Working at the club is such an odd mix of reactions. Right now I feel really happy and I love my life. Other times I'm really sick of the industry & how it affects the rest of my life and I want to never go back.
Part of what i like, i think, is having good reason to wear all the ridiculous things that I can't really justify in normal life. Make-up, sexy high heel boots, clothing designed specifically to highlight sexuality. Normally I never wear high heels at all, despite the fact that I really like the appearance of some high heeled boots. But I just bought the Pleaser Expose 2000 for $65 in black stretch. These boots have 5 1/2 inch heels with a 1 1/2 inch platform. They are totally ridiculous from any practical point of view. In normal life (outside of stripping) I couldn't justify the money, or the discomfort, or the idea that women should put things on their bodies to please men despite obvious drawbacks (time, money, comfort) when it is so rare that men do the same for women (speaking heteronormatively here). However, in the club there are so many women competing for dances that anything I can do to stand out a little from the rest - clothing, make-up, shoes, the way I approach & deal with clients - is something that will increase the chances that I get dances or get peep shows. And the more of those I get, the more money I make, and the more I can justify all the discomfort it took to get those dances. It's sort of a cycle, if you will.
Ponge and I are now past the point of worrying about bills. With this job alone, I can pay for all of our monthly bills & still have some left over to save or go out with. Not that I really go out much at all - work takes over so much of my energies that I like to be a bit chill on my day off. If I have two days off in a row, the second day I usually feel like whooping it up a little, but it's a bad idea because going into the club hungover is really just too difficult. I've made like $1700 in the 11 days (spread out over about 3 weeks) I've been a dancer, and I know that money will keep coming in as long as I keep going to the club and keep making a good effort while I'm there.
The energy thing is getting better, my body is getting used to all the hard work and posturing that I do. Surely I'm building core strength, flexibility, and endurance. I've gotten used to the first pair of boots that I bought so it doesn't hurt my feet so much to switch between heels and my New Balances. In a way, I think wearing the heels has been good for my feet. When I had surgery on the ball of my right foot 5 years ago (a long, long story that leaves me in a lot of hip & knee pain to this day) the dumbfuck podiatrist never suggested that I get physical therapy (and being 17 & inexperienced with such things, I never thought of it myself) so to this day I have cannot bend my right toe back as far as my left. This, I believe, affects how I walk & thus leads to some of the hip & knee pain I have. Walking with my toe stretched back like that (i.e. on high heels)fucked up that area for awhile, but now it's better. I think it is helping to increase flexibility in an area that really needs it.
I also really like the idea that I am getting a workout while I work. It's like doing some kind of fucked up yoga-capoera-martial arts thing for hours on end. I like the idea of being active, and since it's my job, I'm getting paid rather than paying to go to some class. Not that I don't still want to take Tae Kwon Doe at my local martial arts center, but I feel like I want my life to settle into some kind of pattern first. Right now everything is really random.
That's one thing I don't like, my schedule is not settled at all. I like variety in life, but I like to get it around a pattern, if that makes any sense. If I don't get the steady nonprofit job I interviewed for last Friday then I will surely be dancing for at least a month more since I haven't sent out any other resumes and it takes at least a month to get reviewed, interviewed, second interviewed, and hired. If I do get the job I will work until I start there, which won't be for about two weeks. I don't believe I would want to dance at the same time as I had the nonprofit job. The only day I would theoretically want to would be Friday, but that's just a really long day. I think in some aspects I will miss the life and the money and the sexy clothes, but stripping is not a career. At least not for me, I want to get experienced in many aspects of nonprofit work so that I can go after and be capable in many types of jobs. That way I will have much better chance at finding work I enjoy and am challenged by and effect change with for the rest of my life.
....
Right now I am reading this really great book that I have had sitting around for years. It's nice to be out of college so I can get to all those books I've wanted to read and have time to deal with them rather than trying to get at them in between all the reading and studying that I did. Not that I didn't read some really great books in college, but it's nice to be able to focus on just one at a time (although I found some really interesting sychronicities in subjects supposedly disparate) without any pressure aside from my own passion for learning.
The book I am reading is called "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong" by James W. Loewen. You can go here to read the blurb, intro, table of contents, and critiques. But basically, it is this kickass account of what high school American History textbooks say - what we all learn and what essentially makes up our culture's sense of self - versus what reality is. He is a very good writer and I have a hard time putting the book down. It's basically everything I've been meaning to study about our history in a really easy to read format. So I'm going to stop hacking away at this box and read for awhile!