Flashback Sunday

Sundays are really fun. Usually there’s only maybe thirty of us working (a huge percentage of my friends work on Sundays too, because we’re awesome and so are Sundays, so that makes it even better), and the goofy DJ also works that night. There’s not a whole lot of customers but they’re pretty good, you know, quality over quantity. There’s no house fees on Sunday either, so you can come in at ten for a quick four hour shift and not have to pay sixty bucks. We do a poker tournament in the library that night too, thus everyone congregates in the other room where it still feels like a strip club, so it concentrates the smattering of activity in a smaller space. We typically have a lot of fun on Sundays, like, by the end of the night someone ends up doing the sprinkler dance onstage. And sometimes, the goofy DJ decides that he’s not going to play any music that was made in the last two decades, and on those glorious occasions, you get flashback Sundays. We’re trying to make it official, but the mgmt is dragging their feet. So the DJ just does it anyways, from time to time. He’s not just a strip club DJ, this man knows his music and is really into it. He makes teh good funnies on the mic too. I love him.

Well, last night was a flashback Sunday. And it was fucking epic. We made that space of patriarchy and subversion our own, we owned it. I utilized a repressive format for pure expression. Yeah. Chew on that one for a while. Dare ya.

I got out of the shower to a text message from the Aussie that said “OMG there are no customers here, only poker players.” It was 8:30, so I decided to come anyways because it typically doesn’t pick up till late. Drove my ass down there, wondering if I was making a mistake. It had picked up by the time I arrived, pretty average crowd for a Sunday (read: dead as a doornail). I ate some fajitas, got to visit with Delilah for the first time in two months, we discussed our looming moves/transitions out of the business. Ran into David (whom I’ll discuss further in an forthcoming piece about customer motives that’s going to collectively blow all your minds) and he wanted to go upstairs with a friend of mine, Kendall. We go up there, took turns dancing, laughed our ASSES off. Omg. She got her tits done in Germany when she lived over there, so now she just refers to them as her “German imports.” That was one of the kickers of the hour, in addition to when David suggested that we come over to “check out [his] baseball card collection.” The music was basically awesome, we had the speaker turned up all the way in our booth, and were giving really unusual lapdances, you know, actually in time with music. At some point I worked up a sweat. And I mean really, how often do I get to dance for a beautiful naked woman to The Cure’s “Why can’t I be you?”…that’s right, never. Too fast of a song for the club, you’ll never hear it. One of my favorite Cure tracks too. So much fun.

We got paid hourly to have a blast. One of the few times you’re going to hear me say this, in my jaded condition, but OMFG sometimes I really love my job.

Well David had bought me offstage at the beginning of the hour, and I was kindof sad about that. After we got paid for our hour and were back downstairs, I was exhilarated by both the rockin’ good time Kendall and I had just shared, and the highly respectable amount of cash we’d made (especially for a Sunday), and I wanted to dance. I mentioned this to the house mom, asking if she’d put me up onstage. She said, “Well, I don’t want it to seem like I’m playing favorites,” meaning she didn’t want to change the order of the rotation. I said, “Oh I don’t give a fuck about the list, I just want to go onstage. Like now. I don’t care if I have to go again later, in fact, I’d love to.” She picked up the phone, I told her I wanted Madonna’s “Dress you up” and “Into the groove,” and I changed into my boots. Those songs are way fast for a stage set, normally my music is a bit slower because I have no stripper moves to speak of, I just throw out a watered-down version of my normal dance moves (read: more flexing and posing and attention to angles), because I'm going to move to whatever's playing and if it's within my dancefloor-optimal BPM range of 128-135, I'm going to look like a tard and end up sweating way too much. But I wasn’t intending on actually acting like a stripper out there, not this time. And I could run a 5K in those boots.

I laid it the fuck down. I danced and danced and danced. Like I didn’t care who was watching, you know, the way it should be on the dancefloor. But it’s not a dancefloor, even though the surface is perfect, it’s a stage. Great fun, since I got the DJ up there like, timing my lights and I’ve got my coworkers screaming their appreciation, and I know all the words and all my moves were right because I have every fucking intonation and beat of those tracks memorized because I LOVE MADONNA and I was just…flying. Spinning and stomping while generally BLASTING my sexuality at people.

Thank god I snagged a bar towel on my way to the stage, because I was dripping with sweat by the time I hit my first side stage. I spent the next two songs dabbing at my face, armpits, under my tits. No really. Dripping. Do you like your strippers sweaty? Doesn’t matter cuz I don’t give a flying fuck.

Post epic stage set. Not really any money out there, and I’d already made what I normally make on an average night in my first hour, so I didn’t care. I just bought myself a couple tasty adult beverages and talked to people till I had to do my last set. I was the last girl on stage for the night, which is usually quite annoying because that’s prime time to snag your final victim of the evening, but I didn’t care. Hell, I was only supposed to do one song, and I did two. Robert Palmer’s “I didn’t mean to turn you on,” and one of my favorites to drop when I’m feeling particularly angsty, Joan Jett’s “I hate myself for loving you.” And this time it didn’t matter if anyone was watching because nobody was. Everyone was gone and the waitresses were cleaning their tables and there I was, fucking going at it with this huge sound system all by myself.

In the dressing room I’m informed that Taylor knows a Korean karaoke joint that’s open late and will serve us booze afterhours. We grab some friends and the cross-dressing regular, and off we go. Now, I’ve only sung karaoke twice, and both were rather underwhelming experiences, mostly because I can’t sing to save my life and I generally don’t enjoy playing games that I’m not good at. And I always thought those private room joints were probably lame, because what’s the fun if no one’s watching? Well turns out they’re SUPER fun if you want to make a total fool of yourself in front of your friends. Shots, sake, snacks that include cookie crisp, a playlist that’s very roughly translated from Korean, a playback system that gives you a score at the end of your song (lowest score we got was 97—that’s about when we started yelling “GOOOOOAAAAAAL” and decided that we win at karaoke), cordless mics, and a big coffee table that’s just begging to be stood upon whilst belting out Stacy Q’s “Two of hearts” or Paul Simon's "Kodachrome." Yeah. We did all that.

I got home at five. I got paid to have a blast last night. Sometimes I really love my job.