I get asked out on a regular strip club shift many times. Many men, in relationships, married, single that visit the strip club end up with the fantasy and sometimes with the obsession to meet the dancer of their choice outside of the club. Often, after a relationship has developed inside the club, lap dances have been experienced together, and even life stories, thoughts, and feelings have been shared, the men feel entitled to see a dancer outside of the club. It becomes a primary and often frustrating goal to get a dancer to agree to a the relationship outside of the club. And if we don’t, often we get labeled as money hungry bitches that just want your money. Even women call us that. After all, nobody wants to be a stripper (except of course in a female fantasy). We take money from people for something we shouldn’t take money for, for something we shouldn’t do after all. We shouldn’t take our clothes off for money in the first place. We shouldn’t charge for conversation, seduction, and affection that we share with our customers. In fact, strippers shouldn’t get paid for entertaining people. Movie stars take their clothes off for living (many have been seen in lingerie, bikinis, or even nude), they seduce, they even pretend to have sex on the screen, they turn people on but they are appreciated, celebrated for it. They make millions for entertaining people, even, if it turns out to be a bad, lame movie. They say we strippers just pretend to like a customer. Movie stars pretend all day long, and if they are good enough at pretending they even get an Oscar for it. Right?
The anger, discrimination, and disappointment about us strippers doesn’t come from what we are, it comes from the expectations that people have about the profession of a stripper. But it’s a false assumption about what stripping is and how it should be. We are entertainers, but we are close to the audience. We are not projected by some machine onto a beautiful, giant, white screen. We work on, often a dirty, stage. Dirty, because nobody thinks the stage should be cleaned for our asses. It’s good enough covered in sweat and tears from years. It’s good enough for a stripper. But we strippers talk to the ones that nobody wants to talk to. We don’t take husbands away from their wives. The husbands comes freely to us, because their wives are too busy getting their manicures and pedicures, their wives won’t listen to what they let lose in the club. In fact, the husbands wouldn’t dare to show their wives who they really are. That’s why they come to us. We take them for who they are no matter how despicable they are. We don’t nag at them or try to change them. Sometimes, we shrug our shoulders in the dressing room and tell each other, “That’s just how he is. What he says about your ass, and how he comments on your pussy.” The single guys come to us because they are afraid to talk to girls. They don’t know what to say, how to respond to a text, and how to ask a girl out for dinner. They come to us to find out, or if they are too shy to find a girl outside of the club, then at least, they can have safe female interaction and company without having to worry. So, what are we strippers.? Money hungry bitches or gems of society that have found their own coping mechanisms to deal with all the dysfunctional people we get to deal with. And would any therapist, any entertainer, any doctor provide their service for free? Just because we take tips on stage and don’t have a set price for watching doesn’t mean our profession isn’t legitimate. And would any of you out there have the courage to ask out your therapist, doctor, or your favorite movie star expecting them to say yes, and then get terribly upset at them when they would say, “No” and called them a money hungry scam artist? This is what we do … we listen to you, we dance for you, we care for you … but since there is no set price on us we do have the right to walk away from you into the dressing room to decompress from you. That doesn’t make us anything you can own or have any rights to. We are free strippers and we get to choose. But we are only that when we work. And your dollars are pity dollars, yet, we take ever single one of them as a treasure. We feed our families with it, take care of our aching bodies with it, and yes, some of us buy drugs with it, so we can cope with more bullshit just like your wives that fill their prescriptions on Prozac. We are strippers, but we buy our own shit, pay our own bills, and work hard for everything we can afford.
Jonesing for more? http://www.amazon.com/dp/1257802860/ref=dra_a_rv_ss_ho_it_P1400_1000?tag=dradis-20
Or watch http://vimeo.com/5974973
Or click on https://www.amazon.com/author/aajones
Tilt: Diary of a Virgin Stripper 