I caught some kind of stomach virus that's been going around and had a completely miserable day yesterday. I got up, I felt ill, I hugged the toilet for a few hours, dragged myself to the urgent care clinic (it was a Saturday, of course), had to sit around for two hours to be told I had a stomach bug and to achieve my initial objective which was to get a prescription for Phenergan in suppository form (I took a pill and it came up soon after). Having obtained that and some Gatorade I retuned home. Around 7 last night I walked to the corner store (quite literally just around the corner of the building) and was so dizzy I feared I'd pass out in the elevator coming back up. I think I only slept at most two consecutive hours in the last 24, having to wake up intermittantly to hit the toilet. Thankfully I haven't thrown up since 1 a.m.

which brings me to work on Thursday when I left early; basically it was just a slow day and I was tired, so I wasn't feeling incredibly great. One of the girls asked me what was wrong and I said, "Oh, I'm just kind of tired and dragging." "I hope it's not the flu," she said. "Oh, lord, I hope not," I responded. Technically it isn't the flu, it's a stomach bug, but there you go. I can't even watch food commercials on television. Ick.

I forgot to mention next month's alternative to Valentine's Day, Steak and a Blowjob Day, or as it's referred to on this annoyingly tame website, Steak and BJ Day. They also misspelled fellatio. Hee.

Also, speaking of fellatio, this is the funniest Craigslist posting of the week.

So in the dressing room last Saturday one of the girls asked another to take a picture of her in full makeup, hair, and sheer nighty. "For my mom," she said. Oy. I feel a little like a prude, here, that I've never normalized stripping enough to really want to share the day-to-day with my parents. They know what I do, but we pretty much don't talk about it. I talk about it with my mother some, my father never, and assorted cousins and aunts and uncles think it's pretty freaking funny. However, I pray none of them hit this site or, god forbid, see me at work. Maybe this "being cool with the parents" thing is a Portland deal? I would almost say it's kind of a white trash deal but that would be cruel . . .

Let me share with you a lovely gift given to me by a friend, this set of nesting dolls, available here. Ooh, how sultry.

What will she be next? A little more naked!

And now she takes her bra off completely!
Panties next?

How saucy! Let's look and see if she's really a blonde.

How typical. What a tease.

Well, this was kind of late in coming, but it looks like someone is really banking from the loooong rain;a company that bottles and sells Oregon rainwater. There is a similar company outside of Austin though I imagine they are in trouble this year.

We were sitting in the dressing room a few days ago before opening when one of the younger dancers was talking about her week.
"My dad and my stepmom came in here last week. She wants to make me costumes!"
Looks are exchanged.
"Your dad was in here? What did you do?"
"Oh, nothing. He sits in the back and plays video poker and doesn't look when I'm onstage."
Looks are exchanged again. Another dancer comments on how the appearance of any family member would cause her to turn tail and run. One more mentions that though her family knows she dances, they have an unspoken agreement to never, ever discuss it. Finally someone says, "Welllll . . . I guess that's cool that your family is OK with it . . . but it's still weird.

Were I to ever see my father, an uncle, a stepbrother step into the club, my shift would be over so quickly. Though the thought of my stepmother in a strip club makes me giggle.

A customer told me he loved me today. In sign language. He also gave me a bag of coffee (I drink nothing but coffee and water. If you're sitting with customers and alternating between the two all day you also have a handy need to get up and visit the ladies' room frequently). It was a sweet gesture, though I would have preferred something nonedible. He's a very nice customer, though, and I hope I accepted the gift graciously enough.

Along those lines, someone tipped movie tickets on stage the other day--a girl had left it up there and I spotted it after my set. That's actually a pretty nice tip, you know, eight bucks or so, and as I later told someone else, "If customers wanted to start tipping me with gift cards I'd be pretty happy about that." You know, Victoria's Secret, Home Depot, Whole Foods, Amazon. That would be awesome.

I went to Lush on Wednesday to meet with some internet stripper friends, one of whom was a bit freaked that a male was there and left really quickly; I guess I should set up a girls' night for a PDX stripper meet since I was sorry she left so early. But he was really fun company and I wouldn't have wanted to exclude him. Lush is a lovely club but was just dead as all hell. There is, however, a dancer named Sonya there who does the best pole tricks I have ever seen. It was like being at naked Cirque du Soleil. I also met my first real live Suicide Girl. I didn't get to ask her if they were really the asshats they're currently being portrayed as, though.

The best thing I heard from a customer this week: "It's not fair that you're that hot and you know what Slashdot is." I responded to this by quoting Why I Hate Saturn which I think makes me even geekier. Or crazier.