12.22.10
FL Files: 3: Checkmate.
Never before had I ever felt that weight. That heaviness of shame not earned, guilt not afforded; the crushing, sinking feeling when you realize that someone feels entitled—and what that someone feels entitled to is your body.
That moment that feels like snakeskin not yet split; too tight, that gaze. Eyes with lucid clarity and appraisal held years behind them, experience in secure understanding of property, and in that moment you are seen as property.
It was slow that night, which added fuel to the fire.
Text posted at 06:46
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12.21.10
Photo posted at 11:58
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FL Files: 2: Chess Pieces.
Each strip club has its own club smell. We come home from the House smelling of stale cigarettes, bad cologne, beer and body scents, old leather, fine cigars, stage sweat, wet money, and whatever we use to cover up that smell. What Ch. uses smells like cookies.
Porthole held a musky sourness to it, as if from an interval of un-use, like a cellar. There, too, were the tell-tale signs of strip club sweat and nicotine beneath the aged yellow lights that gave it an oddly antiquated feel, despite its playful maritime decor.
Like chess pieces, I believe that a club’s arrangement can directly correlate how and to whom money is spent. A club that believes itself a bar first will make money best at the bar; a club that believes itself entertainment first will flourish through that entertainment.
At the time we worked it, Porthole believed itself a pub, first.
Text posted at 11:56
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FL Files: 1: Introduction.
So much can change in two and a half years, which is how long it had been since Lilah and I worked at a strip club in Florida. My memories of the first club, which we’d dubbed Red, are fond ones. I remember my first taste of a locker room with grinning girls, my first house mom, my first champagne VIP.
I remember a stretch hummer with some of the more extroverted girls and we’d go down the main strip, luring patrons from their bars with promises of flirting and booze. “All of your money can be made with a wink,” a curly-haired girl told me—and winked; it was her trademark from stage, her siren song.
Odd that just two and a half years later and it’s another life.
Red was closed, but here we two girls were back.
Text posted at 10:48
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I have a number of general posts I want to write, but in order to understand my thoughts, I think it’s finally time I share with you my specific experiences in Florida from September 2010, in three parts.
Quote posted at 09:56
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