There's a dancer at the club who's been in the business for about 19 years, she says. Let's call her Ms. Allman; she's a southern gal. She's the one who tipped me to the club in SC where I'll be working in February. Ms. A is in great shape, very trim and toned, with a reasonable boob job, probably a C cup. She's very feisty. This is the gal who called the creepy guy from earlier this week an asshole. Tends to be a bit of a motormouth, hustles guys at the pool table, and does incredible handstands and pole work on stage. She is very entertaining and definitely of the old school.

We were talking in the dressing room about different clubs, and she said she wouldn't dance nude. "That's mine, right there. I'm not showing it to anyone else," she said. Fair enough, we all have our boundaries.

On stage, she'll occasionally flip from the stage into a customer's lap, winding up upside down with his nose squarely in her asscrack. It's a fairly impressive and dangerous move. I have also seen her take an empty beer can from a customer, place it between her buttocks, and crush it. And she has also tucked her ankles behind her ears and set a customer's beer bottle on her crotch and balanced it there.

These are all things I would never consider doing topless, naked, or fully clothed. Yet I'm perfectly comfortable doing the splits buck naked. Well, we all have our boundaries.

I'm tired now; it was kind of a long day. Which means I worked more than 5 hours. But the first two were pretty dead, and I didn't do much of anything. Then, after a stage set, I was approached by an older guy who wanted to negotiate some couch dances. He went into a little description of how he has his favorite girl at the club, who wasn't there today, and that he didn't like dances, but rather to have her sit on his lap topless and just chat with him. "And she kisses me," he said. Huh? Yes, he told me he kisses this dancer. I'm tending to not believe him at this point, because what he says he usually spends on her ($200) doesn't seem like it would be near enough to tempt this pretty successful dancer into such antics. I tell him that I don't think I can deliver what she does (if she does), but that we can give it a shot my way and see if he likes it.

Well, this guy is the neediest customer I've ever run into. He discusses his annual income and his IQ, two things that I don't want to hear from anyone. I'm impressed by what people do, not what they say. Not to mention it's incredibly tacky. And then he goes on to tell me how useful an attractive, college-educated woman like myself could be to him in his professional life. "I like (the other dancer), but she doesn't have a college education," he says. That's a bad criteria to use when judging strippers--or anyone, for that matter. On and on he went, occasionally trying to cop a feel. My arm fell asleep, and then my leg. The waves of neediness coming off of this guy were so exhausting, and finally I excused myself after about five songs.

And then he hands me $20.

"Honey, this is a $20. We were up here for five songs," I tell him, having established with him earlier that time in the couch dance area is $20 a song whether I'm dancing or chatting topless. I would so have rather done five dances than listen to this guy. Fortunately he hits the bar and gets more cash. Sigh. It was the hardest $100 I think I've ever earned, and I've done it with $5 dances before.

I am so worn out I'm shaking when I get on stage; my leg is still partially asleep, and I'm just so amazed at this man's endless blather about his business and his (way lowball) offer for a night with me, which he then rescinded to tell me I should accompany him on business trips, upon which I would probably decide "to just go ahead and do it (him) anyway."

As he hands me the money and turns from the bar, the girl who's coming off stage says, "You never buy dances from me, asshole!" (With an attitude like that, how could he resist?) No big loss, I wanted to tell her.

Thankfully, the rest of the evening was full of low-maintainence customers. I had a lot of fun talking to a couple of guys on the floor, and the fella from a couple of weeks ago who handed me money just for hanging out at the bar was back. I didn't do a single dance for him, but he gave me $100 while I was at the bar. He simultaneously slipped $50s to another dancer and me, and went to the restroom. She looked at me and said, "Why did he just give us fifty bucks?" Well, hell, it never occured to me to ask why before. "He just does that," I told her. And he's funny, too. So that helped a lot, and my mood was much improved by the time I left.

Someone came back from England bringing me underwear, boiled sweets, and a copy of Belle de Jour. Though I've read most of the blog, there is a significant amount of non-blogged material in the book, and I'm enjoying the read. It's a little smutty, you know.

Reading "sex bloggers" is a pastime of mine. Probably for all of you, too. There's six or seven I visit regularly, and my favorite is Mistress Matisse. But funnily enough, for a woman who will gladly go into detail about sex in person, I've never been too interested in writing about it. In my real diary, sure, but not for public consumption. Perhaps this is a consequence of my occupation; I'm naked in public--literally--and I write about that, so I don't feel the need to write about the parts where I'm naked in private. Also, on reading Belle's book, I wonder what her paramours think of how they're portrayed. I've been so monogamous the entire time I've maintained this blog, so even if I did write about my sex life, it would only concern one other person. But go back in time and I could have written about a wider variety of people. What would they have thought?

Matisse's situation is different; the people she's involved with, to a great degree, also live publicy sexual lives; they're involved in communities or lifestyles where it's central. One of them keeps his own blog, detailing their experiences from his perspective.

I don't think there's anything bad about sex blogging; it's fun to read and at times provides great insight. I love Matisse's handling of multiple partners, and the attitudes of those who don't get it. In theory, I'd accept an open relationship. We're just both too lazy and picky to find anyone else to fuck. I love Prof $1.50's rendering of the fiasco that was her online/briefly real-world relationship with her internet boyfriend. I can so relate. I read Postmodern Courtesan and love her book list, though I'm skeptical of the blogged events' basis in reality. But I still read it.

But yeah, writing about the sex life, not for me.

I know for a fact that some people I've slept with are regular readers of this blog. One of them emails me occasionally; we've remained friends. One has never even mentioned my site to me; I found out through friends he visits. I'm not sure he's in my circle of friends anymore, since he RSVP'd for, then never showed or called for my best friend's (his former roommate) wedding. There might be others. I can think of a couple more who might know of the site. It would be really, really funny to write about (ancient) sex with them knowing they're reading, but I also think it would be a little mean.

*back to work*

I will be heading to South Carolina to work during the second week of February. I anticipate better weather and money. One of the girls at the Living Room told me about Club Paradise and said, "There's not a house on Hilton Head under half a mil, or a woman under 200 pounds." I'm not sure golf season is in effect yet, but I figured I'd check it out. They supply a condo for the out-of-town dancers and the flight was cheap, so I'm not risking too much even if the money isn't great. It would be hard for it to be worse, I'd imagine. I'm not starving here or anything, but driving an hour each way and leaving with less than $200 is not good.

Some guy at the bar last week struck up a conversation with me; he's kind of a hippie and a club regular. He told me he'd stopped taking his Zoloft. Hmm. We chat, and he says, "You're a lot smarter than you let on." Hee. Yes, most intelligent strippers are going to try to impress you with their brains. And people off their meds drinking in a bar are good judges of brainpower, hmm? I certainly don't play dumb at work, I just don't want to alienate anyone by making my intelligence the focal point of my presentation. Come to think of it, that would be annoying in just about any social or work situation.

This reminds me of the time some guy did a double take when I used some multisyllabic word. "Wow! I never heard a stripper use that word before!" It made me feel like a monkey who'd learned sign language.

Can you imagine saying something so patronizing to anyone else? "Wow! I've never heard a plumber speak like that before!" You'd get your ass handed to you. To tell the truth, I did rip into that guy a little.

Honestly, where do these guys come from? They also ask me why I'm still stripping after finishing school. Well, you dork, my English degree doesn't have the earning power of my tits. And my Eco minor helps me recognize this. I don't remember who said it but I loved this line: "My IQ doesn't go down when I take my clothes off."

I'm kind of happy that these incidents shock me, because it goes to show you they don't happen very often. Most customers either don't care about my brain, which is fine with me, or they like my personality, which my brain is involved in. Not a lot of them act stunned like that.

Of course, there's a different breed of customer and dancer in Dayton. Maybe I need to head up to Columbus to work. College town, state capital and all

Today's my day off. Well, technically I could take the rest of the week off, since I've worked my required and scheduled three shifts, but I'm going to work on Friday and Saturday. The scheduling thing is interesting; I'm not used to that. But considering that the shifts are so short and you're only required to work three days, and can make your own schedule, it's not that bad of a deal.

It still hasn't been great; I'll have a decent day, then a slow one, then a decent one, but no wonderful nights yet.

There's a homeless or close to it guy who stops by the bar. He comes up and orders a beer, the bartender tells him, "That's $2.75." He says, "Aw, I only got a dollar, can you throw something in?" And she does! I've seen this happen three times. And he talks very loudly. "HEY, GORGEOUS! YOU LOOKIN' GOOD!" He's like the Jackovasaur from South Park.

On one of my first days at the club, a woman who'd given birth just four weeks before came back to work. She's onstage and two of the guys at the bar are talking about it.
"She just had a kid four weeks ago, can you believe it?"
She dances down towards the bar and one of them tells her how good she's looking.
"Yeah, but I still have to lose some weight," she says.
"Around the middle, huh?" he says.
Then they start talking about breast milk.
"Hey, I might have some coffee in a while, can you come over and put some milk in it?"

Yep, it's a bit of a neighborhood place.

On Monday I was talking to a guy from Dallas who was up on business. He was an A&M grad, so we got to talking about the governor (Rick Perry is the first Aggie governor of Texas). "I went to school with him, you know. He was a dumbass then and he's a dumbass now."

This same guy then asked me if I did "progressive" dances, meaning did they get better as we went on. He asked this after I'd finished the first one. Now, I won't lie and promise things I won't give in order to make money. I just can't do it. I think if a guy wants to spend his money on a "dirty" dancer, he should be free to do so. So I told him I did "sustainable" dances. Which means that I do them at a level of contact and activity that I'm comfortable with so that I can keep doing them. We did a few more, then he tried to put my hand on his crotch. But hey, at least I did four dances before he tried anything.

Yesterday was interesting. I sat down at the bar for a break before going on stage, and I returned to my spot after my set as it was a little slow. The guy next to me slipped me $10 and apologized for not tipping me on stage. He ended up just handing me money for the rest of my shift, and bought a few dances. He must have just handed me about $150 in pure tips while I was sitting at the bar with him for a couple of hours. "Can I give you some money? You won't be offended?" Nope. Sure won't. He was a lot of fun, then as he got progressively drunker started hitting on me more and more. Then apologizing for hitting on me. Then hitting on me again. Repeat. It got a little tiring. I guess he's one of those guys who's fun between drinks 1-5, then you want to watch out. Made my night easier, though, that's for sure.

I hope Friday and Saturday are good. I still haven't worked a weekend because I was sick last week; found a good doctor in Cincinnati, though.

Yes, I live and I dance. The drive up to Cincinnati was all right; thankfully we didn't get covered in snow until the week before Christmas. That week I'd driven to Dayton to check out the Living Room, where I'm currently employed. I walked in the door and the manager asked me to start working immediately as they were short on girls. No ID check, no rules lecture, nothing. It's topless, so the whole time I'm mentally reminding myself to leave my thong on. It was pretty quiet, but I liked the club fine, even though dancers have to pay for their damn cokes and coffee here . . . not to mention water.

But it's a nice enough club. Certainly not decorated in standard Texas strip club style. The chairs are like those stacking ones they use in hotel conference rooms, but I guess that doesn't matter since we don't do table dances there. All of the dances are done while the guy sits in a large, overstuffed chair in a raised area off of the main floor. Private enough for them to enjoy it but not so private that I'm concerned.

Anyhow, this club has slightly different rules, but it's awesome in a couple of ways. First, the shifts are only four hours long. That means no leave-early fee. It frequently cost me $60-$80 a shift to work at XTC; $20-$40 in house fees, $20 to leave early, and $10-$20 to the DJ. Here there is only a $20 house fee, regardless of which shift or how many you work, and a tip to the DJ. Very nice.

The stage is a little weird; it's like a runway, not really a performing stage. Spinning poles too. But there's only one, so the longest I'll be up is for two songs, not the six it takes to do three stages at most Austin clubs.

I've been gone a week, out in LA at the Rose Bowl and in Hollywood for a nice vacation. Of course, it rained the whole damn time, and it's cold and rainy in Cincinnati now. Bleh.

I'll be working this afternoon and will continue to catch up later.