Welcome to The Glass Stiletto!!!

Five years I worked there. Five days a week, 5 hours a day. 12 noon to five in the afternoon. Easily, I took home a couple hundreds dollars a day. That was on top of my shitty paycheck. I was a high school drop out, who somehow, someway became a poet, writer, motherfucking artist, who just happened to work at a strip club on the side.

Those were the days. Crazy days.

Sometimes when I told people I used to work at a strip club they’d look at me like I just told them the most inappropriate joke in the world. Which, I guess, I kinda did. That kind of conversational segue, ethically, sits on the same dirty plane as rape, molestation, and infidelity. Not murder though. But pretty close. And to talk about strip clubs and strippers and getting paid to glitz it and glamorize it to someone I barely knew, someone who already was ready to judge because they believed in an unwavering, static, form of ethics, was definitely a conversation stopper.

But hey. The conversation was bound to stop eventually, and I figured I might as well have some fun on the way to mutually figuring out me and those people were probably not going to be friends.

“So what do you think about this current administration’s lack of support for third world countries?” they’d typically ask, sipping on a $10 drink, sitting in a comfortable booth, inside a non-stick bar designed to look dirty, with a valet outside who parked their manual transmission vehicle.

“I used to work at a strip club.” I’d lead, sipping on my $5 beer, looking them dead in the eye, waiting for disgust to eyelid them. “Wanna buy me a drink? I’ll tell you all about it?”

And usually at that point, they’d get up and quickly walk away or I’d get a new drink. Winner winner chicken dinner.

Most of the time I’d pull this out when I was hanging out with the artist crowds. The live painters, the spoken word artist, the barefoot open mic musicians, the kinds of half-ass tourist artists I despised being around. The ones who talked, talked, talked, about everything and anything, and somehow, someway, brought it back to whatever painting, poem, song, play, they were working on at that moment. And about how and what and why kind of inspiration they were hit with. And what kind of yoga they were practicing. And how evil Christianity and Catholicism was and how beautiful Buddhism and Taoism was. And how they wish they were born in the 70′s. All the while, they were in school at UCLA, or USC, or UCI, or some fucking University studying microbiology. Or engineering. Or business. The kinds of people who liked to talk about things, to talk about themselves, but never do anything except put it in a strange painting or an unstructured poem or a boring song. The kinds of people that stick to their own kind to reinforce a fear they had of the ugly ugliness of the world that they were too scared to touch.

I hated them. I hated them so much I decided to become friends with them.

“I’d make a couple hundred every day.” I’d continue, if they were curious enough to buy me a drink. “I worked the day shift. The managers were friends I grew up with, so I only worked the weekday days.”

“Strip clubs open during the day?” They’d ask curious, careful.

“We did. From noon to 3 or 4 in the morning. 15 or 16 hours a day depending on the day.” I’d say, drinking my new drink as fast as possible, readying the timing of a big story point with a new drink request. “But I would only get the day shift and never the weekend. Noon to 5pm. That was my shift. And I got a couple of hundred dollars a day to do it.”

They’d stare. Tried to get past the fact they actually met someone who made a living at a strip club.

“You know, you’d be surprised.” I’d say, finishing up my drink. “There isn’t as much drugs and sex as you might think in a place like that.”

Then they’d lean in closer. I’d look at my drink, sip on the ice, chew a little bit of it, drawing out as much alcohol as possible. They’d get the hint.

“Want another one?” They’d ask, catching the attention of the waitress.

“Another Jack and Coke please.” I’d say. And I’d wait for my drink to arrive.

“Well of course there was sex and drugs. Shit, it was a strip club, but there wasn’t as much as one would think. For a strip club.” I’d sip my new drink. Notice more whiskey. Myself would get comfortable. And unleash. “It was a lot more corporate actually. It was a business. A business like everything else out there. But we sold fantasies. We sold lonely guys and desperate guys and and sad and pathetic guys the fantasy of being wanted and liked for one night. So long as they had the cash.”

“That’s…crazy…” They’d say.

“You haven’t even heard the half of it.” I’d say. Whiskey eyes coming to get me. “You got some time on your hands? I’ll tell you all about it.”

And that’s how I’d get drunk. For free mostly. Because I used to work at a strip club.