i very rarely feel demeaned at the club, and i don't even really often feel disrespected. i almost always feel that i am the one yielding the power in the situation, and that i am granting a very clear avenue for (usually) men to be present with their sexual desires without shame or judgment and with clear boundaries. the boundaries thing, on a side not, is interesting to me. in the few occasions in which i've been with cis-men who are not queer/feminist-y men, i've often not felt good communication around boundaries. in fact, i don't know why i queer/not-queered that. even in a lot of queer hook-ups and relationships i've been in, it's been hard to communicate boundaries on both sides. but at the club, men really often ask what is okay, and are really pliable when i tell them what isn't (once i've weeded out and NOT gone with the ones who just want to fuck.) but anyway, i wonder if people are just better with boundaries...or want more of them then we are brought up to think.

money has never seemed as tangible and as fake as working at a strip club. it kind of blows my mind how i can coax a man into emptying his wallet and then going to an ATM with a fifteen dollar surcharge. sex is pretty powerful i guess. i always feel like the lap dance starts when they go to the ATM lol, and i stand behind them scratching the back of their head or rubbing their back or working my hips on them or something so that they stay in the mood and  don't freak out about how much money they are spending.

but anyway, back to my EXPERIENCE BEING DEMEANED. what made me feel so shitty wasn't like a guy getting over excited and trying to touch my pussy, which happens ALL THE TIME. but it was another fucking british sleazebag! i feel disgusting just remembering it...it's funny what becomes big. these two white guys in button - downs were sitting in these chairs far from the stage. in my head i decided to call them the "no dance" or better "no money" chairs, because guys sort of sit in them to be away from the action...to avoid the path way of the dancers it seems, and also to avoid having to tip whoever is on stage. so anyway, despite thinking this...in fact WHILE thinking this, i went to sit on this one guy's lap. i started to talk to him...he was british and then he said. "don't talk. i just want to watch." so i was like, whatever. and i stopped talking. and he started running his hands all over my body. at first it was fine, but then it started to feel disgusting, like SUPER DIRTY. and believe it, i have guys hands over me all night, so what about this was different? it was that vermin-like quality, this sense of oulless touch, with no perception of the humanity of the one being touched. so anyway, ti was feeling GROSS, and about a song and a half passed and i thought that i would see if i could bring him back to a lap dance room. at that moment he leaned to my ear and said "now go away." in that disgusting fucking british accent. i said, "excuse me?' "now go away," he repeated. i pulled out the side of my thong for  a tip and he just looked at me. i did it again. nothing. i bent down to his ear and said, deeply and without wavering. "aren't you going to tip me for putting your hands all over my body for two songs?" he shook his head. no more than that. MYSOGYNIST SCUM OF THE EARTH. is all i have to say. i know a lot of men carry misogyny...a lot of women too...a lot of people in general. but fewer INTENTIONALLY DEPLOY IT. now that's fucked up and makes me want to go fuck some shit up. but i couldn't. but i did go over when ch-- was sitting on his lap afterwards and whisper in her ear (without making eye contact with him), "if he's anything like he was with me, he's a huge sleazebag who won't tip you anything or buy a dance."

There were many more incidents of racism as always. From the flagrant, "did you ever notice how drunk mexicans are as bad or worse than black people?" spoken by the door girl, to a more subtle instance that happened to me while walking around the room looking for customers. i often think about how racism happens on both the sides of men picking girls to give them lap dances, but also vice versa. anyway, i will take this opportunity to admit to profiling towards white men when giving dances. i'm not going to deconstruct that here, only that i am understanding a need to challenge that in myself. tonight i sat down tih a black guy who was there with his friend. he was on the outside, more so than his friend, but he was also bald and i think had lighter skin than his friend. i was chatting with him, and he said, "can you do me a favor?" and i asked him what it was. he asked if i could go sit with his friend, that hsi friend was having a not so great night because he hadn't been getting very much attention. i told him that i was working, and did he want to tip me to go sit with his friend. he said something, i don't reember what, and i asked if he wanted to buy a lap dance for his friend or if his friend wanted to buy one. he said, and he seemed genuinely upset at this point, "we've been in a lot of clubs tonight, can you tell me why no one has sat with my friend?" in my head i said RACISM, and i'm sure he knew the answer, too. he said that no one had given his friend a chance to see if he wanted a lap dance even. So i went and sat on his lap, and he was SUPER sweet, and i did give him a dance and it was lovely and goddamnit if racism isn't everywhere and sad as fuck.

Also, tonight I was standing outside with A--, and these two guys were sort of homing in on us...they finally got close, and the one guy asked what kind of a bar it was. The door girl said, "It's a STRIP club." and he said. "oh." he looked at me and said, "I thougth ya'll were an impersonator bar." Oh man I wanted to laugh so hard. And he didn't mean it as an insult he genuinely thought that, and he was a little drunk so he was really just speaking where he was at. A--, who hadn't been visible to the man as I had been was like, "oh no, baby, this is ALL real." After he left she looked at me and was like, "he thought you were  a dude!" as if that had not already been clear ot me. what neither of them probalby realized was that that was like the msot awesomest compliment ever.

One of the early dances I did was with a guy who was the overseer at an oil rig. While I was giving him the dance, he said some offhand bravado about "I've done it all." I was like, "yea?" not really paying attention or caring about what he was talking about. "everything except sex with a dude," he followed. "Well," I said, "you still have time." "OH NO." he said, immediately. the next thing that i heard was, "there's no quitters on the rig," which didn't make sense ot me, so i said, "oh no?" and he said, "nope. there are no queers allowed on my rig." "no?" i said. "no." i asked him what happened to queers on the rig, if they got kicked out. He said he had had one guy and found out he was "queer" and "so i told him he had to go."  GODDAMN.
"there are no queers on the rig" "i found out he was queer and i told him he had to go. also, he said that i could tell he was cajun by his accent and his attitude.