He was going through a separation then from a much younger wife, and I spared him not at all when I tried to help him understand what was going on between them. It was clear to me that, among other things, he worked too much and that she wasn't getting what she needed from him emotionally. I suggested some great relationship books for him to read that I thought would help him understand what was going on between them, and often Vince would describe an interchange between him and his wife and ask "what did she mean by that?" They finally worked through their differences and decided to save the marriage, which thrilled me. He dropped the rent off in my mailbox once when my mother and a friend were over for tea, and I met him outside and asked if he'd like to come in. He was utterly astonished, and I found that he had assumed that he would drop the money by if I needed it (when you do theatre and work in a strip joint, you can't really work any of the rehearsal or performance nights, so I often starve to perform) and that I didn't want to be bothered by his presence. We had a perfectly lovely time, and although he never came over again, I would occasionally come home and find a bag of vegetarian groceries on the doorstep. Vince was never anything less than a gentleman, never made untoward suggestions or compromising assumptions, and I miss him and hope sincerely that he and his wife are alright and happy somewhere.

Randy is the best friend a dancer ever had. Over the years several dancers have lived at his house when they went through bad times. They brought kids and pets and visiting boyfriends, and all of it was fine with Randy. He bought me my domain name and the webcam and would do anything to see that this site is successful and that the message gets out. He wants to take me to Ireland but I'm afraid to get on an airplane. He came to my wedding. He's offered to pay my entry fee into pool tournaments. Some people might think that Randy is just a big patsy, but he knows the score. He's been around dancers as long as I've been alive. He's just a wonderful guy who loves to help. He's not rich, just generous and hardworking. He's very much like a mother hen to the girls.

I guess the point of all this isn't just that all kinds of men go to titty bars, but that they're real, decent, whole people. They're not all perverts with attachment disorders who are just waiting for the right kind of stimulus to turn them into rapists and serial killers. They don't all leer at me and disregard my personhood. These are people with whom I've had beneficial, enlightening, satisfying, validating, fulfilling, uplifting, real relationships - the kind lots of people wouldn't believe it was possible to find in a strip joint.

When I say that these people have become part of my personal life, I should probably clarify that: The most important part about these relationships in the context of the sex industry is that they are entirely platonic. None of them have ever been under the impression that we were going to have sex or a romantic encounter of any kind. They have become my friends because they understand the industry and because I was honest with them, and most of all, because we see each other as individuals, not as objects. It's perfectly easy to make a living as an erotic performer without ever being dishonest with someone or leading them on for one minute.