Working the Super Bowl

I joined a PMDD support group. I haven’t been formally diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, but I know that every month for a week or more prior to my period my skin crawls, I lose sleep to insomnia, my thinking gets blurry, I lose my ability to temperature regulate, my breasts swell with discernable cysts, and a slew of other chronic symptoms. I also know that the medical profession is woefully ignorant of a lot of menstruation-related disorders and most doctors only prescribe birth control as a cure-all for anything and everything that ails us uterus-havers. I know that I talk about this a lot, but that’s just because I deal with it constantly. It’s literally half of my life right now. If you’re a cis man and feel like this conversation has nothing to do with you or your interests, you might be right. Feel free to excuse yourself and return next week for a more universal post about my adventures in sex work.

Some things I’ve learned about PMDD: the symptoms are a reaction to hormonal fluctuations. The dominant theory is that something encoded in our cells causes our bodies to perceive hormonal fluctuations as a virus or some other malignant invasion. This mis-signaling triggers a fight or flight response. My body tries to fight off this natural process and I get shot up with stress hormones. PMDD can look like PTSD in brain scans. People with PMDD are often misdiagnosed as being bipolar or having borderline personality disorder, which are two severe mental conditions, and perhaps that paints the gravity of how PMDD manifests in our lives.

I’m deep in my monthly-mental-sinkhole trying to string together thoughts that aren’t depressing or fatalistic. It’s not that my world is bleak or lacking in promise, it’s just that illness is quite adept at shielding you from any bits of sunlight that might peek through, offering an inkling of hope. I spent most of this past month looking forward to the Super Bowl, not because of anything related to the sweaty men in skin-tight uniforms rolling around on the ground, giving each other aggressive hugs and scoring. No, I was excited for the influx of visitors who would make their way over to the club for a little post-game action. Win or lose, people would go from their $6k seats to blowing at least a few hundred dollars for a high-contact lap dance. I knew nothing about the teams, nor how their respective seasons went. Prior to Sunday, I didn’t even know what the Rams’ colors were. I still could not tell you a single thing about Cincinnati bless their poor little “trophy-less” “poverty town” hearts (shoutout LAHoodMedia for this biting headline). But I’d heard many tales of making ridiculous amounts of money from working a Super Bowl weekend. As a counterpoint, I also heard plenty of stories about dancers getting ripped off by clubs who set ridiculous house fees to work Super Bowl weekends, insist upon handling all the cash including tips, and then steal thousands of hard-earned dollars from dancers with little to no repercussions for their blatant wage theft.

My club isn’t the best club by any measure but it’s relatively decent, and I trust them to only steal the normal half of every dance they always take. Our security guards help us on and off stage and help collect our stage tips without expecting a cut in return. We don’t have to pay a house fee to work. We are expected to tip out at the end of the night, but even that is less than at many other clubs. Of course, the bar is so low that it is scraping the ground and I’m literally cheering right now that I experience less wage theft as opposed to not experiencing any wage theft at all. But I digress.

I had been excited to work until Saturday. My PMDD was raging and I couldn’t look at myself in a mirror without seeing something ugly and undesirable. I pinched at my slightly bloated belly and decided to try and tone a bit before work by going rock climbing. It’s one of my semi-secret hobbies, and usually it brings me a special kind of joy and sense of accomplishment that very few other activities can, writing included. The session started off swimmingly. I climbed a few difficult routes and coached Evan on his routes. But then I made a horrific belaying mistake and Evan began dropping rapidly. I turned my hands into mincemeat, slowing his descent, and afterwards, I felt like my fingers were on fire. I haven’t experienced more excruciating pain. I’d planned to work that evening, but that was going to be impossible. I couldn’t spend more than a few seconds without an ice pack in my hands, and even then, the pain was so intense I could hardly breathe. I scoured the cabinet searching for leftover hydrocodone from my wisdom tooth extraction and thankfully found a bottle. I took one, waited an hour, but noticed hardly any change. I took a second one, terrified to consider how much damage I’d done that I needed two doses of this powerful opioid.

I sat alone at home vacillating between mind numbing pain and spinning out, going over everything I’d done wrong and how fucked I was because of something as petty as body insecurity. Evan was fine, thankfully. But the event played in my head on repeat. There was no one to blame but myself.

I got three hours of sleep that night and awoke, bracing myself for the possibility that the pain would be the same and I wouldn’t be able to work at all. But as I opened my eyes and took inventory of my body, I realized with hesitant gratitude that my hands, while horribly disfigured, were not in the same white-hot pain. I could hardly move them, and I would have to wrap them in bandages, but theoretically, I could work. There was very little joy in this realization, just a slight calming of the negative voices sounding off in my head. I could maybe have another go at working the Super Bowl. Simultaneously, I felt sick realizing that I was prioritizing working the event over letting my mangled hands heal. Touch is everything as a stripper, and I would have to find ways to conceal my cuts and bandages. I couldn’t get my hands wet, or else the bandages would peel off. I wouldn’t be able to dance on the pole. After a month spent recovering from my last injury, I was once again choosing to play hurt. And I didn’t even have to play hurt. The point of working the Super Bowl is the promise of extra money. In exchange, I was breaking my no working weekends rule. Maybe I would come home with loads more money than normal, or maybe I would leave with no more money than any other night.

I spent the day debating going in or skipping it to focus on rest and healing. Sometimes I wish there was greater cultural currency to staying in. I wish my FOMO was less event-based and more relaxation oriented. What if my mind looped about how much better I’d feel if I stayed in? What if I couldn’t help but fixate on that sweet sweet alone time spent in bed watching YouTube? I suppose in those cases, I know what I’d be missing out on. In the case of the Super Bowl, it’s the great unknown. But even that unknown is knowable. Best case scenario, I meet one or two real ballers who take me for a slew of 30-minute or Heaven Box rooms, get tipped hundreds of dollars, and leave with regulars I can count on. And as a veteran stripper, I’ve been lucky enough to have this experience many times. It feels like winning a high-stakes table bet at a casino. Luck turns your way. In a single meeting, you realize you don’t have to work as hard or struggle as consistently. You can depend on someone to make up the difference on nights when you experience shortfalls. They promise you the moon and want you to dream along with them, until that inevitable conclusion when you can’t provide the one thing they want most.

I suppose another ideal outcome would be trashbags full of “rain”. A few guys come in with stacks and they throw a stack on every dancer. They hand the favorites a few hundred just to chat. Other stage tippers throw twenties to get a piece of the attention that the stacks men are getting. Mixed in, you get a few long rooms with generous tips, and that’s that. These are dreams for many dancers, but I’ve been lucky enough to earn more than I imagined was possible. I’ve never had the ridiculous $10k night, but I’ve had my share of $3k-$4k nights. I’ve been very lucky in this profession, but that luck has led me to a bit of a personal crisis.

I’m not sure if I would have gone in at all if Juan hadn’t texted me.

Hello, beautiful. Just wondering if you’re working at the club today.

I’m trying to decide if I will.

Well, I’m here now. My drivers wanted to come by while we wait for our clients to get out of the game.

How is it right now?

Honestly, it seems a bit slow. There are only 6 other guys here and 3 of them are my driver, so yeah.

I figured it would be slow at first. I wanted to go in early so that I could leave early, and having Juan there to start my night gave me a guarantee that I would at least hit the quota. That slight advantage eased a bit of my anxiety. There’s nothing worse than having a rough start to your shift. It drains your morale. Technically, all strippers in California should be enjoying the cushion of minimum wage even on slow days, but because strip clubs are run by predatory crooks, instead, clubs are enforcing a system of wage theft where we have to “earn” our wages by selling a certain number of dances or risk owing the club money and facing possible termination, there is no security. In fact, I’ve never felt less secure than I have since becoming an employee. My regulars help me so much, but I shouldn’t have to worry about owing my employer money. But I wasn’t about to change the system on Super Bowl Sunday.

When I arrived, I immediately spotted Juan and his drivers sprawled out at one of the little tables by the stage with a stack of ones in the center. There were a handful of other customers, mostly the kinds of regulars who sit and watch, maybe tip the stage a few dollars every now and again. Their eyes were glued to the projector screen as they lazily ate sandwiches or chicken wings. A few glanced over when I came in, but most remained fixated on the game playing silently in the background.

“Our girl Cheyenne is the real touchdown happening tonight, folks. Everyone here is a winner watching her dance,” the DJ cruned.

I snorted. It was going to be a night of football puns. I chose an outfit that vaguely looked like the Rams’ team colors and walked out. Juan’s table went silent and stared at me as I sat beside him. It was evident they knew who I was. Juan makes no secret of my identity or his relationship with me. His friends, family, and coworkers know that I’m a stripper and that he pays to see me. They also know that I’ve been a positive influence in his life, in spite of the perhaps dubious circumstances of our relationship. The men waved at me politely. I smiled, then turned my attention to Juan.

“You’re gonna be mad at me,” he said, wearily.

He pulled out his phone and showed me his sleep tracking stats. He hadn’t gotten more than 4 hours of sleep for the past 7 days. He leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes.

“You know you’ve been bad,” I chided.

“I know, but I have to. I’ll be better after next week.”

Juan promised he would get a half hour with me during the half-time show. I had arrived at the beginning of the second quarter, so there was nothing much to do other than wait and watch the game with everyone else. The stage was more interesting to me, but even the DJ was cutting the dancers some slack. There was no competing with the game: no ass was thick enough, no set of tiddies were jiggly enough. There’s nothing men love more than watching other men play. More fans dressed in Rams jerseys gradually filtered in for the sole purpose of watching the game. Meanwhile, the chef in the back was preparing a buffet that consisted of some version of chicken breasts, steamed veggies, potatoes, and beefy lasagna. While the men could think of nothing but the game, I could think of nothing but eating a slice of lasagna. I felt like Garfield the way I was salivating over the tray of lasagna that I wouldn’t be able to touch until the end of my shift. The promise of a mediocre slice of Italian delight was more tantalizing than any amount of money a man might hand me, but I shoved the thought out of my mind. Now was time for money, not lasagna.

Juan handed me a folded stack of bills and I tucked them into my purse without counting. Maybe he wanted me to count, to understand his generosity, but I just appreciated the gesture. Juan always takes care of me.

“Juan told me all about your org,” one of his drivers began, leaning in to speak to me, “And I have a question, if that’s okay.”

I nodded, worried where the conversation might go.

“How do sex workers stay safe going to and from jobs? Do they ever have drivers they can trust? I imagine it must be scary, and you guys probably get harassed.”

“That’s,” I sighed, “a good question.”

“There should be a car service with vetted drivers you guys can call.”

“Workin’ on it,” Juan nodded.

“I just think it’s so silly that I could hire someone to have sex with me, record it on camera, and sell it, and that’s legal, but if I just want to do it privately, I’m breaking a law.”

“I know, right?” I said.

“The system needs to change,” he said, then returned his gaze to the game.

It was a heartwarming exchange. Juan had done his work.