And I'm on my way

Spyce, with a y

Last Thursday I got together with a couple of friends -- the dancer I went to Vegas with in April, and Summer, my teacher (and then boss) from PDX Pole Divas. Someone had the amazing idea to open up another strip club in Portland! What's that make, 56?

It's billed as Portland's newest upscale gentleman's club. It's located near Old Town, down on NW Couch and 2nd, close to a bunch of nightclubs and bars, and reminds me of the location of that short-lived place in Austin on 6th Street. The kind of traffic you expect there would be douchebags hitting meat markets and the drunk douchettes they hope to hit on, and our expectations were thoroughly met.

While two of us stood outside waiting for the third, who should we see approaching but this guy? "Don't recognize me, don't recognize me, I'm wearing my glasses, don't recognize me," I muttered. "Hi, Susan!" "Oh great."

Either he never read this article or he graciously (?) didn't mention it. Whew. I guess. It might have been fun to get into it.

We entered when Summer arrived; her vehicle clearly advertises her pole business and she confirmed that this attracts a lot of attention for her. The interior of the bar was pretty nice and very nightclubby. The stage sits a mere six inches off of the ground with poles very close to the corners and table seating rather than a rail around the stage; guess what this means? Nightly meetings twixt stiletto heel and customer body parts. They have got to raise that stage or build a rail around it before someone gets an accidental stripper-induced concussion.

But we really couldn't see too much, what with some woman's birthday party in front of us. As we explained to Summer, "When strippers bitch about female customers, this is what they're talking about." "I see why!" They were dancing on the floor, smacking their asses, blocking our view, and taking snapshots until one of the dancers on stage sent a bouncer over to ask that they put the camera away. Since, you know, it's a strip club.

What fun that would be to work around every weekend!

We talked about having some lapdances, but none of the dancers ever came by to ask for one, even though we tipped them all on stage. Boo for lazy strippers! Then we took off to check out Nicolai Street and see some girls we knew there. It was like night and day going from the downtown bar full of clubbers to the northwest one full of blue collar guys and people from the neighborhood restaurants. People were actually paying attention to the stage; and that bar is, if anything, one of those places where the strippers are incidental attractions somewhere between the video poker and the pool table. It's not upscale, but it's been around a while and will most certainly outlast Spyce. They're making a lot of work for themselves with that location.

From the Mary's jukebox to Fox

Of course I'm watching the show Fringe because what's not to like about The X-Files? And of course, since people wind up dead on a show about an FBI agent pursing paranormal incidents, there's going to be some hookers and strippers making cameos.

But hey, they're the kind of strippers who dance to the Black Angels. "Bloodhounds on My Trail" has been in my personal list of favorites for months thanks to a cool Mary's coworker (and friend of the band) who put it in the jukebox. Hearing "Young Men Dead" in a strip club scene during primetime totally took my mind off of the fact that of course that stripper was going to be dead inside of seven minutes. And that the one on the pole was dancing on a brick (?) floor.

And no, I never get tired of this kind of thing. It's always going to entertain me.

I'm teaching!

Summer of PDX Pole Divas has asked me to teach a lapdancing class this Saturday night.

From the PDX Pole Divas site:
Lapping Your Honey
Dates: Saturday 9/20/2008
Time: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
When it comes to giving, it's the thought that counts, and for your significant other, all the better if those thoughts are naughty! Come to the Diva Den West this Saturday, September 20th at 6 p.m. for Lapping Your Honey, a two-hour class on exotic dance, striptease, and private dancing for the bedroom.

We'll talk about

* costuming: lingerie for every woman
* setting the mood and music
* striptease, or, yes, there is a right way to take it off
* sensual movement
* how to feel great naked
* private dance techniques
* floorwork
* revealing your inner seductress

Bring your heels, a button up shirt, or double layered shirt, and shirt or shorts...you are welcome dress the part! There will be no nudity in this class

Susan Wayward has over a decade's experience as an exotic dancer, but more importantly has sustained a great relationship with her husband for over ten years. At least once a week she hears, "Can you teach me how to do that?" from female customers. Why yes, yes she can!


Go here to register at the bottom of the page.

Last night at the rack

"You should wear more green eye makeup. The green would go great with your red hair (I'm a brunette)."

"If your ass could speak, I bet it would be multilingual. It would speak, like, six languages."

(This is second only to "I bet your ass has opposable thumbs" for my favorite ass-related remark ever.)

Tuesday night, the little bar with one stage and no private dances had an open shift, and with a $4K vet bill on the credit card I need to make an effort to work at least some this week; it's not road money, but it's money, right?

The advantage of a stage only club is that it's relatively easy work to just dance and smile and not have to talk to people and be charming and try to sell them dances. When your brain is working slowly like mine is this week, that's good. Although it is disheartening when your money literally comes one dollar at a time -- I think that might have been the first night in a long time where I haven't been paid in anything but dollar bills. Usually someone tosses a $20 up there at some point.

So I punched in music into a jukebox, spent a little time talking to some customers who were perfectly pleasant if not free with the cash, and got through the night well enough. Enter music, step on stage, remove clothing, repeat. It's very simple.

Summer was also nice enough to let me fool around in her studio a couple of times, having fun with the play part of the job, the pole. My arms are so very very sore today from holding myself up and trying to learn new ways to be upside down holding onto a pole with one leg and no arms, and then doing handstands against the pole. All the blood rushed to my head and I felt dizzy when righting myself. That's a way to get a new perspective; being upside down. Watching all of your body trying to come to your head. It's not a flattering view, really, but it's an interesting one. I expect my breasts to try to hit my chin, but everything else that can move will.

And stainless steel poles require a strong grip that bruises thighs unused to it. These have faded since yesterday but are still quite impressive.


Same club tonight. Then tomorrow throwing myself back into the bigger club, I guess. I need to find my personality; I think I left it in Montana.

R.I.P. Squeaky, 1992-2008

Amateur night, take 3

My last night in Missoula was the Sunday before Labor Day, the last Sunday of the month, and amateur night. I've worked two other amateur nights at this club, one being great and the other being awful for earnings. This one was a record night for me at the club thanks mostly to the first customer who sat at my first stage set of the night and subsequently bought two hours in VIP before 10 p.m. The shocking part about this was his complete lack of fitting the profile of the average VIP-purchasing customer; he was under 30 and from Mexico, and at first I felt a little odd about the whole thing, about being his paid companionship and all, since he seemed sweet and lonely, but then he started propositioning me and getting grabby and my compassion began to be balanced with irritation.

As I've mentioned before, the great thing about amateur night here is the lack of ringers. At just about every single one of these things, the contestants are usually experienced strippers trying to win the cash prize or a job at the club, as some clubs use them as an easy event to get people in the doors combined with condensing all of their hiring into one night of the week. I'm happy to say I haven't had to enter one of these to get hired, although I've known some very experienced dancers who have. I believe the Seattle Deja Vu engages in this practice, with the prize money serving the purpose of buying the mandatory Seattle stripper license.

Not so in Missoula; there's real amateurs. One of them was the mother of one of the dancers at the club. Said dancer didn't work that night, so I didn't get to see her reaction, but I was told this wasn't the first time her mom had competed. There were also some, well ,average local girls, some hot local girls, another older woman who sported the first full bush I've seen at a nude club in quite some time, a truly amateur hottie who'll probably be working at the club, and a ringer, who, if she hasn't done this before, surely studied well. The ringer placed first, the young hottie second, and one of the older women took third. By audience response she should have gotten first place, clearly, as the crowd whooped and hollered for "Gramma!" to win. And yet it didn't seem too mean-spirited.

Back in the dressing room between sets I saw the dancer manager helping a contestant sort her tips. A small pile of quarters was next to the bucket, which seemed odd. First I thought how rude it was that someone threw quarters on the stage. Then I realized that if they made their way into the tip bucket, the contestant had to pick them up rather than ignoring them or tossing them back at the offending "tipper," the two most common responses to those sorts of shenanigans. And finally I realized the manager was unwrapping them from twisted dollar bills, in which they'd been used as ballast to make them reach the stage when tossed from a distance. "You can keep all of these; we're not going to deal with quarters," the house mom said (the amateur night contestants, like the house dancers, give up a percentage of stage tips to tip out club employees. Now I know they won't take a percentage of anything less than $1.00).

Then I received text messages all night from Mr. W, who spent six hours in the cat ER with our cat; blocked them out and continued to work. It was such a strange night. Those two hours in VIP kept me out of the crowd as it was building to its peak, and when I emerged it was into a completely different club, one filled to bursting with a line out the door waiting to get in. I hate the ultra-crowded nights and always have; I find them overwhelming. It makes it harder to pick out my target customers and requires defensive walking through the club. I have to take a deep breath, position myself somewhere with a good view of the crowd, and them map out a route that gets me to accidentally bump into the most likely customers. It worked out well enough, though I'm tired just thinking about it.

After last call, after the lights went up, the club was a disaster area. This is one of the few places I've worked where bringing up the lights actually reveals a pretty nicely furnished, clean club, but after hundreds of recently returned college kids tramp through a bar, it's noticeable. It reminded me of nothing so much as the Pink Pony in Atlanta two years ago the night before the NCAA championship game; a busy night, lots of money, and lots of really drunk girls who weren't strippers.

Once safely in my truck and headed home, I called for a kitty status update, and promptly lost it, then pulled into the Taco Bell parking lot to shut off the engine and cry about my cat, about being away from home and about feeling like a fuckup who'd neglected her little family all summer. All that money I'd made, it should have been kind of a celebratory night, but it wasn't. It was cold and rainy, and I was alone five hundred miles from home.

Tuesday was a long day on the road; my beloved cat went into the emergency pet hospital late on Sunday night, thanks to the amazing Mr. Wayward who sat in the waiting room for six hours with her. The news isn't good so far and she's still there, and it was a hard ten hours on the road with plenty of time for me to worry. I had to block her out of my mind; every time I'd think about it, I'd burst into tears.

I'm not much of a crier. Maybe once a year. But it really hurts to think about this. She's old but has been in pretty good health until recently. It's a kidney issue and I really don't think she'll be with us a lot longer. My one hope is that she's well enough to come home for a while before we say goodbye.

Reading about other people's pets is probably as interesting as hearing about their dreams, but I've gotten a lot of very sweet messages from my friends and thank everyone for their kind words.