Ava Adore

Turnover Rate

I guess it happens sometime to all of us who stick around one place too long. You look up and suddenly you don’t recognize anyone. All the faces you came to know, laugh with, worry over—they’re missing from the life of the place, faded to decor and then gone.

It’s not all sad, of course. You get girls like Ag. and Rv. who go on to other things, life progress, moving up and moving out and moving on. You get girls who’ve left, hoping for greener pastures at other clubs in a down economy. You get girls fired over stupid shit they didn’t do. You get girls fired over stupid shit they did do.

And you look up and suddenly Ry., Lo., Ls., Ag., Rv., Sk.—they’re all gone. Ah., Cr., they never hacked it past their first month. Ev., Gi., Ri., Br., Dy.—haven’t seen them in weeks, I don’t know where they are or if they’re still with us. Instead I’ve got a ton of girls I have to learn the names of within 2 weeks if they manage to stick around.

And part of that makes me miss the girls I started with terribly… and part of it, oddly, feels a lot like college. It reminds me of my years in university when, each year around this time, your seniors aren’t on campus any more and the freshmen are instead. It feels a lot like that, a mix of forlorn and hopeful.

It’s somehow fitting that the gone girls were my seniors. But it’s also that mixed feeling you get at graduation: you know at some point, it’s going to be you doing the long walk. And you can’t see yourself doing it and you don’t know when—but you know others have gone before you, so you will follow, in time.

Stripping is a business attached to a body clock if nothing else. Circadian rhythm, lunar cycles, and the pull of gravity on the weight of our bones.