Oh yeah, I'm switching hosts this month . . . the site might be wonky for a day or two. Shouldn't take too long to sort out, though.

The trip to Austin was brief and hot; I did indeed work on Monday night, too. Thanks to one customer in particular for the lovely birthday gift; it was much appreciated. Hee, hee, I have been writing a lot of thank you notes lately and here is how they go:
Dear [blank],

It was so great to see you/Sorry you couldn't make it . . .
Thanks for your generous/thoughtful/kind gift [gift=cash. If it was a present, then it's "Thank you for the beautiful vase"] . . .
Hope to see you soon,

Susan

Blah blah. It gets repetitive, but you still want to make each note unique, you know?

XTC was interesting; apparently they are enforcing some weight restrictions on the night shift in a rather unusual way. Chunky girls are being told they can't go on stage--but they can still work! This seems screamingly unfair to me, who will pay $20 to skip stages at that club. My opinion is a stripper who shouldn't be on stage shouldn't be a stripper. It is, after all, a rather basic job requirement that you take off your clothes while people watch.

The day shift? Not so many requirements, hee.

I was glad to see, however briefly, Brian the doorguy and DJ Hippi, along with a few of the usual girls. However, I'm not sure how good it will be to work there this summer if I'm down in Austin for six weeks. Readers, if you have a special request for me to work at your favorite Austin club in July or August, feel free to let me know. I hate to give up the nudity, though. After two months of wearing two-thongs-and-pasties it felt rather liberating.

Tonight it's back out to Indiana.

I'm in Austin and it only took 45 minutes before I ate at Curra's. Now that is a fine start to a birthday weekend as was getting upgraded to a room with a jacuzzi tub.

I might try to make it in to XTC to work on Monday night if I haven't had too much of a blowout tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

And I'm in the process of switching hosts, so if the site's fucked up at the end of the month, that's what's going on. It shouldn't take too long, but I might have email issues because Earthlink is taking forever to sort out the domain stuff. Anything urgent comes up, catch me at rivercitykitty@yahoo.com.

I'm not sure what kind of impact this ruling will have, but it isn't a shock considering that there aren't any clubs in Hamilton County at all.

I think that this Deja Vu is a little closer to me than Concepts, but Deja Vus give me the willies. It is my fervent hope that I never work at one. It's like the Wal-Mart of nudie bars.

Seriously, I wasn't kidding about the tuition for that summer class. UT has none of that community-college-eighty-dollars-a-class-shit, it's like an investment of a couple grand just to start. I'll sell lapdance packages&mdashbuy five get one free, or something. I would say I'll just sell lapdances, but I have a short period of time here to take care of business--it's down to Austin on Saturday (my birthday is on Sunday), up here again on Tuesday, then a drive to Texas around the 8th or 9th of July (classes run July 11-Aug 13).

Hee hee. I know that's normally not the time of year to plan a trip to Texas, but hell, that's what A/C is for.

But really, I put some used shoes and things up on eBanned, I'm so worried I won't be able to cover the tuition! Eek. I hate dealing with a last-minute crisis like this. Although I'm confident I'll make it work. Dammit.

Anybody want to help me with tuition so I can go back to Austin for a few weeks? I'm thinking of taking a summer class at UT in July/August but I need to come up with some extra bucks to do so, above and beyond what I can earn between now and July 11 . . . I'm trying to think of a way to make myself into a charity so you could give me money and make it tax-deductible.

Yesterday was quite possibly the slowest day ever. I mean, we're talking a total customer count of under 20 for the entire day. The bar sales were pitiful. There is nothing more soul-sucking than being on stage in front of no audience for hours at a time. Yeesh. No more Mondays ever for me. Though I did get to dance to ABBA.

Yesterday I wore a little black suit at work. I also had my glasses on—that's why I wore the suit; I felt like not wearing my contacts, and of course a stripper with glasses is either a librarian, a secretary, or a schoolteacher (ah, but screw that gender stereotyping. I told the guys I was a naughty prosecuting attorney). Mario, the daytime door man and I were sitting at the bar and another dancer walked in. She peered at me, not recognizing me with my glasses, and I said, "It's Susan."
"She's my secretary today," Mario said.
"Hmph. I've been replaced in everything else by you, might as well be replaced as the secretary," she says.
Huh? I haven't seen her in professional wear, but maybe that's her thing. And another customer told me when I first started that she wasn't too happy with me because "now she doesn't have the best body on the shift." This is so utterly bizarre, because we do not look or dance alike in any way--she is a slender, tan blonde and climbs the pole. Totally different looks and styles.
Well, I hate confrontation, and when I was back in the dressing room got really nervous as she was telling another girl about a fight she'd been in. "And then I just kicked her once in the gut and said, 'Don't fuck with my girl, bitch!'" Oh, shit.
But I'm guessing her comment could be chalked up to general crankiness, because she did talk to me later in the day, just conversationally. You know, that's the thing wiht little clubs, they have a delicate balance and it isn't hard for girls to feel threatened.

There was an awful murder-suicide in a house down the block from the club Friday night. Apparently a fireman shot his estranged wife then turned the gun on himself--there were cop cars out there all day and we kept waiting for TV crews to show up. I can't find anything in the papers today either.

At the very end of the shift, I was sitting at the bar chatting with a customer, a very stylish (wearing the new Armani colgne, awesome tailored jeans) and witty black guy, and I asked to bum a cigarette. "They're menthols," he said.
"Oh, that's fine," I said, and took one.
"My nigga! Smokin' a menthol."

I nearly fell off the bar stool, I was laughing so hard.

Did I ever tell you about the time I took the Mekons to a strip club? This was during South by Southwest, in 1998, when I was 21. It was the Sunday night that ended the festival, and I was talking to Jon Langford and Sally Timms when the topic of my occupation came up. We all decided it would be fun to head to the Yellow Rose, where I was working at the time. I'd first met Jon when interviewing him for the school paper and, as he is one of the friendliest men in the world, he'd introduced me to his bandmates and buddies. I know there were some other folks with us, and though I have my suspicions, my memory's a little fuzzy. If you were there, remind me. And oh yeah, I post this being fairly certain the parties involved won't care about being outed as drinkers and libertines.

I do remember buying Sally a couple of lapdances, and that her boyfriend at the time, Fred Armisen, tried to bring in his camcorder but was shot down at the door (obviously, but still too bad as the footage he shot that week wound up as part of an entertaining and widely circulated flick.)

That was, without a doubt, my most entertaining night as a customer in a strip club.

Cute article at Nerve.com today; a participatory journalism piece where a woman tries out at a NYC nudie bar.

My body's been in revolt. After a couple of nights sleeping on a shitty mattress in PA, my back seized up so tightly that I was literally squeezing out the acupuncture needles during a treatment last week. My stress level has never been so high in my life; I need a serious attitude adjustment. I think a late-20s malaise has settled on me. Granted, it's been a busy and stressful year, but I want the stress to have more positive results, like making me work more or focus on my, um, next career. Instead it just takes itself out on my body.

I worked on Saturday and Monday during the day and it was pathetic both times, which is too bad, since because of the back I'll probably be going over to days for the forseeable future--it's less stressful. Hah hah.

I have had some entertaining experiences selling shoes on Ebanned; one of my pairs of stripper heels went for over $40. For used stripper shoes. Of course, there's value added by my having worn them.

I left work early last night because I wasn't feeling well, which, damn it, means I will have to go in tonight for sure before leaving tomorrow on vacation; it's off to the East Coast for a week.

But during the brief time I was there, I was chatting with a customer and said, "Deep Throat, huh? I'm kind of sad it wasn't Kissinger."

"Yeah, that's pretty crazy. It's amazing those guys used information from some phone call, some guy they didn't even know. That was shaky reporting."

pause


Sound of Susan laughing as she realizes someone just called what Woodward and Bernstein did "shaky reporting."