Editor’s Note: mentions sexual assault, includes descriptions of sexual acts
A stripper is born on the 28th of the month because rent is due on the 1st and ends simply aren’t meeting the way they must to keep the roof over your head and food in your belly. You find a pair of cheap heels and the only set of lingerie you own and summon all the nerve and gumption you can muster to jiggle and gyrate in front of a manager with a cross look on his face, who is only half paying attention.
A stripper is born the instant a man hands you a stupid amount of money for existing in front of him. In your presence, he can hardly stand his own humiliating existence. The money is an apology for a world where two disparate beings must cross paths. He doesn’t even feel worthy enough to touch you. He sits across from you on a peeling black leather couch in the VIP and offers you a jacket because the sight of your radiant skin is more than he can bear.
A stripper is born when the first customer places a ratty dollar on the stage, a meager demonstration of appreciation for the show of skin and his proximity to pussy. He’s so close that he could almost smell the mix of sweat and discharge emanating from your hole. You feel his eyes, so attuned to your movement that you can feel them caressing your skin, but he doesn’t reach down to grab another bill.
A stripper is born after the first man tells you, “Not now, maybe later.” You walk away, wilted. The patriarchy has informed you up until this point that almost any man could want you. But you’ve wilfully entered a topsy-turvy world where men hold the upper hand. They have the gift of choice–as much as they can afford. This lesson stings but you become a stripper when you accept the rejection and continue.
A stripper is born on the 28th of the month because rent is due on the 1st and ends simply aren’t meeting the way they must to keep the roof over your head and food in your belly.
A stripper is born the first time you transcend beyond the class you were born into. You’ve known poverty. Tasted processed foods purchased with coupons from the Walmart discount section. You’ve learned how little you can eat in a week—that dinner can be a spoonful of peanut butter on a bad day. But all of a sudden, you’re eating at restaurants with stars beside their names. You’re in the room with celebrities and the men behind the scenes who finance them. You stop checking the prices of things and live as if money is endless, even though you know how quickly money can end. How abundance can evaporate, and how close discount aisle shopping may be once again. But still, you know that you have figured out some sort of cheat code, and playing on easy mode, even temporarily, is breathtakingly beautiful.
A stripper is born at 4 p.m. on a Thursday when a high-school math teacher comes in wearing slip-ins Skechers and pays to dry hump your leg for half an hour. His torso is the circumference of your wingspan, and you find yourself smushed between his belly and the VIP sofa. You imagine the view from the cameras overhead as the high-school math teacher as if in a trance, grinds against you, his sweat dripping into your hair. He smells more like urine than you want to admit, but a job is a job, and you’re making decent money in exchange for your dignity.
A stripper is born after a long shift of selling intimate contact when you finally receive your payout and accept that you’re only getting half of what you brought in, and from that, you still must tip the staff. Sure, you’re grateful for the help you received. The DJ played the music you requested, the dance counter totaled your earnings, and the bouncer kept an eye on rowdy patrons, but why did the tip have to come from the 50% you take home? Why didn’t it come from the 50% taken by the house? Despite the contradictions, you pay everyone their percentage and quietly tuck away your sense of injustice because the money is enough to hush these errant thoughts.
A stripper is born the first time you transcend beyond the class you were born into. You’ve known poverty.
A stripper is born the first time a customer breaks your heart. He promises to help you achieve your dreams. He asks you to name the thing you want more than anything else in the world. He holds your wish and tells you how beautiful it is. He cradles the delicate Fabergé egg of your hope in his hands, turning it over, admiring the purity of unjaded youth. For a moment, you believe that he can grant your wish. Your dreams go from misty imaginings to mushy, tofu-textured tangible possibilities. You begin planning a life. You take steps forward to fulfill those dreams, and your client encourages you, offering sporadic support. This goes on for a while. It seems too good to be true. Then, all of a sudden, it is too good to be true. Seemingly out of nowhere, your customer “accidentally” forgets your Fabergé egg somewhere. He says he doesn’t remember what he did with it, but he’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Except that, for some reason, he gets so busy that he can’t seem to see you anymore or even answer your text messages. Without warning or apology, one day, he disappears. The life you’ve begun to create evaporates in an instant.
A stripper is reborn the first time you let a client put a finger inside of you. The experience is neither good nor bad. You’ve let other people penetrate you for free. This time is different, but the client is paying you good money, and a hole is a hole. Yet, the concept scandalizes you. You know how other dancers talk about “dirty strippers,” and the stigma burns like a hot iron. But on a purely physical level, it doesn’t feel unpleasant to be touched, and the amount he’s paying lubricates your loins. What does it mean? You wonder. You ponder the absurdity of a finger going into a hole and the gravity it seems to carry at a societal level, accepting the money and the stigma together.
A full-service sex worker is born one night when it’s raining, and the club is empty, and you just found out your grandmother is dying, but you decide to work anyway. You can’t help but wear your sadness on your face. It emanates from you. It’s as if the clients can smell it on your skin, and most shoo you away preemptively, warding away the gloom. But a few sharks in the water smell blood. They circle, low-balling you. After a night of rejections, you can’t bear the thought of walking away with empty pockets. You accept an offer you wouldn’t otherwise. The client promises he’ll finish within two minutes. Two minutes, $200. To his credit, he does. You aren’t sure if that makes it better or worse. He hands you the cash and thanks you. You realize how far from enough that amount is to you, yet you can’t undo what you did. Somehow, a penis is different from a finger, and yet you can’t quite explain why, or according to what metric, or even if you believe in that metric. Somehow, $200 isn’t enough, yet you’ve slept with men for free. You realize you have an innate sense of appropriate compensation that you’ve disrupted through this impromptu transaction, yet you’re relatively unscathed.
A full-service sex worker is born one night when it’s raining, and the club is empty, and you just found out your grandmother is dying, but you decide to work anyway.
A full-service sex worker is born after you accept that your boundaries may be more flexible than you thought, and you begin exploring the limits of your comfort. You negotiate your rates and settle upon a price that feels steep in an affirming way. Like a condom, it protects you from your clients. It is the barrier to entry. You create your first profile on an escorting page, pay a fee, and wait for the requests to roll in. You share your body with clients, and while the experiences vary, they are not nearly as dirty or harrowing as societal messaging suggests. It hardens you, but not completely.
A stripper is reborn after two months of radio silence on the escorting database. Rebirth is painful. From the warm, wet womb of escorting, you are thrust into the unforgiving world of men who cannot afford your time and with whom you must nonetheless interact. Like a baby deer, you must relearn to walk on stilts. You crawl and totter across a rickety stage. You remember all the reasons you left and wonder whether leaving might still be a better option, but you stay for all the reasons you stayed the first time. The money is good, the hours are flexible, and the women are pretty.
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