I wonder how many people see my URL and think I'm a prawn blog and block me.
I'm an actual human. I don't advertise. I'm not looking for money. I'm not trying to sell you a moon lamp or heart glasses. Most of my content is me babbling on (sometimes at length) about my own life, not quippy rebloggable things. I don't post my face or body because I come here for the anonymity and screaming into the void, that's all.
Maybe that's a thing you like; maybe you just stumbled in looking for prawn or photos of a slipper and you're disappointed. I'm retired from the swork trade, but I still sometimes write about it. Here. Have millions of words. I've been here since late 2009.
Here’s a page of the questions people ask me frequently and answers. I made it just for you.
I'm sitting here listening to strip club music circa 2009-2020 trying to write for this performance I want a chance to give this summer, trying to pick a trio of poems for a contest from a larger unfinished chapbook.
I want to go back, all the time. I miss dancing. I miss doing something with my body. I miss being sexy, since I hit 38 recently and I got Spanx and retinol for myself for my birthday. I never thought I'd be one of those people missing my youth, and yet I've been the high school quarterback reliving The Big Game for years.
When I listen to music, there's some weird fucking conditioning in me that feels like it's time to get up and move my old bones, a visceral programming, a training that maybe never goes away. The cells in my fucking blood light up. I'm too old these days - I'm not sure I'd ever get hired with my grays poking through the hair dye faster than I can touch it up. The "meno belly" I can't seem to drop unless I decide to adopt a disorder I just don't have the discipline for anymore. The joints that pop and snap when I get out of my chair from doing puzzles. Wrinkles that would take a plastic surgeon to iron out.
Yet, if I ever had a calling, I hear it.
I used to write about it. Here, and offline where I can keep things unpublished for future use.
Lately, I don't know where to start. I can't prove that the estrogen that seems to have come to a screeching halt is also a heartbreaking loss of creativity - but there's something stuck. The words I used to be able to access easily just feel dumb now. I wonder what the point of my writing is. I mean, sure, I journal for personal reflection occasionally. But what am I doing here? Why am I telling this story? What the fuck even is the story?
There's no whore-to-saved-princess trope. I mean, sure, I suppose I could frame it that way if someone didn't know me that well - but it's not the truth. The truth is messy and not at all linear. I didn't quit sex work when I quit doing drugs and drinking (I didn't quit for another year and a half), and although that was part of it, it wasn't the thing that made me quit. I often wish I'd never quit.
I took a break to haul an aluminum ladder up the stairs of our boring, suburban-beige townhouse to the guest room, which seems like the best prospect for putting up my shiny gold stripper pole. I need to do something with the clutter on the floor, though: my dead ex-partner's stuff, abandoned scrapbooking projects, photos of all of my racehorse wins that I can't bring myself to hang anywhere, a yoga mat I grace with my presence maybe twice a month, a bearded dragon enclosure with a hibernating elderly dragon named Hope, a stuffed bear from a grief organization that I was supposed to program with my dead partner's voice or something.
If I move all that and figure out how I can singlehandedly take down a ceiling fan, well then, maybe I can have a pole up there. Quietly, because we have neighbors on both walls. With the blinds closed, so we don't traumatize my 208 neighbors. On carpet, no shoes. Still. It's MY shiny gold pole. Pray for me that I don't drop the stupid thing or electrocute myself....someday, when I get around to it.
In the meantime, it's just this loop, this wanting to write or dance or create or expel whatever is in me.
I bought a book about it, because of course I decided I'd try to study my way through instead of just let that creativity go off like a bomb. There's no fuse.
Big Magic (Elizabeth Gilbert) - I'm barely minutes into it when she asks the central question: do you have the courage it takes to bring forth the treasures within you? The thing is, I do. I do have the courage. What I don't have is whatever those treasures are. What's left? Where are we going, here? What's my story?
So many people have these harrowing tales of overdoses and sepsis and transplants and addiction and recovery that are bigger, scarier monsters to overcome in the end. So many people have these tales of achievement or abuse or talent or whatever that are truly extraordinary. I think the more I've grown in my 30s, the more I've realized that I'm just sort of...normal. I mean, I've done some pretty cool things. I have a lot of big feelings and I'm articulate. But DO I have a story that is meaningful to anyone but me? Why?
I said I was going to submit *something* to a contest today, but I'm just sort of frozen. Is it actually polished enough? Is this the right submission? The music going in my ears begging me to do something physical when all I can manage is to read writing from 2021 about it. Do I even remember enough of my career?
And then I remember. But somehow those memories are warped - they're not just through the lens of twenty-something me. They're through the lens of the absolutely fucking constant news stream of Epstein files coverage. They're through the lens of attending meetings where I talk about some of my private moments in an "experience strength and hope" context in three minutes flat (or the timer rings).
I think what I want is to move. Go. Dance. My winter body living in suburbia is just...not enchanted to do more than drag the recycling to the curb.
I think what I want is to be known, again. It's been missing. I left behind my best friend in the entire world last year, stubbornly stuck in her own addiction, and I'm still not sure if I should have jumped into that muddy water and tried to be there instead of move on. I think about her every goddamned day, think about reaching out, and doubt myself both ways. I wonder sometimes if she will find her own recovery and join me someday, knowing that's so far out of my control.
I think I want someone to know the soul that's missing from my life. The compliance white lights at work set to colors that are meant to keep us awake but give about half of us migraines. The view from my window to some stick-built apartment buildings. These goddamned beige walls that I can't stop talking about because I hate them so much (it's a rental). The bike paths that are now just wide paths next to busy streets that smell like exhaust and gritty mud and gray snow. It's like part of me wants to say: I'm still in here! I'm still in here! It's like being in a coma, maybe, where the rest of the world moves on and I can't blink or squeeze your hand but fuck me I'm still in here. I just can't get it out.
It's our last night at the farm. The last time we'll ever sleep here. In about 48 hours, I'll never see the farm again. You think I'd be sobbing now and grieving now and writing my heart out with poetry about how much I love it right now. I think I've just hit a point of exhaustion. I can't. I can't grieve any harder. I have nothing left between the physical exertion of moving an entire house + farm and moving other people's horses and keeping up with friends/family/coworkers/everyone who all just want to ask me about it.
I haven't slept normally in two months, because I keep waking up with regrets and shame and rapid ruminating about every single detail at 3am, re-litigating the case for staying or going except it's pretty much a done deal. I've had to live through the what-ifs and if-onlys for two months, constantly. Sometime in the last week, just as the close date started to get FOR REAL close, I just...hit a point of no return. It's not apathy, and I'm not sure what to call it. I just feel spiritually exhausted. I have nothing left to give.
I wanted this time with the farm to be special. I wanted to collect the sugar sand and water and some leaves and dirt. I wanted to lay on the ground and stare at the sky and thank it for everything. I wanted this perfect funeral. But, like all the funerals I've had to attend over the last few years...it just...sneaks up on you, flies by, and leaves you with this sense of "wait, was that it?" "Wait, that's not enough." All the sudden the Last Night is here.
It's the last full moon here, too. I'd hoped I might get lucky with a sharp winter clear sky and a view of the Milky Way. No dice. It's just Midwestern January dull and cloudy (except the moon). I can't help but think of my little dog, Raven, and how she used to howl at the moon here with me. Every full moon, I think of her. She loved to sing.
I want to feel something, but I am fresh out of feelings.
My partner, Z*, is feeling them all now. We've been mismatched this whole time - her being brave and rational while I'm falling apart and trying to take a sledgehammer to meaningful items. And now me being a zombie who can check things off the to-do list while she's mourning losing her best horse friend (not our horse, we don't get to see her anymore). On the surface it seems like we should be complementing each other, but it's not that. It's a loneliness because we're not having a shared experience at the same time.
This moving experience really is going to be make it or break it for this relationship. And dear god, I hope we survive this. But the resentment and exhaustion and loneliness and everything else is just sitting under the surface, waiting for the curtains to close after the last act and the beauty to be gone forever.
I wish I had something full of life to say right now. I wish I had bigger feelings tonight. Bigger, heaving sobs. I'm just....out of tears. Out of the ability to feel anything. It's surreal. After weeks of panic, regret, shame, guilt, and wanting to just scream STOP and make it all STOP...it's almost here and I'm basically cool as a cucumber...until I fall asleep. Once I'm asleep, my brain just won't quit.
I think we both want sex tonight for some sort of symbolism, some finality...some...something...but the distance is clear.
We've moved almost all of our stuff into the most uninspired, beige, suburban, copycat townhouse complex. It's a nice place to live but holy fuck it's nothing like the dragonfly storms, the coyotes singing at night, Orion following me around, the whispers of snow, the absolute magic of this farm. This particular one place on earth...I really think there's something magical here. Something irreplaceable, something sacred that is beyond words. I'm an atheist in practice, but I can tell you that this place is just...there's something here beyond words. It's not spooky, it's like a divinity, a...a...uh...a magic. I deeply regret selling to an asshole, but good people had 18 months to buy it and didn't. :(
This farm will humble the next person, just like it did with me. It was not gentle or subtle. Best of luck to them.
I wanted to bury a love letter to the farm here, but I have no energy to write it. I have nothing inspired to say, no heart to put into anything right now.
I desperately need a vacation. I need to run away for a little while. The last one I tried to take for myself ended in this terrible disaster, severing a 23 year friendship. I...I need some time to let a big sky bring me back to peace with myself and my decisions and my world. For now, all I can do is distract myself to get past the rumination gatekeeper.
Well, I was diligently working on that book. I went to therapy and talked about the way I reacted to hearing music, that visceral thing. We ended up talking more and more about the mixed bag that is sex work in general and it got a little too deep and ope wouldn't you know, that book firmly does not need to be written. There's too many people that would be invested in making sure the things in that book stay private, I think. Cheers to an anonymous blog where you can read literally 16 years of content for free.
Created a playlist for that book I'm writing and it is an emotional *whiplash* - Cardi B to Halestorm, Buckcherry to Sia, Kings of Leon to Basement Jaxx. Ke$ha to Muse, A Perfect Circle to The Black Keys. My god, I really did live lifetimes in the club. I just quickly added a bunch of stuff but my emotions are like...all over the place. This is the most unhinged playlist I've ever made lol.
Nearly 6 years after retiring from the club, I can confirm that some songs come on and my body still has a Pavlovian response like I'm getting ready to go on stage. I'm ready.
I'm also almost 38, about half of my hair is grey, and I haven't been in a pair of 1" heels in years.
Honestly, this is the first year of my life where I've just been consistently...happy. I feel like I finally finally finally finally fucking figured it out. I'm not living in this endless spiral. I can finally SEE the beauty in my life, everywhere I go.
My life is so hopelessly fucking beautiful everywhere I turn: waking up in the most cozy, nesting, fluffy bed next to my gorgeous and kind fiancée. Working on a perfectly landscaped campus, driving to work listening to recovery podcasts and audiobooks, taking my lunch break to collect buckeyes and appreciate the smell of the evergreen bushes, a new club I joined there that made the hybrid hypercorporate thing not so bad after all. A group of friends who challenge me, who are whip smart and engaged and full of life and love going for walks. A partner to run with, to laugh so hard after she cums and can't stop, to stare across the fields in the morning with, to listen to thunder and rub our toes together and spend our weekend drives "around the block" talking through decks of questions we never thought to ask each other. Working in the sunshine, sweating, soaking in vitamin D, the kind of physical labor that yields a feeling of actually making progress. Time for vacations to places I've always meant to visit. A body that certainly ain't what it used to be (RIP right shoulder), but damn if I don't still have the same perfect tits that made me millions. Cozy fantasy books and queer history staples and memoirs that feel like friends. Cross stitch projects of ghosts and foxes while I drink a little chamomile tea before bed. My little dog curled up at my feet, almost fourteen years old and entirely grey-nosed. Leaves that are changing now, a late-summer drought that seems to be ending, spooky season coming in with hoodies and drizzle and fog and pumpkin-everything at Trader Joe's. I sleep (mostly) well and I eat (mostly) well and I run (mostly) well.
I have a profound gratitude for this moment in my life, in part because I know how fast the entire world can get ripped out from underneath my feet...but also...I've just never really been Here before. My life has been so incredibly privileged many times, and it's not that I couldn't see it - it's that there was a part of me that couldn't access the appreciation for it. I sound like a brat when I say that (and I probably sounded like a brat all along, sure, and maybe it was just an entire brat life? I don't know), but it feels like something was broken in my brain and now it is fixed.
It feels like all of the fucking years I tried and tried and tried and desperately fucking tried to get better have finally resulted in This Part: The Part Where I Actually Feel Better. Two decades of therapy, off and on, until I stopped taunting therapists and actually did the thing. Quitting drinking, coke, pills and nearly seven years of sobriety, recovery lit, the fellowship I miss. Finally quitting vaping. Quitting the caffeine that sent my mood up and down. Staying away from the antidepressants/medications I never really needed in the first place. Actually finally getting enough fiber and a goddamned multivitamin I swear to god that might have actually been the problem this whole time? Finding some of my footing with taming the anxiety and gaining what feels like a tiny shred of the wisdom that I hope hits like a freight train in my forties. Letting go of people who don't have the humility right now to walk forward. Finding submission in my work life to the corporate overlords and buying into the whole charade that, turns out, is kind of a nice paycheck once I stop being such a ~reBeL~ about it. Diving into the love I have for my partner with one level deeper and deeper of connection constantly; the connection we've built one grain of sand at a time. Allowing grief to really move through me in the most painstakingly brutal way without interruption. Letting myself actually. fucking. rest. sometimes. Getting away from social media and news most of the time to tame my anxiety and live in the real world, the one happening right in front of me in this moment. Doing some yoga. Paddleboarding. Hiking, biking, swimming, running, SWEATING and SWEATING because my brain cannot function without sweating every day. Vegan-mostly-everything, except once in awhile, but damn, was soy the answer all along?
I don't know how long this will last. They say perimenopause is a cruel reverse puberty full of emotional rollercoasters, and honestly, I can't be too far off from that phase given some of my hormonal symptoms and I'm THRIVING. I mean, my vagina is dry like the Sahara and my hair is getting more wiry and I wake up to a hot flash most mornings and my ears are itchy and I sorely regret not using more sunscreen and going tanning with my old lady skin and all kinds of weird shit, but truthfully? I'll take all of it if it comes with this sort of acceptance, gratitude, and a quieter brain.
But oh my god, y'all. I found some peace and happiness. After 37 years of mental health issues both innate and external...I finally found the magic combination that unlocked this brain of mine to be able to revel in this reality every day, all day. I feel like I live in the mini doses of magic constantly, the aesthetic, the warmest relationships. Nothing is perfect (and I definitely still struggle with insatiability), but everything is perfect. Not a single shred of it with filters or on Instagram.
I went to the funeral for K*, the club manager. I left work early, rearranged my schedule. I wanted to go, even knowing the few girls who said they might go would probably flake out. The clothes I put on this morning were nerdy, absolutely not funeral clothes - a pair of straight legged Lee jeans from the farm store on discount, my running shoes, a faded black hoodie, no makeup, an off center high ponytail for hair I didn't bother brushing as I ran out the door early so I could leave early. I thought I should put on a black dress, at least be "respectful," but I haven't shaved my legs in a century. Since I've gained some weight, I don't have any Funeral Attire that fits me, truthfully. I probably could have done better than that, but a long to-do list and wicked cramps have me feeling run down. And honestly? K* wore the exact same goddamned blue and white pinstriped button up shirt and jeans for like 20+ years. No one was going to care if I looked cool, least of all me.
I pulled up to the cemetery, a small one on the north end of the city. I knew where it was, across from an old Famous Dave's where I was a server for a couple of years in my youngster days. I'd stared out at that green field even then, thinking it was such an odd place for a cemetery in a commercial district near an old liminal - now nearly dead - mall. The gravesite was just across a chainlink fence from the back of a Discount Tire where people were working on cars as we gathered. The fence across the road was pushed down, likely the product of neighborhood kids who enjoy nighttime shenanigans in the cemetery. I imagined people fucking on his grave and wondered if that was wildly inappropriate or exactly appropriate.
Gathering. Kind of, I guess. There was about 15 people in total. His sister, her husband, their couple of adult and greying children.
The club owner and his boo thing/girlfriend/hot young wife/whatever. The security guy, next in line for the throne, who also brought his oldest daughter. She was born a couple of years into my dancing career and now she's in braces, in high school, in pajama pants on summer vacation. I remember the bouncer being so proud to show us pictures of her as a baby, as a toddler. One of the most annoying DJs to exist in the entire world - who is the cousin of the owner - showed. The longtime groundskeeper, D*, who told us that the other groundskeeper Skeet was in Colorado, dying of cancer.
And me. Of the thousands of girls that could have showed up, I was the only one who did. In my mind, he'd be surrounded by a mysterious group of hot women who vanish as quickly as they appear. That didn't happen. It didn't even happen that a few of us, aged out and pudgier and greying showed up. It was just me, in my $30 farm store jeans. Self-conscious, sure, but worse would be if I left the funeral in awkwardness - double awkward, no? And I was there because I wanted to be there. I might have been the only one who wanted to be there instead of thinking they had to be there.
I remembered when my sponsor called me four years ago and asked why I didn't come to her sister's funeral. My own partner had only been dead for about three months and I couldn't even feed myself, let alone consider losing it at the funeral of a woman I didn't know on behalf of one I did. I couldn't do it. But I'll never forget that she taught me to just show up. Just...show up to funerals. It matters to people.
K* watched me go from being a fledgling little 21 year old who had no idea how to move her hips, a bad tramp stamp of the Greyhound logo, and teetering like a baby deer in 3" chunky heels to...an adult, almost. A millionaire, a business owner, a world title holder, two degrees, men I dated. He watched me go through phases of trying to control drinking and drinking a lot and on-the-clock sober...to an addict and into finding recovery.
You know the fucked up part is that I don't even know if he liked me. I don't know if he thought I was just an annoying piece of ass who worked downstairs. I was a rule-follower upstairs in the attic with him, pouring only my one shot of booze to the designated Solo cup line for my tip money. He never showed much emotion to anybody, but that included me. He still probably knew more about me than my own dad. Lord knows I knew him longer than any relationship I'd had in my life. Who knows whether he ever cared about me at all, though.
K*s niece said he was a good man. The awkward DJ said he was a good man. People came up and talked and those two said he was a good man. Was he? Was he a good man? I don't fucking know, you know? Was he a good man because he had every opportunity to coerce me into sex or anything else and he never even tried, or is that just like, basement level expectations? It's hard to believe it's just the basement level when it's what so many other men did. I don't know, maybe I was just less fuckable than others. I heard rumors, but never from any of my friends. Never from anyone I could confirm, anyway. Was I lucky, was he good, was he just an average dude that I gave too much credit and went to a funeral in farm jeans.
I'm glad it didn't rain. I forgot my umbrella.
The service came with a minister who went on and on and on and on about Psalm 23. Jesus Christ I don't think I'll ever forget Psalm 23. Blah blah blah sheep god holy shit I didn't need a lecture. I wondered if the family just deeply wanted this Baptist pastor or what, but during the service the guy even talked about how K* had prepaid his own arrangements, including having him at the service. It surprised me; I never would have guessed he'd be religious in the least. His family made up for it by requiring the whole lot of us to attempt to sing the first verse of a hymn called "At Calvary" with bizarre lyrics about living in vanity and pride and sin and not knowing Jesus died for me. I didn't sing. What a weird choice. No "Girls Girls Girls" on his way out, no "Closing Time." Missed opportunities.
K*s brother-in-law, a septuagenarian, mentioned he'd gotten the cell phone, and that he'd discovered quite a private life inside of it. "Things we couldn't even imagine." Homie, he worked in a titty bar, and you're talking to a bouncer, the club owner, and former stripper. There's little to imagine. But he went on to say that the phone rang sometimes, and when it did, it was Chewbacca. That Chewbacca gurgling noise. The little things about people that no one else would know or care, I guess.
The pastor told a very abbreviated version of his life story. The name of the high school he graduated from, a certificate in electronics repair from a tech program, and he worked construction and managed a restaurant before becoming "a business manager." Not a single person, now that I think of it, said the words "strip club" while I was there. I'm not sure we were hiding it from god, y'all. Or why we'd hide it at all. It was the only thing half of us had in common.
He was cremated, so the only thing on the table was a single small flower arrangement. I wondered if the funeral home borrowed it from somewhere else. The two attendants in the back watched us. I watched them. We all watched each other, none of us listening to this pastor, who read from his iPad with DEEP passion for the lord. It turns out that K* paid for his own funeral services ahead of time, as people tend to do when they start getting older. He was so pragmatic, I thought, that he just went and bought himself a plot next to a chainlink fence behind a Discount Tire. I could smell the grease from a nearby Popeye's through the fence, too.
The pastor talked about his cats. We all talked about his cats. I clocked the one in the terrible selfie they used on his one-sheet program as Midas, his favorite cat. The groundskeeper tells us that he remembers the day that he found Midas as a kitten in a cornfield and gave him to K*. I don't think another photo of him existed to even use in print, on the obituary-less announcement of the service online.
As we're leaving, the groundskeeper tells me that he beat lung cancer last year, that they shocked his heart back into rhythm and he's all good now. I congratulated him, and somehow I'm actually like an inch taller than he is? I didn't remember that part, but I guess everyone's height is distorted night after night of Pleasers. I thought about the poem I wrote about the groundskeepers a handful of years ago, probably the best one I've ever written. It was part of a series I did about the club, and the rest were so-so. But the groundskeepers poem was good, and I knew it, and I'd never tell him I wrote it about him.
I tell the bouncer I still miss it. A lot. It seems to make him uncomfortable. I forget what it's like to have the only acceptable emotions in life be pleasing others and fury. This Tin Man found her heart awhile ago and forgets that the world of the club can be...hard. Hard as in hardened, hard as in...hardly. Hard. Now I'm giggling because that seems both apt and square and also euphemistic.
Anyway.
The entire thing was over and we all left in thirty minutes flat, no luncheon. That's it. That's all of it, all of his life. I doubt anyone will ever visit that gravesite now, but there is a little marker somewhere on the planet with his name and dates of birth and death proving that he was here, even if no one else remembers. I don't know if anyone will even read this hurried post, as I slammed everything down on the page trying to get it all out of my memories before I forget it all so that I can remember it.
I left, feeling...dazed. Hurried. Alone. I wasn't supposed to feel anything, and I did. No one cried. I sort of had that feeling in my throat but of course I wouldn't let it out, it didn't need to actually come out.
I started a voice memo to a girl from the club that I keep in touch with who'd wanted to go and promptly forgotten. We have a bit of a special relationship with grief; her beloved dad died at the same time that my partner did and we talked at length about it. We grieved together, sort of, virtually, despite still living in the same city.
I told her all about the funeral, about everything - a nearly 19 minute voice memo. I guess I just had more and more to say and I even told her about the bright blue, primary blue, fake velvet chairs surrounding the urn and the one basket of presumably-borrowed flowers. I don't think she'll ever listen to the message. I feel, still, weirdly alone in this not-grief and drove the wrong way to the grocery store on the same street I drive three times a week. I mentioned at the end of the message that I was writing a book about the club, which is sort of false because I'm only thinking about it and putting it on a to-do list, the part of my to-do list for "Eventually" goals with a skull and crossbones, where goals actually just kind of go to die, but still, it's on there and it wasn't last week. I guess I said it out loud. I don't know whether I am or I'm not.
I pulled over for ice cream instead from this cheap shitty ice cream place and made myself a "dirt cup" with crushed Oreos and gummy bears and added mini M&Ms and stared at the apartment buildings across the street. If there wasn't going to be any luncheon, I suppose a shitty dirt cup full of the added sugar and dairy and chocolate and gluten I don't really ever indulge in anymore might as well be a thing. Why not. A celebration of life.
It took me a minute to realize that the mini gummy bears I'd mixed into the ice cream were the same 14 flavors and the same kind I'd lined up in a hotel in Santa Fe, where I'd run away with my bestie to celebrate my ex's life - empty handed and without a real funeral to attend - when he died in 2015. The bears had the same perfect chewiness as I remembered from ten years ago. I realized, then, it'd been ten years. Just like that.
I got home and stuck the two handouts from the funeral in my current read, Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler) after I unfolded them. I realized the creases were across his face and I felt guilty. I keep that kind of thing, you know, in a giant chest in my bedroom full of every birthday card I've ever been sent too. I guess someday you just become a wrinkled up bad selfie as a bookmark in someone's book after a funeral. I...I guess that's that.
Tonight, I dove back into Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert) on audiobook while I mowed. I accidentally mowed over a baby raccoon skull that had been hanging by mummified pieces of skin to the intact spine, also aerosolized. I nearly mowed over the biggest painted turtle while she nested in the hillside next to my farm sign and fortunately she moved on and the eggs were already covered. Baby foxes played in one of the pastures, baby birds chirped at me as I walked by our decorative vines since they've known me since birth. Life. Death. Life. Death. Shit goes on and on, and almost no one notices, and it fills me with so much feelings that even noticing the trash in the ditch from booze cruisers on the gravel roads has me feeling raw. Feeling like I'm the only one who could possibly see how much it all MEANS.
I know it's the grief, under there somewhere. I didn't shed a tear, but I know it's there, even if...even if it's not there for anyone else. Even if maybe it's possible he didn't even like me, or care about me, I don't know. All I know is that my heart is sad that there was a person who died who deserved better than all of that. But...he was a human who lived and who was part of my life three or four nights a week and most holidays for more than a decade, and I don't regret going and I'm a little sad and it's a little confusing. Grief is a compounding bitch and sometimes the traumatic parts of Y* dying catch up to me any time I hear about anyone else's death and I secretly hope that wound never closes, that it always feels like a fresh scab picked off when anyone else dies too.
I hope that someday when I die, someone cares enough about me to bury me somewhere pretty even if it isn't pragmatic. I hope that people show up to my funeral and talk about more memories than my cat and the sticky note indicating dentures in a bathroom cabinet. I hope, someday, that someone loved me so hard they cry at my funeral. I hope that someone knows me so deeply and that by the time I leave this body I've made enough of an impact that they can tell stories of my soul at my funeral, you know?
What a weird day. I definitely cried by the end of this post, just a couple tears. It's enough. And it's time for bed, listening to the frogs and the buzzing June bugs. Everything is moving so fast.
My old club boss died. The one with all the cats upstairs who roamed the couches while we did shots and threw our money in a vase and stared at 80" security screens of the club.
He wore the same striped blue collared shirt every single day, his uniform. Gave that club decades of quiet management, all night, every night, unflinching at whatever the feral women threw at him - literally or figuratively.
His obituary has no text other than where he was born, died, and that there's a graveside service next Wednesday at 2:00. No "father, husband, son." No mention of the years he stood guard at the top of those stairs waiting for little dancer knocks to come in, no mention of the hundreds (or thousands?) of young women that he gave an opportunity to do something.
I don't know that he was a Good Man, okay. I don't.
But I know he had every chance to hurt me, and didn't, and that's a lot fucking nicer than a long string of dudes who did, so I guess that's something. I drank and played and explored and made money in a safe place for more than 10 years, in part because of him.
I have mixed feelings, you know? The older I get, the more I feel weird about a man in his 40s, 50s, 60s who stared at naked barely-legal women all night, every night, for decades. I mean. He wasn't that creepy about it, to be honest? But at 37 myself now...I guess....I'm getting to a more mature point in life where consent isn't just a transaction and a birthday, it's a maturity level. I hate admitting that because it sounds S.Wer.F.y, but, yeah. Yeah I wouldn't want to be staring at naked 18 year old boys at this age because I'd feel supremely uncomfortable. I guess we all have jobs to do though, and this one put food in my belly for the rest of my life.
I wonder who paid for the burial and service.
I wonder who will be there.
I wonder how I will feel.
I didn't realize his birthday was September 30th. He was 65. He smoked like a chimney and basically never looked anyone in the eye.
Even after all those years, I didn't know that much about him. He never really talked and just took in the flurry of dancers' conversations.
One time I bought him a bunch of cat toys for the boys for Christmas. I didn't know what else he might want. I didn't care enough to think of more than that. I didn't know how to have a relationship with him, but I surely had some sort of relationship with him.
I hope someone remembers to feed the cats and change the litter.
I heard he died from some complication of a minor procedure, but I haven't really heard if it's true. You know how rumors spread in the club, and it only goes downhill with a bunch of us who have retired and are trying to get updates from the ones still there, their SnapChats and shit.
The only pic they found to use of him was him and his blue striped shirt and his orange kitty, at work.
Apparently the club owner's lil boo thing posted one sentence about it on Facebook, and then posted a pic of herself in a bikini. Not even one of the stock models. One sentence.
There are days that I think maybe this blog is Complete. That everything I could ever remember about the club is done. That nothing more could happen that could remind me of that place, being retired from there for more than 5 years now. And every once in awhile, something comes up.
Sad to see him go.
What a ride. What a story he took with him to the grave.
Raise a glass for him tonight and maybe he'll send a little divine intervention this weekend in tips. Who knows.
I’ve been using a flip phone lately to overcome my issues with doomscrolling and mindless tech use.
So I found myself with MUCH more time on my hands today and thought I’d sit down and write. Play with my horse. All the things I said I just don’t have time for, I figured I have time for.
I sat down to write and………nothing.
I read through some earlier writing that I remember being fantastic and cried and felt my heartstrings and grief and love and realized that I only seem to write anything at all when I’m deep into my feelings. When I am drowning.
For many months, I’ve just been Fine.
Truly. Fine.
I wake up, I run, I go to a dull but stable job, I have a sweetheart fiancée, we make dinner, and I am Fine.
This is it. This is what I wanted my whole life - to not have all the crazy ups and downs and big THINGS that happen all the time. To just be sorta happy, level, all the time.
But wow I can’t seem to write an inspired sentence to save my life.
I finally have time to write that book.
Aaaaand I can’t seem to write a paragraph worth reading.
Finally turned off anon asking due to Gaza grifters. While I sincerely hope that those who genuinely need help do get it, sending weird anonymous emoji soup ain’t it.
I’m genuinely surprised it took me more than FIFTEEN YEARS on this blog to need to turn off anon and it wasn’t due to some weird S.WE.RFy hate mail.
I have a thousand thoughts running through my head. I just had an hour long phone conversation with the young girl that C*, my old whale daddy client (age 78), is involved with.
It was like talking to myself from seven years ago. I told her that, over and over, and told her to look in the mirror. Really look. Really take her time. I can't tell her what to do, and I'm not even interested in trying.
Girl, I know so many things about you simply because C* picked you. I already knew you had a rough upbringing, that you're smart and empathetic, that you have anxiety, that you probably have few friends and no family support, that you have aspirations to do more with your life, that drugs or booze sometimes get the better of you. I already know, because he picked you. His type is women under 30, maybe 32, who need him.
He likes 'em a little fucked up and a lot young - although it's not because he's a monster. C* is what we would have called autistic, if anyone diagnosed autism when he was a child. He deep-dives on special interests and struggles to communicate in ways that most people find reasonable. He raped his previous wife until she divorced him about 30-35 years ago, because he simply understood marriage to include the sex he wanted and consent culture wasn't something anyone really talked about. He doesn't understand the nuance of body language and tone unless it's obvious, only the words that people say, which are often confusing. He's always been reclusive, and spends a lot of time playing World of Warcraft and reading about the economy so he can manage his McDuck mountain of money (about $400m).
E* is not the first girl he has tried to marry. He tried to marry me. At times, I considered how my life would change if I said yes...but I never truly entertained it. Some part of me knew that the right to marriage was one of the only things that men couldn't buy from me. For as much as I deeply loved my career - and STILL deeply love C* and call him occasionally - the golden handcuffs felt real. I felt like there was so much of myself I didn't own. I had everything I ever wanted, dripping in excess...AND I was so, so incredibly lonely, and I didn't know why I just had this...endless feeling that I didn't belong to myself.
I desperately wish I could talk to RA* right now. She was the woman before me. It's always been a chain of women. I still have her number, I think. I could call her. And she hates me. I looked up our text exchange to see what the last date was. July 1, 2019. I still wasn't done dancing yet, and would keep dancing another half a year or so. She messaged me a bunch, high or drunk or whatever. Sometimes friendly, but her messages took a really tough turn - she started to rehash everything about our friendship. In return? I owned most of it. I owned being a shitty friend, and I did my best grownup apology and listen. I listened until two things happened: she insisted I somehow "owed" her money for "stealing" C* from her, and her attacks got pretty personal and not constructive.
She never believed me when I told her that I kept C* on the hook for her for over a year while she was away at cooking school. I never told him her personal things, I had her back at the club and with her biggest client. My young self really thought I was doing my friend a solid back then, bookmarking this client and sitting with him all night so that no one else would talk to him for months while she was in California. Yeah, after awhile, he started to like me. And of course I took his money. She returned, many months later, to find that he wasn't as interested. I don't remember how it went down, whether he just cut her off (as he often does when he feels any inkling of conflict) or told her off, but he was sorta done with her as he grew fond of me. As he grew fond of me while I was still entirely reassuring him that RA* was a worthwhile companion and cared for him and wanted to be here and blah blah blah blah fucking on and on for MONTHS. God, I was dumb. I was like...24? 25?
Talking to E* today, his current young girl, I started to get it, though. The anger. I felt the same feelings - that E* didn't deserve the money - and CERTAINLY not more than I did! - that she had somehow "taken" him from me since our time overlapped a small amount. That she had isolated him, that she was bad for him and just using him, that she was too naive to even fucking know what she was getting herself into with him, that she couldn't be grateful enough or her circumstances weren't like mine, or I was somehow smarter and more deserving. I felt every feeling come up that I felt was thrown at me by the woman who came before me. I felt the fire of distrust simmering.
And I recognized it.
And I sat with myself for a second.
No, I chose to leave a consistent relationship with C* behind because I was falling in love with someone else and enjoying all of the features of new love and the time with him I couldn't get enough of. When I stopped being consistent, he found her, age 23 - the same as I was about the time I met him for the first time. All he ever wanted was someone to consistently love and care for him. When I stopped, she stepped in. She probably didn't do it the same way I did, but she was there and I wasn't.
So I have a false dichotomy staring me in the face: do I regret not staying in the messed up pseudorelationship I had with C*, or do I not regret it because I had a beautiful relationship with a man I deeply loved? Or both? Or neither? It's complicated. I don't fucking know. There IS a part of me that regrets giving up that relationship with C*. His money made my life easy, and frankly, I genuinely enjoyed his company more often than not. It's been confusing and hurtful when he's ignored my calls. He's told me that E* doesn't want me to talk to him, and so he only answers privately. It turns out that one of them is lying: E* said she never restricted him from talking to anyone with not a hint of bullshit on her breath.
This young woman came across as being genuine, smart, thoughtful, motivated, curious, empathetic, and caring about C*. Why have I been led to believe she's kind of a dumb cunt who is just using him?
Another question flashes through my mind: was I using C*? Was I just using him for his money? And I think there's so many ways I could answer that. On the one hand, my entire job was escorting and sex work. We had an agreement that I spent time with him in exchange for money that wasn't unexpected, and he'd had this agreement for something like 30 years with other women before me. So, ipso fucking facto, yes, I took his money in exchange for my time. Just like RA* did, just like B* did, and D*, and just like E* is doing now. E* probably deserves the money just as much as some of the rest of us did, and I'm not sure if there's a good way to measure how much someone "deserves" it. She's there, spending time with him, letting him into her life, and being compensated for it. Can I really judge her for doing the same thing I did, without even knowing her?
On the other hand, holy fuck did I protect and love that man. I spent weeks, months, years of my life with that man, listening to him when no one else would, touching him, being on his team when he felt like everyone else - even his family - didn't like him or want him around. I genuinely loved him, and still do. It's a mindfuck. But I'd be lying if I said there weren't plenty of times where I vented to friends, laughed at the absurdities I shouldn't have, and wasn't into pure friendship, either. I was there for the money AND the feelings were there AND the job came with a lot of frustration and loneliness when no one else understood and I had no vocabulary or maturity to talk about it and my mental health was a mess back then with drugs and booze.
I'm sitting here now, with a ring on my finger from a woman I love so much, wondering how much different my life would be had I gone ahead and married C*. Still, these days, I don't think I regret not doing it. But working for many more years and being trapped in corporate compliance and watching our money carefully...there's a part of me that wishes I would have been smarter with the money.
And it occurs to me that I don't wish away my relationship or the course of events over the last 6ish years at all, but I think I feel regret about how reckless I was with money often. I had it so easy because I thought I could do anything. I thought the money was endless, and so I did try out my dreams. And now I make okay money for what I do and I'm privileged to be without debt thanks to C*, but...yeah, it ain't that sugar daddy money for sure. Dreams are dead and corporate fluorescents are in.
I wonder if there's a hint of missing my youth there, too.
I think there's a healthy and warranted lot of skepticism that she's trying to marry him for the "right" reasons. I feel protective of him, and I don't want him to get into a marriage with a young conniving girl who takes his money and bails, or who offs him in his sleep or something, you know? But then again, what are the "right" reasons for marriage? MY reasons? Is that how I'm judging "right?" Or traditional reasons? What a joke. What ARE the right reasons for marriage? I'm engaged to a lovely woman these days but lord, I don't think I should be the arbiter of determining what a "legitimate" marriage is. We've been through that in history and it never turns out that the people restricting marriage are on the right side of that argument.
Repeat the same logic with thinking that I know what's best for a young woman's sex life - that she must surely want to have great sex and C* ain't it, right? That would certainly make their marriage illegitimate or mean that she's "using him," right? Except this is never the same thing I would say to anyone else in a relationship - I have friends who are ace/aro, I have friends who have significant disabilities that limit their sex life, and even personally...yeah, my libido kinda crashed over the last year or so, I guess. Why would I hold her to a standard that I don't hold anyone else to? That seems ridiculous.
Is it because *I* can't imagine marrying him? Well, I also don't want to marry my deadbeat ex who is probably still smoking a pound of weed per day and playing video games forever, but...someone else did. He's married too, lol. Who am I to think that just because *I* didn't want to marry someone, someone else shouldn't either? That'd be a pretty arrogant thing to think, ey?
Am I jealous of her age, her love for him, her current access to money? Yeah, probably. But that's way less "blame-y" than any of the other stuff and I'd actually have to deal with myself on that one, right? Man, that sucks.
What if I just can't know what is truly in her head and her heart and she seems like a well-spoken, nice, enjoyable young woman who does genuinely care for him and is kind to him - perhaps the same as I was? What good does hating her do? Hate her for choices I made or made differently than her? Yikes.
What if - WHAT IF - she was "using him" and secretly sleeping with some bro dude on her couch and just waiting for her payday when C* dies? Okay, so what IF it were to be kind of a sham, worst case? Like, what if she's secretly kind of a cunt and doesn't deserve any of it? Let's play that one out. Well, I haven't seen any signs that C* is unable to consent, or doesn't know what he's doing. He's been trying to marry strippers and escorts for literally DOZENS OF YEARS. And while he's definitely autistic, he's not dumb or foolish. He doesn't appear to have dementia or some other health issue that would mean that he couldn't consent to marrying her. I certainly felt zero guilt getting paid over the years, even if it was a lot of money - because his consent was always there. He's also sober, so no substances involved in his decision making either.
One of the things I tell people who are trying to get sober is: if you want things you don’t have, you have to be willing to do things you haven’t done. In recovery circles, it’s like: if you want to stay sober, you have to be willing to be uncomfortable or leave a barbecue or tell the truth or stay away from that toxic ex. But you know, if I wanted what E* has, I’d have to be willing to do what E* doing. And I’m not. I’m not. She wanted it, and she’s doing it. How could I be unhappy for either one of them about that? It’s the same vague feeling as wishing I could get sober back then, but I wasn’t willing to do what it took (yet). So, I guess, kudos to her for doing it even if I’m over here in a different struggle these days.
I guess when I sit down and think about all the reservations I had about her, the anger, the fear for C*....what I actually find underneath is that it's really my own insecurities (thanks, mercury retrograde?). And I really, really wish I could talk to my friend from a lifetime ago about this one. She's truly the only one that could even remotely understand.
I've started to wonder, today, about the others that came before RA*. What would they say? How did they feel about RA*, about me?
I didn't hash all this out with E* in the moment, of course, and I truly just listened more than I ever talked. I only kept telling her it was fucking weird talking to myself from 7 years ago, and that I wished I had just sat and really listened to my inner self back then. Not the self that other people wanted me to be, or the self that I thought I was, or thought I needed to be, or thought other people wanted me to be or any of the NOISE. But I wish I'd just sat with all of the things about myself with humility - the good and the bad - and just existed in that space. Deep down, I knew what was right for me, and deep down, she will too.
C*s family is trying to get him declared incompetent so that they can stop this marriage. AFAIK, he's not incompetent. There's still an underlying feeling of "eeeeeeee do not marry this girl" from me, but I think I'll have to do better than all the above shit, you know? I don't know what the answer is, but the truth is, it ain't my life anymore.
And all of this week, I just kept writing in my journal about how much I love my life and my frogs and my sky and my partner and everything. I know the answer is within, and has nothing to do with her. I just REALLY wish I had my old pal to talk about it with. Maybe someday.
I had said I wasn’t going to marry her because of the current political fuckery. But I love her too much for that. We can be outlaws if it comes to that.
I’m taking her to the most holy and beautiful place I can think of on the darkest new moon night, dozens of miles deep into the backcountry down roads that barely count and over a mountain pass full of rattlesnakes and after an exhausting climb toward the stars, and I’m going to ask her even if I am scared. We can do it together, scared.
The ring is full of meteorite, the one she loved the most.
Oh my god, I needed the shower I took immediately after getting home.
TW: child SA, addiction, overdose, death, grief, drugs >>>>>>>>
I took a very old friend to a meeting today, but ended up sitting on her couch the same as I did 20 years ago, talking. She just arrived home from a grippy socks vacation and is trying hard to stay clean after a pretty intense death of her friend. I knew that much when I picked her up. Recovery is my jam, happy to help, always happy to see an old party buddy decide to get clean.
I had no idea that she and her husband targeted me as a sixteen year old for sex - both with them and with other adults, and it hit me like a ton of bricks as she was apologizing for it. I sincerely had no idea.
Sixteen year old me was wild. Unable to be contained. I was going to do whatever the fuck I wanted, anyway. I thought I was so grownup, and all of my problems were with people trying to limit my independence. If they'd just let me be/do what I want, I'd be fine. Or something.
I used to spend hours and days at their house instead of going home because their house felt like love and my own house didn't. They fed me most nights for a long time. They let me help put up their Christmas tree. They let me sleep on their couch when I was exhausted. They tipped well, when they came to see me at work at the shitty diner I worked at. I snuggled up with their old miniature poodle, Princess. We played video games for hours and hours and hours - Spyro, Grand Theft Auto, Mario Party. They listened to me, and treated me as an adult-equal.
It should have been a red flag. If not at the time - because we didn't really talk about that stuff as red flags in the early 00s Midwest, okay? - it should have been a red flag in retrospect? Right? RIGHT? I guess I didn't think of mid-to-late 20-somethings hanging out with a sixteen year old was that wild, because...I was pretty precocious, anyway. And there were other teens there pretty often, too. They had all kinds of throwaway kids over. Runaways, little addicts, little misunderstood Rocky Horror Picture Show emo kids, kids from shitty homes. Most of them were at least 18, but there were a handful of us that were underage. They fed us. We all fed each other. We were a dogpile on the futon, giggling and passing a joint and
When I tell stories about this time, I've told them as a kind of benevolent trap house. Always people coming and going, a lot of us without jobs, surviving on grilled cheeses. It was also a place where there were lots of guns to play with out on tables and walls, there was always booze and I was always welcome to it, and they bought me cigarettes whenever that one guy at that one liquor store wasn't working to sell them to me (*legal age was 18 back then, kids). Sometimes I smoked weed, but mostly it really wasn't my thing anyway. Sometimes I got into harder drugs, but it's hard to remember which drugs I did when and where at that age. I just can't remember it all.
Their place was a one bedroom apartment that was one quarter of an enormous historic Victorian house. It had these super super tall ceilings - 15 feet? 20 feet? Anyway. I was there almost every day in 2004-2005, and spent time there every week or so in 2006-2008. I have so many fond memories there. I felt I belonged there, and my friends were there. I remember laying in the bathtub with a girl named Katie that I had a huge crush on....we played in the clawfoot tub for HOURS and hours and hours, just laughing and drinking Smirnoff from the bottle as some of it spilled in the tub while we gestured wildly. Fully clothed. No water in the tub. Every once in awhile, others would stop by and use the bathroom and we'd talk to them while they peed. It was the only bathroom, and there wasn't a lot of body shame.
I slept in the bed with them, sometimes, too. Curled up between them. It didn't seem weird, in a house full of free love vibes. We shared everything. Why wouldn't I sleep in the bed sometimes? It was more comfortable than the floor or the pokey futon. From what I remember, most of the time we just slept. There were a few times that we did have sex - but truthfully? It wasn't that big of a deal. I wasn't really "in my body" in those moments anyway, and I don't really remember much except the size of his dick, which was impressively huge for such a short-statured man. Everyone knew that T* had a huge dick for a short guy; it was kind of a running joke. I had less than zero attraction to him, but I liked dick and had a hell of a libido. Even now, twenty years later, I remember those encounters as being curious and consensual and weird at worst. I truly don't remember any part of the times I was in the bedroom being nonconsensual? At least, right now anyway. Maybe something will come to me, but...maybe not.
I remember them being kind to me. There was consent language happening long before anyone was actually having explicit consent conversations as part of...like, regular culture. I'm that old, y'all. I'm that old that I remember a time before we used a lot of consent language - I'm old enough to remember that this was pretty limited to the kink/BDSM community. I also remember them asking me if I wanted to stop, if I was okay. I can't stress enough how much I remember them being KIND to me. We weren't having constant sex; I remember it being occasional, and I don't remember anyone pressuring me or wanting it to be a constant thing.
There was sex with them, with other girls my age too. Sex with other adult men, although I don't remember a lot of it. I wasn't blackout drunk, I just...listen, I have a lot of gaps in memory and I'm doing my best here. Again, I really don't remember anything at this house being nonconsensual. It might have been stupid, or reckless, or fueled by booze, or whatever - but my memory is that all of the adults that I slept with there were reasonably consensual encounters. In my state, the age of consent IS sixteen (or 14, if the partner is under 18). No one was even breaking any laws.
Back to today. I was talking to A* after this meeting, and she just kept apologizing. Apologizing. Apologizing. I'm like: for what???? Feeding me?!?! Loving me? Caring about me? She's crying that guilt-cry, head in her hands, clearly just suffering under the weight of whatever apology she's trying to give me. And it comes out that she and her husband were targeting young girls. Picking them up from ****** school with bottles of booze in the back. Letting them come over and sleep in their bed. I'm finding out that I wasn't the youngest - although I don't remember any girls younger than 16 around.
I went straight into fawn mode, reassuring her that I didn't remember it that way. That everything I did in that house and with her and her (now ex-) husband was consensual. What. I guess I didn't FEEL targeted/coerced/groomed. I am still trying to figure it out, truthfully.
I guess in my LOGIC brain, I know that this is grooming, but it was literally today that I felt…like…I wasn’t somehow different? Like grooming was for naive kids or good kids or little kids but not me? Wait. What?
Also, for those of you that aren’t retired from SW and service industries: tonight (Jan 17) is Benjamin Franklin’s 315th birthday.
Go get those 100s, babe.
I miss making Ben Franklin cakes and desserts to celebrate at work. You’ll have to go get that bag for me, because the only bags I got these days are for groceries, airplanes, and trauma.
And should anyone feel inclined to make a cake or eat a gas station cupcake about it…send me a pic. Cheers.
I had a chance to watch this last night at a local theater and it has my whole heart as a human portrait of what it feels like to become invisible as an aging woman. To lose or retire from a career where I felt wanted, needed - or in the words of the protagonist, seen and beautiful. This one did it beautifully, although not specifically about strippers.
Hold up, I’ve been away from this platform long enough - are we back to being able to use regular words again instead of “corn” and “spicy dancers?” 2018 tumblr was a trip. For the youngsters - the beginning of SESTA/FOSTA and butchering Section 230 was a wild time in tumblr/internet history but especially so for SWers.
Anyway. This movie was a poignant loss of youth. It was emotional outbursts and friendship and messy relationships and a passion for a career and memories and a world that…goes on without us wanting it to change.
10 years ago I probably would have hated this movie. Old strippers gotta retire - did they not get the often-chanted locker room mantra of the job not being forever? I remember the younger girls (and being one of the younger girls) who felt a sort of secondary shame or a pity for the older women, around forty, still dancing in the club. Like they didn’t have anything else they could do, or they didn’t bother “using their time wisely” to get a degree or something, like they couldn’t see how old they looked and how their earnings were decreasing.
My, my. How the world changes and the years have fucking slapped me with the humility and empathy and wisdom I lacked.
Now I just miss having so much passion at work. I was so creative in my free time. There were, admittedly, some golden handcuffs at times…but in general? I had TIME freedom. I was depressed and abusing substances but I loved my career. I felt important to someone. To myself. I had power, in myself. In the world.
And now I sit in a chair and wait for someone to need my input at work two hours a week on things that don’t even matter as a completely anonymous face in operations at a major bank. I spin. And spin. And spin. I just do it in my chair now, my health insurance tied to my ability to sit in the chair and not move…a tenuous grip and a lot of daydreams. I have deep forehead wrinkles and a pudgy tummy and a face full of crows feet and…
