VD

Valentine's Day has come and gone again. Ugh. An old friend who I worked with at my first strip club job sent me a text that said, 'Happy VD, I'm burning for you'. Clever. She's been working as a manager-slash-bartender in a regular ol' bar in the city for the past few years, but with times as hard as they are she's now looking for shifts back in a gentlemen's club. Unfortunately even though many of our old colleagues from years ago (the 'dedicated' male service workers, go figure) have now penetrated the upper echelon of today's clubs, she's had no luck getting back in. Everyone wants a job in the vice industries. Wall Street brokers are even sending resumes to managers for jobs in an attempt to get back some of the money they 'invested' in the clubs before the economy crashed.

Ha ha! I said gentlemen's club. I can't help but want to change up the vocabulary so as not to repeat 'strip club' often, but 'gentlemen's club' is such a euphemism! What a crock. And the 'hosts' are not pimps, the 'lap dances' not over-the-pants frictional jack-offs, 'dancers' not strippers... or hookers. We're even told to never use the word 'cheap', but 'inexpensive' instead. I need to snap out of the gentlemen's club vernacular- NUDIE BAR! SEX SHOW! BROTHEL! NIPPLE DERBIE!!!! Yeah, I looked that last one up. What the hell is a nipple derbie anyway?

Anyway. In the name of St. Valentine, the patron of lovers, let me at least mention those patrons who might be occasionally considered gentlemen. Still, my pseudonym allows me to skip the euphemizing and get straight to the point: the dumb, the dwarfed, the obese, the disturbingly ugly, the crippled- these are the guys who are excused. They are also the ones you're more likely to see on Valentine's Day because they really can't get it on their own. The rest are not gentlemen. They are liars, cheaters, and overindulgent- brokers, lawyers, CEOs, actors and trust fund babies. Those guys spend Valentine's Day with their girlfriends.

Happy VD! I'm itching to make some money.

Perkies

There are so many different perks to consider in the business, budump-bump. Perks in the added bonus sense of the word, I mean. The bathroom guy once had the best answer when a customer asked him, "What's the best thing about this job?" He told him, "I can take a piss whenever I want." It was right on cue, I'm sure. I have my own jokish answers to common questions as well. You might even consider that its own perk: to have jokes memorized as a job requirement; it aids in my popularity, no doubt. The hosts and the managers laugh about service punctuality and free upgrades gained from the power of their business cards. They can get a cellphone fixed and delivered back to them at work in the same day. Buy the deliverer a drink if need be, but the new connect is usually ecstatic just to be in the club- especially on company time. I'm sure the hot girls checking coats and taking admission fees, and the security dudes at the door can get a food delivery stat, maybe even free, although I'm never there to see it. And when assigned indoors, the security guards are ultimately getting paid to look at naked girls. Fights just don't break out like in regular clubs, so the need to actually secure is somewhat rare.

Stories are a perk for me, and others. That chick that wrote Juno in her off-stripping time signed on for a series with Steven Spielberg. I WISH! Well... I don't wish that everyone I know find out that I work in a strip club and accept it, but I'd take a deal with Steven Spielberg as a result of having so much extra creative time, transparency aside. What else? Hair and makeup is a perk in a couple ways. That place is a wealth of beauty tricks and illusions, the dressing room its classroom and the club its research lab. It's a free lesson if you want it, or beauty is an all-too-easily-available option to just pay for and have applied to you. Take it from a girl with a big 'ol head of hair, having a hair stylist on site and ready to tame your mane for twenty bucks is a fringe benefit.  That leads me back to cash. Cash in hand, especially these days, now that's big. And, of course, the job can be a lot of fun (although that fact is more dangerous than a bonus).                                                                                                                                                                          

Strippers, its worth mentioning, are exempt from this topic except to mention that the downfalls of their job far outweigh the perks (as is true for every position, in my honest opinion). Let's just assume they have all of the above mentioned plus some.