Q: For several years now I’ve thought about becoming a stripper. I don’t want to be one for years and years, but something about it has always been fascinating to me and I would love to try it. For the first summer I am not living at home (hopefully the next one) I want to try and make this happen. Thoughts? Advice?
A: I don’t know why women have a fascination with stripping, but let me sum it up for you. After six years in the industry: sticky legs from a congealed mixture of tears, sweat and semen; empty vodka bottles and girls puking in toilets with one shoe on; glitter stuck in places you never knew existed; waking up in $100 bills and wondering how they got into your butt crack; watching the sunrise as you drive home, thinking to yourself, “I only made $900, that bitch Katy stole my regular, I’m going to fucking kill her,” as you obsessively snort more coke so you can stay awake long enough to get home; giving lap dances to David Arquette as he sadly and depressively cries about “ending the sanctity of his marriage” while passing $100 bills to you every minute; then you take a smoke break and feel like a jerk, but hey, his hair was really soft; and lifting up cushions in the “bed dance” area to find a stack of used condoms bigger than a bowling ball.
Stripping is nasty, it’s gross and it’s this really fucked up way of life where money has no meaning and everything is this distorted playground land of “fuck you, pay me.” Why anyone would want to experience this is beyond me. I’ve seen girls get eaten alive by this shit. By all means, if you’re in the gutter and need a hand up, you’re strong enough to use dancing for the few positives it can be used for, then go for it. But if you’re some spoiled brat who lives with their parents and have a means to support yourself that doesn’t involve selling your dignity at $20 a song, then you have no business in this industry. You don’t have skin tough enough, and you certainly have no legitimate reason to throw your entire life under the bus just because you’re curious to know what it’s like to have some stranger cum on your face and then precede to hand you $200.
You’re curious as to what stripping is like—let me enlighten you: it’s degrading, it’s embarrassing and it sucks.
That’s my personal opinion. Just don’t go there. If you want to explore your sexuality, then do it in another way—of which there are plenty. Join a swingers club. Be a player and pick up a bunch of random people. Mainly because stripping isn’t about all these new-ageism’s that pro-sex workers like to say it’s about. Stripping isn’t about sexual exploration or the exploration of new age power dynamics. No, stripping is about making money when you’re broke, not having a college degree and saying no to grinding poverty jobs that are a joke. Stripping is about finding a way to rise above the shit-hand life has dealt you. So if you’ve not been dealt a shit hand, then why go there? It really isn’t what you think it is.