Ava Adore

Portrait: Laurel: The Backbone.

Part of breaking down stereotypes, throughout the years, is to humanize. In my “Portrait of a Girl” series, I’ll share with you some of my coworkers’ stories. Now on to ‘Laurel,’ a day girl.

I’d met Laurel a number of times: she’s incredibly short, even in heels, so she definitely sticks in your mind. She has long, fine, silky dirty blonde hair and a round face that, despite being sweetly structured, still seems tough.

She’s one of the girls I have a 2-hour overlay with when I work 6-2s, when the night girls don’t get on until 8pm. One night I went into the back to get ready and I hear Laurel mouthing off loudly into her phone in the locker room, clearly livid.

The conversation was very terse and didn’t give much away; she hung up soon after, but we got to hear what it was about. She’d been supporting her long-time boyfriend when he was with her, whom she’d been friends with for years even before that.

Being a stripper is difficult in a number of ways, obviously, but also monetarily.

Just as some people think all you care about is money and you need everything purchased for you, you will also get the people who believe that because you have money, you should buy everything—after all, it’s so “easy” for you to get more.

You’ll get significant others that think you should support them; some people will use this as an easy-out, enabling them to never look too hard for a job. This was Laurel’s case, especially since they’d been so long together.

He then cheated on her and left her and moved to bumfuck nowhere—Chicago, maybe? Not that Chicago is bumfuck nowhere, but the city sticks in my mind from that conversation, and it’s hella far from here—about six months ago.

Since then, she’s been single and using her money for herself: she bought a new bed, a new tv, and the luxuries most people would like when they’re not carrying the expense of two people. Only, now, her ex-boyfriend wanted to come back.

That’s what I came in on: her outright laughing, literally saying, “HA HA HA HA, RIGHT, I’M LAUGHING, THIS IS SOOOOO FUNNY, HA HA HA,” in this curt half-amused half-‘you’re-a-fucking-douchebag’ tone.

Let me put this in perspective. This girl got herself this boyfriend, who was made insecure by her job, asked her to stop—which she happily did, because he was more important to her. She works as a waitress to keep them both afloat. He leaves her.

She starts dancing again. He wants to come back. And all she can do is laugh and laugh. Going back to dancing, that freedom of both body and money, that memory of who she was before and is still again, gave her the backbone she needed to put her foot down and say,

‘I will no longer be taken advantage of—and certainly not by you.’

I don’t know if you’ve ever had to do everything in your power to help another person, especially a person you’ve been romantically entangled with—listened to them, worked through things with them, lived with them, clothed them, fed them—

and had to realize, painfully, that it was one-sided. That at some point, you weren’t getting anything back, and you had to face up to the fact that you let yourself be taken advantage of. And what’s worse: facing it means letting yourself keep doing it… or telling the person you love you can’t do it anymore.

That is some difficult stuff right there. And she isn’t the first, nor I’m sure the last, for whom the act of stripping and the support system of the club helped get her there. I was proud of her that night and I looked up to her strength. I still do.