The online diary of a gay courtesan.

It never ceases to amaze me how many little details I forget to blog about. I keep fretting, thinking that I’ll run out of interesting stories, but then a patron will ask me something or do something and I’ll remember there’s so much more to tell. So, people ask me fairly frequently (worded in various ways): “Does your mother know that you dance naked in bars?”

Here’s the short answer: Yes.

Actually, everyone in my family knows, on both sides. It’s not a problem for anyone that I know of. And how could it be? Some people come from a long line of doctors… I come from a long line of entertainers. My sister has danced in clubs, and so has my mother. My grandmother has spoken of the days of the Burlesque.

At any rate, it’s not nearly as scandalous as many people assume. I was just at my families’ houses (divorce does that) for the holiday, and people from both clans were asking me about my performance schedule, was I making good money, and are you getting enough rest? Honestly, the only points most of them worry about are that I drink enough water, sleep properly, and drive safely. My mother’s husband even gets up early to make sure I get home okay. He was there waiting for me on Friday night/Saturday morning when I got there finally at 5:30, and again on Saturday night/Sunday morning when I arrived at 4:30. Those two also got me a birthday card with a cartoon in the style of Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” with a female Collie giving a lap dance to a male German Sheperd. The Sheperd was saying, “Oh yeah, shake that tail, bitch!” It was freaking hilarious.

My Gramma speaks very plainly to me about sexuality and issues surrounding human desire. She is a firm believer in universal bisexuality. As a writer and story teller she isn’t squeamish about describing the various proclivities of her characters (which are thinly veiled descriptions of her own fantasies). I’ve even blogged about a recent conversation I had with Gramma about sex workers. Although we live in the South, we are decidedly non-Southern. So, when people say something to the effect of, “I’ma tell yo Mama where you at!” I generally respond with, “Oh, great… She’ll be giving me pointers in front of everyone again about improving my pole tricks.”

My Gramma and I were yesterday discussing the salient distinctions between exotic dancers and strippers. One of the points of differentitation for me is desparation, as I stated in one of my first blog posts on this site. If there is desparation, standards get lowered (if they weren’t very high to begin with).

This conversation started after she told me about an incident in the paper about 40 years ago wherein a man and female prostitute were arrested on the street after arguing over her price. Evidently she wanted $200 (in 1970′s dollars), and he thought it too much. Gramma said she was discussing it over lunch one day later that week with her lady friends, and that she’d scandalized them all by saying, “Try as I might, I couldn’t imagine anything I could do that would be worth $200!” I thought it was funny, especially when she followed it up with, “But in all fairness to the lady, I didn’t see the gentleman in question.”

To illustrate my point about desparation, I told Gramma about the following conversation I had with Angel about a year ago. Before I begin, I should point out that Angel always came in with a particular goal in mind. “Well, I gotta make $287 tonight – speeding ticket.” Or another example: “Man, I gotta pull $416 tonight. They put tires on my truck and I said I’d pay ‘em tomorrow.” So… here we go:

“So, what’s your goal tonight, Angel?”
“$312.”
“Why that specific amount? Why not $300 or $325 or $363?”
“Gotta pay my electric bill.”
“Your electric bill?! How the hell do you have a $312 electric bill on a trailer?”
“I have alot of lamps.”
“That’s a LOT of lamps. Why don’t you get some energy efficient bulbs?”
“No, I have to have a particular type of lamp.”
“Do you have vision problems of some kind?”
“No, I was growing pot.”
“Oh… Well… That must have been a helluva lot of pot. Or are you just not very good at growing it?”
“Hell no, man! I grow pot better than anyone I know.”
“Then you must have been growing alof of it.”
“Yeah.”
“I presume you’re going to sell it.”
“Yeah.”
“So then what’s the problem? Why don’t you just sell the pot and pay your electric bill?”
“I smoked all of it.”

Of course that’s not really any more ridiculous than the straight dancers at Swinging Richards who get paid to be sexualized by gay men, in order to have the money to go to the titty bar down the street and give all their tips to the female dancers (who oftentimes turn right around and come to Swinging Richards to give those same dollars back to the same male dancers who’d just spent the money at the titty bar). Jesus. Just because you can breed doesn’t mean you should.