I struck a deal with the live-in groundskeeper to get a mason jar full of 175 proof moonshine made out of sweet feed. Only in the Midwest.

Aaaaand cue crying all the way to the liquor store on my way to work, listening to The XX and looking for blow. Here goes. Goodbye 2013, hello 2014.

Stripper Problems

I did so many push-ups and planks today that, when I hopped in the shower afterward, shaving was awkward and difficult. You mean I’m supposed to be fit AND hairless?

Part II of This is Why I Pay Them

I failed at nail stickers.

Thoughts on a Post-Dance World

What if, when I come out of the shadow economy, I can’t hack it? What if five-day-in-a-row workweeks feel like marathon torture exercises in sitting still? What if I can’t get out of bed in the morning? What if I’ve never learned to manage a paycheck (despite being great with budgeting)? What if no one will hire me? What if they only hire me so they can ask me for lap dances (this happened once)? What if something tragic happens and I can’t afford to fix it? How do I get a job with health benefits? What if I get fat? How will I not be a princess on a day-to-day basis? When I get stressed out at work, I won’t be able to drink…so then what? Should I tell the truth on my résumé or lie? If I lie and get caught, could I be in legal trouble? How do I navigate a daydweller’s world?

This is Why I Pay Them

I tried to paint my own nails between sets of acrylics today. It looks like Barbie took a shit on my hands. Outside the lines.

Substance. Substantial. Substantiated.

He told me I was a better high than heroin. I almost believed him.

Twice now — once at work, once at home — I’ve smelled…cocaine. My nose isn’t very accurate lately; I’ve also incorrectly smelled rabbits/rodents, bubblegum, vomit, and latex. The first time I noticed, it was smelling coke just outside of the dressing room. (For those that have never done a big fat rail of the stuff, no, you can’t smell cocaine unless you’re really close and inhaling very deep, very quickly.) I joked with the DJ about it a few weeks back. Phantom cocaine.

Another customer, a regular, commented on a dancer’s drinking problem. She really needs to stop drinking, he says. Really. She’s gotta quit. I say: we’ve all gotta stop, right? Someday, right?

I’m high as a kite on a Friday night — from the recommended dose of Benadryl — getting ready to whoop some ass in cribbage, at home, pretending not to love him. My, how times have changed.

*

Monday. Tonight. Liquor instead of completing my pre-work ritual, which would have included liquor, anyway. A run to the liquor store later, head hung in some sort of shame, my garter still on my leg as I ran in “just for a sec.”

I’ve grabbed twice at poles, reasonably sober, and missed, my depth perception strangely off.

I gotta go make more money. I’m trying to care. I’m trying.

It’s Not Cocaine

My customer gave me packets of extremely toxic, very dangerous, quite regulated pesticide. I complained of box elder bugs in the spring, grasshoppers in the summer, and enormous wolf-spiders-on-steroids in the cold months, so this odd gift makes sense and is quite appreciated.

But, seriously, I was just gifted powdered, regulated insecticide.

I need a list of some of the quirky (often thoughtful) things I’ve been gifted over the years.

Sinner

It’s annoyingly cliche that I’ve come to enjoy listening to The Naked and Famous while driving, yeah?
*
I set my mind to making $150 an hour today, so I could take the rest of the week to give my California friend some love and enjoy running, frolicking, biking with my dogs, a music festival full of lovers and adults playing pretend.
*
Instead I made $186/hour. Can’t stop. Won’t stop. I’ve been spot on.
*
Somewhere in the last year — somehow, how the fuck — I went from feeling, physically, like a cute girl kid with bumbly stiff legs and a wrinkly, freckled sweet-girl nose…to a fucking…a woman. Claws and breasts and batting eyes and snark and full pussy lips and hips and that swing. That swing. I noticed it happened this summer. I feel like I went through stripper puberty.
AWK-KWARD.
But at least now I feel like all my parts work together. Shoulders, meet kneecaps and middle toes. You guys are so gonna be best friends.
*
I lied to a coworker while I was drunk. I spent my weekend being afraid she’s going to find out, and it occupied much of my thoughts. While mowing, while doing dishes. While eating and playing and bathing and running and tanning. I wondered whether I should just tell her the truth and apologize. Whether I needed a shrink to tell me to just move on, and let the guilt haunt me into not lying to acquaintances like that. Whether doing the right and moral thing would cause more harm than good, whether it could just stay my secret. Whether, if I told, I should explain the extended truth, whether that long explanation should just stay in my past.
*
Autumn is here. My favorite. The nights are getting longer. Darkness, sooner, and later, and longer. Soon there won’t be much sun or heat for me and I’ll be terribly sad about missing the whole idea of day for weeks on end. BUT for now, the cooler and sweeter air has me feeling like the entire world was made for me and is really fucking imperfectly beautiful in only a way I can understand. Which is lonely.
*
My eyes are heavy after a long day of pulling my dogs behind my bike in their trailer for the entire afternoon and playing monkey all night. Onward.

Can I Pay My House Fee in Goat Feed?

Did I mention that the owner of my club has decided the club will be breeding miniature antelope? At least, this was his elaborate plan a few nights ago. He assured me that they exist, although I have yet to Google these critters for myself.

There’s already Pygmy goats and a slightly feral groundskeeper on the property. Why not have a miniature zoo?

I asked him if I could pay my future house fees in goat feed and heated water buckets. He laughed, with a blank stare, too drunk or too unsure to answer the question.