I Made A Friend This One Weird Time

When I was still teaching Composition and Rhetoric, one of the ways I forced my students to think about research topics was to ask them a series of questions, which subversively pulled from the deep recesses of their brains some ideas about the cultural and societal issues that they care most about. It was always imperative that I helped them find a topic that wouldn’t become dull or overwhelming when I slapped that 15 page research paper assignment on them. The exercise served to help them think about issues they could spend an entire semester researching without losing their minds.

If you were President/Dictator etc. for one day, what laws would you enact or repeal?

If you were given a million dollars to create your own charitable foundation, what would it be and why?

And my favorite question, the one that most quietly reveals their priorities is this:

If there is some cataclysmic event, an apocalyptic happening that brought the society to which you’ve grown accustomed to a screaming halt, what would be the FIRST ITEM you would try to forage for? What store would you be looting?

The answers to that question are particularly revealing. My student with Type 1 Diabetes said she’d hit every pharmacy she could find to secure insulin. Some students head straight to the sporting goods store for guns and survival gear. Some hoard food, some make massive clothing hauls, some hit jewelry stores under the assumption that perhaps gold and silver would be of use in trade at some future point.

Back in 2010, I was asking these questions aloud during a Friday class, allowing the students a few minutes in between to fully articulate their answers. When I got to my favorite question about the cataclysmic event, a student in the front row with light brown hair and icy blue eyes, a Jennifer Lawrence look-somewhat-alike, shot her hand up Hermione Granger-style and asked: “Are there zombies?”

“Really?” I asked

“Yeah, my answer is different if there are.”

I tried as best as I could to conceal my annoyance, which isn’t always easy for me, but it’s most easy when I’m teaching.

“I guess if you want there to be zombies, then there are zombies. . . I don’t know. No, no zombies. Well, I don’t care . . . just answer the question however you want to.” This was before I began watching The Walking Dead. For the record, I have since decided it was a completely valid question.

I was probably getting ready to start my period, which, as a feminist, I realize is a shitty excuse, but as a fucking human, a completely authentic one. I went home at 2:00 pm and poured an over-sized glass of wine. My boyfriend, now husband, came over and I bitched for a straight hour about how annoyed I was.

“Come-the-fuck-on, are there zombies? What the fuck is this chick talking about?” I complained between gulps and not-quite-yet-husband poured me another glass. One of the reasons I knew he was the person I was supposed to marry is because when I’m a crazy, neurotic mess, he’s always calm, quiet, and focused.

“Did she just want to make a thing about what we were doing?” My vexation only exacerbated by the fact that I had to work in three hours. I had no time for a nap; the super-juggle of day job and night job paradigm, which only served to fuel my already irritated attitude.

No matter how bad I felt, no matter what daily exasperations entered into my world, no matter the hardships and problems of the real me, there was always something liberating about having the opportunity to change my identity and get paid for it. If I had a day like this day, difficult students or difficult situations, difficult children or difficult bills to pay, all of that strips away when I put on my fake eyelashes. When I tease and shellac my hair into a beauty queen coif, when I pull the strings on my corset so tight I feel like Scarlett O’Hara gripping a bed post, all of the outside goes away. The strip club is like a space ship. You enter and you are worlds away from the mundane hum-drum of regular life. That’s probably part of the appeal for customers, come to think of it. Not just the hot, topless girls who actually engage with patrons, but that otherworldly tone that permeates the club. No one feels like they’re in Kansas anymore.

I’d nearly forgotten my disgruntling afternoon when I plopped into a chair at the bar to bullshit with Mike, the manager, for a handful of minutes before I fully entered into the metamorphosis of Jackee the Caterpillar to Betty the Butterfly. I wasn’t paying close attention to the new girl he was talking to, new girls being a constant staple at the strip club. It seems cold, but I often didn’t bother to interact with new employees outside of introducing myself and allowing for the occasional small talk. Part of it was that my work time was so characterized by my motivation to make as much money in the shortest amount of time, and so I was often unobservant to the goings on of the employees around me.

The other reason for my initial distance was that the job, being a stripper, is far more difficult than pop culture would like you to believe, and even some of the most gorgeous, well-endowed in the chest, perfect-butted women cannot grasp that the job is not about being the prettiest. A myriad of factors enter into the success of a good exotic dancer, and general overall attractiveness is but a small sliver. This results in alarmingly high turnover. Girls come and work one night and never return. Some stay a week. Some stay for a collection of months, but give up. There were always new girls and at a certain point, they all started to look the same to me.

The new girl with whom Mike was chatting turned to walk away, lingering for the few seconds that I needed to sense some familiarity in her face. Who was that girl? I know that face. She looks like . . . but that couldn’t possibly be . . . no, I’m just still irritated about this afternoon and her face is in my brain.

After I was painted and coiffed and appropriately cinched in the right places, I climbed into the DJ booth to chat up my buddy, DJ Keller, and complain about my day to ears that understood. The new girl with the familiar face, who had chosen to call herself Bella, was on stage. I relayed the annoying afternoon, knowing that Keller would commiserate with me, and I casually mentioned that the girl on stage looked like the girl who’d annoyed me with the zombie business.

“OH. Bing, she does go to Stephens.”

My stomach sank. Of all the possible students, current and former, of all the predicaments I tend to find myself in, how in the actual fuck was I going to handle this one. I hadn’t been here the day she was hired, and though my rank may have influenced the choice to employ her, she was too pretty to not get a job at the club if she really wanted it.

“Keller, what the fuck am I gonna do? This is one of my current students. This is not good.”

I spent the first half of the night avoiding her, constantly ruminating on how I could possibly handle this situation, fretting over any unfortunate implications this might have for my other job, my real job. Sometime around midnight, after a few shots of whiskey courage, I found myself alone with her in the tiny area between the dressing room and the DJ booth, a small island of seclusion and respite for dancers to sneak a cigarette or take a quick break from exasperating customers.

“So this doesn’t have to be weird,” I said.

“Totally agree.” She responded. Nothing about zombies or how we’d survive, nothing about how we might handle this come Monday in class. It was an immediate mutual understanding. We just would keep the arenas separate and never speak of this again.

We managed to avoid one another for a few weeks, operating on the knowledge of mutually assured destruction should one of us get outta line. At work, we are cordial and largely avoid each other. At school, she comes to class and I teach it but there is little to no unnecessary interaction between us. But then one day we were almost alone in the VIP, me having just finished a dance and Bella just beginning one. I walked toward the exit when Bella’s customer shouted over to me . . .

“Hey, hey you! Can I get the next dance with both of you guys?”

Bella and Betty locked eyes, exchanging a glance that said so many wordless things: Oh God, do we have to? Oh fuck, yes we do. Oh sonofabitch, the customer is always right, Oh fucking fuckaduck, this has to happen. Oh shit we’re getting paid, but this is gonna be weird on Monday morning.

I hate it when worlds collide.

We did it. We smiled. We pretended to make out behind the curtains of our hair. We grabbed each other’s boobs and syrup-sweet talked this guy out of a tip. And when he was gone, and silence hung between us, Bella and I quietly dressing, she broke through the thick muted air:

“Well, that was fucking weird.”

And we laughed. And laughed harder. Laughed hard enough for a passerby to stop and peek in at us, thinking he was missing some stripper comedy show. And all the weird, awkward awful melted away.

Why am I telling you this? What is the moral to this stripper tale? I’ve always asserted that the strip club is a microcosm of the world at large. These stories that are essentially campfire fare, little anecdotes for curious friends and strangers who want to know all about the glamourous life of an exotic dancer, these tales are still applicable to life. I fell in complete platonic love with Bella. I count her among the best friends I made during that long, long period of my life when I was living as two people in one body. The story of us, of Bella and Betty, reminds me that your friends may not always start as your friends. Sometimes the people who annoy you with questions about zombies end up being some of the smartest, funniest, kindest people you meet. It serves as a reminder to unhinge your ego when it comes to petty irritants, because sometimes—perhaps even often—the people you love come in unexpected packages.

Experience Required

While I spent a substantial amount of time vigilantly compartmentalizing various aspects of my life, at some point I said ‘fuck it’ and started allowing those different areas of being that make me who I really am to slowly and comprehensively marry themselves back together into what I've become today- a coagulation of previously divided parts puzzle-piecing into this finished product. It’s been an exuberant, liberating endeavor for my soul. It started with scrounging up the balls to write about being a stripper as an undergrad, then again as a graduate student, publishing work that ‘outed’ me to the general public, speaking to writers at a national conference about the act of writing about things of a sexual nature, speaking to feminist forums about the sex industry, doing interviews and writing for independent filmmakers to document aspects of my life I’d previously kept hidden.

What’s been great for my soul, I’m sorry to report, hasn't been all that spectacular for my employability. I've applied for 42 jobs since September when I moved to North Carolina. My résumé, as far as I can tell, meets the contemporary standards of what employers might expect, my cover letters are articulate and insightful and catered specifically to each position I apply for and to the company offering the position, and my references, in my humble opinion, are god damned impressive and include a Pulitzer Prize nominee.

I can’t help but suspect that my willingness to be honest about exactly who I am and about my life experiences has something to do with my inability to get a job. And this bums me out. I've written before about the question I’m often asked regarding whether or not I worry that being forthcoming about my experience in the Unholy Arena of the American Nudie Bar might hinder my ability to advance myself in other fields of endeavor later in life, and I maintain that it’s still more important to me to be honest about who I am and what I've seen and what I think about the whole business of being me. 
But this job search business, as soul crushing as it is, I imagine is equally tough for all of my former comrades-in-arms, my girls, my former co-strippers, who have to find jobs outside the confines of the nudie bar at some point, whether it’s because they're pregnant, or they get married, or they finally graduate from the college that their weekend-dancing was paying for. And it occurs to me that we have such a rich experience that in many ways translates to other industries, but because we have to be so secretive about our pasts as strippers, we’re left unable to document the job experience in applications and résumés.

So this is for you, gals of mine, a letter of recommendation of sorts to justify exactly what you've learned and earned in terms of experience that translates to the wider world of work in America.

Excellence in Customer Service:

We don’t get paid unless they love us. And, my darling readers, I mean that in the most precise and literal sense. Strippers, in most cases, do not get a paycheck. In fact, most strip clubs operate under a maintenance system, where a dancer pays a house fee (sometimes called ‘rent’, sometimes called ‘maintenance’) to occupy that club each night. The DJ isn’t lying when he says: “These girls work for tips and tips alone.” We rely, à la Blanche Dubois, on the kindness of strangers. That is to say, if we are not kind, kindness is not usually reciprocated (unless they’re into that sort of thing, but that’s a whole other tale). We are kind, diplomatic, congenial, friendly, outgoing. We are masters of small talk, wranglers of chit-chat, ready with smiles—at least, those of us who've managed to stick with the job. Any dancer worth her salt has no choice but to become proficient at conversation.

Likewise, we are efficient in our conversational skills. Time is money, as the old saying goes, and therefore we've learned to not be overly chatty, but rather talk until we can piece together enough context clues to discover what a patron wants. Should that man (or woman, in some cases) not be particularly interested in spending any additional time with us, or perhaps have expressed interest in another coworker, we aim to please.

Should a fella be into, say, the blonde, girl-next-door cheerleader type, I’ll be the first to say: “You know what, I have a friend you should meet, wait right here while I fetch her for you.” This serves the whole in several ways: 1. I’m freed up to move on to the next guy. 2. The gal I find as a replacement will likely remember this, and return the favor in kind when a dude is interested in a busty, brunette, pinup girl. 3. Everyone is working at an efficient pace. 4. The customer is happy. We truck in happiness. We are happiness dealers by the bushel. And that’s the point.

Business Math and Cash Handling Skills

The fifth question James Lipton always asks his guests on Inside the Actors Studio is:

“What noise or sound do you love?”

I can say that I unequivocally love the sound of 20 strippers counting their money at the end of the night. Forty hands making that ffffttt, ffffttt, fffttt, sound with thousands of dollars between them is hypnotic and enchanting and so, so fast. We can shuffle a deck of singles faster than you can say blueberry pie. In fact, I’m fairly good at guessing, down to the dollar, a stack of ones slapped into my hand, based just on the height and weight. We are money-counting mother fuckers. We deal in cash, and only cash, and we’re good at it.

Likewise, because we’re obligated to tip gratuity out to our DJ, our bouncers, and our bartenders at the end of the night, we've conquered figuring percentages in our head. It’s part of our job.

Diversity in the Workplace

Despite what pop culture might lead you to believe, strippers come from extraordinarily varied backgrounds. Of course, I've danced with girls who've grown up on welfare and who come from broken homes. But I've also worked with girls whose parents were doctors and account executives and whose parents have been married for 30 years. I've worked with women born and raised in small Missouri towns, and women from as far away as Canada and Australia. I've shared a stage with dancers of every conceivable race and religion and ethnicity. And when you get naked with people every night, any sense of discomfort regarding these differences evaporates. We love each other, we are truly immersed in one another’s cultural variances and accept and cherish our distinctions.

Similarly, we are exposed to every type of person imaginable. We treat everyone we encounter with the same respect and congeniality. We chance upon rich old men and poor college students, men from every country on earth, lawyers and union guys, construction workers, military service members, lobbyists and laborers, professional sports players and famous actors (I’ll never tell, so don’t ask . . . well, I will tell, but not on the internet and only if we’re friends). There is no room for prejudices in dealing with customers.

Determination and Hard Work

No matter how good you are at being a stripper, some nights just suck balls. While a dancer can count on relatively good pay in the long term, there are those nights when she might say to herself, “Fuck, I’d have made more money tonight if I worked at McDonalds.” It’s just the way it is. Because there is no paycheck, the pay varies based on customer attendance and participation, but also sometimes plain old-fashioned luck. Some nights are shit, but dancers know that the next night will be better and we show up, slate-cleaned and determined to make up for the bad nights with good ones.

And while it may look like an easy job, being a stripper is hard, just in the practical sense. We work long, and I mean long, hours. Many a night I arrived at work at 5:30 pm and watched the sun crack the sky on my commute home. And we work long hours in 7 inch platform stilettos. And we dance, dance, dance all night long. It is a physically demanding job. We bruise our knees on stages and bruise our ribs on brass poles, we twist ankles, and we climb up and down stairs, and don’t even get me started on what a decade of stripping does to your lower spine . . . a very real condition my friend, Jenni, and I have coined ‘stripper back’. Frequently, even office jobs require minor lifting . . . can you lift 20lbs? the job advertisements ask—dude, we can lift our own body weight and turn upside down on a three inch diameter brass pole.

Managerial Demands

I've been fortunate to work with some very wonderful managers in my tenure, but there have been severe exceptions to that statement. I assure you, dancers often deal with bosses who are major assholes with a capital A. If a potential boss thinks his gruff demeanor or high standards might be too stringent for a ‘delicate gal who’s only known the coddling environment of a strip club’, that dude is DEAD WRONG. I promise you, that gal has worked for a bigger dickhead than you. Take a chance, she’s got thick skin, I promise.

And I don’t suspect any former dancer will actually use this as an addendum to an application in which she’s chosen to include her experience as a stripper to translate to ‘real-world’ work, but I wish she could. I wish she could be ballsy enough to do it, but even more, I wish a person doing the hiring would be ballsy enough to accept it as true. Because it is.

I love you, my bitches, with all my strippery heart. 

"Jack, You're Doing It Wrong"

One of the first ‘grown-up’ movies I attentively watched and enjoyed as a child was the John Hughes feature Mr. Mom. In the film, Jack Butler [Michael Keaton] is laid off from his job and reverses daytime roles with his wife [Teri Garr], she returning to the workforce while he assumes the responsibilities of a stay-at-home parent. The movie is filled with the situational fuckupery you might expect of a man accustomed to the daily grind of 1980’s corporate shenanigans taking on the full time parent gig—dinners are burned, diapers explode, blankies are lost. But my favorite scene occurs when Jack drops off the kids at school for the first time. As Jack tries to meander through oncoming traffic, his eldest son chides him, claims mommy doesn't go this way, says: “You’re doing it wrong.” Jack protests, claims he using the Jack Butler Method, fudges his way through car after car honking and throwing spiteful looks at him, until  another fellow mommy approaches the car, motions for him to roll down the window, and tells him, “Hi Jack. I’m Annette. You’re doing it wrong.” She goes on to explain that she tells all the new mommies to enter through the south and exit through the north, and then in reverse for pick-up.

I don’t know why I felt such a kinship to this moment in the life of the fictional Jack Butler, even as a child. There was very little about my six-year-old self that would have connected in the logical sense with a mid-thirties stay-at-home dad. But the sentiment, even at such a young age, resonated with me. I was often ‘doing it wrong’.

That phrase still reverberates. I’m a parent and a homeowner. I have a master’s degree and a minivan. I’m a Marine Corps wife, for god’s sake. Why is it that I can’t get my shit together and quit working at the nudie bar and grow the fuck up and start doing it right?

Why is it the things that make me say aloud, “Oh my God, I love my life” also frequently accompany the thought “What am I doing with my life?”. I love my life because, despite all the shit I complain about, I’m a really happy person. And I am surrounded by people who make me laugh, and that’s currency in my house.

Someone asked me recently what I would do if I didn't have writing and teaching and dancing in my underwear taking up all my work hours. More specifically, the question was: “What would be your dream job?” And I’ve thought about that a bunch. The answer to this is very simple. My dreams rarely, if ever, involve jobs. I know myself well enough that if I were to overhaul my life and start working an eight-to-five in an office with cubicles and break rooms and industrial lighting, my soul would die. That sounds like melodrama, but I’m not kidding you. I’d give myself six months until I was deeply medically depressed and crying uncontrollably on a daily basis. I’m just not made for that kind of thing. And though it enters my mind occasionally that I might be doing it wrong, that this seemingly bizarre life I've created is steeped in madness, I’m also reminded that I’m so much happier than most of the people I know who are doing it right.

And maybe that’s why I developed that childhood crush on Jack Butler, and why I could find humor in his consistent doing it wrong. Because maybe I knew even as a child that I would hear that over and over again and that I should just start laughing at it early. I've done it all wrong, and backwards, and out of order, and the refrain has sometimes been Jack, you’re doing it wrong, but I’m learning as I get older that the people singing that chorus are people I don’t really like much anyway. And they’re unhappy people, and often unhappy because they've made life choices based on what everyone told them was doing it right.

It’s too late for me to derail from my crazy train now. I’ve gotten a taste of what it means to find the beauty in humanity and not succumb to the bullshit we’ve made up along way. I’m relishing in doing it wrong.

To fully appreciate the Jack Butler Method-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKkZhubwt04

Enthusiasm don't pay the bills, son!

On occasion, I’m asked to talk to certain organizations or groups of students or writers about my life. More specifically, I’m asked to talk about the content of my writing, primarily the seeming dichotomy of being who I am. And usually there’s a Q & A afterward, a set aside amount of time that generally is characterized by questions about the stripper job.

“Do you find yourself growing irritated at men because of the job?”

“How did you start doing it?”

“Who in your life knows about the job, and from whom do you keep it secret?”

There are elements of my life that I’m so accustomed to, I forget that people might find it interesting or unusual.  I've been doing a curious amount of interviews lately as a result of some of the talks I've given. And I’m noticing that the question I’m least often asked, or least often asked to elaborate on is this: “If you’re a professor, why are you also a dancer?” That whole element of my life is sort of overlooked for the juicier, and admittedly probably more intriguing, details of the stripper job. What bothers me is that the conversation I feel like we should be having, if there needs to be a conversation about me in the first place, is why DO I have to have both jobs?

I almost never reveal my daytime identity at the nighttime job. Largely it’s because I feel entitled to some semblance of privacy. But also, if the idea of privacy weren't in the foreground, I know that the truth about my academic life in the context of the strip club is almost unbelievable. I could make up the most asinine bullshit—I was born into a family of Irish travelers and I grew up in an RV, I’m a folk artist who makes lawn furniture out of discarded silverware, blah blah blah—and people buy it by the cartload. But the truth is far less believable, and so even if I felt compelled to tell it, no one would believe me anyway. The Cassandra Complex.

Here is the answer to the question I want to be asked: In name, yes, I am a professor of African-American Literature and English Composition. That sounds impressive, perhaps, inspiring thoughts of tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, and days spent in grand lecture halls, or quietly book-buried in an office behind a stout oak desk. But that’s not true for 76% of college professors. Yes, 76%, over three-quarters of American college/university faculty are adjuncts. Sometimes institutions dress the names up: part-time, continuing part-time, voting adjunct, etc. but ultimately the names define the same occupational status: higher education untouchable.

I teach two courses nearly every semester [sometimes it’s three, occasionally it is shaved down to one]and I am paid per course. I receive no benefits, no sick leave, no retirement or pension, no funding for professional development, no sabbatical, no real voice in administrative decisions regarding curriculum or course scheduling. There are semesters when my courses get cut, and therefore, my pay is suddenly halved without warning. I pay for my own parking. My gross income from teaching topped out last year at around $16,000. And honestly, that’s pretty spectacular adjunct pay. I have friends at other institutions who’ve worked the same hours for far less. All that said, I think a more colorful illustration to describe my work in academia is this: it costs more to board and ride a horse at Stephens than it does to pay my salary. That’s not an exaggeration. I just added up the fees. And don’t even get me started on what my students pay in tuition, room & board, technology fees. That number would likely pay my salary four-fold.

Since the economic crash of 2008 [coincidentally, the year I entered graduate school, partially at the behest of the former VP of Academic Affairs at my institution] 40% of full-time jobs in academia have been permanently eliminated. Simply put, there are no new jobs for MFA’s or Ph.D.’s available. When they do become available, the influx of applicants for a single position is gargantuan. If I were to quit, seek a non-academic job, I sever ties to my institution, limiting my likelihood of ever teaching again. And honestly, aside from the embarrassingly low pay, I really love teaching. I blush with joy when I get to share information with students. My enthusiasm is palpable in my literature classes. I don’t want to give up teaching; I would just like to think that it holds some value in the broader sense. Joy and enthusiasm don’t pay the bills, son.

Moreover, when I watch the money generated by academic institutions via tuition, sporting events, alumni donation get funneled into bigger buildings, posh furnishings, more bricks, more mortar instead of toward the development and maintenance of faculty, I wonder what the hell college is even for anymore. When the highest paid employee in the state of Missouri is the Mizzou football coach [or maybe it’s the basketball coach . . . either way, they both make more than our governor] meanwhile, I’m wondering how I’ll make it if one of my courses doesn’t fill and has to be cut, thereby cutting my already paltry salary in half. And don’t give me that old shenanigans about how sports generate money for the institution, so it’s crucial to hire the best, yada yada – shut up! I get it. I understand the commercial and economic factors behind this decision making. But ultimately, or at least historically, don’t people go to college to learn? Doesn’t anyone want to know stuff anymore? And why are faculty and faculty positions the first on the chopping block when it’s time to trim the fat? Something is wrong when 76% of faculty is paid as poorly as I am, while the football coach is a millionaire.

[Likewise, something is wrong when my husband, an active-duty member of the USMC is paid a dismal fraction of the annual salary of an average NFL player, but that’s a rant for another time.]

This is why I’m still a stripper on the weekends, folks. Because I make in a weekend what Stephens pays me in a month. That’s not braggartism, but a testament to exactly how poverty-level consistent my academic pay is. And this isn’t a condemnation of Stephens, but an observation of the larger institutional shift from focus on education to focus on commercial/financial gain. Colleges became businesses instead of idea spaces long before I entered the academic world, but the disparity between the learning part and the business part stretches, an ever-growing chasm, far from the original intent.

The weekend job isn't an exploratory gig for me, not an endeavor in immersion journalism, not an outlet for exhibitionism nor a therapeutic space for me to investigate sexuality. It’s a god damned job, like schlepping drinks, like busing tables, like cleaning office buildings, like retail . . . all of those jobs that supplement the lowly adjunct’s pay. I’m just getting by, just like everyone else.

These are the things I see, friends, from my figurative periscope, deep in the hot trenches. Lately in some ways, my written observations are taking on a life of their own, shaping the path ahead of me, which is terrifying and thrilling at the same time, but I can’t stop telling the truth about my experience. It’s probably because I’m getting older, and don’t give a shit what people think anymore. If people are going to hold court on my being a stripper, but not issue judgment on why anyone has to work as much or as hard as I do just to make ends meet, then they’re assholes I wouldn't associate with anyway. Also, I’m learning people seem to feel good about reading what I write, and the feedback has been overwhelming and inspiring. On days when both jobs make me feel like a slave to my own reality, the writing gig, this thing we writers do, fulfills me in ways no occupation can and I’m grateful for all of the amazing people who've written to me upon reading a post that has resonated with them in some way. So thanks for reading, guys. And thanks for being human beings, which I’m discovering is the most challenging job of them all.

A Few Remarks

I was asked yesterday in an interview whether or not I would call myself [or my multi-faceted lifestyle, at least] exceptional or if I would call it remarkable. The question gave me pause, because initially the words seem relatively interchangeable, synonymous with noteworthy, interesting, unique. But ultimately the query has led me to this conclusion: to call me exceptional is to say that I am somehow an exception to some rule. The notion is that because I have all of these variant facets of life all running concurrently at once, I am somehow more significant than other people whose lives intersect with mine. The idea suggests that although I’m a stripper, being an academic and a writer makes me somehow more acceptable than the other women who, for varied reasons, also work at a nudie bar. This is bullshit. I’m not exceptional. To say I am is to say that all those other women are not exceptional, thereby suggesting they are less than or equal to what society expects a stripper is or is not.

To call me exceptional is to say that I am not one of them. It also suggests that the women I work with must live lives consistent with the largely-conflated stereotypes surrounding the industry. You know that old song: drug-addled sluts from broken homes who survived a sexually-traumatic childhood only to be forced to seek positive affirmation through sexual exhibition straight out of a Mötley Crüe video. Come on, now. Aren't we grown-ups, yet? The whole idea makes me defensive for every other gal I've had the pleasure of working with. To say I’m an exceptional stripper is like saying to a black person ‘I don’t really like black people, but you’re exceptional, you’re better, you’re not one of those . . .”

Likewise, while I would agree that my life is remarkable, I might also argue that EVERYONE has a remarkable life, especially if you’re really good at telling a story. My life is remarkable because I have the skills to make remarks that people find interesting. But that doesn't suggest that my life is somehow better than or more acceptable than the lives of my coworkers. I think my friend Jill is god dammed remarkable because she’s the only person I know who has managed to successfully pull-off every single Pinterest craft, recipe, party-inspiration she’s ever attempted. It’s fucking awe-inspiring! And I occasionally find myself wishing I could be more like her in that respect. Does that make her an exceptional stripper? No. Does it make her remarkable? Yes, because I just remarked.

What this really boils down to is that every human being is remarkable. Those whose lives seem mundane are remarkable if you turn the picture the right way, if you artfully craft the words that shape their memoir. 

Unbalanced

The good folks at the University of Missouri Feminist Student Union invited me to talk about my experience as a nudie dancer, academic, and mother last night. The talk was great, though I always vacillate between wanting to maintain a sense of formality so people will take me seriously and embracing my natural inclination to just wing it. The evening before the talk, I checked the event announcement on Facebook to see what exactly the crowd would be expecting of me and the description read as follows:

‘Join FSU next Tuesday as we talk to a local woman about how she balances exotic dancing, motherhood, and academia. We will also be discussing how, as feminists, we can combat slut-shaming and promote positive body image. We hope to see you there!’

And while the talk I gave certainly addressed my life or the combination of lives that I lead, attendees may note that I didn't exactly address specifically how I balance two very different jobs, kids, husband, a writing life, friends, and the like. People often ask me how I do it all and here’s the honest answer: I DON’T! I do not balance these aspects of my life, by any stretch of the imagination. If I knew how to do that, I’d be a saint. Or a millionaire.

I don’t balance every aspect of my life because it’s impossible. My question for the wider world is this—why is that so bad? Unrealistic expectations that we place on ourselves as women [and men, too, I suppose] make us crazy. If I actually finished everything that I wanted to do in a single day, the number of hours in a single day would have to double. As long as I have to abide by the rules of a three-dimensional reality, something is going to get sacrificed. And that’s the scary word, isn't it? A whole faction of feminism is based on the notion that women shouldn't have to sacrifice things that they want in order to become the person they want to be.

But what I’m really petitioning is a redefinition of the word ‘sacrifice’. I move that we embrace the word sacrifice in reference to all those things on our daily to-do lists. We should be able to give up things of a lower vibration in order to gain things of a higher vibration. Or, in less ‘woo-woo’ terms: I henceforth refuse to feel guilty that my kitchen floor is disgusting because I spent all morning writing this blog. I really didn't want to mop anyway. No one is going to come over and fawn over the cleanliness of my cold, hard, ceramic tile. But someone might read this, and feel less guilty that they fed their kids cereal and toast for dinner because they worked all day and just need to sit down. Someone might read this and feel better about taking a ‘mental health’ day from work because they really wanted to spend time with their husband, or kids, or friends.

I could have that tile squeaky clean and gleaming right now, but what does it get me other than a clean floor? Chances are no one, particularly not the children who live here, will notice I mopped. Moreover, there’s an even greater likelihood that the floor will need to be mopped again come three o’clock when the offspring storm the castle and pillage the fridge and pantry. There will be spilled dark chocolate almond milk. There will be crumbs. Better I wait until four, sacrificing the fleeting and nominal satisfaction of the clean floor now for time spent in my writing head, where I’m much happier anyway, crafting these words that someone will read. There is no glory in perfection. There is no perfect. Do the things that are best for your soul first. Mop the fucking floor later.

For Our Boys

I was coincidentally working on revisions to this part of the book when the announcement was made that the Westboro Baptist Church would be here in Columbia to protest at the funeral of our local fallen soldier, Spc. Sterling W. Wyatt. I wanted to share this as a reminder of what we do to one another, and of what we can do for one another, each in our own little ways, if we let the light in.

The War Years

Papa pulls Kyle’s wheelchair up the stairs to the VIP, Kyle still seated in it, peering over his shoulder as if he were backing a car out of a driveway. I put my eyes on the stairs, or on the contents of my purse where I toy for lipstick or some other distraction, keeping them anywhere but on what is happening in front of me. It’s not such a big deal, just a bouncer helping a guy up a few steps so he can get a lap dance. It’s only during the walk up these stairs that my eyes can’t meet Kyle’s because I’m afraid he’ll see how guilty I feel for my completely able legs, carelessly climbing up behind him, so taken for granted.

            Once we’re at the doorway to the VIP, Kyle smiles and thanks Papa as we take our respective places. Papa starts the jukebox and Kyle ditches the chair next to the couch. I watch his thick biceps stretch the sleeve of his t-shirt. My hand reaches out to touch them, to slide down the back of his arm and feel the tight definition, the power under his skin. His full lips part over his teeth, pulling into a perfect smile. I don’t have to pretend to flirt with him.

            I sit on his lap, let my body wrap around his. He strokes my hair and pulls me tighter to him. My hands roam along his shoulders, down over his chest, skimming the ridges of his abdomen.  I slip them under his shirt, creep over warm skin of his torso, around to the smaller part of his back. His injuries are healed, but I can feel the odd creases just above his hips, places where skin from his thighs were transplanted, hairless and rippled. Beneath these ridges, down below his waist where Kyle’s back begins a sharp twist like the trunk of a tree battered by kudzu and wind, he won’t feel my hands on him.

            He told me once that he’s lucky to have his legs, even if they don't work. The IED explosion that took his ability to feel his lower body also took his friend’s legs completely off, and took another fellow soldier’s life. Kyle feels like the lucky one, even though he can’t feel my body on his, even though what he gets from this dance isn’t what the average guy gets. He doesn’t get an erection; he doesn’t jerk and buck his hips up to meet my body as I move slowly on his lap. He holds me close to him, and I press my body back into his, listen to his breathing, let him run his hands over my shoulders, and slide gently around my waist.

The Clinton Administration was a damn fine time to be a stripper. Outside of the malaise induced by Newt’s Contract with America, the ever-presence of moral warrior Ken Starr, and Monica Lewinsky’s beret-topped head on the nightly news, people had been happy. Saturday college football and income tax refunds. People drank lemonade-flavored beer; they listened to Matchbox Twenty and thought it was art. The masses were out more than ever, celebrating payday at the strip club. I never thought about war. Maybe I was just young and stupid and not paying attention, but war wasn’t something we did anymore, not since Vietnam, and the memory of body counts and disabled vets and Operation Rolling Thunder and carpet bombs belonged to my parents, to their generation.

Of course there were always soldiers fighting . . . Beirut, Panama, the first Gulf War, Kosovo. But they were called military actions, not wars. My classmates weren’t being drafted and the nightly news told us that ultimately life should go on without diversion.

I watched the bungled 2000 election results on a big screen TV at the stripclub. Dan Rather said things like: “This knock-down, drag out battle drags on into the night, and turn the lights down, the party just got wilder. Florida comes out of the Gore column, back up in the air.” Then the local news anchor broke in to announce that despite having been killed in plane crash just weeks prior to the election, former Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan had been posthumously elected to the U.S. Senate, beating the still very-much-alive former Missouri Governor John Ashcroft.

A little less than a year later, the Towers fell in New York. The Pentagon was smashed by an airplane. The whole political stage changed, but, even when the world goes crazy, the strip club stays pretty much the same.

In time, I rely more on regulars, those benefiting from tax cuts for the wealthy. I pounce on customers when stimulus package checks are doled out. Recessions, political upheavals, bad weather and bad business, a man will still slip into the club to forget about his troubles with the company of a showgirl.  In a nuclear fallout, the buzzing neon lights of strip clubs will still read Open for Business.

Soon, the military boys appeared, Missouri National Guard boys mostly. They ship out to places with names like Kirkuk, Mosul, Basrah, and Baghdad. Young boys, gung ho, shouting “HOO-AH”. A two-piece camouflage number that makes my ass look fantastic, an outfit described on its package as Sexy Army Chick, made its way into my collection of costumes. I give lap dances to outbound kids also dressed up like soldiers.

“Ain’t no pussy where you’re going, man,” his friends will yell when I ask: “Are you ready for a lap dance, Private? What’s that? I can’t hear you. Are you ready for a lap dance, Private?

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”

I hope they take it with them, the untroubled illusion we conceive in the nudie bar. I hope that in the darkness of worlds I cannot know, the American boys think about strippers the way they think about Bud Light, or barbecue, or the Fourth of July; something from home that goes on, unchanged, waiting for their return.

 Others will come home. Quiet souls whose eyes I search for some kind of understanding, some hint of what is going on outside the strip club, outside our sheltered United States, out there where we send them.

Kyle is the only customer that makes me feel like what I do means something, beyond being a living sex toy for ten hours a night. Something better comes from being the hot girl on Kyle’s lap. If just for a moment, just the length of a few songs, we can escape, hold each other tighter for a little while. In an unlikely place, Kyle and I embrace a momentary calm. Not just a stripper and a wounded veteran, but two people, witnesses to the darkness of which the human heart is capable, sharing together a kinship that says:  We are human beings. We are souls still capable of finding the good in the world. In the shadows of all the wickedness that breeds in the hearts of man, we can generate light, bright enough to illuminate a tiny corner of the universe where love and goodness can grow.