(no subject)
If this is tl:dr, basically I moved to San Francisco May 31st and am now a peepshow girl. Stripper. http://www.lustyladysf.com/lusties/ava/
I lived in the foggiest part of SF, Outer Sunset, for the first two months. I moved yesterday.
So I now live in Inner Richmond. Not Richmond, but Inner Richmond in San Francisco. I didn't even know Richmond existed until people asked if I was really moving all the way out there. This is what happens when you grow up in car-dependant San Fernando Valley and places like Acton seem as far away as Pluto.
Back to Inner Richmond. It's a really nice neighborhood as far as I can tell, even though last night as I was falling asleep I heard a man yell "FAGGOT! YOU CAN... SUCK MY DICK.. FOREVER!!!!" As if that kind of afterlife would be equivalent to that one guy whose name sounds like Syphilis has to lift that rock up that mountain for eternity. Which is just like when all your dopamine receptors are burnt out and your brain doesn't have any reward system. You know.
My room is atop a street-front store-front on Geary, a sushi place called SUSHI NOW!, or Sushi Raw, I haven't really looked at it for too long. It has the triple-window set classic to San Francisco Victorians. When looking for places to live, or even just walking around the city, I always fantasied about living in one of those rooms on the street. Now that I actually do, well, I love the light and the convenience, but I didn't realize how the noise would permeate through even the double pane windows.
I might just play music all the time. It should work. I hope I don't get in trouble because I was accepted under the guise that I am not a rambunctious teenager, am going to college.
I am really happy it's a minimum one-year lease. The landlord doesn't like to go out looking for people to rent, and I sure as hell don't like looking for places to live in San Francisco.
It's kinda small but my rent is a hundred dollars cheaper than before.
And it has a door that locks.
This is Inner Richmond! I've heard three ambulances in the short time (half of yesterday to 10AM today).
And to think I almost moved to West Oakland... as a MUNI employee told me, "Honey, your REJECTION was PROTECTION, West Oakland ain't a good place to be..."
I work at The Lusty Lady Theatre in San Francisco's North Beach district. It's right next to Hustler and around the corner from the Hungry I, Garden of Eden, Roaring 20s, the Condor. It's a ways walk from the sketchier places that I won't name, but I'll just say sell drugs in private rooms and the next day your bank asks you if someone stole your ATM card and you oversleep and miss your OWN stripping stage training (but it was optional so it's okay).
I like it because there is glass. I usually say that because when I say I'm a stripper I am trying to backtrack and stop the person I told from thinking that I give lapdances. Because I don't. As I learned from my six months of massage school, I ain't into touching people.
I dance naked for four hours at a time with a ten minute break every thirty to forty minutes (the breaks work so that when one girls go off stage, another comes back from her own break to replace her and so on). The stage has three girls on at a time, two when one girl doesn't show up and we're short and we close the middle booths.
All the new girls want tattoos the first weeks they work there. After staring at your body for so long, you want more to look at. And that is the secret to why so many strippers have tattoos. Or one of them, at least.
Most of the girls who work there are lesbians and feminists and this is boring to write about because it's such a fascinating job but I feel like whenever I'm talking about it, I have to defend it. I sometimes feel guilty for liking this job. It's a sex-positive paradise full of .. just.. close bonds. It's the first time in my life I have felt a true sisterhood. We bond over talking about the guys, our lives, everything. We are naked and so we open up more. We all keep certain things private, most have complete lives as pre-school teachers and college students (one of the Madams has a PhD), but there is just something about the environment that is so wonderful. I've often had a bad day and it ends up great at work. So far the most fun I've had at a shift is when one girl started out crying in the dressing room. We ended up doing the mashed potato to Rick James "I Feel Good" and "synchronized stripping" and singing along to "the lesbian anthem" What's Up?
Because the girls are all more or less in the same boat. We are doing this thing that is socially taboo, and yet we punch in time clocks and show up for shifts on time like other jobs.
It was once referred not as a "real job". It is a real job. I felt proud of myself. I like this job. And I feel guilty for liking it because I'm not SUPPOSED to. I feel guilty for liking it because I want to share how happy it makes me, but it's socially unacceptable and other people.. I feel like they aren't in the San Francisco sex-positive bubble I am, or haven't read the books I have.. I feel like they would say I am exploiting myself, not living up to my full potential. But that's the thing. I feel like by exploiting myself I am living up to my full potential. I am still writing. I am also making use of my current youth and beauty and comfort in my own skin.
The blanket that I am sitting on smells bad and I bought a Justin Bieber toothbrush.
I've been somewhat of a total slut. I made out with five people on a staircase the other day as I was leaving for work. My gay male roommate Colton was the second best kisser. Otherwise, I have kinda forgotten how to be sexy to girls.. like when a girl comes in a booth not for the sake of novelty or with a couple, I get nervous. They are the only ones I can't look in the eye for too long. Men are easy, I don't care too much of what they think of me, if I'm their type then I know what turns them on. I have nothing to lose if they don't like me.
I can say all I want about the Lusty Lady, that there is a movie about how it was unionized called Live Nude Girls Unite! (available on Instant Netflix), how it's the world's only unionized co-op peepshow, how it has a library, a 401(k) plan, quite a few memoirs and essays written by the girls (Bare, Whores and Other Feminists, The Creamsicle), a zine, how I can sleepovernight on those 11pm-3am shifts and wake up and take the streetcars to the Castro, the free box full of goodies, the parties I've been invited to ... but these are all things I say as a knee-jerk reaction to what I assume the other person is thinking.
I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't work there. I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't feel comfortable with their bodies. I feel sorry for anyone who feels like sexuality is any way shameful.
I spend all day dancing, talking, laughing. I love getting glammed up in the dressing room.
The problem is, as always with me, is that there is no problem.
My dad thinks I work at a cafe. Make sure you wear comfortable shoes since you'll be standing all day, he says.
I have mastered wearing 8 inch heels. I do not wobble, my ankles are strong. My knees are a bit weak and my legs are sometimes bruised with ambitious moves, but that's what legwarmers are for.
Do you wear hairnets, he asks, to keep your hair out of the food? No, I wear wigs and clip-in extensions.
I love my job and I wish society was different so I could share it with him, but really, it's up to me to tell him, because the more open people are, the more society will eventually be.. I tell all my friends but parents are different... I want to make him PROUD because I've been such a fuck-up in school and being fucked up in the head (my preferred term for "mentally ill"). But really. I have my shit together. I have a job I love. I live in a city I can't stand being outside of. While I miss my friends in the valley, I do have some here I'm beginning to get close to.
I feel lucky. and it scares me. like it's so good it's about to fall apart. but really, how? i show up for work on time. i have everything under control. i think it's just because i just wrote about everything.
it's just my life, nothing to glamorize, defend, whatever. i am living it.
I lived in the foggiest part of SF, Outer Sunset, for the first two months. I moved yesterday.
So I now live in Inner Richmond. Not Richmond, but Inner Richmond in San Francisco. I didn't even know Richmond existed until people asked if I was really moving all the way out there. This is what happens when you grow up in car-dependant San Fernando Valley and places like Acton seem as far away as Pluto.
Back to Inner Richmond. It's a really nice neighborhood as far as I can tell, even though last night as I was falling asleep I heard a man yell "FAGGOT! YOU CAN... SUCK MY DICK.. FOREVER!!!!" As if that kind of afterlife would be equivalent to that one guy whose name sounds like Syphilis has to lift that rock up that mountain for eternity. Which is just like when all your dopamine receptors are burnt out and your brain doesn't have any reward system. You know.
My room is atop a street-front store-front on Geary, a sushi place called SUSHI NOW!, or Sushi Raw, I haven't really looked at it for too long. It has the triple-window set classic to San Francisco Victorians. When looking for places to live, or even just walking around the city, I always fantasied about living in one of those rooms on the street. Now that I actually do, well, I love the light and the convenience, but I didn't realize how the noise would permeate through even the double pane windows.
I might just play music all the time. It should work. I hope I don't get in trouble because I was accepted under the guise that I am not a rambunctious teenager, am going to college.
I am really happy it's a minimum one-year lease. The landlord doesn't like to go out looking for people to rent, and I sure as hell don't like looking for places to live in San Francisco.
It's kinda small but my rent is a hundred dollars cheaper than before.
And it has a door that locks.
This is Inner Richmond! I've heard three ambulances in the short time (half of yesterday to 10AM today).
And to think I almost moved to West Oakland... as a MUNI employee told me, "Honey, your REJECTION was PROTECTION, West Oakland ain't a good place to be..."
I work at The Lusty Lady Theatre in San Francisco's North Beach district. It's right next to Hustler and around the corner from the Hungry I, Garden of Eden, Roaring 20s, the Condor. It's a ways walk from the sketchier places that I won't name, but I'll just say sell drugs in private rooms and the next day your bank asks you if someone stole your ATM card and you oversleep and miss your OWN stripping stage training (but it was optional so it's okay).
I like it because there is glass. I usually say that because when I say I'm a stripper I am trying to backtrack and stop the person I told from thinking that I give lapdances. Because I don't. As I learned from my six months of massage school, I ain't into touching people.
I dance naked for four hours at a time with a ten minute break every thirty to forty minutes (the breaks work so that when one girls go off stage, another comes back from her own break to replace her and so on). The stage has three girls on at a time, two when one girl doesn't show up and we're short and we close the middle booths.
All the new girls want tattoos the first weeks they work there. After staring at your body for so long, you want more to look at. And that is the secret to why so many strippers have tattoos. Or one of them, at least.
Most of the girls who work there are lesbians and feminists and this is boring to write about because it's such a fascinating job but I feel like whenever I'm talking about it, I have to defend it. I sometimes feel guilty for liking this job. It's a sex-positive paradise full of .. just.. close bonds. It's the first time in my life I have felt a true sisterhood. We bond over talking about the guys, our lives, everything. We are naked and so we open up more. We all keep certain things private, most have complete lives as pre-school teachers and college students (one of the Madams has a PhD), but there is just something about the environment that is so wonderful. I've often had a bad day and it ends up great at work. So far the most fun I've had at a shift is when one girl started out crying in the dressing room. We ended up doing the mashed potato to Rick James "I Feel Good" and "synchronized stripping" and singing along to "the lesbian anthem" What's Up?
Because the girls are all more or less in the same boat. We are doing this thing that is socially taboo, and yet we punch in time clocks and show up for shifts on time like other jobs.
It was once referred not as a "real job". It is a real job. I felt proud of myself. I like this job. And I feel guilty for liking it because I'm not SUPPOSED to. I feel guilty for liking it because I want to share how happy it makes me, but it's socially unacceptable and other people.. I feel like they aren't in the San Francisco sex-positive bubble I am, or haven't read the books I have.. I feel like they would say I am exploiting myself, not living up to my full potential. But that's the thing. I feel like by exploiting myself I am living up to my full potential. I am still writing. I am also making use of my current youth and beauty and comfort in my own skin.
The blanket that I am sitting on smells bad and I bought a Justin Bieber toothbrush.
I've been somewhat of a total slut. I made out with five people on a staircase the other day as I was leaving for work. My gay male roommate Colton was the second best kisser. Otherwise, I have kinda forgotten how to be sexy to girls.. like when a girl comes in a booth not for the sake of novelty or with a couple, I get nervous. They are the only ones I can't look in the eye for too long. Men are easy, I don't care too much of what they think of me, if I'm their type then I know what turns them on. I have nothing to lose if they don't like me.
I can say all I want about the Lusty Lady, that there is a movie about how it was unionized called Live Nude Girls Unite! (available on Instant Netflix), how it's the world's only unionized co-op peepshow, how it has a library, a 401(k) plan, quite a few memoirs and essays written by the girls (Bare, Whores and Other Feminists, The Creamsicle), a zine, how I can sleepovernight on those 11pm-3am shifts and wake up and take the streetcars to the Castro, the free box full of goodies, the parties I've been invited to ... but these are all things I say as a knee-jerk reaction to what I assume the other person is thinking.
I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't work there. I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't feel comfortable with their bodies. I feel sorry for anyone who feels like sexuality is any way shameful.
I spend all day dancing, talking, laughing. I love getting glammed up in the dressing room.
The problem is, as always with me, is that there is no problem.
My dad thinks I work at a cafe. Make sure you wear comfortable shoes since you'll be standing all day, he says.
I have mastered wearing 8 inch heels. I do not wobble, my ankles are strong. My knees are a bit weak and my legs are sometimes bruised with ambitious moves, but that's what legwarmers are for.
Do you wear hairnets, he asks, to keep your hair out of the food? No, I wear wigs and clip-in extensions.
I love my job and I wish society was different so I could share it with him, but really, it's up to me to tell him, because the more open people are, the more society will eventually be.. I tell all my friends but parents are different... I want to make him PROUD because I've been such a fuck-up in school and being fucked up in the head (my preferred term for "mentally ill"). But really. I have my shit together. I have a job I love. I live in a city I can't stand being outside of. While I miss my friends in the valley, I do have some here I'm beginning to get close to.
I feel lucky. and it scares me. like it's so good it's about to fall apart. but really, how? i show up for work on time. i have everything under control. i think it's just because i just wrote about everything.
it's just my life, nothing to glamorize, defend, whatever. i am living it.