I worked as a stripper for 2 ½ years at the Spearmint Rhino
in Vegas. I haven’t been a stripper since April, and I’m still adjusting to
life after that Black Friday hustle in the darkness.
There have been some good changes to my psyche that will
help me to succeed in life, and there have been some disturbing changes that
make me want to go to therapy ASAP.
The good and bad together, I know that all of the changes
have made me more adept at survival. A good story teaches us how to adapt,
survive and thrive, and stripping in Vegas was a great story.
I’m much stronger, if not better, for my time as a
stripper. And here’s my brain now
because of it…
1)
I like older guys
As a stripper at work in Vegas, this is how
the scene looks: Good-looking guys my age are arrogant, broke douche bags who
will give me no money yet still think I’d like to have sex with them just
because they’re hot. Or they’ll offer an insultingly low amount of money for
sex.
“Come back to my hotel room with me. I’ll
give you a $100.”
“Nope. Bye. Have fun masturbating.”
Men 35+ are where it’s at in a stripper’s
world. These men are really excited that a young girl is willing to writhe
around almost naked with them and they respond with a lot of gratitude, a lot
of compliments and a lot of cash.
So yeah, post stripping, I still carry a
torch for older gentlemen who have the desire and the means to spoil me. And, unless I’m especially horny and
lonely, I have disdain for the guys my age that are too cocky and beautiful.
“Get a real job, pretty boy.”
2)
Rejection is my middle name… aka I’m fearless
I have been rejected more than anyone who
has never worked as a stripper. My sexual overtures have been rejected by 1000s
of men. Thousands of men were huge assholes to me, waved me away from them
without a word or told me I wasn’t their type. Thousands of men told me $20
was too much to have my naked breasts in their face for a song. A few men even
tried not to pay me after my naked breasts had been in their face, telling me
“You’re not worth that much.”
When a guy overreacts to my rejection of him,
instead of feeling bad, as I did before being a stripper, I find it extremely
pathetic.
When I was rejected, I got up and got on
with my life. I didn’t throw a fucking tantrum.
I had one guy I’d rejected at a bar tell me to, “Go kill
yourself.”
Seriously, dude? Grow a freaking pair.
Constant rejection was THE BEST GIFT
stripping gave me. Most people live their entire lives with a paralyzing fear
of rejection. They’re too afraid to be told No. They’re too afraid to fail. They’re
too afraid of potential pain. And so they never TRY anything.
And seriously, you’ll miss 100% of the
shots you don’t take.
With fear of rejection a vague memory, I’m
free to approach anyone, try anything, risk it all…
I’m free to move to LA to pursue my
childhood dream of being a writer. And that’s well worth being told No a few
thousand times. After all, it only
takes one.
3)
Prostitution is totally fine and awesome.
I wasn’t a prostitute in Vegas. I wasn’t
even fully nude. I was selling tits. I was selling a party. I was selling
pretending to care about men I couldn’t have cared less about.
I wasn’t sleeping with men for money, but
this was a line drawn in the sand. I WAS selling a level of intimacy, once
reserved for my boyfriend, to whoever was willing to pay me enough, and this
decision, repeated over time, resulted in the same detached mentality towards
sex that prostitutes have.
Make me an offer. I might take you up on
it.
When I first started stripping, the idea of
sex for money was appalling.
“Absolutely NOT! I am NOT for sale! Not for
a million dollars I wouldn’t have sex with someone I didn’t choose from my
loins!”
Three years later, I believe that there’s nothing
wrong with choosing sexual partners with my brain instead of my loins. There’s
nothing wrong with making decisions with my wallet instead of my heart.
No one in their right mind would have been
willing to pay me a million dollars to sleep with them. So then I lowered my
hypothetical price to $30,000. By the end, when a friend told me she’d agreed
to have sex with someone for $2000, I was legitimately impressed with her being
able to pull that sort of money and I insisted that she should be proud of
herself. Market value for high-end
pussy in Vegas was only $1000 after all – my girl gets double that cause she’s
a sexy baller.
This attitude of having no price that
someone could pay you for sex is so far removed from most people’s realities…
this is the naïve attitude of first world women who have never had to
compromise themselves in order to survive.
This no longer describes me.
4)
Don’t cuddle me, bro.
I’m totally fine with having some fun with a guy
that I couldn’t care less about.
As long as it’s safe, then I don’t
need to know anyone’s real name…
But I can’t cuddle with anyone unless I
actually care about him. Cuddling was never a commodity I was selling.
Sex is a fun 2-man, or occasionally group,
activity. Cuddling is letting my guard down, letting myself feel my emotions
for a change instead of using yoga to quiet and control them.
Vulnerability doesn’t make money, and I’m
trained to make money.
“Do you want to sleep over?”
“Oh… that’s okay. I’m sure you have a
really early morning…”
“No, I have a completely free day.”
“Right… I wanted to get a full day of
writing in… sooo…Bye.”
5)
“Yo, Eskimo. Lemme sell you some ice.”
My interpersonal skills, my sales
skills, are like no other. If I had a sales business, I’d want to hire
exclusively ex-strippers to pedal my wares… not that I could afford their
services.
Everything the books tell you to do
to improve your communication skills, I did for years for money. I learned to
approach, build rapport and confidence, and most importantly, I learned to
close. ABCs – Always be closing.
Every interaction people have has
the undercurrent of sex. This is why we like people. This is why we do what
others want us to do. Sex is always the secret reason behind persuasion.
I spent years blatantly selling my
sexuality – putting it so far ahead of myself that it couldn’t be missed. So
now, all I have to do to sell is tone the sex down. The persuasion works the
same as when I was stripping, only the subtly has been adjusted.
If this whole writing shebang
doesn’t work out, I’m going to be making bank as Billy Mayes – hocking whatever
the hell I want to hock – because I can convince Eskimos to buy ice.
So that’s it. That’s my mind now after stripping.
I
sometimes miss the Ohio country girl I once was. But that’s okay because the woman I am now is hardworking, determined, beautiful,
brave and so incredibly strong that it hurts my heart to remember what she had
to go through to become that way.
I still fully believe that when I achieve True Liberation,
it’ll all have been worth the trouble.
And the journey itself has been well worth the price of admission.
