Strip Smart

 

Pole Dancers – Strip Smart!

Do you prance at the nightly adult entertainment club party? My raw memoir will teach you how to keep those boys with the bills coming back to you.

I was the Queen of my Pole-Dancing Kind.

 My memoir Shave Slowly  will show you how to attract and hold any man you set your sights on, in or out of the club.

A hint . . . your most effective strategy has nothing to do with sex.

In the novel, Lovely Beast, my fictional Taylor Thorn character’s traits were influenced by years as an adult entertainer. They also lay deep within the dark shadows of my upbringing when I learned how to not only survive, but thrive in the demanding and competitive world we all live in.

In Shave Slowly, my real life is profiled so settle back as I give you a rare uncensored glimpse into the mysterious world that I came to dominate as a successful stripper in the Midwest. It took some time, but I began to understand that it wasn’t really about the sex. Yes, bills changed hands, skin was displayed and touched, but the actual commodity valued and exchanged at the rate of hundreds of dollars per hour, may surprise you.

Pole spinners can read my memoir and learn how to keep their tip purses full and their club owners happy, but they can also learn to make any relationship, in or out of the club, a win-win for both parties.

     

Find excerpts from Lovely Beast Chapter 1 & Shave Slowly Chapter 2 below.

    My original audio journal recordings which I used to shape the chapters in Shave Slowly are now available on:

http://shaveslowly.bandcamp.com

Shave Slowly
Chapter 2
July 4

RARE WEEKDAY OFF, and I took advantage of every away-from-the-club minute of it. It was the 4^th of July! I slept in for starters, laid around, took a leisurely shower, had sex with my amazing husband, went shopping, returned home, and had even better sex with a man I don’t usually get to spend an entire day with.

Some friends came over, we grilled, brats, burgers, dogs, beer, and later walked to a hill where we took in three sets of local fireworks taking place just a few miles from my home.

Sitting on the grass, holding my husband, surrounded by throngs of such normal looking families, for a while I forgot about what I had to do, day in and day out, for a living, and imagined a future when I’d left the club behind and was able to raise my own family and truly be one of them. Such a great day.

It seemed as if there were even more people on the hill than in past years. In Milwaukee, Summerfest is the "Big Gig" over the 4’th of July holiday, but it wouldn’t surprise me if people were getting sick of going there on the 4^th, pay to get in, pay to park, the crowds, the expensive beer and food, and pass up the Summerfest grounds for a more traditional family-and-friends day. Now, although I wasn’t at the club, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t working.

On my way to the store, I began texting all my regulars from the club. I do that on and off all year, but I love connecting with them on the holidays.

Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!

Happy 4’th!

Happy Labor Day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

They are so happy to get that kind of text from me, and so touched that I would think of them on a holiday.

I admit, it’s business. Holidays are a good excuse to contact a client I might not have seen for a while, encouraging them to stop in. A text will get them thinking about me again—remembering the fun and excitement we had the last time they came to the club.

So often they’ll text me back, and ask questions indicating they are looking forward to seeing me soon.

Are you still working?

Are you at the same club?

I can’t believe you have my number!

It’s so great to hear from you!

How are you?

It makes them feel genuinely cared about, and it makes me feel great to get those kinds of responses.

Back to the business side, usually within a month I’ll get a little bump in client contacts, or someone who didn’t come in much becomes a new regular, and all that means more guys are spending more money on me—which is the name of the game.

Beyond the monetary, I know many of my regulars are single, or are in loveless marriages, or worse, with partners who abuse them. Getting a text from me can really brighten up their day. I understand the important role of nurturing the relationships I thrive on at the club.

Don’t forget, the relationships at the club are a two-way street. The part that’s not about money, playing out the real, genuine aspect of the relationship—I feel good when they feel good.

We seem to be set up that way. Give out good things, and good things will come back to you. No one can get away with being mean and nasty for long. Eventually, you’ll pay a heavy price.

Like all of us, the guys who come into the club once a week, once a month, once a year, it’s something they really look forward to—something that fulfills that fundamental need we all have to experience intimacy. The ones who aren’t rich will often save their money for weeks just to spend an hour with a special girl at the club.

BY THE TIME I arrived at the grocery store I’d texted my clients through to the J’s. On the way home, I got through the rest of the alphabet. Within an hour I’d gotten replies from most of them and soon had to start deleting older messages to keep my inbox open . . . crazy, huh?

My 4’th was a Great Great Day!

How was yours?

July 5

HE DAY AFTER A MAJOR holiday, the 4’th of July, full of fireworks, parades, and picnics, turned out to be a pretty great day as well. The new no-smoking-in-public law went into effect, so the club became a smoke-free zone for the first time ever.

The club sells high-end cigars and I’m sure the smoking ban will cut into their bottom line. Some of the older men were chewing on them, others were sucking on the cigs like a pacifier—men and their childish habits. Not a smoker, I certainly didn’t mind that the guys weren’t covered in smoke. I hate cigars. Once in a while wasn’t bad, but when you walk through a cloud bank of that thick, dense, pungent smoke it sticks to you all day, and smells up my car and everything else . . . yuk!

 

One of the girls I’ll often sit with, spend time with, hustle with, and make money with at the club is LatteGirl. She thoughtfully brought in Starbucks to help get our day off to a good start . . . such a sweet thing . . . I really like her. LatteGirl had one of her regulars come in first thing.

 

DoctorMan was a wonderful guy, so sweet, and always smelled so good. I often got a hug from him, and he tipped me well on stage, even though he comes in to see LatteGirl—mainly just because I’m her friend. Even though he likes me, DoctorMan still won’t do a dance with me if she’s busy, or even if she’s not at the club when he comes in.

 

That’s fine. Sometimes he’ll tip me a generous $20 just to sit with him. I both keep him company, and keep the vultures away. He hates it when the girls aggressively hustle him. So, we’re sitting together when a long, lanky tall drink of water walks in. Wearing boots and snap-button shirts, CowboyMan is a very nice older gentleman who comes into the club quite often.

 

I can’t seem to remember his name, and that’s something of a problem for me, and I don’t know why. Even though I spend a lot of time with them, and they spend a lot of money on me, I can’t always attach a name to some of the guys who come into the club. Need to see a shrink about that one day . . . crazy.

Anyway, CowboyMan walks in the door, I’m waving at him from across the bar, but his eyes are adjusting so he doesn’t see me. All the girls are in there for just one reason—to bank. One of the other girls manages to get his attention.

 

"Oh, come by me . . . sit right here," she said to him, knowing full well that he always comes in to spend time with me and LatteGirl. How did she know that for sure? One of the other dancers had just finished informing her of that fact of club etiquette when he walked in the door.

 

The guys who come into the club are often creatures of habit. If you pay attention, and a successful dancer should to just that, you’ll notice they’ll come in on certain days, or at certain times of the day; sit in certain spots in the club, and often want to spend time and do dances with only one or a certain few girls.

 

Most of the girls pick up on those trends, but some, the more desperate ones, will risk a confrontation to hone in on some other dancer’s territory. Things can get ugly when that happens. That little shit did just that.

 

Okay, she knows who my regulars are, and even though she’s the dumbest piece of trailer trash I’ve ever seen in my fucking life, she’s not that clueless. She goes after my customers because she knows they have money to spend. Most of the dancers know better than to mess with me, so when they do I know they’re getting desperate.

 

The smarter ones will chum up next to me, usually when they’re drunk, thinking they’ll get some of my residuals. The even smarter ones will try to make friends with me, hoping I’ll share the wealth with them. One day I pulled into the club parking lot at the same time as one of the other girls. She saw my sleek, black, new, I-love-my-car Chrysler 300C Srt, a ride that would make Frank Martin (Transporter) swoon, and a comment slipped out as we walked together toward the north-side doors.

 

"I should make friends with you so I can make some fucking money!"

I just laughed and replied, "Oh, really."

 

That didn’t sit well with me, and after that I even avoided eye contact with her, because the last thing I’d wanted was to encourage that particular girl to get a taste of my action . . . the skinny little germaphobe.

Anyway, my CowboyMan gets lassoed by DesperateGirl who calls him over and pulls him down into a seat next to her. He’s obviously uncomfortable and I see him looking over at us all the time she’s yammering on about her kids, or some dumb thing. She’s talking and talking and talking and finally they went to do a dance just as I was going up on stage.

 

I thought, the timing is good because I knew he would be free of her and we’d hook up for a dance after I got off stage. I wasn’t too upset, but the bartender and a couple of the other girls gave me a, What-the-fuck-does-she-think-she’s-doing look.

 

As much as some of the girls hate me, are jealous of my success, or whatever else, they still have a measure of respect. More than that, they know how things are supposed to be done at the club, in order to keep the peace. A girl’s customer is a girl’s customer, and you don’t step on that, but some bitches don’t give a fuck. Oh well, that’s fine, CowboyMan did some dances with me later.

With only six girls manning the afternoon shift, we were rotating on stage twice an hour. During my fourth stage show I see WheelchairMan rolling into the club.

 

He has some kind of birth defect, never really wanted to talk about it, but he’s really sweet and drives in from over a hundred miles away to come exclusively to our club. Apparently none of the clubs in his area can measure up. I see SweetLittleSister at the bar sitting by herself with nothing to do, so I wave her over.

 

"Go over by that guy, and sit with him."

 

She listens, knowing from past experience that I’m pretty much never wrong about pointing out opportunities in the club. I get off stage and before I even start my tip walk, I run over to WheelchairMan, give him a big hug, say hi and kiss him on the forehead.

 

"I haven’t seen you forever, has it been since last Christmas?"

 

Apparently, he comes to Milwaukee every six months or so, brings a loaded credit card, and does multiple VIP’s with several different girls. That’s the kind of information it pays to remember about a customer. I knew I’d be one of the girls he’d choose because he was always happy to see me, and I figured he also like SweetLittleSister. And, what guy wouldn’t, she is frickin gorgeous . . . genuinely pleasant, and charming as well.

 

I’m talking with WheelchairMan for a few minutes when he says, "Well, you wanna go?" That usually means they want to get a VIP started. As I recalled, he was one of those guys who didn’t need or want a lot of chitchat before the action began. He turned to SweetLittleSister and said, "I’m gonna go with Amy right now, but we’ll do a VIP a little bit later."

 

That was fine and she wasn’t worried. While we were in VIP I talked him into a double which was a new experience for me, one I was looking forward to, especially with SweetLittleSister. He did an hour with me, and an hour with both of us, and left with a big smile on his face.

 

As a result of his medical condition, WheelchairMan doesn’t experience a normal sexual response, and by that I mean I never see a bulge in his pants, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a sexual being. Nipples, my nipples, his nipples get played with and lead to a kind of substitute orgasm for him. Without a doubt he’s turned on by the sight of a beautiful naked woman.

 

My point, orgasmic sex, masturbation, is only one minor dimension of the sensual experience two human beings can engage in. The formula for sensual fulfillment may be as unique as each human walking the face of the earth and involves true intimacy through some level of a relationship based on quality communication.

 

It’s my job, it’s your job if you’re a dancer in the business, or if you’re someone’s wife or lover, to uncover that erotic recipe so he can feel fulfilled in that most important arena of anyone’s life.

AFTER MY LAST STAGE show, I found out the night shift was short on dancers, so I stayed longer than I normally would have. One of my regulars wandered in much later than usual. I took care of him, and did one last dance with a walk-in.

 

I left the club surprisingly well compensated for my efforts.

 

It was another great day.

 

I craved feeling wanted, needed . . . loved. I started going out on the down low with other JW girls. We were all after a taste of the outside world. Finding ourselves on a club dance floor, responding to the sexual tension, feeling the intense energy of the scene, the driving pounding music, the lights, the crowd, the guys’ eyes staring right through our clothes, we would dance until soaked with the sweat of the most ecstasy we’d ever known. This went way beyond sex, at least the sex you’d get from most JW men.

 

After a couple of years of this kind of clubbing, though it was a trip, it still wasn’t enough. I still hated my life. Then, another moment of the most unlikely serendipity and I knew things would never be the same.

 

Walking into a new club, there he was—a big, sexy man dressed in all black, the head of security. I turned to the girls I was with.

 

"Oh . . . my . . . god . . . I want him . . . I have to have him!"

 

I had no way of knowing if anything would come of my moment of teen-idol obsession, but I kept dragging my friends back to that club. Then, I found out he also was a bouncer at a gentlemen’s club in Milwaukee and started visiting him there. I was still married, but the chemistry was intense and undeniable. We would steal away in my car, his car, or to hotels every chance we could. It was the best sex I’d ever had . . . then . . . and still is!

 

After a year of that craziness, I left my JW husband, finally escaping the life I hated so, the life that was strangling me.

 

It took a wonderful man to make me finally feel loved and appreciated—something he makes damn sure of every day. Yes, he told me he loved me, but I felt his love long before the words came. I’ve felt his love each and every day since. Gone for good are those sad days and nights filled with loneliness and neglect.

 

With true love comes unconditional support—any crazy thing I want to do, he’s there for me no matter how it might affect him.

 

Always a hard worker, at first I cleaned houses by day and was a shot girl by night at the gentlemen’s club where my man worked. I was having a great time and making awesome money. I still had my pride, though, and when management started losing it; one day passing out praise, the next yelling about some stupid little thing, I moved on.

 

At the next club, I set aside my shot-glass tray, stepped up on stage, and never looked back. The club managers treated the dancers well, were free with compliments when you’d earned them, and have always treated me with respect. It feels good to be patted on the back once in a while.

 

Years later now, I’m still with my man, still happy, still at that same club, and I’ve learned much during a personal and professional life full of ups and downs.

 

Read on! Explore a journal of the last full year of my days as an adult entertainer and I’ll share some of the secrets I’ve uncovered along the way with you.

Lovely Beast

Chapter 1

1

  

LET ME OUT of here . . . you know I hate the dark! I can’t breathe. Let me out . . . I’ll do it, I’ll do anything you want, just let me out of here!” were Taylor’s screams, searing the silence in the middle of the night, on what began as a quiet evening on the cusp of a new moon—on an oppressively hot night in July, so black, so dark that Moonbeam, Taylor’s white Siamese, didn’t even scratch the screen to prowl.

“Taylor, wake up . . . Taylor . . . you’re having another nightmare,” her roommate Natasha said while shaking her shoulders trying to roust her out of the state of panic she’d been gripped with during the latest in a recent string of disturbing and desperate dreams.

“What’s wrong . . . hey, stop it!”

“You’re having a bad dream. Settle down, everything is all right.”

“Oh . . . sure . . . ,” Taylor mumbled after regaining consciousness just long enough to stop the nightmare before rolling onto her right side and slipping back into the peaceful space of a deep dream-free sleep. 

She slept in the nude, but an impulse of subconscious modesty caused her to pull a corner of white silk sheet delicately over her right hip while leaving the rest of her sculpted contours in full view—a vision that took Natasha’s breath away.  

Taylor’s bad dreams had become a recurring disturbance for Natasha, strangely only a few days in a row each month, around the same time of the month. She couldn’t help but notice that Taylor’s voice was much different during the nightmares—more like a child’s, and connected to a child’s mind.   

The nightmares began a few weeks after she moved in to share expenses with Taylor who’d purchased a duplex—paying for it in cash with the money she’d earned and saved during three years as an exotic entertainer. Natasha was also in the business, at Heartbreakers, an upscale suburban club near O’Hare in Chicago, but no one banked like Taylor.

The club was open from lunch to close, at 4 AM. Taylor prowled during the day shift, which, because there were so many girls and so few customers, was not easy unless you had the killer looks and irresistible charm to attract the high-rollers who wandered into the club, often for a playboy business lunch.  Hypnotized by the seductive vibe, many would stay to play with the dancers long into the afternoon. 

These guys laid down $300 for a half hour of VIP Taylor time with the casual disregard for cash that the rest of us would feel after paying three bucks for a Big Mac. The club kept a hundred. 

During a typical day shift, Taylor was seldom available for the normal rotation on stage because there was usually a numbered list of eager well-healed whales waiting for their turn to crest in some of her X-rated VIP waves. If you were fortunate to see her stage routine, you would not soon forget Taylor’s high-energy Goth interpretations of the pounding alternative stripper rock the DJ’s always played for her. 

Grabbing the pole with a strong grip, she typically began with a clockwise spin flexing her right leg bringing her knee up to waist level before launching her head straight back allowing her long jet-black hair to tickle her Jessica-Alba ass. Responding to the bold sound bolts, with her left hand now also on the pole, a series of dramatic thrusts forward and back followed a counterclockwise move while characteristically lifting her left leg past her waist. If there were guys at the tip rail, and there always were when she was on stage, Taylor would head to the floor directly in front of one of them. 

It wasn’t uncommon for a customer, experiencing the sensual excitement of seeing Taylor for the first time, to shower his entire stash of singles on her, one after the other, floating down like angel’s feathers, while she posed and gyrated in front of him.

The tease continued as she brushed down his face with her all-natural 16-year-old C-cup breasts before heading down to his crotch where she usually felt a building bulge. Usually, that meant the bait was taken, the erotic hook set, which would lead to typically more than one private dance or perhaps a session in VIP.      

The dayshift had the feel of a members-only establishment—very few customers, but among the ones who came, some could buy and sell the club on a whim. The nightshift saw Heartbreakers fill up with a much younger, and much less affluent group of guys who spent most of their discretionary cash getting drunk enough to approach a dancer and barter their remaining Andrew Jackson’s for whatever sexual services the dancer might offer. Taylor couldn’t be bothered trying to hook the smelt at night when during the day the $100-a-pound blue fin tuna were just begging to get caught in the afternoon erotic feeding frenzy.

For Taylor, exotic dancing was her six-figure career and she treated it like a profession. She wasn’t there to pick up enough cash to fund her next fix. No drinking on the job, either. She was all Monday-through-Friday business and her cash was well invested in stocks and real estate. 

In every sense of the term she was a highly paid entertainer and therapist, and she earned every penny of the $1,000 or so a day she brought home, taking in a doctor’s income without a framed degree hanging in her office—the VIP room.

Today’s upscale gentlemen’s clubs are a far cry from the sixties seedy side-road strip parlors where the dancers were not much better than two-dollar whores, and or had become tragic figures because of drug or alcohol problems that left them unable to manage their money or their lives. 

On a high-fashion Milan runway, the clothes are the admired art form and the models aren’t much more than animated mannequins. On the catwalk at an upscale strip club, the dancers, their beautifully sculpted living breathing forms, become the art, first being admired, then auctioned off to the highest bidder. 

In a club like Heartbreakers, many of the beautiful dancers were mothers, college students working on degrees, aspiring actresses, or professionally minded women looking to be discovered as models, and they made so much money just dancing they didn’t have to cross the line into prostitution. 

Some of the girls, though, did get into Ashley Alexandra Dupre top-dollar call-girl gigs, but Taylor wouldn’t usually go there. Because of certain childhood experiences, she’d been desensitized to the powerful emotions that normally accompany sexual contact with another human being, but also, because of her childhood, there were limits to what she was willing to do with a stranger. That wasn’t always the case, however. 

When Taylor stepped on the strip-club stage it was to exercise her right to manage and market just one of her valuable personal assets—her Miss-America beauty. Diablo-Cody curious about the possibilities surrounding exotic entertainment, the prospect of fast easy money, and the opportunity to turn the tables of control on the kind of men who were forced on her as a child, Taylor was easily seduced into the profession.

Since Playboy began opening career-path doors for models who graced the adult-rated pages of their magazine, exotic dancing came next as way to get exposure and Taylor wasn’t shy. She understood the value of networking, and guarded the secrets gleaned from successful businessmen whose tongues were loosened by the social lubricants of premium single-malt Scotch, a ten-dollar cigar, and Taylor’s enchanting, irresistible exotic appeal and sensitive genuine conversation that always left the man wanting more.

Hanging on the walls of the club’s main lounge were beautifully framed 3’ x 4’ adult art photographs of erotic fantasy female forms, so captivating that depending who was on stage, a patron might find himself locked onto a picture until someone worthy of upstaging the frozen image started dancing. At Heartbreakers, the draw was that many of the dancers did embody the sexual fantasy standards most guys dragged into the club along with their sex-starved libidos, chronically over stimulated by endless media images of the perfect female or the ultimate erotic escapade. 

There was Paullina. When God designed the prototype for the perfect female, Paullina was the result. All other women have some flaw by comparison. She was outrageously tall, blushingly beautiful, exotically proportioned with long limbs, naturally curly, textured hair flowing down her back, and sexy young, firm, full Barbie-Doll breasts. When she took the stage, everyone in the club stopped to watch, even the bouncers and other dancers, who often flocked to the tipping rail.

 More than her physical beauty, she seemed untouched by what she was doing for a living. Unaware of the power she could bring to bear because of her intimidating physical beauty, Paullina appeared to be forever a blushing, basically shy, teenager still uncomfortable with her long, once gangly, now supermodel-exotic limbs.  Her charming shy presence was as disarming as her Angelina-Joli body, but she never pressured anyone to go where she easily could have led them; to just open their wallets, or to give her literally anything she wanted.   

Then, there was Carina. This is a woman with the kind of unheard of genetic makeup that after giving birth, she looked even better than before her son, Mick, named for Mick Jagger, came into the world. One of her eggs should go for a cool mil on the celebrity unfertilized frozen egg bank market. Carina looked like she worked out seven days a week and watched everything she ate, but none of that was the case. She was God’s gift to the strippers’ sisterhood, setting the standard about as high as the bar could go.  

Heartbreaker’s was a carnal coliseum where the dancers carried the gladiator’s swords—an erotic arena where the patrons were the victims destined to be sacrificed to the god of carnality. Everyone knew the rules and the guys didn’t have a chance, which meant they wouldn’t leave the club with any cash. Their only hope was to avoid maxing out their credit cards by the end of the night. Natasha often watched with awe and wonder as Taylor circled the club like a Great White before clamping down on her next victim.                

Natasha was from Eastern Europe, just one of the millions of legal visitors turned undocumented illegal aliens, who through various means manage to make their way to American shores, desperate to escape desperate circumstances in their home countries. She flew in on a visitor’s visa with her boyfriend, never intending to stay. The plan was to earn money and return to Belarus to use the American dollar’s buying power back home to build a better life. That was the plan.

They trusted a labor broker who took their money and betrayed their trust—setting them up with an unscrupulous man who exploited their hard work on a cleaning crew. He was worse than a thief, refused to pay them, and when they complained, hospitalized her boyfriend before calling the local police who were in on the scam. On survival autopilot, they split that scene and ended up in the Chicago area where things were better, but not good.

Up at the crack of dawn, they slaved every day performing dirty, demanding, demeaning work, and ending up with pennies.  Next Natasha landed a gig as a nanny. Her boyfriend found day-labor-for-cash construction work.  Then, one day during a troubling call from her home in Belarus, she learned her father was near death after battling cancer. 

She desperately wanted to get home to be with him before he died, but didn’t have the plane fare. That’s when a friend brought her to the exotic club where she danced for some quick cash to buy a ticket.

Her father passed before she could arrange to fly home, which would have been a problem even if she had the money. Over six months had passed since she entered America with her valid visitor’s visa. Natasha had now joined the throngs of undocumented illegal foreign residents. Her plan to return home with suitcases full of American currency was not even close to being realized. She just couldn’t leave yet and besides, Natasha was afflicted with the addiction of wanting to achieve some portion of the American Dream. Had she managed to fly home to be with her father, she probably would never have been able to return to America. 

There was a new manager at the club where she started dancing. He was putting pressure on the girls for sexual favors as a condition of their employment. Natasha wasn’t about to be manipulated like that, but now hooked on the fix of fast money, it wasn’t long before Natasha moved on, found Heartbreakers, and Taylor.

 “You can dance!” Taylor said, after being surprised by the sexy polished energy of Natasha’s stage performance.

Natasha’s storm of long, feathered, textured midnight-black hair hung down her back—magnificent hair is often found on a magnificent female, bold and confident enough to display the mark of her potency. Her costume featured silk ribbon streamers dangling down from her hips and shoulders, and when she moved they created the illusion she was floating in a mesmerizing erotic mist of fairy dust. Relationships were never Taylor’s strong suit, but after getting out of a bad marriage, and able to enjoy the sexual company of both men and women, she wasn’t above flirting with some of the dancers.

“Yah, thanks, I’ve been on the pole before, at another club.”

“What brings you to Heartbreakers?”