Raised right, gone wrong...

I've been busy. And I've also been trying to stay cool in this fucking heat. I dance at night and during the day, I sleep in my very, very dark bedroom next to the AC which runs full blast. AC is crucial in Florida. I know a few people who try and live without it (too much money for them to run), but baby, I gotta have my cool air. And yeah, I'm a homegrown country girl from Georgia, but no way am I trying to sleep in this heat and humidity.

Ok, apart from that...I've been working the summer crowds of drunk young men. Last night one of the girls I work with got so drunk that when she was getting dressed in the locker room, she dropped sixteen $100 bills on the floor!! I picked them up and gave them back to her, but some of the girls gave me shit for this. They would've kept the money. Bitch deserved it, one said to me.

Look, I may be struggling with my spiritual place in life, but I was raised right, for the most part. My folks are Christian and I felt like if I hadn't given the money back, my dad would've been disappointed. Not that my folks and I talk much anymore. They obviously have "issues" with what I do. I've gone the wrong path in life.

But hey, it keeps the AC on.

On another note, do you think I would be a better minister if I were Christian? The funeral I officiated at got me thinking about a lot of things. Maybe there is an afterlife and maybe I will see my friends again.

I kept my reading close to the heart about who my friend really was and did some readings from the Minister's Service Manual:

"What was his creed?
I do not know his creed, I only know
That here below, he walked the common road
And lifted many a load, lightened the task,
Brightened the day for others toiling on a weary way;
This, his only meed; I do not know his creed."

Ok, so I gotta ask though....what is the meaning behind meed? Isn't that supposed to be mead? As in the drink?

Anyway, we did scatter his ashes from horseback. I went inward after getting back from N. Carolina so I could process what happened. And make some money.

I ended up with plenty last night. Gotta keep it going. BTW..what think you all of my new UV light costume? Guys were loving this late last night....

My first go as a Universal Life Church Minister

I think I did ok for my first time being a minister. I officiated a funeral for my friend in North Carolina and I studied a lot of the books I got from the ULC's website and I think in the end, it all went pretty well. Actually, the whole process has made me question my atheist beliefs. Nothing like death, right?

Now I have to work all weekend to get some money. It's so fucking hot in Florida too. I'm sortof used to it...but it's annoying because when I go to work, I have to dance under these super bright stage lights. Ugh. NO ONE looks good under stage lights. And I sweat and my makeup runs. There's no escape.

If the shoe fits...

Men with shoe fetishes come with the territory. Last night I had a fairly regular customer come in. He's a surgeon. Anyway, he comes over to my station and says. "I want lap dances tonight. Lots of them!" Which is just fine by me. Except with him, he likes it when I wave my shoes in his face and let him lick my toes. That's his version of a lap dance. Oh, and being told what to do. He likes to be dominated.

All in a night's work. As I was getting off, he got my email. Today he sent me an email gushing about this and that and wanting me to come over to his place this week for more foot fetish fun. Here's the way I look at it...easy money. No sex, no weirdness....just my feet and him and his wallet.

Hey, I don't really get it. It's not something that gets me going. But still...thank God for foot fetishes!

Liabilities....

Stripping makes you so hard. It has to. It's like that pair of ten-inch Alexander McQueen shoes. Until your soles get calloused solid, it's going to hurt like hell to walk in them.

I like it to hurt. I like to be human. I don't want to get hard.

A job like this has multiple liabilities: the first is that you lose the understanding of what a dollar means. You can't help it. Four minutes of your time are twenty bucks, and then thirty bucks is discounted at two hundred and sixty. So, yeah, four half-hour VIPs and you're already making more than people who make $20 per hour are making per week! It's some serious cash folks. So before you go and trot out your pitchforks and rake ME over the coals for defiling the body God gave me and shit, think about it....GOD his very self did just that. He GAVE me this body. To use how I want. Sigh.

Anyway, you start looking at everything around you in terms of VIP gigs—a pair of Christian Louboutin high heels with red soles? That's a little more than a one-hour VIP. And rent is just three one-hour VIP dances. Hell, you KNOW how fast you can line up those VIP dances. No biggie.

This is when you realize you have been indoctrinated into The Stripping Life.

The second liability is what it does to your perception of men. In short, it really, really fucks it up. Let's face it, if you're a good looking woman, you know what it means to have so many possibilities you spend your entire life shopping for someone better. It's just like that. You have men all over you all day and night long. But this eventually conspires to suffocate you. And your sense of tenderness and intimacy. And well, your friendships are guarded too.

But this is why I had made friends with my friend who is now dead. He was someone I would never sleep with, whom I knew wouldn't try shit with me and who was respectful. Sure, sure...I met him in a strip club too. I didn't say he wasn't human. But he was one of the men I trusted is all I'm saying. Him and Jimmy (hi Jimmy!).

Anyway, the second stage, on the other hand, hits you like a damn wall and it's called doubt. Do they really like you or do they just want to fuck you like everyone else? Do they really know you or are you playing the role of someone else like you do for a dance? How do you know they mean the shit they say when you hear the same shit a hundred times every night from drunk men you end up never seeing again? The answer is, of course, that you don't. And probably never will so it's much easier to stick with doubt and perhaps even Certainty. Certainty that people in your life are completely insincere and fucked up.

Mix in a hearty dose of Resentment, Bitterness, and Rage and you get heartbreak; which is where I'm at.

The worst part is a combination of the above two things. When I was younger, an older woman stripper friend advised me to accept every date with cute, rich guys. “Why not?” she reasoned. “It's a free dinner.” I always thought this was a terrible deal—put up with someone talking with you for a few hours for food? WTF??? When you're younger and have nothing to do, it doesn't matter so much. But as reality seeps in and time becomes a luxury, the idea of trading in your time for dinner becomes less and less appealing, even if it is the newest restaurant in town.

When you dance, weekends are out of the question, to start. Right off the bat, this dude is costing you at least six hundred big ones. Is he worth it? This is why so many girls go into escorting. Until you try, you have no idea how many men will hand you money after you tell them, “I can't. I work every night. One date night is $800 less for me and I need that $800.” It's a small step to negotiating the price of sex after that. One time, I totaled my car in a drunk driving accident and I didn't have a car to get around and my driver wasn't here either. So one of my clients gave me $5,000 that night to “fix” the problem.

I took it.

But yeah, when you're off work, then with some of the guy I go out with, it's like suddenly you're not dating, you're working. These men aren't boyfriends, they're tricks.

This is Loneliness.

I don't want to get hardened. I don't want to forget the value of money or lose sight of what genuine connection feels like. So yeah, now I'm raw from a friend's death. I'm thinking about my place in the world as a Universal Life Church minister. I'm thinking about my place in the world as a stripper. I'm thinking about my place in the world as a person...who needs the basics.

Yeah.

Life goes on....

Well, it's been a hell of a week. My friend passed away two days ago. And this isn't the only friend I've lost in the last few months. Another one died after getting an infection while undergoing cancer treatments. Shit. This life thing is difficult and hard. His wife has asked me if I would officiate the funeral. Why not? He was a good friend and he never judged me by what I did.

Actually, we met a long time ago as he was one of my clients at a club I was working at. I never did lap dances for him or anything...he was older than me too. But after he'd been in a few times, I met him outside of work for a drink and we really connected. As friends. I mean I was married at the time. This was when I used to live in Miami (another long story). Anyway, he taught me how to handicap horses (this was his job at the time...a handicapper with the track before he retired). Anyway, we used to go down to the track and it was so much fun to see how he did it. We often won too. It was a looong ass time before he finally got around to telling his wife he'd befriended a stripper. And she wasn't exactly thrilled about our friendship either. But we continued being friends, I even met his daughter (who became a friend too). Some years went by, I lost my husband, moved to Panama City and his family moved to North Carolina... But we kept in touch.

So I'm going back at the end of the week to officiate his funeral. My first one. I'm super nervous and now I'm going to sit down with Jimmy and figure out how to do this. Maybe there are tutorials on line? So yeah, my first debut as a Universal Life Minister...and it's a funeral of one of my best friends.

Any suggestions? He wasn't strictly Christian, but he did believe in God and an afterlife.... Which is something I'm starting to question.

Stripper minister....

Now this is pretty cool. Something in line with what I'M hoping to do. I LOVE HER! You go girl!

Death comes in many forms....

So I've got to fly to North Carolina tomorrow to see my friend who's been put into the hospice.  God, this is awful.  I was NOT focused on my shift last night.  Though I will say the world's creepiest guy was focused on me.  He paid well, I'll give him that.  And he wasn't a grease ball.  He had money, gold watch, nice clothes...and he was alone.  Just sat there next to my station and paid for a few dances.  He smelled like fucking Ax Body Spray or something.

The creepy part about him was his staring.  Cold, calculated eyes.  Dead eyes.  I'd rather have a nervous drunk any day...

Back to my friend...if any of my new minister friends have sage advice in how I can best be there for him as someone who wants to use all her life experiences to start her own ministry, then please email me or leave a comment.  I'm nervous about seeing him, but I've been through a lot of bad things in life...so I'm not naive.  I lost my husband and I never thought I'd get over that, to be honest.

But I'm too young to be losing friends.  Aren't we all? Death comes in many guises.  From the guy last night inhabiting a living body to the specter knocking at my friend's door.