What What (In the Butt)

Last night, I was poked in the butthole.

Most people can’t say that after a hard day’s work.  Until last night, I was part of that greater population.

Jesse came in around 5 PM.  The club was almost empty, and I had been sitting at a table in the corner folding origami puffy stars.  I saw him standing by the Chris, the bouncer, drinking a beer and acting as if he and Chris had been friends for years.  I walked up to him with a little wiggle and a big smile and gave him a fluorescent red star that glowed under the black lights…

Which he promptly ate.

He hit on me for a few minutes before another girl — one of the more aggressive, energetic, party-all-the-time girls — took his hat, grabbed him by the collar, and dragged him off to a chair where she then plopped into his lap.

Thank god.

I can and have done well with customers who fall into the ‘life of the party’ category, but more often than not, they are more trouble than they are worth.  Last night, I just didn’t have the energy.  I went back to my quiet corner and got lost in folding more stars.

I looked up once when I caught Chris descending on Jesse in a flash out of the corner of my eye for some breech of the touching rule that I was too distracted to witness.

About an hour later, I was standing by the front desk with the door girl when Jesse came up to me and drunkenly started telling her that I was obviously ‘the mama of the club’ and that he could tell I would ‘fuck him up’ if I thought he was misbehaving.  ‘YOU are in charge here, mama.  In CHARGE.’

Having an unruly person fear me is one of the more preferred options.  So, I rolled with it.  I agreed and somehow turned the topic around to private dances.  I got him into the back and in a booth.  As I was standing over him explaining my pricing , he put his hand on the back of my thigh and tried to pull me towards him.  I removed his hand and reminded him of the rules.

The next song started, and I turned my back to him while I undid my top.  To my surprise and relief, Chris was standing in a far booth watching intently.  He turned his hand palm-up and rubbed his thumb and fingers together, mouthing ‘Money up front.’  I turned around and leaned over Jesse, cupping my tits and squeezing them together while I said lowly, ‘Hey, Jesse, let’s get business out of the way so you can relax and enjoy this fully.’  He reached in his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash while I swayed sensually.  I took it and turned around again so I could count it while keeping him busy with a booty clap.

Satisfied, I threw it to the side with my purse and began to slowly remove my booty shorts.  Just as I was bending over and turning my head to shoot him a sexy smile, I felt it.

I whipped around to see him still fixated on where my ass had been, mouth hanging open, finger frozen out in front of him.

‘You’re out,’ I said, pointing towards the doorway of the booth, and pressed myself against the wall as Chris swept in from the right and my manager from the left.

I calmly gathered my money, my clothes, and the little yellow star I had been working on before he approached me as they escorted him from the club.

Once dressed, I went back out into the main room where all of the girls clamored to hear what had happened.

‘I would have elbowed him in the face!’

‘I would have slammed my foot down on his crotch!’

‘I would have fucked him up!’

‘I’d be so pissed!’

‘I’d probably be in the back crying right now.’

Chris, who had just returned from arranging a ride home for Jesse, broke in and asked, ‘Are you okay?’

It struck me then that any normal person, and even most strippers, would be really upset in this situation.  But I wasn’t.  Not only did I not have any violent impulses at any point during nor after the interaction, but I had absolutely no negative emotional reaction to being sexually assaulted.  In fact, I was glad to have finally made some money and be able to tip out the day staff.

There have been times where I’ve worked very hard to fool myself into thinking that I was okay with something when I wasn’t and then had it build up and erupt shortly after.  But I was — and still am — completely unperturbed by the entire event.

I was, however, starting to get concerned over my lack of reaction to the whole thing, but then I thought about it…

I had a bouncer watching over me the entire time, I was aware that the customer was potentially problematic, I was able to stop him before he could do much more than brush his finger against me, and I had already gotten my money.

In short, Jesse was right…

I was in charge.

I know my boundaries, and I now have a proven track record of enforcing them.  And, while getting poked in the butthole is never worth the price of a lap dance, I am confident in my team of staff and our ability to handle difficult situations with efficiency and grace.

~W~

Who are we?

Last night something happened.

Something I thought would be just a blip in on my stripperhood radar.  Something I’d take like a champ and move on.  Something I’d chalk up to inexperience.  Something I’d accept as one of the risks of my job.  Something that the part of me that likes to be in charge tried to gloss over, demanding that I not react, that everything remain ‘business as usual’, that nothing had changed.  Because autopilot only works when nothing has changed.  Autopilot is a creature of habit.  It drones on and on, reliably, with no purpose other than to keep the outcome of every situation the same, even when circumstances are different.  Because that’s what’s easy.  Autopilot is lazy.

It’s funny that the laziest part of me is the part that commands control — leaving the part that senses and assesses and adapts to run complacently in the background.  Until something changes that can’t be ignored.  Last night, something changed.

Last night, I was stiffed.

The guy counted the money out in front of me, came to the back where the private dances are done, watched me take off my clothes and look into his eyes and smile and run my hands along my body, felt me press my full weight against him and breathe softly into his ear, told me how I was worth every penny he was going to give me, knowing full well…

That he was going to give me nothing.

As soon as I finished dancing, he jumped off the couch and started to leave.  In my club, we aren’t allowed to leave the private booths until we are fully clothed.  Well, as fully as a stripper is ever clothed while at the club.  ‘Hey, get back here.  This isn’t “Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.”  I’m going to get dressed, and we’ll walk out together.’  I was fully aware that I had still not received payment, but I’ve always let the customer take the lead on when he pays.  Keeping him with me while I dressed was my attempt to give him his final opportunity to take that lead.  Instead, he told me how much he loved the club and would return.  As soon as I was dressed and took a step toward him, he hightailed it back towards the main room.

Usually, the manager or doorman is waiting at a podium right outside the booths to collect their cut of our dance fees.  No one was there, so when my customer breezed on by, I was right behind him.

Just as we were about to turn the last corner, the manager came around in the opposite direction and blocked me off.  I started to say, ‘He hasn’t paid me yet’ but was cut short by a sharp look that wordlessly communicated ‘Don’t try to rip me off’.

I went back and paid my fees.  By the time I got out to the main room, the guy and his friend were gone.

One of my favorite quotes related to my profession is from The Pole Story.  It begins:

‘Anyone who has ever danced erotically for another knows the tremendous power she has over that person…’

There is tremendous power in having someone hand over a decent chunk of cash to spend 4 minutes in my presence.  In knowing that I have something of such high value to someone that he will eagerly give me a quarter of his day’s earnings for me to pay attention to him for the length of one song.

It continues:

‘…The quickest way to rob a woman of that power is to shame her out of it.’

Last night showed me how untrue this final sentence is.  The power a dancer has comes from her value.  Sure, people can tell her that what she does is dirty or immoral or degrading, but that judgment doesn’t change the fact that she is very highly valued.  Some girls may buy into what they say and and also start attaching those negative judgments to their value, thinking things like ‘He only wants me for my body’ (Why is that a bad thing?  No one ever says, ‘He only wants me for my brains/beaming personality/infectious laugh.’  But that’s another can of worms.), but I don’t.  And even if I did feel bad about having it, I’d still have that power.

No, the quickest way to rob a woman of that power is, very simply, to take that power — that value — away.

In the club, there are two situations where a dancer does not have power.  If a guy isn’t interested in her, she has no value to him and, therefore, no power.  I fully realise that I am not everyone’s cup of tea, so I don’t waste my time nor energy on guys who aren’t willing to compensate me for it.  I find this out quickly and move on.  I don’t lose power because I never had it, and I don’t need it because the interaction is already over.

The second situation is when a dancer has something a customer wants — something he values — and the two attach the same worth to that something.  At this point, she is completely in charge.  Then, after she has given him what he wanted, he gives her nothing.  I have no doubt that my dances were worth the agreed upon price to my ‘customer’.  But he withheld it anyway.  In that moment, I couldn’t do anything about it.  He walked right out the door, taking what he wanted, taking what I wanted and, consequently, taking my power.

I went into this industry after taking pole dancing lessons for a few months.  I thought doing it naked for money would be just as much (if not more) fun than doing it in the studio.  I thought it would build my confidence (not to be confused with self-esteem).  But I was wrong.  Putting myself out there for everyone to judge and possibly reject every time I walk on stage or out on the floor or up to a potential customer is not fun.  It does not build confidence.  But I love working at the club regardless of what anyone there thinks of me because I still have the power to either get them to open up their wallets for me or not give them the time of day.  It’s that aspect that keeps me coming back even when I feel like a sow on stilts.  It’s that aspect that makes me miss working when I’m too sick to get off the couch.  It’s that aspect that seeps into my everyday life and makes me stronger.

But last night, that changed.  And despite , or possibly because of, my best efforts to convince myself it was nothing, I spent most of today completely disconnected.  I needed a place where I could put all of this down so that those two parts of myself who aren’t speaking to each other could make their arguments, come to an understanding, and kiss and have sloppy make up sex.  Because of that, this blog about my friend’s and my commencement into the sex industry as awkward, unconventional strippers went from an idea we tossed around casually to a reality.

So here we are, the girls who catch their heels in their g-strings when they try to stand up, who slip and fall on stage, who get told they look like a horse when they walk in platform heels, who can’t help but giggle when they smack their own asses, who blush when another girl spreads her labia open in their faces and asks for a ‘cuntcheck’, who can’t figure out how to put their tops back on after they’re done on stage,  who don’t normally wear make up, who sometimes jiggle too much in some places and not enough in others, who can only turn one direction on the pole, who watch their money walk right out the door.

We are the Clockwise Strippers.

~W~