Sleeping at Night

"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For Everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be manifest, that they are wrought in God." -JC (John 3:19-21)

As The Times crossword advances to a place out of my mental grasp, I am reminded that the week is almost over. Thank you, GOD, and you're welcome for the shout out! I've survived four day shifts in a row. The positive side is that I've had evenings off and enjoyed them (too much yesterday, actually, when I spent more than I made). The bad thing was the realization that men are perverts 24 hours a day with no shame. As if I didn't know this to some extent, but the reminder of how far some go was a bit painful.

Irish Santa, Obnoxious-Short-Patron-Shot-and-Goose-Back Man, and Paulie were there every day like clockwork, and they weren't the only outed addicts, just the exceptional ones. Paulie, the old guido who subjected me to the sight of a clitoris and outer labia last week, managed to make my stomach turn again when I served him and a couple girls a full on lobster feast. He reached across the table without pause ripping meat from the carcasses in front of each girl and handing out the family style vegetables with his fingers. I never got a chance to see if he had a greasy butter stain all over the front of his pants after he got up, but I pictured it (as much as he plays with his crotch). But the worst part was watching the chicks eat the food after his cooties were all over it! I had to wash up to my elbows in the bathroom after bussing dishes off the table! Where are your boundaries, ladies!

Which reminds me- another truth that's been solidified in my What I Already Know brain file is that I'm a much better bartender after a couple drinks... well duh. No seriously though, it's especially difficult not to drink at a strip club. During the day, though, I can't do it like that. I read! My laugh is painfully fake, and some people I decide to not even wait on occasionally forcing a dancer to track me down because she was counting on me to help her waste time. Then I go in a sober pushover. I do try to get into a friendly groove at the end of the day when I know I'm about to go home broke, but without any real sense of pride. Right after the corporate work day ends and right before we do the shift change it starts to pick up and I start to push back. Ask and you shall receive! It's the truth, but it's awkward to do (especially sober and as a well-trained people pleaser). Still, I do just enough to walk out happy about a work to pay ratio above average and the fact that I have the night off.

Of course the truth is, I suck. The dancers-turned-waitresses do the best all around and I do my personal best with the protection of the bar between me and my prey (or am I the prey), AND I'm even better with a few drinks in me... at night. It's the only time that place could ever be acceptable in any way: drunk and at night. Serving drinks to couples in dark rooms when I know it's a sunny day out and I'm missing it is very different. Perhaps I should guilt the guy into buying a bottle of something because I know his little secret, maybe I should sit on his lap and tell him what he wants to drink because he'll probably listen, but instead I'm the girl taking their order from as far away as possible and then walking away as they're answering. I don't care- the line only blurs at night, but during the day it's lit up and obvious. Ewwwww, you're a perv!

Luck for me I can stomach a lot of gross.

My rational? It's just financially worth dealing with when factoring in a return of way lucrative night shifts. I made a respectable amount of money this week working the day shifts. It's worth it. Really. The day shift's not bad. The night shift is almost fun sometimes. It's cool. Did I say that already? Oh God.

Afternoon Delight

I'm working the day shift all week. It's cool because I get to keep a pretty normal sleep schedule, it's easy, and the money is decent. Better than most lunch shifts at a restaurant, that's for sure. I get there at 10:30 and leave before eight. Since it's summer it's not completely dark when I get out, but if I get on the train home immediately then by the time I get to my neighborhood it is. I can't imagine doing this for an extended amount of time- at least with the night shift you can will yourself to get up after a few hours of sleep and enjoy some sun from the next day... or stay up into the next day. But working all day the lights especially kill me in that dungeon. I'm happy to sit by myself on the separate V.I.P. floor where there's AC, lower volume on the music and I can read my book without much distraction- but it's hard to read under the black lighting. I should start taking vitamin D before I go crazy. It's like working in a casino.

The day shift has been interesting in its own way. Like how I've noticed who the real addicts are- I didn't even realize how I was naively assuming that some of these guys just happen to come on the same days I normally work! The truth is some go every day. There's this one guy who's been in the last two days, which is about as long as he's been in New York on business, and the hostess knew him from a previous trip. It sounds like I might see him tomorrow morning again, too. Strangely enough, though, this one guy I don't mind. He's got a cute little Irish accent and looks sorta like Santa Clause. I've imagined him a jolly, old, fat, lonely man who just enjoys the affection. Maybe his beautiful, legend marriage ended when she passed away from some rare cancer that he nursed her through, and he vowed to never love another women and now resorts to paying for human contact. Hot stripper human contact. Anyways, I may not give him any affection (gross!), but I do feel drawn to sit with him when he's waiting alone for the host to get him a new girl for another new hour in the room (he was still there when I left!) I can't tell if any of the girls he goes in with are finishers*, since I haven't worked at this club long enough to figure all the dancers out, but they don't seem to be. 

Mark Twain says to never wake a woman up from her dream!

So yeah. When working the day shift I head out of the house early, grab an iced coffee, The Times, The Post, and my novel and head to the strip club. I put on my sexy little outfit in the basement (skipping the hair and makeup routine mostly since I'm rarely seen anyway) and head up to the top floor where I make sure everything looks right before I sit down at a table to read the headlines and the 'Strange But True' section, do the crossword puzzles, then the Sudoku, order my ten dollar three course lunch (Holla!) and eat it. That reminds me, I forgot my chocolate cake doggy bag on top of my locker. Damn.

I do all this, usually, before the first guy comes up from the main floor to get a private room. Afternoon delight after lunch. When he gets up there I ask him if they want a bottle of wine, champagne (How about a bottle so I can just leave you two alone?) or drinks, they put in an order, I make it, serve it, close their curtained door with a heavy duty paper clamp, and finish the paperwork that the hostess has prepared for the payment of the room. Then I go sit back down with the walkie-talkie and listen for the signals that someone else might be coming up. The guys leave good tips cause they're ballers, plus they don't usually want me making another trip to get change as that's only cutting into their private time. Simple stupid.

And as always- one guy can make the whole day. Come to think of it, the Irish Santa tipped me big on every drink all day. Maybe that's why I liked him. 

*Finisher: a woman who poses as an exotic dancer but then prostitutes herself when in the private room. Synonyms: fun girl; one who 'does the right thing'; closer; hooker; ho; etc.

Pa Ruski? Habla Espanol? Arabee? English??

"May God be merciful with everyone, and may He remove from their eyesight the grim affliction that compels them to interpret everything I say as morally deprived and wanton. I have no recourse but to pray for these unfortunates, that God might enlighten their vision, so that they would truly see at least some of what is going on around them, as it really is, and guide them to the ways of respectable dialogue, without attacking others as unbelievers, without humiliating them, and without rubbing them in the dirt." Excerpt from 'Girls of Riyadh' by Rajaa Alsanea

Another really cool thing about working in a strip club is not just the money that you make, but the traveling the money can afford you (uh, yeah, my brain has to rationalize this way in order to build up the positive side of my pro/con list- "more available cash" would be another example... let it slide). I recently returned from over a year abroad where I was able to work a meaningful job as a writer, live comfortably and enjoy myself thanks to Third World prices and a strip club piggy bank. Now I'm home and able to slide right back in to get myself city situated again. Thank you service industry! 

So I moved to the Middle East a couple years ago after busting my ass through a busy season at the first strip club I bartended at; took the money and ran, as they say. It was in my last days upon leaving when I was working one of my lucrative VIP shifts during the early dinner rush and the owner approached my bar as he had habitually done over the past year or so. I got him a white wine, I'm sure, and we got to chatting. How I hate to waste my charm in these places! Eventually I was relieved by a visiting minion or ass-kisser or someone and my boss said to him about me, "Can you believe this girl? She's leaving us! Going to the Middle East." Then he looked me in the eye and went on, "They hate women over there." 

This guy. Who is married with grown children and grandchildren, and spends every day after work in his club with his stripper girlfriend, his best buddies and their own exotic dancing mistresses-AASLUTSCHOOOO! - sorry, excuse me. This guy who eats a big bloody steak, buttery and cheesy side dishes, drinks alcohol and smokes weed, and has sex with a prostitute every night. This old man who had a family party at the same club he cheats on his wife in- parties where his toddling grandchildren roam a place with poles and glowing pictures of fake breasts and jewelry in ass cracks on the wall. Curse the creators of Viagra! How is this old man still alive?

Am I giving myself too away here?

It just gets me thinking. When This Guy said that to me it stuck. Who the hell was he judging?But you 'love' women, is that it? Of course I just smiled and pretended to take him seriously as always. Stifle the opinion! And then I moved to a conservative country where I saw a whole other kind of screwed up. It made me truly realize how men and women are messed up all over the world. Crazy can look like many things. Some women stay virgins until they marry a man they don't love. Some have hymen repair surgery to trick a husband into believing they're a virgin when they're not. Some take their clothes off for money. Men want sex and women find many ways to deal with that- EVERYwhere.

The major languages of the club I'm in now are Spanish and Russian. English isn't popular in the dressing room. Although I'm American through and through, my father's strong Eastern European blood shows up so much on my face that girls are constantly asking me things in Russian. What's most interesting to me is how there was also a reputation that preceded Russian girls in the Middle East. Don't tell me you weren't picturing girls from the pages of Russian Mail Order Bride catalogue too. In Arab countries they were the call girls disguised as belly dancers or the dates for the traveling, rich Gulfie men. They must be the poorest white girls in the world- that's the only rationalization I can get out of that: laws of supply and demand. Stereotypes grow from a small but very real seed, I believe.

Of course I think many things are what they are and happen for a reason. They better- otherwise my good girl reputation was a huge waste of time and I've lost critical hustling years!

The After After Party

When you finish working at 5am (last call's at 4, and then we do our cash outs), you can't go right to bed.  It'd be like going to sleep before dinner time, for the nine to fivers. So, of course, in this great city that doesn't sleep there are a number of options for the service industry folk to wind down.

First stop is always right next door where there's a bar that reopens after they close specifically for my club's staff. There's a doorbell and the manager will come answer each new ring to approve or disapprove the guest. You have to know him or he'll tell you they're closed. It's a dark pub for us to get a quick buzz and talk shop while the sun comes up. From there one can always hit up Korea Town at any hour because these Koreans are the lucky holders of a legal 24 hour liquor license giving them the ability to openly sell sake and beer with the food (the afterthought to the liquor pull). No secret code to get in. There are a number of restaurants on this midtown strip to choose from, and going at dawn always results in a funny story.

On Friday and Saturday there's an after hours party downtown that goes until 8:30 or so. The basement club has a full bar, and plenty of druggies, drug music and drugs. Although liquor is my only vice, I brought some of my coworkers to this spot last night and enjoyed the guido fist pumping and glow stick dancing show. It was pretty intense as always. People there are so high that they have the nerve to strike up conversations with complete strangers, and as the three newbies who seemed to know the important people there (I'm friends with the promoters), me and my two guy friends from work drew a lot of attention. It's also quite the cockfest, so I was being schemed on from every angle by men with sly grins, big pupils and more drugs. And hats- you've never seen so many hats in one place without uniforms involved. It's like a mini hell, but it's so intriguing to me. There was one girl who did a run/dance from wall to wall the entire time I was there. And she was having a blast! Good times.

I can't believe I stayed so late this time that they turned the lights on at the after after party.

A Stripper's Soundtrack

One of the best parts about working in a strip club, besides the money, is the music. Because it's not a genre themed party (i.e. hip hop or house), all kinds of music can be played. Naked chicks are the theme. Mostly what we hear is based on what the girls request to dance to when they're on stage, but most of them are pretty lame and don't care so it leaves room for requests. If we don't request then the obvious dirty strip club jams will play- I'm In Love With a Stripper, She's Only 17, one of the many appropriate 50 Cent titles- you know, tacky stuff. 

That would be the DJ job I would want. All the girls tip him out every night too- 20 a pop and we get upwards of a 100 girls a night. Crazy. And they've got a nice set up, since they need a lot of technology back there in the booth to keep track of the rotation and which girls are in private rooms and therefor unavailable. The computer gives them the ability to download new music on command. Plus they're constantly saying crazy stuff and making growling and whistling sounds over the mic. I would have fun with that part especially. "And here comes Fantasy ready to fulfill your fantasies in a private room- GRRRRR... don't forget to tip your servers!"

I love it when the dancers pick conscious artists like Lauryn Hill to strip to. They so don't notice the irony. "Showin' off your ass like you thinkin' it's a trend, girlfriend lemme break it down for you again." Hilarious.

Everybody Poops

It was a slow holiday weekend in the city.  At one point in the middle of my shift a curvy Latina with a platinum blond wig passed by me (while I held up the wall).  She paused and smiled, leaned to look at the hidden tables under the stairs where a few new guests were drinking beers. Then she looked back at me and said, "I should go over there, but I'm gonna go take a dump first". I laughed and she headed down to the dressing room.