The Holiday Dry Spell pt. 1

I love xmas in spite of being a staunch atheist. It’s a magical time of year, rich with the remnants of pagan solstice traditions. There’s nothing further away from baby Jesus lying in a manger somewhere in the ancient Middle East than a home intruder in a red velvet matching set sneaking in to place presents under an evergreen tree. Snow, reindeer, all these frosty Northern European traditions obviously have nothing to do with celebrating a bygone savior’s birthday, and perhaps that’s why I have no qualms celebrating the holiday. The America-specific version we observe is a celebration of capitalism, and as such should be harkened with the traditional Happy Honda Days or Merry Chrysler. Every year I set up my XXXmas tree, decorated with cheerful-colored dicks and vulvas, naked whores sculpted out of clay, and holiday hens painted with care. This year I added a painstakingly sculpted glock, switchblade, and a few Pleaser shoes. I’m a simple fae at heart, fighting the war on xmas one handmade ornament at a time.

I took a few weeks off from the club. The period between Thanksgiving and xmas is notoriously slow, contrary to what many civvies might believe. Xmas is an expensive holiday, and all the fathers and husbands who frequent our many fine strip establishments face the very difficult choice between continuing to visit their favorite erotic companions or pay for the annual ski trip with the family to Aspen. Unfortunately, they tend to choose family over us this time of year, which means it’s almost not worth it to work if you can afford the break. I had reached my breaking point mid-December, not due to any particularly negative experience. I was just burnt out. I didn’t want to talk to men, let alone have them suckle at my teets like infants while negotiating my tip. Of course, I *could* establish harder boundaries and outlaw any proximity to my tender zones, but I’m an unrepentant whore and it would hurt business. I decided to give my mind and body a break. I canceled everything and retreated inward to play video games and binge watch TV. Once upon a time, winter was the season when I could let loose and gain some cold weather weight, but strippers don’t get that lenience. We don’t get to layer clothes to hide our holiday feasting. All I wanted was to go hard on eggnog and chocolate panettone, but I reigned myself in, anticipating my return to working in my skivvies.

Tuesday night I finally invited my customers for a visit. The club was empty aside from a single straggly regular, a retiree with a shoulder length combover who pops over after placing bets on horse races. He takes his time, usually likes to sit around and chat with whatever dancer is willing to listen for half an hour, and then maybe he’ll buy some dances. I don’t have patience for long-sell customers. I’d rather twiddle my thumbs than play mind games with lonely old men who don’t realize I’m at work. I watched another stripper put in the time talking him into a half hour room.

Meanwhile I made sure my regulars wouldn’t overlap. It’s a clusterfuck when regulars show up at the same time. It forces me to prioritize and someone always ends up feeling snubbed, no matter how much they deny it and tell me to go ahead and do my job. Anyway, there was no conflict because there were hardly any customers. The DJ wasn’t making any of us dance on stage.

My first regular, Sam, walked in and whistled, amazed by the ghost town scene,“This is sad.”

“It’s slow, yeah.”

“I brought all these $1’s, but nobody’s even dancing,” he looked around, “Am I the only guy here?”

“Right now, you are.”

“Sheesh,” He sighed, “Let’s get out of here. It’s too depressing.”

I took Sam for 45 minutes in the far back VIP room. He likes the privacy, I’m not partial to the booth because it gives off “people fuck here” energy, and I like to hold onto the delusion that nobody knows what I’m doing.

I gave Sam a handy and he apologized.

“Sorry, that didn’t last very long. It’s been a while.”

I never understand why men feel like they need to apologize for coming too quickly. It’s not like I want to be working at it for longer. I don’t look at them differently, like “wow if only it was my coochie riding this penis”. I get arm cramps when it takes too long. It’s tiring and I worry that I’m doing an inadequate job. I’d rather they finish quickly so that we can chill and talk like humans instead of having to entertain a man wrapped up in horny psychosis.

After our dance, I returned to the locker room looking for baby wipes. Baby wipes are the unofficial sponsor of strippers everywhere. We go through them in droves, but of course, wipe companies would rather miss out on a major demographic rather than explicitly pander to sex workers. I realized I’d left my pack in the car. Getting them would mean putting on my outside clothes and taking off my elaborate 6-strap, lace-up heels, and I didn’t care enough to go through that process. I’d have to borrow wipes and make extra bathroom runs.

I noticed one of my unofficial regulars talking to another dancer. I call him “unofficial” because we haven’t swapped numbers, and to be completely honest, I don’t remember his name. It’s one of those Top 10 Names For White Boys circa 1978: Chris, David, John, Robert–something innocuous. Anyway, if I’m around, he dances with me, but we never plan around it. He knows my schedule and plans accordingly. Unlike many of my other regulars, we have a completely superficial relationship. When he arrives we exchange a customary greeting and he takes me directly up to the Skybox. He doesn’t waste time chit-chatting about life or work, which is fine. I think he’s married and has some kind of home life he’s never discussed. I love clients with hard boundaries because too often business and pleasure bleed together when you’re in the business of pleasure. With him, I never have any question of what he wants with me; however, because I know so little about him, I do wonder about how he perceives our arrangement. Am I his weekly treat for working hard? Am I his equivalent of a trip to the health spa: something to clear out the toxins? Am I an escape from his family duties? Does he compartmentalize these little trysts, only unlocking them Tuesday evenings when he has time to pop over? I’ll probably never know.

After he left, I took a seat on one of the empty VIP sofas and sprawled out. I had refused to remove any body hair for the entirety of my break, which meant I’d had to trim away over two weeks of pubic growth. I don’t shave because shaving leads to ingrown hairs and all kinds of little cuts, plus I seldom get complaints from customers about my body hair choices. I use a buzzer to crop things down, and it’s usually effective, however I always miss a few hairs. I fished out a tiny pair of scissors from my purse and hunched over to trim one of the stragglers right as Mike, the club owner, walked by. He gave me a look, and I tried to hide the fact I was trimming my pubic hair in plain sight. It’s hardly the grossest thing to happen in a VIP booth. I wasn’t embarrassed, but I had been caught. I decided the best remedy was to make myself look busy. I spotted a tall, young Black man in a corner. We made eye contact and he came over to me.

“Can I get a two-for-one?”

I don’t do twofers. I’m too much of a veteran to work for ten dollars a song, plus the singles booths look like they lost a fight to a pack of pit bulls. I could tell it was either the first or one of his first times in a strip club, which in a way is kinda cute and innocent to see, especially after dealing with so many seasoned club goers. I have a soft spot for young Black men. I know life isn’t easy and money can be evasive unless you’re dealing or by some miracle the product of a middle class family. I sized up the young man: no brands, an anime girl on his shirt, a pair of glasses clung to the end of his exposed nose while his mouth was covered by a black mask. Maybe it’s weird and incestuous, but seeing him made me feel like a mutha.

“Sure.”

Axel looked at me perplexed.

“Are you sure? Selena doesn’t usually do two-for-ones.”

“It’s okay,” I assured him.

“She must have a crush on you or something,” he muttered, “That’ll be $51, $61 if you’re paying with a card.”

The young man fiddled with his wallet, searching for the right card.

“I always tell people, it’s better to just go for the VIP booth. It’s $136, and Miss Selena might be generous enough to give you an extra song for free,” Axel nudged.

“I would if I could, man, but I paid for parking and for my drink. Y’all be taking all I got.”

I led him to the least destroyed singles booth and draped myself across his lap.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“I’m 19. How old you think I was?”

“I figured you were a baby.”

“You can’t be that much older than me! How old are you?”

“29.”

“Damn! I thought you was my age.”

“Black don’t crack.”

I made sure he kept his hands to appropriate places. Some customers are quiet when they get a dance, others get chatty to break the tension. He was a talker.

“You like working here?” he asked.

“It’s good money. You been to a strip club before?”

“This is my third one.”

“I could tell. It gets better when you have more money.”

He blushed, “Yeah, I bet. I work at CVS, so I don’t really got it like that yet.”

The second song finished and I stood up.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” I nodded.

I watched him collect his things. I squinted at his shirt. The character on it looking like a Japanese anime version of Alice in Wonderland.

“Who’s that on your shirt?” I asked.

“It’s a character from this anime, Magical Princess.”

“Oh, that’s dope. I love magical girl anime.”

“You like anime?”

“Of course. I’ve been an anime nerd.”

“You’re gonna make a great wife one day.”

It was a cute sentiment. I hugged him goodbye and he left, cashed out.

I’m not trying to be anyone’s wife unless it comes with a lot of money guaranteed in a prenup. Marriage is for assets, not love or commitment. It’s a contract that tells people who gets what in separation or death. When people use it for binding their love, to me it stinks of entrapment.

I got a text from Juan indicating he was on his way. Over the holiday, Juan and his mother had made me a baby blue marabou robe. His mother is a seamstress, so she made the pattern and sewed the delicate mesh fabric. Juan handstitched the fur trim. I’d met him at a little dive bar while I was on my break. I don’t trust many regulars enough to meet them out in the world, but Juan is a good, principled man. He arrived on time with a large white gift bag, the blue robe peeking out from inside.

“The color is perfect!” I exclaimed.

I reached to pull it out of the bag and felt something else inside. It was a jewelry box. Juan had been threatening to get me something, but it still came as a surprise. Inside was a necklace with a set of golden wings. It was strange and unexpected in a way that was exactly right. I put it on with my evil eye necklace and felt like a biblically accurate angel: the kinds made of wings and eyes and nothing else, or the creepy spinning rings with thousands of eyes.

***Sidebar: in my free time, I listen to a lot of theology lectures. I’ve gone down a wormhole learning about ancient magic across religious traditions (there was plenty of magic in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, contrary to popular belief). I’ve learned about Mayan, Incan, Zoroastrianism, Mandaeism, Taoism, Shinto, Hinduism, the various mystics in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, and more. I’m an atheist, but religion is interesting in the ways it forms culture.***

“I’m sending you the Zales warranty info. It’s guaranteed for life.”

I wore the blue robe to work for the first time Tuesday and sent Juan a selfie.

“Would you mind if I came to see you?” he had asked.

“I’d love that.”

He sent me a screenshot of his health tracker app data. In my holistic domming, I’ve told him that he has to sleep at least five hours per night and take at least one day off per week. This came after he told me he averages three-hour nights and only takes a day off once every few months. I also told him he had to prioritize exercise, eating well, and seeing his doctors regularly over visiting me, and to his credit, he’s followed all of my rules. He updates me on his progress and sends me the health stats before coming to the club to assure me he’s following my rules.

“Wow! An eight hour night. Proud of you.”

“:)”

Normally there are enough customers to keep me occupied while I wait for my regulars to come through, but that night the club was essentially empty. I checked my emails, and scrolled into oblivion. There was nobody to hustle aside from a coed group of young people visiting from Colorado, but they were sitting on the tip rail and looked too coupled up for a lap dance.