(Edit: The link to the pics below will show you some amazing female pole artists, but here’s a video as well of an amazing male pole artist. Courtesy of Jennifer – thanks for the link!)

There are a wide variety of pole tricks you can do, depending on the strength of your arms and legs, and the diameter of the pole. A female pole is generally about 1.5-2 inches in diameter, and a male pole is usually more like 3-4 inches. Both have their advantages and challenges: I have small hands, which means on a male pole I can’t do most upper body tricks that require a hand grip, but the thicker pole is more stable and can support more than one person at a time (for more complicated shapes/tricks involving more than one dancer). I can do more upper body work on a female pole, but i often wonder whether i’m going to damage the pole (and several of the lower body shapes feel precarious, but perhaps that’s because I’m accustomed to having a thicker pole between my thighs?).

Why does this entry suddenly feel far more salacious than I’d originally intended?

Anyway, a female patron (a matron?) asked me last night how I perform the trick you see in the picture here (click to enlarge). First, it’s harder on the tree, because it was even thicker than a male pole, but it’s also rough and uneven. Suffice it to say I wouldn’t have done this picture with a pine tree – OW! I don’t know whether there are proper names for the shapes I do, so when I talk about pole tricks, I’ll just call them what they are. This is a crossed ankle pike with no hands.

First make sure the pole isn’t slippery. Ideally you should wipe the pole down with isopropyl alcohol, which will sterilize the surface and then evaporate quickly without leaving behind a residue. Stripping the oils off the pole will enhance your grip by increasing the friction between the metal and your skin. This is great for shapes that require holding or squeezing, but you’ll need to be careful if you intend to do any sliding or spinning, because the friction could give you an abrasion. NOTE: If you get an open sore on your skin at the club I strongly suggest using a sterilizing hand gel immediately, so as to avoid MRSA infections (I had one in April 2007, and I almost lost my right leg at the knee).

Alright, so first you have to mount the pole. Ahem.

This is easiest by putting your arms around the pole and interlacing your fingers. Stand a tad less than arm’s length from the pole, so your palms touch the pole while still being able to slightly bend your elbows. Be sure you weave your fingers together so that the base of the fingers on one hand are touching the base of the fingers on the other hand. You should be able to press the pads of your fingers firmly on the backs of your hands – this is how you control the strength of your grip. This will also create a bowl between your palms that you can meld around the pole. Place your palms on the pole at about the level of your forehead or higher (having your hands above your weight will create the friction you will need when your feet leave the ground).

Pull through your palms as you clamp your fingers down. Simultaneously bend your elbows. If you coordinate this properly you will be pulled forward and up towards your hands. The moment your feet leave the floor you should bring your legs up, one on each side of the pole. Your forearms will probably touch the pole – use them to brace and control your weight. Once your legs are parallel to the floor cross your ankles and squeeze them together as firmly as you can. You will feel pressure in your feet as you attempt pull them away from each other. The more you can pull your feet into each other, the tighter the grip in your thighs will be.

There is a little trick you need to know: Lift your thighs a tad higher than you think is level to the floor. Your skin will grip the pole (provided you’re not one of those annoying oily strippers I’ve blogged about), and you will settle an inch or so. This quick settling process will pull the skin up against the pole and lock you into place. This locking is actually more important than the gripping in your ankles and thighs.

Once your skin has gripped the pole and your ankles are locked, squeeze your inner thighs and let go with your hands. Be sure you are sitting up straight through your torso, so that you make an “L” on the pole. This “L” is what is called a pike. Between the tension in your ankles, thighs, and skin you should be able to appear to levitate on the pole.

Now to dismount the pole… AHEM!

Grip your fingers together again, so that you cup the pole in your palms. Pull yourself up slightly to unlock your skin. Once your hands are supporting you, uncross your ankles, lower your feet, and lower yourself down with control.

You will need to develop a good amount of strength in your biceps/triceps brachii, anterior/medial/posterior heads of the deltoids, pectoralis majors, latissimus dorsi, and the adductors of the thighs. I suggest a variety of pushups and pullups. Once you can do 5-8 sets of 20-30 pushups and 5-8 sets of 12-20 pullups you should have the upper body strength necessary to control the mounting and dismounting of this shape safely. You should be able, on a cable machine, to do the adductor exercise with at least 50-75% of your body weight in each leg. Your goal is 3-5 sets of 8-10 reps. P90X is an amazing home workout regimen that I have done at least 2 or 3 times now.

Note: This trick becomes even more impressive if you have the strength to uncross your ankles. I like playing with individuals watching. I make eye contact, they show that they’re impressed, I give them a coy eyebrow, and then uncross my ankles. It often takes them a second or two to digest why this subtle difference is so impressive, but when people understand it’s like watching a lightbulb turn on.

I’ve been asked quite a bit what my ethnic background is. I thought I was pretty obviously a straight-up honky cracka, but I can see how my particular breeding (or lack thereof) might not be so obvious. I get a variety of guesses, so, since it seems to be a point of interest, I’ll just address it now and clear the air.

My Gramma did about 15 years of research into this, and I guess the easiest way to describe me is 1/3 German, 1/3 Dutch, and 1/3 French (I guess that means i’m 100% Germanic, eh?). I am not the expert on this, so I’m basing all this on what I think Gramma has told me. I remember (but that’s a problematic term, isn’t it?) her saying our German dirt farmers were from Bavaria, that our Dutch dirt farmers were from Friesland, and that our French dirt farmers were from Normandy. Somehow, going way way way back, one of my distant French relatives was one of the knights killed by Henry V at the Battle of Agencourt (and he even has a line or two in the play “Henry V” by Shakespeare before he croaks on stage! Awesome!). So, there’s evidently some little drizzling of nobility up in me somewhere (I suppose that’s what makes me such a pincess?).

Anyway, I’ve lived in France and I speak French. I’ve visited the Black Forest of Bavaria, and I’ve spent time in The Netherlands. I wanted to get closer to my roots, so that’s what I’ve done over the years to see where my poor white trash peeps used to grovel around in the mud. They must’ve been some tough bastards, that’s for sure. I concentrated my interest, and therefore identify, mostly on the French portion. This is for both practical and romantic reasons: I wanted to understand all the terminology in my ballet classes, so that’s how I picked French in highschool, and that in turn set me out in the direction of all things French (I did a double major in Dance and French with a minor in Spanish – they didn’t have German at the time). I also had a better time with French history, because I fell in love with the stories about Eleanor of Acquataine, Jeanne la Pucelle (Joan of Arc), and Marie Antoinette. France is so gay! I love it there (although Germany and Holland are great places to be queer, too).

So, there you have it. I’m a gringo from the South. I identify as French, but i’m 1/3 German, 1/3 Dutch, 1/3 French, and 1/3 Fabuluscious (did you actually think you could fit this much personality into a measley 3 thirds?!).

It occurred to me, after reflecting some about my experience, at that party from last week, that there is a Jekyll & Hyde phenomenon lurking in many club patrons, gay men in particular. It also occurred to me that there is a day & night phenomenon that I want to explore for a few moments. What follows isn’t researched or cited – it’s simply my dialogue with myself about the observations I have about the patrons who disturb me most (keeping in mind throughout that what I will be saying doesn’t apply to ALL people, but is presented as over-simplified generalizations).

People associate metaphoric values to light/dark and day/night, conflating them with good/bad. I have a hypothesis: People almost seem to have it coded into their socializing DNA traits to act rowdy, or to allow their “darker” sides to come out at night. It’s too easy to say that Night is Dark, and thus people let their destructive natures blossom under the moonlight (like lillies of death, I suppose), as if night/dark is the very source of this “bad.”

I think there is a practical connection that goes way back. Without electricity and artificial lighting, your work day effectively ends when the sun goes down. Ergo, your most productive (i.e. work related) activities happen in the light. Once it’s night and you can no longer really do much, it makes sense that people would socialize at night around fires and dance, mingle, or drink. Same with the winter in general: If it’s too dark and cold to farm your land or do any work, then it is an obvious time of year to pack full of festivals and holidays in order to pass the time: Hours not devoted to work or sleep end up becoming hours devoted to play or relaxation.

What if, over the course of thousands of years, we have simply been bred to associate day with respectability and night with scandal? If you follow that line of thought, then in a religious culture that values toil above pleasure (rather than in balance with it), everything done at night becomes frivilous (and therefore non-, un-, or anti-”good”) by comparison. Everything you wouldn’t want people to see you doing, you do at night, under the cloak of darkness where you can hope for some modicum of anonymity. Night becomes a place to hide your shame or guilt.

In this way, all around the world, good, productive people rise and shine to do their respectable work. For a good portion of them there is an attitude that anything of Night must be myseterious, evil, salacious, dangerous, or immoral, since it is the time when productive people are worn out and go to bed. Night is the time of the unseen/unseeable. It is the time when those with something to hide emerge, like monsters out of nightmares.

If you look at my description of that party, it was attended by “upstanding professionals” who mostly happened to be older white, gay gentlemen. This is where the Jekyll & Hyde amongst patrons comes in. Given the way they were acting like rutting pigs at a trough, and given the wild (in some instances dangerous) looks their eyes, and given their total abandonment of all social decorum, exactly what about them should have spoken to their being doctors, lawyers, architects, etc.? How would I, or anyone else who doesn’t know them, ever guess that these grasping, slobbering troglodytes were “upstanding professionals?” If someone is an “upstanding professional,” shouldn’t that define who they are away from work as well? (I can hear it now: “I’m not an upstanding professional, but I play one from 9-5.”)

I don’t understand this dichotomy. I am the same person at night that I am all day long. I am more polite at work than I would be at my house, but I don’t resemble Janus, looking in two directions with every passing moment. I don’t divorce my noctural self from my diurnal self. I am always me. I don’t understand the outright hypocrisy of wearing two diametrically opposed masks. Which is the real you? Do you even know? Are both of them you, or does one compensate for the other? Are neither of them you, and you simply have no idea who you even are? If you, like most people I know, attach part of your identity to your profession, then what does it say about you that this identity slides away so readily when the illumination dims?

Let me be frank: There are many wonderful patrons who act just as civil at the club as they do at the grocery strore. But there is also a sizeable lot who frighten me: When I bump into them during the day, they scurry from my presence, as if I am something toxic or tainted (when usually it is I who should be trying to get away from them). At night they come slinking back with flattering apologies and small tips, bribing me to forget they were espied pretending to be respectable in some other place and time. I might play along more completely, if the dollar earned so respectably wasn’t so disrespectably tucked under my perineum with a lingering grope and a lecherous wink. When Hyde grins at me with my privates in his palm, I simply laugh inside and wonder where the doctor/lawyer/ teacher/politician/engineer is hiding.

The sun is going to rise soon… did you forget that? Or are you ignoring it on purpose? Who is the “upstanding professional” in this scenario? Is there one? The patrons I like and respect the most are not necessarily the ones who give me the most money, but the ones who give me the most hope that I am right in thinking that people, by and large, really are the ”upstanding professionals” they seem to be.

That’s the mantra for every excuse right now. Probably because it’s true. One piece of advice I’m not sure I’ve blogged about yet: Make sure that your adult entertainment career is either diversified, so that you don’t depend on tips alone (i.e. start a website for yourself that generates money , or some activity like that), or secure other forms of employment that are more stable in terms of pay.

I’ve had multiple jobs since 2002. Even when I was a school teacher and a college professor I always had at least one other job. I do this, because it takes a little of the power away from my boss and puts it in my pocket. “You do realize, don’t you, that this isn’t my only job?” That revelation has evened the field many times with mean, pushy, rude, aggressive, and overly demanding managers and bosses. The air comes right out of their sail when they can’t threaten your livelihood.

At any rate, the current economy is making even part-time work difficult to find. For the first time in nearly seven years I have only one source of income, and it’s the clubs. That doesn’t feel very good, I must admit. I already felt vulnerable enough having only the clubs and a part-time writing gig. Well, that writing option seems to have dried up, as they haven’t been paying me and they won’t answer my calls. I’m hoping to hear from them again during better days. I like them very much.

So, time to look for other options. An acquaintaince is hopfully going to be able to get me into his gym where I can teach gymnastics, which would relieve some of the burden off the club income as well as be fun as hell! However, I don’t want to wait on an answer from that. I’m thinking that I might look around in the businesses near my home, and see if I can’t find work at a GNC (where I could get a better price on the supplements I need in order to keep making tips) or Starbucks (where I’ve heard you can work part-time and still get insurance). I don’t need much from a part-time job, unless you count the value of psychological relief.

So, why am I blogging about this, when it may not seem to be directly connected to exotic dance or adult entertainment? I have a very specific reason: I let you all read about this, because it reinforces the fact that most of the people in this line of work have a highly developed sense of work ethic. We’re not lazy people. We’re not content to mooch off the public. We do want to be responsible for ourselves, and we do have all the same cares and worries as anyone else. I wish I could keep churning out the ass-scented money blog entries (because they really are alot of fun), but… well… it’s a bad economy.

Okay, okay…

Time for a funny story… all this darkness and seriousness lately… time to clear the air with a little tale about tail. This just about made me fall out, and is one of the unexpected little joys of working in “the biz.”

I went to the bank to make a deposit. Normally I’d trade all my one’s and five’s in for larger bills. It makes it easy to count and carry (plus a thick stack of small bills is ghetto, especially if you put a large bill on the outside… Grrrrl, stop!). Anyway, I wasn’t able to do that last time I left for home. So, I have an unwieldy roll of small bills.

And what kind of paper is American money made of? Highly durable cotton! That means it soaks up and holds onto all sorts of insanity. When there are only a few bills you won’t notice the smell of money so much… But this nasty pile of cash had been festering in my gear bag and never dried out. Yum.

Anyway, I pulled the money out of its ziplock bag at the bank and got punched in the face by the smell of the club. WOW. That’s what a bar smells like? Gross! I was actually pretty embarrassed. How was I going to explain this to the teller? I figured honesty was best.

“I’m sorry, but my money smells like cigarettes and ass.”

The woman picks up the stack, holds it to her nose, takes a deep huff and replies,

“Yep, it does smell like cigarettes and ass.”

OH MY GOD! LOL LOL LOL LOL