Up The Stairway To The Sex Industry: Exotic Dancing

( This is the longest of the 5 article series because I’ve been doing this work the longest. Just a forewarning to those with little time. ) I’ve never had a regular 9 - 5 job, never worked for an Employer or had the position of anything besides self-employed or an independent contractor. I’ve pretty much always used myself as entertainment - both in general gigs and adult gigs. There are jobs that I’ve done in the past where I was definitely naive, taken advantage of, and rolled with some punches either because I either really wanted the money or was afraid of getting the other person upset. I’ve taken long breaks from said work after getting fed up or finding something better, but then I would eventually return smarter, more efficient, and more assertive with my limitations regardless as to if it affected my money or not. I get questions all the time as to whether I’ve done anything else besides dancing. Guys: Enjoy this personal history lesson of living and learning through sex work. Girls: If you’ve ever considered any of this work, I’d advise you to learn from my experiences and use them to prepare yourself if and when you start. Both: Feel free to ask me questions after reading, but I won’t answer anything too incriminating nor will I share any personal links. This is what I’ll be writing about where the order will be when I tried each line of work. I’ll put down my “then” experiences when I was a beginner, then I’ll put down my “now” experiences - obviously referring to how I handle the work now that I’m seasoned enough to know better. If this segment doesn’t interest you, just find another in my articles to read as an alternative. This will be VERY lengthy and moderately explicit article. I hope this entertains or at least intrigues you; Webcam Modeling Escorting/Companionship Lingerie/Nude Modeling Adult Films **Exotic Dancing** ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 ) Exotic Dancing THEN: [Mid 2015] - d a y s h i f t My grandpa has my mom and I sit down in the dining room to have an ever so serious talk about how the house is starting to become hard to afford after to my grandmother’s passing. She covered half if not three-quarters of the expenses of living there and they all piled on him. So, he told the two of us that he’d need some financial assistance from both of us and if we didn’t find some line of work soon enough, he’d have to take some reluctant measures like starting a reverse mortgage or selling the house. Okay. Maybe I will be a stripper. Dancing was one of those fantasies I had that popped in my mind here and there since I started school. After all, since I let myself in the doors of adult entertainment and started webcam modeling, all I’ve been doing since is expanding to other lines of work within it. At this point, dancing is the only thing I haven’t given a try but have researched heavily on so I’d at least have the basic knowledge and expectations to working as a dancer. I just never had the means, the flexible schedule, or the lack of questioning of my motives from my mom and grandparents to be able to start dancing. Not until now. Since my grandpa wanted money fast, this was the only thing I could think of that would help me get paid fast. That following evening, I went online and checked out all the local listings and websites for the clubs in town. Night shift was not an option for me, so I was specifically looking for a club that had a dayshift - and I made this task harder than it actually was because I assumed it was rare for a strip club to be opened during the day. Once I made the discovery that 90% of clubs in town were open from at least 12pm to 2am, then I reached the point where I wanted to find the *best* club in town for me to try working at. A lot of the Google reviews on the local clubs were outdated or really didn’t tell me much besides “fun times!” “hot girls!” “cheap beer!” etc etc. Really curt and redundant ‘reviews’. Yelp wasn’t much better as the most recent review/feedback on some of the clubs were over 5 years old. Foursquare was just about the same. I wondered to myself if there was any kind of website dedicated to local adult entertainment where some secret society of customers anonymously talk about the services and talent at these types of establishments and discuss where’s the best place to be and where to avoid at all costs. This is how I first discovered TUSCL. I made an account to see if I could read the reviews of the clubs, but I didn’t realize that you had to be a VIP to get full access - and since I’ve never been in a strip club in my life, I couldn’t write a review to give myself a month. So going down the list of clubs, all I really had to go by was the overall rating of the club built up by the number scale for dancers, atmosphere, and expense. I didn’t care whether the club was bikini/topless/nude because my only concern was being able to work during the day. There was no way I could work overnight without my grandpa and mom asking deeper questions and investigating further (ie: asking for contact numbers, where work was, or a website to show where I was working). The club that seemed to be the top rated out of the options (at the time. Not so much now.) was the Doll House. So what I ended up doing was that at the end of the week, I had a fashion photo shoot in the morning that I was going to model for, so I brought a lot of dresses and shoes for it, but also for when I decided to check the club out in person. The studio where I did the photoshoot was not even 8 minutes away from the Doll House, and by the time we were finished it was only 12:30 in the afternoon, so the club had just opened. I put the club on my GPS and drove up to where there were maybe 8 cars in the parking lot. I was going in this completely blind because I have never been to a strip club before. When I walk in, it was totally dark since my eyes were still adjusting from being out in blaring sunlight. Everyone was seated by the bar on the left side of the room, so I walked over to where the DJ was mopping the floor behind the bar to ask if the manager was there. He directs me over to an older woman sitting over at the end of the bar and I go over and introduce myself before asking if they were hiring any girls. She says yes they have open positions and if I have danced before. I respond no and she then follows with what makes me think I could make the cut of being a dancer. I simply go down the list of other lines of work I’ve done in the industry (webcam, nude modeling, actual porn. lol) and say that I’m simply taking the next step on the pathway up. She seems to accept my verbal work history and asks if I was looking to work today, but unfortunately, I couldn’t start work because well… I had no tools of trade besides the outfits in the car - which really wasn’t much. Plus, the folks back home thought I would only be out for an hour or two max (yes, I was under a very strict household even as a legal adult). I couldn’t work today, but I told her I was hoping to just audition and be able to start work by the beginning of next week if I look alright. Since that Friday was her last workday of the week before an additional manager took over the weekend, she wanted to see me dance on stage first before she made the decision to hire me since she wouldn’t be working again till the following Tuesday. I already felt my nerves start to kick up, but I didn’t want to waste any time, so I agreed to it. I went out and grabbed my outfit bag and shoes in the car and took it to the dressing room. All I had were club dresses and these black faux leather pumps (which were extremely hard to dance in), so I just threw on a short off-the-shoulder black dress to go with them. There were 3 other girls in the dressing room getting ready and they didn’t pay me any mind. After getting dressed, I spoke to the DJ who was throwing me up for one song after two more girls (there were 6 presently there) and asked me what I wanted to dance to. I didn’t even think of a music playlist yet, so I just asked to see the rock music options. I picked the first thing that I saw across the screen - Sweet Dreams by Marilyn Manson. Not the best song, but it was just an audition. He states that if a customer gives me $5 on stage, I had to get completely naked. Then he asked what did I tell the manager my stage name would be? “Eve.” While I waited to go up on stage, I was sightseeing the room and observing the girls on the stage presently. Maybe it was because they just opened and there were only 3 customers in the room, but the girls I did see dance didn’t put in much effort at all - mostly just standing there and twerking or simply walking across the beam that ran along the edge of the stage. I was relieved to see that there were no super high energy or Olympic pole trick dancers there as I wasn’t entirely sure myself what I could do once it was my turn. Some girls approached the few customers that sat by themselves and I mentally checked off everything I researched before this moment with what the girls were saying and their body language with the custies. The moment comes where the DJ announces my name to go up on stage and even though I’m scared shitless I try not to let it show. I walk up the stairs leading up to the stage in my so-not-dance-appropriate shoes once Marilyn Manson starts playing as I try to remember and imitate some of the body movements that the few girls on stage before me had done. Not even 10 seconds passed while I was on stage and one of the custies comes up to leave me $5. Then shortly after, one of the dancers comes up and gives me another $7. It didn’t go through my mind that I had to strip right away and tried to implement some sort of striptease technique until the girls around the room started shouting at me to get naked. I had already taken off the dress and was in the process of removing the bra and panties, but soon succumbed to the instant gratification of the audience. They applauded when I got naked and danced to the rest of the song which to me was a very strange reaction, but I smiled along with it and grooved on until the song was over. After that, I picked up my clothes and got off stage to dress back in my regular clothes. While the audition wasn’t the most graceful thing I’ve ever experienced, I thought I did alright. After putting my dress clothes away and getting back in my civvie clothes, I go back out on the main floor to meet back with the manager to ask how I did and she shrugged and went “You seem okay to me.” I’ll call that a pass. She let me know that I could come back in to work the following Tuesday since that would be when she was working next and I happily agreed to it. As I walk out, DJ tells me that the stage money is mine to keep and that he’ll see me when I come into work, then another girl comes over to introduce herself and briefly makes nice before I leave the club. I was relieved it wasn't an obstacle course trying to get hired, and all I had to do was to decide what I was going to do about outfits, hygienics, and such. Unfortunately, I caught a raging stomach virus before I was originally going to go to work, so it took me an additional week to wait before I could start. When I called to let someone know, it was actually the GM (general manager) that answered and he just told me to come in when I felt better because the primary manager was under the weather as well. When I made the announcement to the family that I got a job, I made the cover story that I was working at an art center on the other side of town. The place did exist, so I took the risk of naming it and it’s location, but my folks never bothered looking the place up or trying to call the center to reach me. Since I was a former art school student, they bought my story pretty easily. To this day, they still think I work there. My very first day of work was… interesting to say the least. I met the owner of the club (who was the biggest perv compared to all of the customers I’ve ever met), gave the DJ a general playlist of songs I wanted to dance to, checked in with the manager, and got a general rundown of 75% of the rules. The other 25% were rules they wanted me to discover on my own by violating them and then being pulled to the side later on to be told what I was supposed to do. The biggest one was the Cup Rule. All the girls got a styrofoam cup upon starting shift where they wrote their names on them and used to pretty much mark their territory. If there was a cup next to a customer - occupied or not - you leave him alone until that girl takes her cup elsewhere. The other rule was that customers couldn’t be approached until they made and received their drink order. They purposely didn’t tell me this right away and I actually detected some brief animosity from the other girls watching when I unknowingly sat with a ‘cupped’ customer who asked me to sit with him or if I approached a guy who didn’t have a drink yet. How’re they going to get mad at me for breaking rules that I intentionally wasn’t informed about in the first place? The majority of the dayshift girls all seemed to know each other as well as the staff from way back (like 10+ years) and it was a 75/25 split between regulars who’ve been getting dances from them for the longest time and the completely random and new customers. Most of the custies that came in during the day were older and retired gents in an even mixture of each ethnicity, with a very small pinch of younger custies coming in once in a blue moon (weekends primarily). What threw me off about the vibe of this place was that I’ve read all over the internet that the one thing that new dancers should not do is try to make friends: The other girls just see me as extra competition in the beginning, so I was not to engage with them or try to befriend them so that they wouldn’t get annoyed or even threatened by me - so it was best to stick to myself for some time and let them come to me once they feel me out. However, all of these girls wanted to know EVERYTHING about me within the first 10 minutes of me starting work and most of them were friendly enough - all which heavily contrasted to what I was warned about from the online stripper bloggers. Despite this, I still kept to myself most of the time and didn’t really speak to any of the dancers unless they spoke to me first. And rightfully so. On the bad days - which was at LEAST twice a week, especially if there was liquor involved, these girls were loose cannons. I managed to not let myself get sucked into the arguments or feuds 80% of the time, but sometimes I still got unlucky and got placed in situations I wasn’t sure how to handle because I’ve never been in them before. I pissed off a few dancers for the most benign of intentions; one girl calmly bitched me out because I approached a customer that just happen to tip her on stage after the manager nagged me to stop sitting by myself and to talk to him. Another sternly bitched me out after she left work early only to come back 3 hours later, and one of her customers (who I didn’t know was a regular) came in while she was gone, asked me if she was working, and I told him that she was here but she left early - because I didn’t know she’d be back. And 90% of the time, when I never argued back with them, the other girls who’d see what happened would assume I was intimidated and would end up turning against or arguing with the opposing dancer for ‘being mean’. I don’t think I was ‘intimidated’ by these girls as much as I simply didn’t have the energy to argue with people that don’t have an effect on my finances. The drama I got sucked into was bizarre, but it was pretty pale compared to some of the stuff I’ve witnessed between the others. There were many close calls to physical fights, but they were pretty rare as the girls seemed to make up as quickly as they got at each other’s throats. While I got along with most of the dancers old and new well enough, I didn’t try to become anyone’s friend. There was one big thing that I wasn’t aware of in particular about the Dayshift at the DH, and that was the fact that dances were VHM and extras prominent 90% of the time. No online hints or giveaways of it at all, and if they were talking about it in the TUSCL reviews, I could not check them at the time. My very first customer was introduced to me through one of the dancers and he was all over me when he learned I was a new girl (although I don’t think he knew that I was brand-spanking new). He was playing some of the gambling machines and had me talk some small talk to him for maybe 5 minutes before he took me back to the private dance area. The next song hadn’t even started yet and I didn’t even get a chance to put my purse and belongings down before he promptly dropped his pants and pointed his dick at me while telling me to stroke it a little before the song started. An immediate “Seriously?” was my only response and he kept motioning for me to come over. “Don’t be scared, all the girls do this.” I asked him to please put his pants back on and he complies while rolling his eyes. When he sits back down and the new song begins, I strip down and begin straddling him to start the dance, but as the song went on, he didn’t even try to act like he was intrigued or happy with me. He just sat back like a statue with his arms across the booth and kept his gaze boredly at the glass behind us. The feeling was mutual. Once the song ended, he just gives a curt thank you, and he hands me the $25 before walking on out without saying anything else. I was already aware that there was a -slight- possibility that customers would be coming in and be looking for more than a regular dance, but I did not expect that from every other customer that agreed to buy a dance from me. In just the first week, I couldn’t count on both hands how many guys immediately whipped out their dick and/or pulled my hand down to touch them or tried to shove two or more fingers in my pussy before I could even sit on their lap. Nobody ever asked me first if it was alright, envelopes were not pushed but shoved often, and I felt more violated than I had when I was doing amateur porn or ‘escorting’ back in college. And just somehow, I was under the impression that all the other dancers were just the cleanest of the clean veteran hustlers that didn’t have to do more than a really good dance for their customers - especially if they had some reliable regulars that have been seeing them for several years. I’m sitting at the corner of the bar one day legit asking myself, considering the environment and expectations from a lot of customers, how was it that I was only doing 1 or 2 dances at a time while these girls were pulling anywhere between 4 - 8 dances minimum with almost every guy they talked to? Most of the time, I was the stripper that made the less money out of all the girls on the roster, and it wasn’t entirely because I was new and was still learning how to dance. They actually got me in trouble... the -one- day I finally succumb to the demand. I’d say at week 3 of dancing, I made nice with a very attractive younger custy. A long-haired kid that was sporting a trench coat with a button-down collar shirt underneath it. I normally am not into guys my own age or the younger crowd, but this was one of the few that I made an exception to. I talked to him for about 15 minutes and it’s clear that I’m really feeling him and he’s really feeling me. Because of the strict no-contact rule that was enforced on the floor, there was only so much we could do openly besides nuzzle up and stroke a leg or a shoulder. I soon tell him that we have to go in the VIP and he quickly agrees, so we go into the private dance area and pick a booth and eagerly await the next song. When the song starts, it was more like getting into foreplay than a regular ole dance. Both our lips were all over each other before they finally met and hands roamed all over the place, and although he didn’t touch me inappropriately right away, his demeanor was pretty primal and I could sense that he really wanted to. One of my hands guided his between my legs while the other teasingly gripped onto his growing bulge and it didn’t take long for him to quietly ask if it was okay for him to take it out. I was so relieved that he asked me first. I was more than fed up with the custies that treated extras as a sure expectation rather than a potential. The fact that he asked first probably turned me on even more. LOL. Anyways, I say go right on ahead. Fuck it. This guy was hot. He undoes his belt and I spend a good 5 songs feeling him up and getting aroused. I really wanted to fuck him, but I wasn’t properly equipped with the gear to do so and unfortunately, neither was he. I guess neither of us was expecting to see each other that day and get this far into dances. I was facing away from the glass wall that was behind me, so even though I could see anyone walking by, I heard the sound of walking back and forth on the walkway of the VIP quite often, and all I thought to myself was “Damn, it’s busy with dances back here.” My custy warns me that he’s about to bust and so he tucks his junk partly back into his pants and finishes the work on his own while I’m embracing and lightly scratching at his back while grinding against his thigh. Even thinking about it this very moment, I was really into it. He pays me the amount he owes in dances along with a tip and makes me pinky-swear that I’ll be here another time for him to see me again, so I pinky-swear. He leaves the club and I make my way to the general manager (the regular manager was still out sick) to pay for my dances and I feel the stares of a couple of dancers follow me as I walk by them. He confirms how many dances I did so I pay him the right amount, but he took his time breaking the change he owed me since he had something to say to me. “The girls have a theory that you’ve been giving handjobs to customers in the back.” P a r d o n ME? Handjobs? Plural?? Obviously, he saw what this guy and I were doing a moment ago, but that was the only time I’ve done it and I immediately argued back against the implication that I’ve been jerking off multiple guys or whatever. I complained that I’ve actually spent a good majority of my time working there rejecting and having to play dodgehisballs with a lot of the customers, and this was the only time I allowed more than a dance to happen. The GM is looking at me like I have two heads, but first advises how I can assert my boundaries with the aggressive custies, then finishes with him saying he doesn’t want to catch me doing that again. Thankfully he only left me with the change from the payout and the warning. I immediately go in the dressing room to freshen up and one of the dancers in the bathroom comes up and asked if management talked to me yet. I guess word of my antics went around quickly. I say yes and she immediately starts her spiel. “Girl, you gotta be careful doing that. Because I do that stuff too,” … Too? “And most of all, make them PAY for that shit. I’m not talking the cost of a dance, I mean charge $75, $100, whatever on top of the dances. Don’t let those guys turn you into a dime whore, seriously, make them pay!” And she leaves the room. So now after a moment of sexual weakness, I now had a reputation in the club as an extras girl. Wonderful. But what really took the cake was that that was the only girl that openly admitted for being down for P4P. All the rest… hypocrites. I later learned who the girls were that ratted me out, and later down the line, I saw those same exact girls doing the same and more for various customers. These girls were not that discreet and seemed to have a don’t ask/don’t tell rule amongst each other, but if a new girl came along and did the same thing that they did, then they had a problem with it and complained to management about it. I never understood, and still don’t understand, why whores would be mad at other whores for being whores? The only logic I could think of was that one girl may be charging significantly less than the rest of them, but there were girls that didn’t care about the price and openly name-dropped the girl poorly for sucking or fucking. The same girl that would walk by a dancer in the middle of talking to a customer and loudly announce “You’re gonna catch more than a blowjob if you’re only paying her $25!” would be seen at times bobbing her head between a custy’s legs through the tinted glass wall. A few of the other girls down the line became more open about their deeds a few months later, but the majority were hypocrites, and that was incredibly stupid to me. And the fines… it was very hard to not be fined if you weren’t kissing the manager’s ass all of the time - and hell, even if you were kissing her ass, you’d still somehow get unlucky with fines. I’m pretty sure she made more money from fining the girls than she did from money earned from regular business transactions and payroll. There were the standard schedule related fines because all the girls had a schedule where they were expected to come in at least 4 days a week. Missing days of work without notice cost $75 per day. Staying out past your 10-minute break cost $3 per extra minute you were late coming back to work. If you didn’t go on stage without reason when repeatedly called up there was a $50 fine. If you were caught giving extras during a private dance (or rather, if a dancer complained, because she never checked unless a girl complained), she’d fine you $100. If you were caught sneaking alcohol in the club (because it was a non-alcoholic nude bar), $100 fine. And if for whatever reason the manager or owner decides to fire you - no matter the reason (unless the reason is you’ve exceeded your fines or refused to pay them) - it would be $400 to get your job back. Yes. We’ve had numerous girls lose their job numerous times, and they’d always pay to come back 3 - 5 more times at least. I don’t know any other club that works like this. I attempted to apply to three other clubs during the day time but it was always poor timing because the clubs either had too many girls or weren’t newbie friendly. Regardless, my time on Dayshift didn’t last longer than 8 months. The girls and some of the customers were driving me crazy, and outside of work, my family was driving me crazy with their strict house rules. I made and saved as much money as I could to gain freedom. In two months, I bought my very first car, and those remaining six months I saved enough money and sanity to be able to comfortably move out and into my own apartment. As soon as I moved out and got some mental clarity, I started the process of switching shifts at the same club. n i g h t s h i f t Night shift at DH was a complete coin flip as far as the girls, the customers, atmosphere and the management went. I had to go in with a clean slate and lost a good majority of my regulars because they didn’t have the flexibility in their schedule to be able to go out during the late hours of the night. About a quarter of the night girls were the ‘alumni’ where they’ve been dancing for DH for what seems like generations, and all the rest of the girls were there for no more than 1 or 2 years. They had a lot more girls despite that the night time manager’s hiring guidelines were much stricter compared to the day manager’s. The dayshift manager hired anyone with a XX chromosome at any time to come work on her shift, so I got to work with some... colorful characters at the time. The manager on night shift was not so laid back about dancer quality, however. The majority of the dancers were much younger, mostly spinners, and didn’t have any deep imperfections (ie: cystic acne, drug scars, extra baby weight, etc). He also tried to keep the number of women of color as minimal as possible. He never admitted anything, but of course, there was a common rumor that he was a closet racist. Even when I told the dayshift manager that I was switching shifts after I moved, she said: “There’s a chance he may not hire you because he doesn’t like black girls.”. And I guess he gave me the benefit of the doubt and let me work for him because I at least fit all the rest of his dancer preferences for his shift. But I was probably the only AA girl working on night shift for a year straight - with there being two of us at the most my entire time there. The majority of the clientele in the evenings were Caucasian blue-collar guys, with a secondary percentage of Hispanic men, followed by a smaller percentage of AA men He very rarely let the day girls work a double shift, and at one point he stopped letting them work nights altogether (except on Sundays where there was no dayshift) because they had a very bad reputation with him along with the majority of the night shift girls. The night shift girls were much more clean and tame with their dances in comparison - which I would definitely take over being groped aggressively or propositioned every other dance I gave - but I kinda felt like they were unsure how to feel about letting me work on their shift because I used to be a ‘dayshift’ girl. But hey. I only worked during the day because I had to before my move. I would have loved to work evenings from the very start. This vibe I picked off from them overtime eventually faded away, and they were actually very friendly with me once they got to know me to an acceptable degree. The same vibe thankfully faded away between me and the manager as well because I initially found him to be very intimidating, but he’s told me years later that I ended up being one of his best girls. He and the dayshift manager seemed no-nonsense in their own different ways. He wasn’t trigger happy with fines at all compared to her. In fact, the only fines he cared about were No Shows if girls didn’t come into work when they were supposed to. Staying on his good side wasn’t too hard, but if you rubbed him the wrong way for whatever reason, he’d let you off with one or two warnings. After that, he would not hesitate to fire you, and you’d better have a real good sob story script compiled and memorized to perfection to perform for him if you ever want to work on his shift again. One reason this shift was ‘cleaner’ compared to the dayshift was that the manager monitored the private dance area semi-regularly, so even if there was the occasional girl that was open to P4P, they’d have to be more alert to their surroundings. I’ve seen him in the corner of my eye checking out my booth often while I was giving dances when I first started working with him because I assume he was making sure I wasn’t upholding the ‘daygirl’ reputation, and overtime he chilled out with the patrolling. Zero tolerance for extra playtime. He’d probably catch one girl a month or every other month playing around in the back, and that would lead to immediate termination of her job - and she couldn’t hand him $400 to overlook it. They’d either go work dayshift instead or find another club. Despite the atmospheric difference between the two shifts, I had one problem that I slowly forced myself to gradually get out of. As expected, business on nights was much bigger compared to dayshift, and during the weekend it could become standing room only with customers. This sent my social anxiety through the roof, which of course never happened on the day shift because we’ve never had that many customers at one time. It was easy to just approach a custy completely relaxed and not have to worry about anything besides getting him intrigued enough to buy a dance with some initial heart to heart. I was never considered a party girl (even during college), and that’s what a lot of these guys were looking for outside of just a good looking girl. I know the worst that could happen was being told ‘no’ to a dance offer, but the mere thought of me potentially bothering them before they could reject me was enough to keep me away from approaching custies at times. I’ve learned overtime to break this thought process and the bad habit it led to keeping me from working properly, thankfully. Even though there was a large number of customers at night, they were much pickier with choosing dancers compared to the customers during the day - especially the younger frat/college/military guys. Most of these guys were not interested in a heart to heart but just wanted to see who had the best ass and titties to squeeze on in the club. Even then, they would only get 1 or 2 dances at a time expecting nothing more than the literal sense of lapdance, so at times it would be very exhausting going back and forth from single digit dances to giving a good impression to custies in ten minutes or less over and over in a span of a 7 hour shift. At one point, I decided to give up working the weekend nights because there was a 50/50 chance that the crowd would be a bust - room full of guys that very seldom wanted to tip girls on stage, sometimes openly made fun of how the dancers looked or talked to them (especially if they had girlfriends in the group with them), and it would be like pulling teeth trying to convince them to buy just one dance. It was an easy way to slowly put the girls in a bad mood, and I completely related. I would much rather leave the club with no money because it was a slow night, not because a big ass crowd didn’t want to spend any money and ruin the atmosphere for the custies that legit wanted to have a good time with a girl. I didn’t have too much trouble working Sunday - Thursday because those nights obviously did not get as intense as the weekends, but there were still moderate waves of custies that would come in where the mood would be mellow and relaxed. That’s the way I preferred it because I prioritize my focus on the custy I was sitting and talking with, and wanted minimal distractions. My longevity at this club had extended tremendously since switching over to the night shift, and I ended up working here for almost 5 years. Within this long period of time was when I saw some changes occur, unfortunately for the worse. Management got a little stricter with fees and rules but at the same time turned a blind eye to the quality of girls that I was working with (extreme drug problems with a few girls that extended to several girls which made some girls turn to cutthroat measures in making money and hurting the fair working girls in the process), overtime it slowly but surely became a more subtle version of dayshift as it became obvious that the club as a whole was losing business. Once I noticed it was starting to affect my income ( by year 4 ) was when I started to get depressed and actually did not look forward to going to work every night. I hesitated to decide to work at another club because I got really close to a lot of the girls and the staff, but it got to the point where I had no other choice but to look elsewhere because I couldn’t afford to wait and see if things got better anymore. But this is how my adventures and misadventures turned out at my very first club ever. t r a v e l s Within a year and a half of dancing, I started getting an interest in clubs outside of town and when I wanted to have a bit more presence on TUSCL - and by that, I mean I wanted to actually read what the actual reviews were saying about the clubs so that I wouldn’t have a repeat of my experience on dayshift. LOL. So I made some brief records of my very first club visits ever (they’re not as long and detailed as how I get now.) so that I could get the VIP access and actually see what some of the mongers were saying about the clubs near me or near where I wanted to travel. (Yep. I should have read about the DH before I started working there during the day. Hah.) The very first time I traveled out of town was in Daytona Beach. Not too far, not too close, figured it would be a nice distance to test the waters. I ended up trying out at Diamond Dolls and it was my very first time dancing at a bikini bar. I had no choice because there were no nude bars in the city. Getting hired was no issue at all. I actually made a fuck ton of money my first month driving down there on a regular basis and actually ghosted my hometown for a bit because of it, and this was before I knew about events such as Bike Week/Biketoberfest and the Daytona 500. Because this was a bikini bar, I had to get used to a few different rules. I already knew that customers could give mild or moderate contact on the stage while tipping the girls, but the concept of champagne rooms, feature dancers, 2-for-1 specials, and costume regulations were all new to me - new but easy to learn about. One thing that annoyed me was the g-string rule where you had to wear an additional micro thong underneath the bottoms of whatever outfit you wore (or they had to follow the 2-finger width rule), plus a few managers did not want your nipples to show a little bit - not even through a sheer top. A whole lot of stuff I didn’t have to worry about while dancing nude. Either way, I became flexible with the different regulations, and making money here at first was pretty easy. Because alcohol was served and I wasn’t in the greatest part of town, I got to meet a whole new spectrum of customers that I very rarely if ever encountered at a nude bar. Yep. Thinking back, I never met these types until I started dancing at DD. Every other night, it was one of the following: A drunk that was looking for a legitimate girlfriend that refused to buy dances from me because he ‘respected me’ too much, but still wanted to exchange numbers and take me out to expensive dinners and fly me all over the world etc etc etc just to see if I’d be the girl of his dreams. So all of that is no spec of dirt off his bank account, but if I ever insinuated that I wanted to give them a $25 dance, they would act if I just swore in a church and ramble about how I’m worth so much more than that. This said ramble will usually go on for at least 15 minutes unless I just walk away or go up on stage to dance with no intent to sit back down with them. A drug dealer that by default automatically assumed I had a cocaine or heroin habit and offered me my first hit of whatever from them free of charge if I gave away that I was tired/sleepy in the slightest. I always refused and they never got dances, but they were very generous with stage tipping. A druggie that came in the club specifically looking for girls who knew someone that could lend or sell them drugs. There was only a 5% success rate at getting these guys to buy dances. Sometimes they’d accuse me of lying if I said I didn’t know anybody that sold whatever. Yeah. Drug usage in Daytona is that prominent. A pimp or wannabe pimp that would harass me to give them my number so that they would call and set me up with some skeevy guy outside the club after work and make extra money ‘together’. Sometimes when I initially refused, they’d wait outside in the parking lot for me to come out after work and try to get my attention while I’m getting in the car (bouncer or no bouncer in tow), always swearing that I could make a shit ton more money with them compared to what I was making at the club. The “new girl” money only lasted for about 4 months before business out of nowhere came to a slowdown. Then I only started traveling to Daytona whenever there was an event in town where it was known business would be booming, because it would be slow any other time. As I do routinely in any other club, I kept to myself when it came to socializing with the other workers - mainly because a lot of the girls would have volatile personalities after getting very drunk, and I’ve had to deal with two bouncers that were always flirting and try to hook up with me outside of work (their staff had changed very frequently, with this being a not so uncommon reason.) My success in dancing in other cities has been very spotty. I attempted to dance in Atlanta a couple of years ago, but it was bad timing not only because it was in the midst of slow season after the Winter holidays, but because it also snowed the same weekend I flew into town, so all of the clubs were shut down except for Pink Pony (I think Club Blaze was open too), so another TUSCLer and I went there to monger for the remainder of my trip. Then I tried to dance in Tampa last year. I successfully got hired at Mons Venus, but yet again, it was in the midst of the slow season, and they were averaging 30 girls a night with maybe less than 10 customers at a time throughout a shift. I tried to apply at many many other clubs after the failure of business at Mons and NOBODY was hiring because of how slow it’s been. My radar at detecting when it’s the best season or time to dance at whatever city is incredibly unreliable, so I feel I have to make connections with other dancers that travel frequently so that maybe they can put word into when is a good time to dance where. I’ve had daydreams of primarily dancing in South Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Vegas, and Dallas, but I hopefully can travel to these destinations as a PL first and not as a dancer so that I can pick up on the sidelines what these clubs would be like and if I can picture myself working in any of them. Traveling is slowly but surely becoming a hobby of mine, so I know in the future I can cover some distance and scope out what else is out there as far as clubs go. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT ABOUT NOW?: [2019 - present] I’m putting down 2019 because this is the year where I officially left the Doll House as my home base club and decided to explore my options with the other local strip clubs. By this time is when I’ve finally figured out my primary hustle and dance technique, as well as developing my overall opinion on the now prominent ‘whorearchy’ that all lines of sex work seem to be getting sucked into and whether they should blend together or segregate against each other or not. [ Just for the record, I don’t have an ounce of a problem with girls or customers that are down for P4P in the club if it’s consensual between the two, the terms are made clear to avoid conflict afterward, and they’re not being done in a manner that’s intentionally cutthroat to another girl (ie: The custy already establishing that he was there to see Girl A, but Girl B argues that he should play with more than one girl, ends up taking all of his money through means of extras, leaving no money left for Girl A who he originally wanted to see.). What I DO have a problem with are custies that are so desperate to get off that they feel they have to force themselves on the dancer without even trying to find out what her boundaries are first at a slow pace (instead of ever so slightly edging their fingers toward her pussy, giving her enough time to say no or move it away if they oppose, they just quickly push their hand down her thong and immediately shove 4 fingers inside her.). That ain’t cool. ] While my experience with dancing has improved since switching over to work nights years ago, I have ran into my share of deep bumps in the road, including being harassed over the phone and stalked by an overly attached custy, being recognized by a family friend at work (thankfully they didn’t snitch), witnessing one of my favorite girls to dance with (and one of the very few I hung out with outside of work) fall into a coke habit and O.D. in the middle of work, and dealing with a late night drunk following me to my car and attempting to break into it while I tried to leave. The job can be a double-edged sword if you’re not physically or mentally prepared for all the factors it comes with. I took a looong hiatus from TUSCL that started the year before because I was dealing with the mental battles in my brain and the financial battles I had to deal with once business in all the clubs, in general, started slowing down. It was all bringing me down mentally, so I had to prioritize work and being mostly happy again and take a break from clubbing for the fun of it, as well as speaking of my adventures on here. Once I moved over to a new club and started on a new anti-anxiety medication, things slowly but surely started to improve. Despite that I changed clubs in early June - which was the start of the Summertime Slowdown for the majority of clubs everywhere - I was still making more income compared to what I was making at the DH during the last year or two. I found a lot of girls that I used to work with and they would all ask me why I hadn’t come to work with them sooner. I have no schedule but I plan my nights the same as I did before: Work mostly weekday nights and only work weekends if I feel that I have to. There are a lot more girls but they are all very friendly and nonchalant at their worst. Management is much more flexible as far as enforcing rules but they have their own unique lines that girls shouldn’t cross, such as taking a recording or photo with customers present on the floor or getting too drunk in the midst of work. I’ve been at this joint for almost a year now and am so far quite happy with the switch. I haven’t had a whole lot of opportunities to travel out of town, but I would like to change that soon enough. Jacksonville gets incredibly boring once you’re used to the scene and see the same stuff over and over. At least to me, it is. I know there’s more to life out there! This has been my current experience with being a stripper/exotic dancer/whateveriminthemoodtobecalled up to this point in time. I have to partially thank TUSCL for helping me decide what clubs I wanted to work in (as well as monger in) as I had no idea what stripperweb was for all these years. LOL. It’s also been a blast meeting a decent number of mongers from here - either while I’m at work or through being PLs together amid club-hopping adventures. Happy Mongering. (Now I can get a full 8 hours of sleep after submitting this.)