Confessions of an Exotic Dancing Librarian

As soon as I opened my teller drawer, my heart started pounding. All of my strapped and loose cash was there from the day before, in neat little rows. How could you have left it out again? How could you have made such a stupid mistake? Everyone went silent. They all knew what forgetting to put one's cash in the vault meant. "Let's start counting," Kris, the head teller, whispered. My insides writhed as Kris and I pulled the straps off the stacks of 100s and 20s to run through the money counter . We needed to account for every penny. You didn't even lock your drawer!My fellow tellers, Megan and Amanda, tried to small talk about their plans for this weekend, to cover up the general feeling of embarrassment. Every once in a while, they glanced over at me, and I hated their stares of pity. The world went blurry as tears threatened to spill over my eyes. My nose turned its characteristic shade of clown-nose bright vermillion that let the world know how pathetic I felt. I excu

I came three hours early on my first day. I hadn't meant to show up that early, but it was a Sunday, and instead of opening up at 11, the club opened at 12 (to get around those pesky alcohol laws in Texas). Pulling up to the back, I could see the kitchen staff were already there, hosing down the parking lot and surrounding area to clean it from the previous night's alcohol spills and cigarette butts. It still stank of stale beer, smoke, and grease, a combination I grew oddly fond of. When I walked in, Little Jon was snoozing in a corner, so I quietly went backstage to the locker room to unpack and get dressed. The House Mom hadn't even arrived yet. I found an empty locker and claimed it with a purple lock. The dingy room had ripped carpet, huge wall-length mirrors, and long benches for the dancers to sit on, or nap on, depending on how slow the day was. Not a single inch looked clean; the shower in the corner looked like a breeding ground for foot fungus, and nary a square inch was f

What was that? Were all lap dances going to be so terrible? I felt like I had just been grubbed and treated like a literal piece of meat, the kind that swings in butcher shops, blood dripping onto the floor and flies buzzing around. It wasn't so much the feeling of being touched that bothered me; it was the sheer force and insistence of the man. I plopped down onto the bench and stared at myself in the mirror. Would it always be periods of molasses-like slowness punctuated by grimy, forceful, ass-spreading men?The House Mom glanced up from her magazine. "How's it going out there?""It's pretty slow, I guess. I just needed to take a break.""It's always slow on Sundays, but it'll pick up."I nodded and laid my head down trying to collect my thoughts."You don't seem like the kind of person to be here. What do you do besides this?" she asked. "I work in a library," I responded. "No shit," she said. "Well honey, let me just tell you one thing: don't quit your second job. This

I could barely fit the key into the door to turn the lock. My legs felt wooden and my brain was stuffed with cotton. After eight hours of dancing, flirting with scores of men, and pacing the floors, I simply wanted to crash on the bed from exhaustion. I paused outside the apartment, listening to the sounds of League of Legends and Nick and Nolan playing. "What the hell are they doing?!""I don't know man, but they're fuckin' insane!""Move! Move! Move!""Fuuuuck!!"Lovely. Normally the sounds of their video game antics didn't bother me, but after the constant blaring of music, all I wanted was silence. Their incessant yelling began to grind my nerves before I even walked in the door. I had also only made $120 that day. Those first few weeks were a bit rough to get used to, especially since I didn't immediately acquire loads of cash, like I had expected. I wanted the big cash: four or five hundred dollars per day. I tried to temper my green dreams with realism. Stripping was a l

I quickly fell into a routine; any day that I wasn't working at the library, I danced at Lipstick, so Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays were characterized by bare flesh and grimy money. Every day I was greeted with the same smell of stale beer, grease, and cigarettes. When I arrived, the kitchen staff would already be unloading cases of beer, hosing down the floors and outside area, and firing up the ovens. Rolling in around 10:30 or so, I straightened my hair, plastered on some make-up, and got dressed. (Or, undressed, I should say.) It was extremely slow-going at Lipstick. In one full hour, I would meet and greet a customer, make small talk, give them the dance, and try to get them to buy another. Sometimes two or three hours would go by where no matter how many customers I greeted or talked to, no one wanted to shell out for a lap dance. There was the occasional three-dance customer, but I rarely got more than two songs out of a single customer. I lacked both experience and a c