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.

Punked, a Little

I’ve been making the assertion that the strip club industry is dying a long, slow, excruciating death for some time now. That’s not to say there isn’t still money to be made, not to say there aren’t individuals that still love us and shower stages with monetary appreciation, not to say that we still don’t have jackpot nights that capture the glittery decadence of the Clinton administration era. But everywhere I go, everyone in the industry keeps searching for some alternative Shangri-La Stripper Land where the money flows through generous fingers, like water through clenched fists. Once commonplace, the customers willing to donate to our breed are an endangered species.

When the economy tanked, when the Missouri legislature crippled the industry, the search moved to border states . . . Kansas, East St. Louis, Iowa. There, I overhear the same conversations: “There’s money in Alaska, when the fishing boats come in. There’s pipeline money in North Dakota. There are always spenders in Vegas.”

My general attitude has changed since I went broke. I don’t buy anything anymore, not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t. I’ve purchased two articles of clothing in 2012. I don’t get facials or manicures anymore. Every penny counts, is accounted for, before it even comes into my possession. Meanwhile, the emerging standard is the bargaining customer. If a dance is forty dollars, they try to negotiate to thirty. They want us to throw one in for free. They look at the dwindling crowds in the bar and harness a buyer’s market mentality. I argue that while you can negotiate the price of a car or a five-piece dinette set, you don’t stand at theatre box offices trying to shaft the kid selling tickets for a reduced price. Ultimately, the endeavor is really insulting. This mentality suggests an underscore that says: “You’re not worth your asking price. I want to cheapen you.” In an environment like this, hustling more money out of customers requires multilayered creativity, tactical maneuvers, trenches-style. A dancer has to manipulate the contents of the wallet at the precise moment when the brain-to-penis blood ratio is skewed enough to make idiots out of even the wisest men.

Despite preparation and foreknowledge, sometimes the strategies backfire. Sometimes you get punked.

So, for example, let’s just say I’m dancing for a man we’ll call Jim. Jim seems nice. Jim pays for three dances. Jim is friendly. Jim, also, is a little person, a factor I account for, a factor suggesting that Jim perhaps has faced some obstacles in his life. A factor suggesting that because of the general attitudes of average Americans towards those of differing abilities, that Jim might be the kind of individual who has good intentions for the rest of humanity, that Jim wouldn’t do something unkind to a gal who has been nothing but nice to him, even if he’s paying her forty dollars a song. Even when I give him a 3-for-100 dollar deal.

At the end of the third dance, I turn on the charm, nestled on Jim’s tiny lap, his child-sized shoes barely poking over the edge of the couch.

“You don’t want to stop now, do you Jim? We’re just getting to know each other. One more?” I ask, the words like syrup, honey-dripping whispers from my mouth to Jim’s ear.

“No, let’s keep going,” he says. “I’ll go to the ATM afterwards.”

And so I keep going, for another three songs. And Tiny Jim heads for the cash machine as I stop to pay the ‘house’ their cut of my dances. And then I notice that Tiny Jim has, in fact, walked right past the ATM, headed for the exit door. I’m still wearing just stilettos and a G-string, stripper clothes draped over my forearm, but I take off to catch him, my long legs making strides that are at least the length of Jim’s height, long enough for me to catch the collar of his shirt just before he slips through the tinted-glass doors. He jerks away from me, laughing in a panicked sort of way, squeezing through the door. I stand on the other side of the glass, mostly naked, and watch Jim’s teeny-tiny legs shuffle in a blur as he runs through the parking lot, his head bobbing with each miniature tread. Jim runs faster than he’s probably ever run in his life, away from his tab.

I briefly consider running out after him, imagine the cinematic scenario . . . a topless stripper in heels and thong underwear hauling across the parking lot behind a dwarf who dashed out without paying her. Would I yank off a stiletto and hurl it at his head, knocking him to the ground? Would the parking lot attendants start chanting “JER-RY! JER-RY! JER-RY!” because I can’t fathom a more Springer-esque episode than the one the universe has delivered to me just now. If the whole thing weren’t so god damned hilarious, I’d have been really pissed off.

In retrospect, as I counted my paltry winnings at the end of the night, I did get really pissed. I got punked. By a little person, no less. A dwarf jacked me for $100 that I really, truly, honest-to-god need right now. In the end, it all just seemed sad and pathetic. Even the people in our society who’ve likely been the subject of persecution of some kind or another don’t have enough respect for me to pay me what they owe me. Maybe that was the plan Jim had all along. I’ll never know. He’ll never come back. He’ll tell his friends how he heisted a hundred bones from a stupid stripper.

And this is the world I inhabit. It’s becoming the world we inhabit, because if I’ve learned nothing else in the last 15 years, it’s that the strip club is a hyper-exaggerated microcosm of the world at large. We’ve become a society of takers . . . take from whomever you can, step on the shoulders of anyone on your climb to the top, leave the world in your wake, care only for yourself, have zero respect for strangers, fuck everyone else; a dystopic, Ayn Rand-ian paradise where the individual wins and the whole world can suck it. This is the disheartening part . . . not that I got punked, not that I lost out on a hundred bucks, but that the general tone of humanity today seems so inhumane. It seems there are fewer and fewer people who possess the ability to think about how their actions affect everyone they encounter. It appears that empathy has taken a back seat to individualism. While I can laugh at the idea of me running naked through an East St. Louis strip club parking lot, nearly naked, throwing my stiletto and chasing after a little person who owes me money, the sentiment behind it hurts. Jim is the individual, like all the other individuals, taking what they can, and I’m the rest of humanity, suffocating in the wake of his tiny legs kicking up dust in his escape. And if I weren’t a writer, constantly reading metaphor in even the silliest events, this whole story would just be one I’d tell around the ghetto fire about getting jacked for a hundred bucks by a little person. But in the end, I am a writer, and everything means something.

God Don't Like Ugly, Chick-Fil-A . . . a Trenches Special Edition

For Heather and Terri, my superfans

I often take the circuitous route to get to my point, but I try to make the scenery pleasant along the way. So I do hope you, the great known and unknown readers out there in the vast corridors of the interwebs, do enjoy the picturesque, if sometimes convoluted, drive to my central proposition.

First a brief lesson on the First Amendment. Let’s look at the actual text from the Bill of Rights:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The most crucial part for you to remember are the first five words of this unalienable right. “Congress shall make no law . . .” I keep hearing people blathering their support for Chick-Fil-A CEO Dan Cathy with statements like, “Dan Cathy has the right to say whatever he wants. That is the country we’re supposed to live in. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH?”

The Cathy supporters are correct in that Mr. Cathy is absolutely authorized to say whatever he likes in any venue, on any subject, and Mr. Cathy can be assured that Congress shall make no law prohibiting that speech. Mr. Cathy will not be arrested for saying that he defends the biblical definition of marriage. This is true.

However . . . what Mr. Cathy is not protected against is counter-speech or counteractions that reject his notion. While he is perfectly within his rights to say anything he wants, I am perfectly within my rights to say he’s a douche nozzle. No one gets arrested.

Similarly, The Jim Henson Company is perfectly within their rights to choose not to continue to do business with Chick-Fil-A. Anyone is authorized under the law to choose not to give their consumer power to an institution or business that will ultimately use some of those profits to support an anti-gay agenda (or any agenda, for that matter). The opposite is also true . . . anti-LGBT groups have exercised their right to very publically boycott companies like Disney, Microsoft, Apple,  J.C. Penney, Old Navy, Ikea, and Gap. Fair Play.

The point I’d like to get across is not a direct address to Dan Cathy. Rather, I want to speak to the people who showed up to the Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day 2012.

Dudes, what are you doing?

Seriously, what are you doing?

No one can convince me that they went to Chick-Fil-A yesterday to support a matter of free speech. No person’s right to free speech has been violated. Instead of demonstrating your support for free speech, you’re supporting the message Dan Cathy pontificated in the first place. The argument that you’re totally fine with homosexuality, but you are against the trampling of free speech is utterly fallacious and totally lost on me. I have a Ph.D. in Bullshit. Don’t try to feed me that lie you’re telling yourself.

Like I said before, Evangelical and Conservative Christians are absolutely within their rights to do this. To make a very public and televised show of support to a company with whom their values align.

But my real question is this? Why are these your values? If you identify yourself as a Christian, why would you demonstrate publically in such a way that you know your numbers will hurt other people, that will cause some excluded on-looker to see your face and see that your presence represents a message that hurts a huge population of this world? Why do you take actions that suggest a notion of supremacy over another person or group of people?

Because when I see you lined up around the block to stand in solidarity with Mr. Cathy’s message, a message that implies that those in same-sex relationships are not valid, are not worthy, are not equal, my silly little imaginative brain juxtaposes those images with black-and-white video reels of bible-abiding Christians standing in solidarity with George Wallace as he shouts into a whiny microphone “Segregation Now! Segregation Forever!”, their joyful expressions and uproarious cheers demonstrating their unity.  I see the snarled faces of young white men and women, whose anger must be shielded by an entire squadron of United States Servicemen just so nine students can go to their first day of high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

This is not what Jesus would do.

You tell me that the Bible tells you so, but the bible tells us lots of things. Are you Christians or are you Biblists? Those who love Christ, who choose to live their lives as Jesus lived his, cannot abide by the destructive usage of scripture to justify hatred, discrimination, inequality, or loathsome behavior against other human beings. It is not of God.

There is a dangerous history of this practice in the United States. The hand-picked, noncontextualized passages in the Bible that admonish homosexuality can easily be equated with passages used throughout the 19^th century in the United States to justify the existence and the continued practice of the enslavement of millions of Africans and their American descendants.

Passages like these: 

Psalm 123:2 (New International Version): As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, tas the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, till he shows us his mercy.

Ephesians 6:4-6: Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.

Ephesians 6:5:Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.

Ephesians 6:9:And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

Colossians 3:22:Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.

Colossians 4:1:Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.

Titus 2:9:Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them,

1 Peter 2:18:Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.

I've never been accused of being particularly conventional, by any definition of the word, and the same can be said of my religious philosophy. It’s based on a five word sentence one of my classmates delivered as part of an oral interpretation exercise in an acting course. I forget the details of the story: Lorenzo had been caught bullying some other kid, and his grandma lectured him about kindness. The part that stuck with me, more than Lorenzo or any other person in the class could have possibly known at the time, was a this sentence, just five words, that rang more true than any other sermon or religious text had ever before.

And Grandmamma said: “Son, God don’t like ugly.”

All of the confusing and contradictory information in the Bible ceased to matter. I realized that ultimately, our toughest challenge is how good we can be to one another on Earth, with all of the cards stacked against us in a world mired in negativity. Can we take the raw materials we have on Earth and try first and foremost to demonstrate goodness, kindness, compassion, to perpetuate the service to others? Simply put, God don’t like ugly. And even if you don’t believe in God, it doesn’t matter. Secular Humanism doesn’t like ugly either. Lord Krishna don’t like ugly. No one likes ugly. And being the person who stands behind religion, or politics, or business as a false platform to just be ugly makes you ugly. Do you want to be the faces in the margins of those historical moments, do you want your grandchildren to ask you: “What were you doing there?” I would hope not. It’s an ugly place.

Hey Dickheads! Instructions on Effectively Winning Hearts and Minds!

I’m making a public assertion: We no longer have a democratic presidential election in this country, if we ever did in the first place. This became somewhat apparent over the last several election cycles: the debacle of 2000, the whispers of voter fraud via Diebold machines in Ohio in 2004, and confirmed instances of voter suppression in 2008. I make no secret about my liberal-leaning tendencies, but those distinctions have become so apparently superfluous to me that calling oneself liberal or conservative is about as meaningful as the difference between liking the color orange better that the color purple. In the end, it really doesn’t matter what you are unless you’re the person in charge.

What’s next? Are we still going to continue to live under the false impression that we live in a democracy? We don’t. We live in a Plutocracy, a system of governance controlled by an oligarchy of wealthy individuals and corporations. We live in a Republic. We are Carthage, we are Rome, teetering on the edge of a fall that no one wants to believe is imminent and everyone will say I’m crazy until it happens.

So in the spirit of crazy, I have a suggestion for our leaders, for the two men engaging in the pomp and circumstance of courting the American public for their votes. Now, each of the two leading parties have raised upwards of four hundred million dollars since January. A more thorough breakdown goes like this: For Obama (the Obama campaign, the DNC, and the Priorities USA Super PAC) the collective aforementioned have raised 490 million dollars. For Romney (the Romney Campaign, the RNC, and the Restore Our Future SuperPAC) the collective raised 437 million dollars. These numbers are current through the month of June, according to the New York Times.

Let’s be honest. Is there anyone out there who relies on the activities of presidential campaigns to inform their final decision on whom to select as their next leader? Do the ads really work, and is there any measurable evidence that they do? I suspect people are going to vote for whomever they would have voted for regardless of the name behind the party. Obama or Romney, Bush or Gore, Johnson or Goldwater. Pretty much everyone votes along party lines, under the false guise that the candidate is representative of their values, or business sense, or opinions on foreign policy. The answer is no, no I don’t believe that any attack ad, or commercial, or public appearance is going to persuade an individual one way or another.

Here’s my crazy idea: You know what would persuade me? Money. Those millions, nearly billions, paying for campaign stops, for attack ads, for the fight to the finish mean nothing to the average American. It disgusts me that so much money is being raised just to auction off an election and pretend that we, the real American people, have anything to do with it. How about you give it to us? Give it to your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. Give it to me, for God’s sake . . Only .001% of that total ($9,270 of 927 million) would be utterly life changing for me. I could pay the mortgage I haven’t been able to afford for three months, and still half would remain to catch up on my other household expenses. I know this is true for uncountable Americans. We are slaves to our jobs, slaves to our lives. We live in a world constructed around work instead of passion, competition instead of compassion, war instead of cooperation. I can’t imagine the powers that be actually want it this way . . . do they?

Be the change we actually need, Mr. Obama. Or, make up for that $77,000 chunk of tax money your skirted for your stupid fancy fucking horse, Mr. Romney. Here’s a secret. We don’t watch your commercials. We skip them, we smoke a cigarette, we hit mute, we go to the kitchen to forge for some comfort snack, like Munchos. We’re tired of the spectacle. We’re tired of the illusion. Demonstrate you give a shit, and I’ll start believing I matter to you, Mr. Candidate. If one of you said: You know what, let’s just give this money to struggling Americans instead of fighting for the power that will ultimately never help struggling Americans, we’d actually vote for you. We’d fight for you. If someone tried to steal the election, we’d revolt for you. Help us, for God’s sake, instead of treating us like idiots.

I’m on to you. 

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.