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Bid for sympathy
So I must post this - I require strippery sympathy right now. So prepare yourselves - I am feeling really needy. I worked on Thursday. Story:
I sit with a guy who thinks I am his teddy bear. Like as soon as I walk over he wraps his arms around me and pulls me practically onto his lap. He is not trying to feel me up or take off my panties or anything, but it is really conspicuous and uncomfortable. I ask immediately if he wants a dance - because I don't cuddle for free. I am really pale and kind of soft looking so people think I'm a really cuddly sort. I'm not. Particularly with guys with whom I have no business relationship. Anyway he says that he does, and I tell him that he has to wait until I'm off the stage - about 15 minutes. He agrees and we pass the time negotiating about what I'll do if he buys 5 dances, 10 dances, takes me to dinner etc. I tell him that I am completely not ripping him off on the first dance and that they really don't get better - just longer. I also tell him that my roommates would kill me if customers started calling me or dropping me off at my house. No lie. They would freak right out. "no, no" he says, "You don't realize - you are one in a million." "Look," I reply "I completely realize. You still can't take me home." Anyway, he keeps asking, but he isn't getting pissy as I say no, so I can live with it. I go on stage. He answers his phone. I get off stage. He says he has to go, but he'll come back. I say yeah, right, stop touching me right now. He says "honest, I swear to god" I say "I don't care - you wasted my time - I can manage courtesy, but don't ask for gratitude." I didn't actually say that part. I was courteous, but in a "stop touching me 5 minutes ago" kind of way. So anyway, more fool I, right? Indeed. (Incidentally - I fully believe that he was planning on buying a couple of dances. I don't think he was trying to be an asshole, it's just an unfortunate development for me this particular time)
I go to the next customer. He does the exact same thing. Now this didn't go well for me the first time, so I did the "no-cuddling-until-your-$20-is-in-my-purse edge-away" and ask if he wants a dance (seriously - I will take time to be charming to my customers, if that is what is demanded - but if they are skipping to the contact, I want to skip to getting paid). He says No. While seriously octopussing me he says that he doesn't want to buy a dance because he got one from this other girl and she has a friend and blah, blah, blah, like I care. Well. I am unwrapping his arms from me and he says "I'm just trying to be honest with you" and I (because I am no longer in a courteous place when someone is trying to hold me down) say "I.. actually... just don't care." If I don't have your money, I don't care who does. But the guy is rejecting me WHILE trying to pull me onto his lap. Why, might you ask? Well. As I am struggling away from this... guy he says "What? You looked like you were having a good enough time over there." I was shocked - and appalled. Both shocked and appalled. I actually stopped moving for a minute, I was that surprised. And he realized this was a bad thing, not a good thing because he then let me up and I said "Oh my god. I did not just hear that. That HAD to be in my imagination" and I struggled to my feet - and we look really silly struggling in our stupid outfits. In retrospect all I can picture is how silly my feet must have looked flapping about trying to find floor. And he says again that "he is trying to be honest with me" and I run away up to the bar, where I consider having him ejected, and then decide not to bother complaining because the girl and friend who have a sure thing in 1/2 hour would not love me for that. I think there was some racial element - like "well you gave it away to that brown guy over there" (because guy the first was a middle aged guy of middle eastern descent).
I seriously do not think I have ever been so angry at a customer. I thought for about 5 seconds I was going to cry - and I was sober. For 5 seconds I was just like "I am going to completely lose it - I am just going to start crying at work." I didn't cry. Although one of my regulars came in, and I did a girl-stripper-PL thing where I let him buy a huge chunk of my night for virtually nothing (and I'm not saying how much nothing - that is how little) so he could pet me and tell me how pretty I was and how dumb the other guys in the bar were and listen to me talk about my classes and movies I liked. I don't think that counts as recouping - but I didn't just cry and go home, so I count it as a small victory.
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Re: Bid for sympathy
Oh, Jenny, I feel for you! I didn't wpork thursday, but it was like that for me Friday. And for everybodyelse at my work, too. Maybe it is a phases of the moon thing. Who knows!
Anyway, it is all in the past. Sorry it happened to you!
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Re: Bid for sympathy
Jenny, you're going to be okay. You just kind of took a "bye" on your night. It happens. It sucks when you're trying not to have any feelings whatsoever because you're working, and then they go and declare mutiny on you. It's also terrible when you're putting up with shit you would never put up with in a million years IRL because you think you're going to get money, and then not only do you not get money, but give the guy the pleasure of ruffling your feathers.
The "teddy bear" men are a disease, I know exactly what you mean. I also get "dry shampoo" men because I have that whole Natalie-Portman-in-Closer haircut going on and they love to make me sit there while they mess it all up, then rearrange it, then mess it up again, then pull on the back of it as though we were having rough sex and it's like, "HELLO. Give me and my cute haircut money, please. Your oily hands are all up in my face and my dermatolagist needs paid." I'm also little and cuddly, and get the: "oh, you're my little china doll. come sit on my lap, little china doll." GAG.
I refuse to sit on anyone's lap on the floor. I tell them that's what the back room is for. Then they point to all the other girls who are sitting on guys' laps around the room and I say, "if you want to dance with one of them, you're more than welcome, but they seem kind of busy right now, don't they?" It's not that this necessarily works from the money perspective, but it tends to cut down on wasting time being mauled like Koko's kitten for free.
Anyway, shake it off. Or try the "wanna dance" thing for awhile, just to get your scales balanced again. It works sometimes, and the emotional payout is far less than what you just had to put up with.
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Re: Bid for sympathy
Poor you. Getting treated like that is awful, but having that emotional reaction is so much worse because there is just nothing that can make it go away. Strip clubs are the worst environments and in no way offer that emotional draino that other work places sometimes do (at the vet's I worked at, I felt so stoic for never crying when we put puppies down, but everyone did and it was supportive...at the club, I need to bottle that shit right up because there is NO one to reach out to, and it even feels like coworkers would use the slightest wiff of my insecurity/sensitivity against me).
And school this time of year, and november in ontario, blah. I feel like crap lately to, and I decided to take this weekend off work (I am also so very behind at school, but that's my problem). Last weekend I felt so close crying too: I was dancing for a guy who seemed ok at first, but things went progressively downward until he started bragging about his collection of preteen porn on his computer. I almost killed him. I have no tolerance for that, and I found the whole incident so overwhelmingly sad and terrifying- but when I went to the changeroom to vent, no when cared or understood why I was so upset. One girl (who was out of her mind on something, which made me feel even more isolated and depressed) said "oh point him out to me, I'm so good at talking dirty...". The waitress, the dj, god- no one was listening...I felt like I was speaking swahilli. I never felt so alone in my life. It was miserable.
anyway, if commiseration offers any solace...I hope you feel better. You did so well not to lose it completely and go home.
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Re: Bid for sympathy
If people can get their hands cut off for stealing in this world, I say a man should get his hands AND dick cut off for making someone feel this way. Just as an example.
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Re: Bid for sympathy
Customers suck sometimes. I hate the ones that seem to come into the club just to put us down or fuck with us. One customer the other day said, "I bet you didn't think you'd be a stripper when you were a little girl." What an insult. I've had other horrible things said to me, too, like "I bet you really hate men." The cuddlers are the worst, in the same vein as the ones who give back massages (but really just try to cop a feel) or feel up your legs while you are sitting there talking to them. Just walk away from these assholes. They don't deserve your time.
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Re: Bid for sympathy
Thank you guys - sometimes you really feel you need the "poor you, I completely understand" - I think what pushed me over the edge was the blatant holding me against my will - like I had given it up for someone else, so then I owed him. Gentlemen - don't do this unless you want a girl to chew out your eyeballs and spit them back in your face.
Aha. Now THERE I have plan for next time.