Rain on Robin

Adieu

2009-08-25T22:40:00.000-07:00

"I found that no genius in another could please me. My unfortunate paradoxes had entirely dried up that source of comfort."
--Goldsmith

"You were spiritually dead through your sins and failures, all the time you followed this world's ideas of living... we all lived like that in the past, and followed the desires and imaginings of our lower natures, being, in fact, under the wrath of God by nature, like everyone else."
--Ephesians 2:1-3 (Phi)

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
--Virginia Woolf

Unless a particularly remarkable addendum occurs to me at a later date, this will be my last entry in this stupid stripper blog. I have decided the sex industry and I are parting ways permanently, and not a moment too soon.

It happened like this:

After my annoyance with stripping reached a fevered pitch about five weeks ago, I decided to take a break, effective immediately. Although at that time I thought of it as more of an hiatus, in the last few days I have decided I would rather collect cans from the side of the road than accrue more bad karma by repeatedly flouting the law of "Right Livelihood" as Buddhists would see it, or court a lifestyle rife with mortal sin, as fellow Christians would term my participation in the sex industry. My conviction that I have indeed been living in an absolutely sinful state since I began accepting money for acts remotely sexual in nature over a year ago has lately become immutable, in fact. Reading over this blog disgusts me now. It seems to be floundering, semi-hysterical, devoid of integrity. It is certainly evidence of a painfully confused state of mind into which I never plan to enter again.

Anyhow, I'm done. From now on I shall sublimate, stifle or, ideally, transcend my exhibitionist/submissive impulses until such a time as a man suitable to be my husband enters the picture. Within the confines of marriage, such acts/tendencies would definitely fall under the category of expressions of "sanctified joy". If no such relationship emerges, I'll live happily, even so. I've been abstinent this long, and I can handle it as long as it's necessary-- even forever.

I know I am doing the right thing because I can pray again-- for the first time in months-- with no sense of separation between myself and the Divine. I possess the sincere conviction that through my repentance I am finally received back into the fold. Although I realize God's love is unconditional, I actively divorced myself from it through my sinful actions, and have been paying the price, consciously or no, for far too many months. Well, that's all over now.

As for what's happening in my life right now...

I've started volunteering at an animal shelter in Williamsburg. Maybe someday I'll get a foxy little pomeranian, but until then, I'll pet abandoned cats and walk monstrous mutts down Bedford Avenue. I spend so much time in quiet contemplation I find it necessary and indeed therapeutic for me to be in contact other living, breathing creatures-- yesterday I walked a saucy little puppy and hugged him when we rested on a bench, feeling his happy little heart beating, which filled me with joy.

When the quiet at home becomes deafening I get out and spend time with my beautiful friends. I've been going to a Buddhist temple in Chinatown with Pearl, and I find it very peaceful there:

I'm signing up to take some more improv classes, too, which I really enjoy.

I am also slowly regaining my ability to focus, and to write. This is a blessing I can hardly overstate. My capacity for sustained and virtuous labor seems to increase the longer I am away from the strip club. This definitely indicates that I'm making the right decision by making my hiatus permanent. It is apparent that I can only hope to pursue my literary ambitions by taking good care of myself and making my inward and outward environments stable and free from lewdness. Virginia Woolf was right-- access to a quiet room and the assurance of a decent, fixed income are the two necessary things a woman must have if she is to write fiction. Although I hardly possess a trust fund or annuity of any sort, I have no debt, and my savings will last a few more months. After that I hope to find a part-time job somewhere quiet and beautiful, and spend the remainder of the time resting or writing.

My sleep disorder is, as always, in effect, but I am trying to accept things as they are, since nothing seems to change my symptoms, least of all worry or self-reproach.

As far as men go...

The men I have dated in the last month are either inappropriately devoted to me or seem to be merely toying with me and saving the best of themselves for something or someone else. I can only imagine this has been the natural result of meeting people when my mind was in a severe state of confusion. Bad idea. Time to move on and start afresh with dignity, which should help me stop attracting perverts and other non-committal, undesirable men. On dates or shortly thereafter I sometimes still find myself trying to practice a sort of unholy emotional alchemy that is, at heart, merely romantic delusion, but I've largely learned to stop trying to transmute rejection into acceptance and frogs into princes. Instead just accept things as they are, feelings and people included. I have a lot of faith things will go well from now on whether I am single forever or a wife within the year.

Best of all, when my stubborn little brother finally comes to visit, perhaps within a month or so, I can receive him with a clean, innocent, undivided heart.

I rejoice at the thought.

Adieu

----

PS It's interesting to pray now and feel I really have joined the ranks of the formerly sinful and now repentant believers. When I feel ashamed I simply remind myself that I am in good company-- Tolstoy, St. Paul, etc. Not that one can ever be entirely free of sin...

Ah, life.

Sassy

2009-07-10T08:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I chat online with an old friend-- a former model/actor and double- Cancer sensitive type whom I met in an improv class a couple of years ago here in NY. I had quite a crush on him then (he has beautiful blue eyes and a gorgeous body), but he was oblivious and nothing developed. Now we lives on the West Coast. A few months ago we reconnected. If we lived in the same state nowadays, our friendliness and playful attraction to one another now mutually acknowledged, I'm sure we would have an interesting relationship (though I suspect never a serious one). Because we are both devoted to becoming more spiritually attuned at all times, our interactions would likely be based as much on our shared love of meditation as our slightly kinky fantasies. He knows about my no premarital sex stance, and, since he has often chosen to explore abstinence for long periods of time as well, we are on the same page about promiscuity, etc.

Every couple of months I get sassy and send him a pic or two of myself. This morning I took these:

Although possibilities are revolving on the horizon, I am not on sending-nude-pics-for-fun terms with anyone else at the moment, which is great. I'm so happy being single right now. I got asked on a couple of dates this week, but I'm not sure I want to go. Maybe I'll flip a coin.

Today I am filled with joy.

PS Had an appointment with another plastic surgeon the other day. He said he couldn't, in good conscience, touch me. To appease me he also asked a colleague and a former professor, and they agreed. Since the doctor who did my nose and *his* supervisor refused to touch me further, also, I have declared myself satisfied with my face. I'd be insane to go against the advice of five plastic surgeons who refuse to take my money. Maybe some day a less invasive means of correcting asymmetry and deviations from ideal facial proportions will be invented, and I can get myself smoothed out then. Until that day, I shall be content.

Chattel

2009-07-09T07:15:00.000-07:00

Photos taken this weekend near Madison Square Park, in the East Village and at Rockaway Beach, respectively:

I went to the beach with a friend on the 4th of July, and got a sunburn so splotchy and rash-like I decided I needed to take the week off of work. On Tuesday I went in to Tryst to show it to the manager, who gave me an infinite amount of hassle about my request. He said sunburn wasn't a "legitimate" reason for taking time off. However, in an industry where beauty and confidence are necessary to generate income, having a painful and ugly sunburn is-- obviously-- an absolutely valid reason not to be able to come in. Who would pay me for a lap dance when I felt and looked far from my best, as my body language and demeanor would no doubt reflect?

Anyway, I was treated like a liar and fined 50 dollars for my last-minute "no-show" (I had actually called in on Monday to warn the manager of my situation, but the club's policy on cancellation is giving a full week's notice or one gets fined).

"Congratulations for putting him in a bad mood," said the cashier with wide, frightened eyes. She is usually friendly to me when she's ringing me up (for the champagne sales I make and the house fee I pay, surprise, surprise) so it was news to me that she could be so cowardly and petty.

"I'm telling the truth, and I am NOT working here this week. Whatever else happens, happens," I said with a shrug.

(maybe I would expect my schedule to be more inflexible if this were a salaried office job, but then nobody would be prying into my discretionary allotment of personal off-time, for which I would be paid, rather than having to pay my employer for the privilege. I would also not have to take time off for a sunburn if I worked in an office, so the point would be moot.)

I think it's disgusting for the other adults at the strip club to run around like scared rabbits based on the whims of the manager. I was only asking for time off, something a lot of employees do in any occupation. If this audacious request sets him off like a child being denied a toy, so be it. My intention was to do the best thing for me, which I believe is-- unequivocally, and also as a universal policy-- never harmful to anyone else.

I am so tired of being treated like a dumb bitch, subject to the whims of a patriarchal system in which even the women in management try to scare the dancers into seeing things their way (which is not always the right way) and treat us like the club's chattel.

PS Last night I went out with my friend Pearl, who is dating a conservative French-Canadian chemical engineer.

"If we go anywhere, I'm driving," he said to her recently.

"Would you like me to wear a burqa while we're at it?" she responded.

Seems there's no faction of society in which men don't revel in controlling women capriciously, when the opportunity arises.

Mystery

2009-07-08T11:16:00.000-07:00

"It is the mystery which enchants, and its being is extinguished with the extinction of the necessary combination of its elements."
-- Friedrich von Schiller

I realize I've been updating this blog less frequently because the experience of being a stripper has been largely demystified for me. My adventurous mind-set has become... less so regarding the sex industry. I suppose I shall figure out what to do in the natural course of time... I'm currently taking 6 days off to try to steel myself for another unbroken stretch of work... it seems I can last about three weeks at a time without overloading, but no more than that.

Dogs

2009-07-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

I keep having dreams in which I am quasi-forcibly given one or two dogs I really don't want.

"I wanted a pomeranian puppy and no other breed," I explain in the dreams to the random person trying to foist an ugly, enormous rottweiler-mix mutt or old and putrid bulldog on me. Thereafter I am somehow convinced to dog sit for these beasts. Whether the owner is coming back or not becomes ambiguous after awhile.

PS Worst week at the strip club ever, income-wise. The people were really interesting, though... I'm sure I'll be back to earning a decent amount of money per shift next week, after all the men with money are back in town.

Sidney Crosby Stanley Cup Slumber Party

2009-06-30T21:05:00.000-07:00

I can tell my life is boring when I get crushes on random athletes en masse. This phenomenon happens approximately once a year for a month-long period or so. Another inevitable part of this cycle is the need to watch uplifting sports documentaries and interviews. Based on previous year's sports fixations, it's my informed opinion that the whole thing is a fairly accurate sign that I'm definitely not optimizing my creative potential at present. However, the phase must run its course.

I tell ya, stripping apparently drains the upward mobility and artistic impulses out of me. However, when I re-watch old Joe Calzaghe interviews it's much easier for me to stay inspired. I believe life is worth living when I watch that humble man jogging down Welsh dirt roads and training in a converted shed with his father.

And when I see Sidney Crosby (who still lives in Mario Lemieux's guest house even though he is 21 years old) all snuggled up with the Stanley Cup:

I once again believe in everything that is good and noble and true about mentorship and one generation virtuously succeeding the next. In sports, at least.

Babycakes etc.

2009-06-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

"As a Bokonist, of course, I would have agreed gaily to go where anyone suggested. As Bokonon says: "Peculiar travel suggestion are dancing lessons from God."
-- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"

Yesterday afternoon I decided to make myself as attractive as possible and set out for a little adventure with a friend. I surrendered my own objectives and simply did whatever he wanted to do. It was really fun.

I started by getting my hair washed and set, as I do every week, at a Dominican salon in my neighborhood. I think they overcharge me because I'm white, but I don't really mind. They always do a great job. I passed the time under the hairdryer reading the early short stories of Flannery O'Connor (I've been enjoying O'Connor so much lately I've had a really difficult time putting her books away when it's time to work at the strip club where reading is frowned upon).

I really wanted this purse:

I saw it in a boutique window a couple of doors down from Babycakes, a vegan bakery where I met up with my aforementioned friend. We ate red velvet cupcakes and raspberry jelly rolls made with spelt flour and agave nectar-- the only baked goods I've eaten recently due to my moratorium on white flour and refined sugar. Then we bought surprisingly good books from card tables set up on the street near NYU and rambled around the Village.

Afterward I had a date with a very nervous man I doubt I'll see again. He is smart, but far too ill at ease in his own skin for me.

Dodge

2009-06-28T19:27:00.001-07:00

I need to stop walking down my block during daylight hours on Sunday or else suck it up and go to church more often. Since Sunday services at the nearly next-door Pentecostal church I've often attended last all day, the odds I'll see a fellow congregant I know on the sidewalk are apparently 100& at any given time. Plus, since I'm seemingly the only white person ever known to attend this particular church, my fellow parishioners remember me well.

It always makes me feel guilty.

Today I ran into a deaconess I like a lot while on my way to pick up some fruit.

"You been working hard lately?" she asked, which is a kind way to inquire about my unexplained absence from the church.

"Yeah. Too hard," I responded briefly.

"I'm off all summer. I work for the Board of 'Ed, so I'm free till September." She smiled.

"Lucky lady!" I laughed and shuffled off with a smile and a backward wave, happy to see her but not exactly thrilled to have to dodge her questions in advance about the nature of my work, etc.

Rough stuff. I do it to myself.

Staal Brothers Make Me Dizzy

2009-06-27T18:20:00.000-07:00

I have a big crush on all four of the tall, blonde Staal brothers, three of whom already play in the NHL (the youngest is eligible for next season's draft). Yesterday evening I watched an interview with second-eldest Jordan Staal (who probably gets sick of all those questions about his wunderkind Penguins teammate Sidney Crosby) with the sound off while dancing on the bar stage at Tryst. I almost fell all over myself when they showed side-by-side shots of him with his gorgeous brothers. Such an overwhelming dose of masculine beauty is hard to handle while one is trying to stay balanced on 5-inch heels at the end of an 8-hour shift.

PS 2 Reading over my recent posts makes me cringe. I've been such an ungrateful whiner!!!!! No more!!!!!!

Rut

2009-06-24T16:48:00.000-07:00

The cancer lurks secure and spreading where furtiveness hides in rows of decaying brick.
-- HP Lovecraft, "The Horror at Red Hook"

My state of torpor has increased to such a degree that I woke up the past few mornings with an alarm bell going off in my mind-- a loud, urgent reminder that sloth is a sin. I feel like a dying pile of flesh, trapped in a paralyzing cycle of indecision. I have become another lost and morally diseased person in a dirty neighborhood of drug dealers and addicts, though my crisis has to do with total confusion and exhaustion, rather than addiction. I feel trapped bodily in my own home, with no ability to envision an outside world outside wider in scope or possibility than the strip club or occasional church sanctuary. Lack of vision is an imprisoning force-- when paired with almost total surcease of energy, the effect is as disgusting as it is weighty.

When I walk down the block to buy food, I encounter people, some of whom I know and like, yet I can't seem to find connections with others or a regular schedule of work manageable anymore.

"When are you coming back to the church?" a tall young man asked me Sunday as I passed him on the street in front of the Pentecostal church near my home.

"I don't know. I have no excuse for not coming in anymore. I'm just lazy." I said without inflections or emotion, neglecting to add that I also feel tainted with the shame of working in a dishonorable profession.

In short: things are bad.

I've found that people in this world who stop contributing to the greater good and become trapped in their own egoic cycles of misery tend to fall into a rapid state of despair and decay (in that order). I don't want to be one of those people.

I am praying right now for a sign. I hope I am able to find a way to contribute to this world positively, and manage to escape this rut.

PS I am trying to avoid all potentially romantic scenarios, but it seems I haven't tried hard enough. Somehow I've managed to give two men my new phone number this week, and the sound of their various texts popping up on my phone is horrible-- like a recrimination for lack of integrity. I don't want to waste anyone's time, so I don't respond. I should have never let them have my information in the first place... that's what I get for meeting people from craigslist ads and the like-- texts from fast-talking lawyers in New Jersey who want to get me drunk on Grey Goose somewhere and film location scouts trying to tempt me to see "Transformers 2" in IMAX. Really? If those are the interests of people I currently attract, I'll just wish them well and go buy some books instead. Whatever other issues may be arising in my personal life, I really am 100% content being single right now.

PS The animal that best represents my current state of being is the naked mole rat:

Stray

2009-06-23T23:04:00.000-07:00

"Cats know how to obtain food without labor, shelter without confinement, and love without penalties."
-- W. L. George

This morning I awoke to a frightening sight. The hale and glossy cat who recently started living on top of the storage shed in my back yard suddenly appeared mangy, dusty and as stiff as roadkill.

For a minute I was sure he was dead.

"Cat!" I cried, hopeful that making noise might incite him to move a bit if indeed he still lived. I was duly rewarded by a cursory--but still very welcome-- twitch of his dark tail in response.

I like seeing him every day. I highly suspect him of being charmingly naughty, but since he's a Bushwick alley cat he probably spends more time trying to keep his little head above water survival-wise than playing kittenish pranks.

I wonder where he goes when it rains?

PS I mentioned the cat to a customer at Tryst the other day.

"A cat on your storage shed?" he asked incredulously. "What, down by the crick? Where do you *live* that you have a *shed*?"

"Bushwick," I laughed.

Ah, me.

PS Why is the lawn furniture overturned? I swear it was right-side-up last week. I don't even want to know.

Highway To Heaven

2009-06-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

The dress I'm wearing today (bought in Washington Heights for 12 dollars last summer) has a lovely peacock print that somewhat reminds me of the more Rococo illustrations of Dr. Seuss:

Also:

Ever since I was a child of five I've had lingering, sorrowful memories of a particularly compelling "Highway to Heaven" episode featuring a homeless, mentally challenged boy living in a cardboard box. Forced by his tragic circumstances to steal cans of tuna from the mean old man-owned corner store in order to feed his beloved pet cat, he makes a fateful birthday wish (on a stale hamburger bun, in his box in a Skid Row alley, with candles he also shoplifted) for someone to love him, upon which an angel (Michael Landon, duh) shows up to help him make it come true.

Now. Having a few days off and no other pressing interests except painting various picture frames in one of four separate pastel colors (still have to buy new mats at Pearl tomorrow):

I decided to find it on You Tube and see if it affected me as powerfully as of yore. Oh my gosh, I watched it twice in two days and got tears in my eyes both times.

I really enjoyed it. I felt genuinely inspired to be less selfish, and to be grateful more often. Whether one views this sort of religious family drama as cheap emotional pornography or, conversely, as a highly accessible and righteous form of popular culture, if the affect on the viewer is enobling (which it was/is for me), I feel the other issues are essentially moot points. Also, the fact that Michael Landon claimed he conceived (as well as subsequently wrote, directed and starred in) "Highway to Heaven" after he made a solemn pact with God at the hospital bedside of his critically injured daughter to produce television shows that made a genuine difference if she recovered (she did), either makes him the most shameless huckster of his generation or a spiritually as well as commercially enterprising man who was simply doing his best.

The episode is called, "Alone".

Note: the children in "Highway to Heaven" seemed to be on summer vacation 99% of the time. Maybe that's because most of them were runaways, terminally ill types, etc. who never went to school anyway.

PS It looks as though the latter half of the week is going to be clear. I'm so tired of this rain-- such a record-breaking, relentless deluge is terrible for business at the strip club as well as my soul.

Underneath My Tree/Teeth

2009-06-21T14:36:00.000-07:00

I bought some adorable little drawings by Jason Sposa of Underneath My Tree (http://www.underneathmytree.com/index.html) at the Renegade Craft Fair a week or two ago. I'm really in love with his work. I think I'll buy another print or two for my mother as a birthday present, and maybe one more for myself while I'm at it.

On a totally unrelated note, I keep having recurring dreams involving tooth loss. According to the articles I've been browsing, such dreams are apparently very common. Unfortunately, not one of the various interpretations I've found regarding dreams about tooth loss is positive.

This web site (http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art10573.asp) says:

"Sometimes tooth loss dreams point to a fear of failure or embarrassment. In waking life, when people lose teeth, they often cover their mouths when talking or smiling. Is there something you want to do but are afraid of undertaking because you fear you'll look foolish if you fail? Or is there something going on in your waking life that you feel you must hide or 'cover up'?"

It seems the burden of my secret life is beginning to poison even my dreams.

I'm not very surprised.

PS I finally bought a new phone. Maybe I'll even get around to telling people I got a new phone number... eventually-ish. It's an iPhone, but this is probably the last time I'll mention that fact. People who talk about their phones or check them obsessively annoy me greatly. Most inexplicable to me is when someone grabs his or her significant other's phone and feels entitled to play with it. I can't imagine being okay with any human being checking my texts. The prospect makes me want to crack skulls, I can't lie.

Sneakers

2009-06-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

I really want some new sneakers. I feel like a brown sparrow among birds of paradise every time I cross the Williamsburg Bridge on the JMZ. Sadly, all the most fabulous, rampantly colorful ones seem to be made, at least partially, of leather.

Boo...

PS My feet hurt so badly from dancing double shifts. I'm going to see if I can find some more comfortable stripper heels around West 4th before I go back to work on Tuesday.

Love Story

2009-06-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

Today my landlord (Barry) and 'lady (Barbara), good friends of mine, came over. I baked a crumb-topped blueberry pie, and Barbara told me her plans to write a book about their love story.

She really ought to. Anytime a Peruvian Christian man and an Hasidic Jewish woman get married, the story is worth telling.

Surfing is Legal in Chicago?

2009-06-13T21:08:00.000-07:00

They recently legalized surfing in my hill-free hometown of Chicago, where even the waves are flat. I wonder if I'll see boogie boards and the whole nine when I visit this summer?

Time has a good article about it. I wonder why I can't seem to figure out how to do hotlinks or whatever anymore...

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1904261,00.html?iid=tsmodule

Blake/Soulless Seduction

2009-06-13T18:46:00.000-07:00

Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.
-- William Blake

Once again I have been reading and gazing upon the sometimes beautiful, often hellish but always visionary works of William Blake. This drawing-- "The Night of Enitharmon's Joy" struck a particular chord in me today. Enitharmon is so peaceful, even when surrounded by demons. You can tell she finds blackest night and devilry to be matters-of-course.

Thought: I refuse to stem the the occasional tide of undirected, yet radiant loving energy I feel when I'm at work. This is, perhaps, a mistake? Should I hide my light under a bushel basket even while stripping? Just a thought because:

I felt a lightning bolt of attraction for a customer yesterday evening that shook me up quite a lot. In fact, I believe it's been about a year since I felt such an instant rapport with a man-- we seemed to be on the same wavelength, instantly. Though this customer comes in most weeks, I've never had the opportunity to speak with him before. Another woman always seems to get to him first, and, because he spends most of his time upstairs, he is never on the floor for long. He wears beautiful Italian suits with high, aristocratic collars, has pleasing, symmetrical features, large, hypnotic eyes and a shockingly beautiful body.

After a few minutes of interesting conversation he bought a dance, and I stripped off my dress and ran my hands down his muscular arms, sinking briefly to my knees while looking up at him. As in a fever dream I imagined the two of us alone, and all the delicious things he might do to me as I knelt before him in such a submissive posture. It made me dizzy.

He asked me what else I do with my time, and I actually told him that I write for a feminist publication instead of my usual lie about being a student. We discussed various schools of feminist thought and social mores. In response to his query about my particular brand of feminism, I said that I equate feminism with freedom.

I looked steadily in his eyes. "I'm also very submissive."

"I know," he answered simply, the way a discerning man in a hurry (which he was) sees a watch he likes in a shop window and buys it instantly, and without fanfare.

"I know you know, because you're clearly very dominant." I suddenly found myself wanting to kiss him, which was a first for me regarding a customer.

"Yes I am," he answered with warmth but no fire. I wasn't sure if he was being a gentleman or trying to make me feel I hadn't earned it quite yet.

I smiled but did not laugh, because I could somewhat intuit that he was about to attempt to seduce me. My usual coquetry was strangely absent, as if my genuine attraction for him had stripped me of all my sham sexuality. In spite of myself I suddenly recognized that we were in agreement about something deep I didn't care to analyze. Not that it had to go anywhere, of course.

"I know you're going to say something that really surprises me," I said in the soft voice that passes as a whisper in a loud strip club, as I writhed nearly nude on his lap.

He obliged by asking me to come with him to his friends home in the Hamptons for the weekend. The train was leaving in half an hour. Of course I declined. He tried mightily to convince me, but I'd be a fool to date a customer. Especially one with money who comes in fairly often, and spend hours at a time in the champagne room with girls he likes. Why give anything to him for free?

"Well, we missed a fun opportunity, but you'll see me around again," he added with a smile as our dance and my shift ended simultaneously.

"Was that the royal we?" I asked rhetorically and with playful scorn, suddenly feisty and unwilling to be included against my will in his statement.

He smiled.

"Have a lovely weekend," I said in parting as I added his money to the roll on my ankle garter and bounded downstairs to get dressed in my street clothes. Suddenly I wanted to get away from him and the strip club and blot out the memory of all the other overwhelming propositions and soulless seduction attempts by strange men I'd fielded lately. None of them meant anything for more than five minutes, after all.

I decided everything about Tryst is meant to be forgotten after my work day/night ends, and I mean to be more assiduous in my efforts to do so from now on. Nothing that happens there is going to carry an ounce of weight in my real life anymore. Other nighttime fantasies pale in the morning light, why should not those I create as a stripper follow suit?

(Scary aside-- a super-creepy customer kept trying to convince a dancer from work to go home with him. "No." she said perpetually. When he asked why, she said: "Because you might chop me up in a million pieces and throw me in the East River." He replied, "No-- I'd only chop you up into three pieces.")

Spoooooooky.

PS Afterward at a restaurant some asshole construction worker sat next to me, got absolutely in my face and wouldn't stop hitting on me no matter what I said.

"It's because I'm black, isn't it?" he asked.

I gave him a withering look. He was undeterred.

"You got a boyfriend?" he asked. He was loathsome. I imagined cutting his tongue out with a scalpel and rubbing his fat, ugly face in his own blood.

"Do *YOU* have a boyfriend?" I asked in return, wishing someone would come and shoot him nobly on my behalf. Nobody did, so I left, as he unleashed a loud torrent of profanity and insults so disgusting everyone turned around to look. Awesome.

I'm so full of anger right now. Recounting the experiences make me feel that I was genuinely abused, and that I hate life. At least I can be grateful enough to say this is the first encounter I've had with such an awful stranger since I moved to New York two years ago.

PS2 I still haven't gotten a new phone. I don't care anymore. I don't want to talk to anyone right now.

Exotic

2009-06-12T00:10:00.001-07:00

Random thoughts:

1.) I'm not an exotic dancer. My dancing is extremely conventional-- I just do it semi-nude.

2.) I will not subject anyone to the fascism of my expectations.

3.) I am completely content.

4.) Among the many types of lawyers I have met in the past couple of years, I find I have the most rapport with litigators. They are really ostentatious and usually have a creative streak a mile wide, even if it is generally of the jazz and Miro-loving variety I never do understand.

5.) I want this adorable pomeranian puppy I encountered in a pet store near Union Square. One nearly identical to it will do in absentia.

Fattened Tentacle's Grasp

2009-06-10T08:28:00.001-07:00

Anthony was glad he wasn't going to work on his book. The notion of
sitting down and conjuring up, not only words in which to clothe
thoughts but thoughts worthy of being clothed--the whole thing was
absurdly beyond his desires.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Beautiful and Damned"

Yesterday I decided to absolutely wallow in indolence in hopes of tiring of it as quickly as possible. I told myself I didn't need to write anything, ever again, hoping that some noble instinct in me would rebel against such wasteful drivel, break through my facade of indifference and spur me to write, after all. I was surprised that such a tactic did indeed, almost immediately (well, say after 7 hours) enable me to wriggle out of sloth's fattened tentacle's grasp and begin a short story. SIGH. Well, finally! My cup runneth over with gratitude.

Tonight I have to work at the strip club from 5-1, and it's raining AGAIN! The amount of rain we've been getting lately is really disheartening for those of us who depend on clear weather to attract customers. I really want to ditch work, but I need to earn some money this week-- Tuesday was awful, and I only worked one day last week, so I can't justify staying home again. I'm beginning to resist going in to work every day now. Well, until I attract a new source of income, I will stick with stripping rather than be unemployed.

Ah, well, I'm so grateful that I began a promising bit of writing that I will try not to let my other occupation get me down. I will make it as fun and profitable for myself as possible, and look forward to finishing my story this weekend.

Dreams

2009-06-08T14:33:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a dream that I had a party, and someone left a small bottle full of LSD one could only use by means of an eyedropper (as actual eyedrops) in my medicine chest as a present.

I shrugged ("I've avoided drugs all this time, and I'm miserable anyway. Oh, why not?" I thought) and saturated an eye with harsh liquid LSD. Very little happened. I kept anxiously waiting for the hallucinations to begin; however, the outlines of a few prosaic domestic objects getting wavy was the only change I noticed. It was a really anticlimactic dream.

Oh, and for posterity it's worth mentioning that I constantly dream of movie theaters. It's been this way for years. Sometimes I just stop by for popcorn. They always let me in to get it. I wonder if it would be like that in the waking world, if I tried?

Lately I have also had quite a few disturbing dreams about my teeth falling out.

PS I really want to have a party. When I tally up all the holidays I was either too ill, depressed or stressed out to celebrate this year (my birthday, Easter, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, New Year's Eve) I can hardly believe it. So pathetic. Maybe I'll have a belated housewarming or tea party/bunch for my estranged girlfriends. Any excuse to bake pretty little treats will do, honestly, especially now that my house is finally fit to show other people. I find the prospect really exciting, especially if I get to buy a new dress and shoes also.

Acedia

2009-06-08T11:26:00.001-07:00

"To the "virtuous" person (by which is meant the person seeking integrity) no value is attached to happiness that involves non-virtuous means. But the solitary by nature of his or her disengagement from the world and society has a very low threshold for non-virtue. Put another way, they have high expectations and standards for what should be considered good and worthy in life."
--Kant on Acedia

Ah, Kant, you sting my sinner's heart with truth.

Acedia, as defined by various dictionaries secular and otherwise I am too indifferent to name specifically, is:

The spiritual paralysis of the powers of the soul.

or:

A state of restlessness and inability either to work or to pray

My sense of equanimity has returned, attended by a listlessness I little thought the happy recession of my misery would occasion. I decided it's probably acedia, really, an amorphous state of spiritual ennui omitted as one of the Seven Deadly Sin after it was apparently judged to be too indistinct to be used as a measuring stick of personal accountability of the same magnitude as the the other watchwords of moral offense that DID make the cut-- sloth, lust, gluttony, etc.

Excellent article about it here: http://www.hermitary.com/solitude/acedia.html

My week off was spent in quiet contemplation, solitude and very pleasant shopping trips that felt a bit like reconnaissance missions until I told myself-- for once-- to stop being so hesitant and buy everything I needed without allowing myself a return trip. My home is finally decorated well enough that its state no longer preys upon my mind. I am satisfied with it for now, FINALLY.

Yesterday I went to the annual Renegade Craft Fair in McCarren Park, and bought my little brother another Squidfire shirt (I have a bunch and buy them for him regularly as well):

http://www.squidfire.com/

I'm going to start laying aside little presents for his visit. I needed this time off to regroup so that I can really work for the next few weeks-- I don't want to do so after he arrives. I'm not sure how to time my plastic surgery yet... guess I'll figure that out when I have the last little bit of money for it saved. No stripping allowed when he is in the picture, that's for sure.

PS Have not checked my voicemail or texts in about 10 days. I'll fax my phone replacement form to the insurance company tomorrow morning and finally get a new phone-- I'm starting to actually miss chatting with people. Well, my brother, anyway.

I Should Do the Hunting

2009-06-03T19:06:00.000-07:00

The other day at Tryst I had a conversation about love with Rachel, a brunette Russian girl with porcelain skin and lush curves. Her flesh seems as fertile as a newly ploughed and loamy field, and she looks dewy- sweet as a girl her age (20) ought to, although young strippers who actually look youthful are quite rare, drugs, stress etc. being factors.

Our conversation took place at the bar stage in the front of the club, as she shifted listlessly from one foot to the other and gripped the pole in the center for support.

(I swear, I must be one of the only women who even bothers to dance at the bar-- everyone else either stands or does the least energetic little shake imaginable.)

I sat in the plush red chair at the foot of the little stage and nodded up at her as we spoke of her probable move to the West Coast.

"My boyfriend is my equal in everything. But if I move to California, he won't follow me. I would follow him to the ends of the Earth! What is wrong with some men, to let the girl they say they love get away so easily always, not even to trying..."

Her English is expressive, if not always grammatically correct.

"I know exactly what you mean," I said. "If you were my girlfriend I'd camp out on your doorstep if you ever threatened to leave me."

"Thank you! I'd do same for you! But if a girl does it, it just looks silly. Makes me wish I was a boy! I should do the hunting in relationship, but it doesn't pay off," she sighed.

Sometimes it's hard to hold off really going after a man one wants. Fighting back the impulse used to keep me up at night, up until a few years ago when I realized no man likes it a bit, and was ever after able to largely let it go.

PS On the walk to work yesterday I ran into a dj friend I haven't seen in a few years. Although we once knew one another fairly well, he didn't even recognize me at first glance. I can't really blame him-- I've lost 25 lbs, had a nose job, grown out my hair, stopped dying it black and gotten it straightened since last we met. However, *he* looked exactly the same, which is to say handsome, charming, and glowing with health. I used to have quite a crush on him, in fact, although I felt only friendliness toward him this time around. Crush or no, I missed that guy-- he's a genius musician and a true gentleman as well. It was nice to hug him and once again see the way his brown eyes light up the way they always do when he talks about his music. He told me his studio is in my neighborhood...

I've known him since I was practically a kid. I wonder what he would say if I told him I'm stripping?

Who cares, I guess.

"What are you doing over here?" he asked, for few bohemian types of our sort hang out in Tribeca aimlessly (he was going to the bank).

"Walking down the street," I shrugged.

I should have said:

"Eating the fruit of forbidden knowledge. It's my thing right now."

It would have been more honest.

PS 2 Tonight I watched some anime and found myself sighing wistfully at the appealing romantic silliness of it.

dialogue sample:

"All you need to do is shut up and be loved by only one person, me."

I wanna say that to someone someday, but I'm not enough of a sociopath. The only boundaries I don't respect are my own.

It Only Takes One

2009-06-02T06:14:00.000-07:00

I'm psyching myself up to get ready for another day shift at the strip club, but it's not easy. Luckily, after today I have arranged to take the rest of the week off. I need seven days of peace and quiet so badly I could scream. I hear the morning rain pattering against my window, which means business will probably be slow. But, as a fellow dancer told me the other day:

"It only takes one."

Which is to say it only takes one man with money to make one's day or week profitable. My ideal sort of customer is interesting as well as generous-- hopefully such a person such will stop in today.

A thought occurred to me just before falling sleep last night:

Service to idealism is a fountain of youth; service to materialism is a sepulcher of death.

I'll spend the next 30 minutes in meditation, then set off to expose myself.

Shopping/Perfect Strangers

2009-05-31T20:13:00.000-07:00

Even though I feel like the above Christian Krohg painting, I went shopping again today.

Looking at the various strangers waiting with me in the Essex station, I thought:

"I love you all. Bless you."

Sometimes it's so easy to love strangers. From afar (in terms of familiarity, not proximity), humans seem so vulnerable, with unmistakable insecurities no different from one's own. However, this doesn't mean they are really flawed. Nobody is less than whole, I believe-- it's only our observing ego and limited physical senses that falsely deem them so.

In comparison to the often-judgemental (despite my best efforts) manner in which I relate privately to others of my acquaintance, the way I view people I don't know is often ideal-- they are, in my estimation, perfect strangers. After hello it's all downhill, I usually find, but before then!-- each person is an unbroken vista of perfection and possibility. That familiarity breeds contempt is an unfortunate notion many have expressed before me, yet I still wish-- foolishly, perhaps-- that nobody ever felt so.

Anyway, although I am assiduously saving money for plastic surgery, apparently my need to buy home decor trumps all. I am so happy to be nearing the finish line in terms of making my house a lovely little nest that I just can't bear to stop now. Also, since I spend so much time in my house-- especially my bed-- the half-finished state of my surroundings is beginning to drive me mad. So. If my nip and tuck is delayed by a couple of weeks, so be it.

From my favorite Indian curio store on Second Avenue I bought a pretty cotton bedspread and a white, wicker-trimmed mirror missing half its curlicues (it wanted to come home with me, what can I say?) and, by a really Herculanean effort, managed to shlep the heavy thing all by myself from the LES to my home in Brooklyn. I suppose I could have gone with a friend or date, but I didn't want to see anyone. At all. I'd rather just take care of everything by myself right now.

Tomorrow I'm going back to that store to pick up a few pillow shams and some fabric for my bedroom wall. I need two goes at everything in life, it seems, including shopping excursions. I love to haggle with the proprietors of the store. It's so fun, in fact, that I'll be happy to do it for the second day in a row.

My body is starting to go limp now and then in the afternoons, especially if I leave my house. I feel faint and dizzy often. Lately my ankle sort of dips mysteriously and dangerously now and then when I dance. This week I almost lost my balance twice. If this is the onset of cataplexy, as I think it may be, I am in big trouble.

That's ok.

I have few ambitions left to be thwarted.

Is this despair or the inevitable malaise of maturity?

Actually I think malaise is totally avoidable, and the reality of the situation is I'm very ungrateful, and feeling the well-deserved negative affects of refusing to recognize my blessings.

"Have a good day, sweetie!" says the stranger as he exits the train.

"You made me joyful," the man writes in his email.

"I miss you so much." another man says via text.

I respond to none of them, though I am lonely, lonely, lonely.

So much adoration, yet they all run away when I don't have sex with them. For me, romance seems like one big exercise in futility, so I will be a really good hermit instead. At least I know I can excel in that capacity.

Locked Out

2009-05-31T05:25:00.001-07:00

When we locked up the house at night,
We always locked the flowers outside
And cut them off from window light...
The flowers were out there with the thieves.
--Robert Frost

Friday night I practically kicked down my own front door trying to get my downstairs neighbors to hear me and let me in. It seems my keys fell out of my pocket at work, unbeknownst to me until I arrived home, upon which I proceeded to pound and then kick the door, trying to make enough racket to be heard.

I've rarely felt so pathetic. There's something about making an extraordinary effort to be let into one's own residence that makes one feel like a beggar-- as though the primary comfort and security of hearth and home were suspect of being as capable of cupidity and caprice as a lover of the inconstant sort...

This doesn't surprise me. I feel so separated from love, God, other people, my own emotions, my family-- life itself, really-- that the door churlishly deciding (I'm convinced!) to play its part in the latest miserable tableau on the stage of my life is far from shocking.

When paradise within is a locked gate, surely one's own terrestrial front door following suit is only natural. I suppose I shall awaken tomorrow to find my bed has collapsed. "No rest for the wicked" and all that...

Eventually I was let in by Senora Maria, the squat, redheaded mother of my close friend who owns the house and rents it to both of us. Her shrill voice generally annoys me greatly, as does the way she inevitably refers my very-occasional queries as a matter of course to my friend, never mentioned by name, but called simply and with weirdly smirking pride,"My son" (She's from Peru, and still definitely subscribes to its patriarchal belief system) but I still felt quite badly about scaring her by kicking so hard at the door that she had fear in her eyes when she opened it.

After all, the prospect of forced entry is enough to give one a heart attack--
ESPECIALLY in this scary part of the hood at night. Ah, Bushwick.

Block

2009-05-28T19:59:00.000-07:00

I polled a friend of mine who is devoted and admirably focused on his stand-up comedy career abut my own inability to write anything but this blog lately.

We discussed it via IM:

him: It's funny-- right before I start writing stuff I get bored with my own act and start not doing so well. There's this subconscious block, but I work though it and make something new. I think you're going through the same thing, and will come out of it the same way.

me: Could be. The thunderheads loom ominously, the rain comes down, and then the sun shines and one can make hay as diligently as before.

him: Is that a Bible verse?

me: Nooo I just made it up.

him: You should've written the Bible. Maybe in a past life you did, and now you feel like nothing can live up to that. Sorry, I've been getting into Carl Jung lately.

He's a very spiritual person. I'm very happy we're friends.

Everything Is Easy

2009-05-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the reminder, Derek Erdman.

I miss living next door to you and your gallery/studio in Chicago.

Bye Bye Megan/Sanctified Joy vs Carnal Knowledge

2009-05-28T16:26:00.000-07:00

"People are endlessly making up fictions... implying that the whole of nature is as crazy as they are."
-- Spinoza, "Treatise on Theology and Politics"

"Oh, how beautiful has your harlot been... Green was grass, and fresh was the flower, the bay tree spread itself, and the hawthorn, but the time is coming of fading; the flower will fade, and the grass will wither, and the whoredom and the enchanter must come to judgment."
--George Fox

I've been reading the doctrinal books of George Fox, who founded the Quaker religion. I want to go to a Quaker service, which is to say I want to sit in a room with other Christians and be quiet.

Megan moved back to Utah today. Earlier, she gave me a few things of hers, including this bamboo plant, which I like very much:

Before she left, she and I discussed being flush with spring fever, and how we have both been struggling not to pounce on cute boys on the subway, etc. lately. My sleep disorder has been making day to day living a challenge the last couple of days, but even severe exhaustion doesn't prevent me from imagining being entwined with a beautiful stranger I've yet to meet, his silken skin beneath my fingertips, biting my lip as he slips my ankles over his shoulders... sigh.

After my date with that Marine last weekend, I felt a few delayed ripples of lust wash over me while riding the J Train home. I shook my head and tried to distract myself with other random thoughts, which worked. After awhile, that is.

I thought about finding a date for this weekend in a normal way (ie not at the strip club), but I can't face the reality of dating at all. When I think about how much I dislike the way I look and how pointless my recent forays into intimacy have been, the daunting thought of trying again stops me in my tracks. In fact, I reject myself outright in advance, and do not care to involve another party in agreement, nor, conversely, dispute someone with a dissenting opinion of my looks.

In fact, I suppose I really shouldn't date till after I get my last little bit of surgery. Or maybe ever again. Nothing lasting or worthwhile ever seems to come of it, after all, and I hate wasting my time or anyone else's.

The one thing that makes me question really giving up the pursuit of a romantic relationship entirely and forever, is that I have a resource at hand, namely my young body, which is, except at work, being completely wasted-- in its prime of potency and ability to give pleasure, no less. I hate to squander the ability to love and satisfy a partner on a physical level, though it would be a pointless endeavor if said enjoyment stemmed from the purely sensual variety of love, rather than the "sanctified joy" that has always been my idea of heavenly sexual union. Lord knows I don't need to wrack up any more carnal knowledge, thank you very much.

And yet, here I am, a virgin, and so sick of talking about it as well as my career as a stripper that I bet I'll spend the weekend reading the Bible and buying some new shoes with lucite heels for work instead of going out, even with a friend...

Stripping is starting to absolutely overwhelm me. I feel as though I'm drowning.I'm going to take next week off if humanly possible. I need to think. I need to pray. I need to get away from that strip club for a minute.

PS Tonight I'm sad. I feel overwhelmed and completely cut off from reality, whatever that means. I'm lonely, but not in the way the presence of another human being can assuage or even touch. Faith and I also seem to have parted ways for the evening, but I cannot mourn our separation because I do not care enough to do so. In short, nothing matters...

PS 2 I wish I had someone-- father, mother, husband, etc. to take care of me. My friendships are wonderful, but they are generally not familial, and family is what I want so much right now. I could cry, I feel so separated from any sort of unconditional love. I feel pitifully abandoned, even as I acknowledge that my emotional state of starvation is self-imposed.

I must not be giving love. Otherwise it would flow to me in return. Although I know this misery is but a shallow fiction written in an artfully shaky hand by my own overly dramatic imagination, I can't seem to avoid believing in it for now.

I am so very unhappy I don't even know what to do. If I could just wake up I'm sure I could figure something out, but I can't.

I am so tired I can barely lift my head from the pillow to get up and turn off the light...

Civic Duty

2009-05-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

"I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion,
Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them?
Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you. "
--Walt Whitman *

Interestingly enough, as soon as I began writing and thinking quite a bit about Jonathan Knight in his unbearably handsome and sensitive youth, I randomly met a tall, sweet, 21-year old Marine who looks quite a bit like him, although his skin is slightly darker-- a luscious combination of honey and olives. Like myself, said Marine (let's call him Alessandro) is also from Chicago, with grandparents who emigrated from Italy. He was here in NY for Fleet Week, aptly named because he is due back in North Carolina by the 28th...

On Saturday night we spent the most sweetly romantic four or five hours I have, perhaps, ever shared with another human being, appreciated by me even more because he risked quite a lot of punishment to sneak off and be (relatively) alone with me (it is mandatory for Marines to travel in groups of no less than four). Unfortunately, due to other restrictions he had to stay near the Times Square area, but we sat quietly together and held hands in Bryant Park, ate Korean barbecue, and went to my favorite candy shop. He utterly refused to eat anything there. Barring the times when my brother and his friends (who are professional athletes) were in training for a big competition, I have rarely been in the presence of another human being in such sparkling good health, and so disciplined in terms of his physical well-being. He was also innocent and sweet-- even angelic and ethereal, despite his two long tours of Iraq.

Indeed, I never met a person who was so tabula rasa. I felt I had nothing to fear from him, ulterior motive-wise. We were simply attracted to one another and feeling the romance of spring stirring in our young hearts. It was delicious.

Upon leaving Bryant Park we passed the building which clandestinely houses the old dungeon where I used to work I saw a zaftig girl with punk-rock highlights coming down the stairs. It was very obvious to me what she was, although I didn't know her personally. I paused, smiling, and told him to look at her as she passed.

"She's a dominatrix." I said, and explained my six month stint as a domme. When I shared some of the gory details of the medical torture sessions I had often conducted, he replied:

"I suppose you wouldn't have much trouble killing someone, then."

"No." I admitted, remembering the blood that had spattered my vinyl naughty nurse's outfit and the rush of dopamine I'd often felt pulling large-gauge needles out of a willing victim's flesh.

However, to satisfy my conscience, I added:

"Although it would have to be in the name of a worthy cause, not that I can think of one..."

"It's the same for me. I don't enjoy killing, but I'm not afraid to do it in the name of the greater good." he said without bravado. He'd put a bayonet through someone's throat before, he then mentioned in passing.

It's a funny thing. I do not believe in war, or murder, yet I have joyfully engaged in many acts of violence. Really, all such acts are equal in concept; the only difference is in the degree of expression. So who am I to judge a Marine, or any other soldier, for the sin of murder? Perhaps I am little better, though I fancy myself to be so because I made such choices at my own discretion, rather than at the behest of a commanding officer.

Outwardly angelic, yet both capable of bloody deeds, we had so much common, did Alessandro and I. I suppose it's a far from unheard-of combination of traits, although I rarely seem to encounter it in a man.

"Why did you join the Marines?" I asked him, suddenly curious.

"My mother has an incurable disease. So I wanted to fight alongside her..." he answered. My heart stirred. What a sweetheart.

"Why do so many men in the military get married at such a young age?" I wanted to know next.

"I'm not sure. It's so difficult to see your girlfriend any other way, sometimes the only way to maintain a relationship is getting married. And some guys do it for the bump in pay, although I can't imagine making a promise that big for a reason like that."

I hugged him about a dozen times for that one.

He told me when he's out of the Marines, he expects to join the SWAT team in Chicago, for he's never been "book smart" and doesn't feel college is right for him.

We met up with a warm acquaintance of mine to watch the Matt Serra/Matt Hughes UFC fight at the Playwright's Tavern in Times Square. I was introduced to his girlfriend, who seemed nice. This acquaintance is a brilliant actor, comedian and improviser I'd like to know better, although I felt a little strange when, after we parted so I could walk my date back to his friends, thereby to depart for their ship, I received a text, referencing my virginity, that said:

"For God's sake, don't lose it to a serviceman." which I thought was funny at first, if only it hadn't been eventually followed, despite my lack of response, by:

"I'm serious. Kiss him if you need to but don't be silly."

Wow. How weird and bossy!!! Not even a best friend would send me something like that. I wondered if he was being overprotective or had some other motivation. I never understand men.

Anyway, I walked my Marine down seven crowded, glittering, neon-lit blocks back to his meet-up spot, parting in front of the subway with an unavoidable sense of finality that indicated the Universe had somehow declared we wouldn't see one another again in New York, despite his most ardent wishes or mine. A little girl snuggled in the arms of her father passed by as we began our good-byes.

"She looks so sleepy and adorable!" I gushed.

"Like someone else I know" he said, surrounding me protectively in his strong arms. I was so overwhelmed with joy and gratitude at having met him that I kissed him a hundred times or so and bounced down the subway stairs, sending him off with a wave and, characteristic of me, no backward glances.

He couldn't get liberty to spend any more time hanging out over the holiday weekend, but I did get a text that said:

"On a serious note, I think I may be having serious feelings for you".

SERIOUS.

He hardly ever even sees women, so I can't take it to heart. The life of an active-duty Marine is often lonely, and I'm sure I could have been almost anyone...

I believe we'll keep in touch, but I don't think we're meant to settle down together, although having an unbelievably handsome and loving husband who is gone for all but major holidays would be a perfect arrangement for me.

Ciao, Alessandro... maybe I'll see you in Chicago on the Fourth of July.

PS I'm convinced we had the most innocent date a Marine and stripper ever had. Ever.

PS2 He'll be off to Afghanistan by the end of the year. I hope he comes back.

* This quote seems kind of mean, but I'm feeling very unattached personally toward all men just now. In my mind they are turning from a seething, unmanageable, problematic mass into a harmless collective vessel for experiments of Virtue and experience.

So It Goes

2009-05-26T06:25:00.000-07:00

Whoever showed too much fight, and denied her lover,
He held her clasped high to his loving heart,
And said to her: ‘Why mar your tender cheeks with tears?
As your father to your mother, I’ll be to you.’

She, who is virgin, who hates Cupid’s darts,
Gives people many wounds, has many to give.
-- Ovid, "The Art of Love"

Spring is in the air, and, while I am aware this is a wonderful time to fall in love, with my annual round of April/May romantic try/fails now ostensibly behind me, I am settling in for another go at being creatively productive instead. I know the shape of my ideal relationship, and since it is not to be found at present, I shall therefore set my hand to the plough artistically, and be very grateful I have life and energy enough to share my love in another form.

The boon of maturity is perspective with neither rancor (which is, as Ortega y Gasset says, "An outpouring of a feeling of inferiority") nor regret.

Example:

In a very pleasant catch-as-catch can sort of way, I was dating a funny, broad, stunningly honest, good-natured person for a month and a half or so until, riding with him on the subway Sunday night, I realized, in a flash of insight, that it probably just isn't going to work out for the following reasons:

1.) The only relationship talk we ever had was sparked by his declaration that he "Didn't want anything serious". I said that was fine, no harm done, but that we'd never see one another again, since that's not what I need (no rush of course, but eventually an exclusive relationship is what I want), upon which he took what he said back. The whole thing made me feel depressed. "I'd like to keep sleeping with other women" is not the ideal sentiment I'd like to hear from a man when he is snuggling in my bed with me. I don't say,"No, no, no" to dozens of men a week (a habit formed long before I worked in the sex industry) to throw away my love and attention on a man who is still definitely, actively, enthusiastically weighing his other sexual options. I know it's sometimes difficult to be with me, considering my refusal to have sex. That's why my partner has to be sure of his feelings. Otherwise it's just a mutual waste of time, and I refuse to knowingly squander time or any other valuable thing. It seems sinful.

2.) His friends came first, in terms of resources and consideration. I would have been satisfied with a 60-40 split for the present, considering there are more of them than me, and they're already proven to be loyal and supportive, whereas any newcomer (namely me) is inevitably on probation for quite awhile. However, that wasn't the case at all. I certainly gave him as much consideration as my other friends and dates, never less. This one stings, I must admit-- it's a deep dig that affects a soulful part of my being, rather than my superficial ego. I guess it comes down to feeling, subconsciously, "You're not as important to me as the other people I like." Which manifested in practical terms as him saying, ""I have to save money, because my friends are coming to town next week." (meaning: so of course I'm not spending any on you, although, of course, it could be any resource, you come last, this is the precedent, and I'm setting it). Really? Red flag, full stop, very hurtful, unacceptable. I've re-arranged my whole schedule around him many times, and used my very last bit of energy to make our time together sweet for him. Maybe I didn't always succeed, but I did try.

3.) He will let me go without a bit of protest, I feel sure, even though he knows where I live and everything.

4.) I'm sure I did more things to make it an impossible situation also, starting with ever believing I am capable of attracting a loving relationship while I'm stripping.

I sound like a whiner (we had a nice time together, it wasn't forever, but what is? the end), so I'm cutting myself off, and devoting the rest of my morning to baking cupcakes and hanging pictures in my apartment. Some of them are sort of heavy, but I'll surely manage. After all, neither love nor manual labor universally require a partner in crime. As surely as a person can harmonize with the infinite, expansive joy that is true love-- with or without another human being-- so can a single girl make her home beautiful solely with her own capable hands if she so desires.

As Vonnegut said, "So it goes"...

PS Back to the strip club tomorrow. I don't want to go!

PS2 I already hung these shelves:

PS 3 Re-reading the state of affairs with this boy, I am shocked I let things go this far. I really seem like a sucker, ah well, live and learn.

Hair

2009-05-25T06:28:00.000-07:00

Goodbye (for now), track weave...

PS When my extensions were clipped off and my hair was unbraided, I couldn't stop scratching my long-hidden scalp. The sensation was so unbelievably wonderful I practically purred like a cat. It's a shame I don't have a boyfriend because my hair can finally be pulled without reservation again.

PS 2 Although I have quite a backlog of significant (to me) experiences from the last couple of weeks I really ought to write about, I believe I'll save all that till tomorrow. Or another day.

PS3 I wonder if my earnings will take a dive now that my hair is so much shorter. Ah, stripping...

Jonathan Knight/Dead Fathers

2009-05-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

When I was a child I used to have a huge crush on Jonathan Knight of New Kids on the Block. I admitted this to no one, of course. Tellingly, the only figures in popular culture I would openly cop to admiring/adoring were:

1.) Shirley Temple
2.) General Patton
3.) Punky Brewster
4.) Bret Hart
5.) Saint Bernadette

About eight years ago I saw Mssr. Knight on Oprah Winfrey, having a panic attack and explaining his lifelong struggle with stage fright, depression, etc. I fell in love all over again. He is precisely the neurotic flavor of man I find most fascinating: talented, attractive and totally at the mercy of his fluctuating, punishingly intense emotions. On some instinctive level I probably recognized his issues all along, and, indeed, liked him primarily because of them; after all, I tend to be attracted to artistic people with depression/mood disorder issues as significant and longstanding as mine, even on a seemingly superficial celebrity crush level.

So. Lately I've been wearing this red enamel heart-charm necklace with Jon Knight's name emblazoned on it (bought on Ebay 5 years ago). Almost nobody notices. Even when I point it out, no one seems to care, sadly. I really want to see New Kids on the Block in concert. However, I don't have a single friend or acquaintance here in New York who would be super jazzed over the prospect of going with me. Everyone I know here has painfully good taste. Booooring. I need to make a new friend who shares some of the same guilty pleasures I do... come one, now, we can't go to Gemma and Film Forum all the time!

Today a repeat customer with red hair and freckles took me to the champagne lounge for a couple of hours. He recommended some P.G. Wodehouse works I always meant to read but never got around to checking out. Then he told me his father died Monday. It seemed sad. He didn't talk much about it, but apparently they were close.

"Tell me something good," he whispered in my ear.

After a moment's pause, I said:

"You are obviously a kind-hearted person, without any karmic roadblocks or sharp edges. I can tell you treat people well, and that means, without a doubt, you will receive the treatment same in return. You're going through a sad but very inevitable human experience right now, but I truly foresee a very happy life for you otherwise."

This seemed to satisfy him. I liked him when I met him the week before, and I liked him all the more after he spent a thousand dollars on me. Being in the prolonged presence of his grief, however, was not without its after-effects. A palpable veil of misery had been draped over me physically and emotionally. I felt as though I'd absorbed some of it by osmosis. The unpleasant sensation lingered the rest of the evening, but I shook it off by the time I stepped off the train back at home in Brooklyn.

Sometimes I wish I made less of a sincere effort to connect with customers on a genuine level, but it's my inevitable M.O. at the strip club or anywhere else.

I'm such a Pisces...

My own estranged father's last act after getting diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor (he was dead within a month of finding out about it, although the tumor had, in all probability, been growing clandestinely/insidiously in his brain for more than a decade) was to cut my brother and I out of his will and donate his body to medical science. My mother maintains that his dying acts simply proved the tumor made him insane. I think it just affirmed that he was an asshole...

No Show, Not Quite

2009-05-19T13:39:00.000-07:00

"An American woman who respects herself," said Mrs. Westgate, turning to Beaumont with her bright expository air, "must buy something every day of her life."
-- Henry James, "An International Affair"

This morning, for the first time in over a week, I truly woke up-- felt the wet carpet of torpor roll back and could once again embrace the prospect of living with a sense of renewed vigor, joy and energy.

The first order of business was to get my track weave washed and set. Sadly, I ended up spending twice as long as usual-- over two hours!-- in the local Dominican beauty shop due to length of time it took to dry out the moisture trapped in my too-thick under-braiding (note to self, never go to that African hair-braiding salon for extensions again). The braids under my weave are still a little wet, in fact, and smelling musty. Nasty-- I can't wait till after the holiday to get this weave taken out. I want to get the last bit of Barbarella mileage out of it this week before I go back to having short hair for a bit, though. It's good for business, if not my peace of mind. Or scalp.

My long salon delay ensured that, since I was more than an hour late, I had to pay the same 50 dollar fine at work as if I was a total no-show. Seems pretty unfair, but every rule for dancers is ultimately made for the benefit of the club, and they rarely cut anyone slack whatsoever. I took the train into Manhattan to explain my salon issue to the manager and pay it in person as well as to see if it was worth my while to stay and dance that day, fine or no. However, I just couldn't bear to get dressed and finish my shift, somehow. Instead, I scheduled myself to work the next three days in a row, sigh. I really made a particular effort to set things straight and be a responsible employee, but it's a losing battle when nobody ever believes anything one says, and almost everybody in a managerial position is a fucking bully, jerk or totally forgetful. NO SUPERVISOR I'VE EVER MET IN THIS INDUSTRY IS NICE AFTER ONE'S FIRST WEEK. EVER.

Note: this is the first time I've ever been late for work at Tryst and I didn't even get one iota of a break, nor did I expect one. Treating employees as disposable, to put it mildly, is S.O.P. in every strip club I've ever known.

Afterward, blinking on the sidewalk outside the club, and as happy as a dove who had flown her cage, I sat in the shady, mossy graveyard at nearby St. Paul's for a little while, ignoring Ground Zero a few hundred feet away as well as every other thing that reminded me that I was in the middle of an enormous city or ever had to work again.

Then I took a meandering walk down Broadway, ending up not quite by chance in one of my favorite stores, the mega-colorful French novelty shop, Pylones, and bought a few little things for myself:

These little plates are so cute I immediately felt compelled to have a romantic/fun picnic somewhere with a friend/date. It didn't happen. Day jobs make spontaneous daytime jaunts difficult for most other people I know. Booooooo. Plus my cell phone is really iffy right now, and I'm kind of loath to get a new one just yet. I like the idea of being progressively incommunicado, at least for awhile...

When I finally got home I called to book a plastic surgery consultation for next week... I can't wait to finish saving up for these little cosmetic procedures and get them over with so I can treat myself to shopping excursions more often, hopfully with my little brother by my side. Although I suppose I'll have to stop working when he's around, so money might be a problem then, sigh.

I was so happy not to go to work today my heart was absolutely singing. Maybe this means I'm in the wrong line of employment?

What else should I do with myself, though? Be my own housewife? Run away to Alaska? Marry for money? My rent is only 400 dollars a month, though, better marry for love. Eventually. Or never?

Who knows, maybe I'll die tomorrow.

Ah, I want to go on a picnic so badly right now!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shelves

2009-05-18T17:59:00.000-07:00

I hung these shelves with tiny nails today. I wonder if they'll hold?

I may come back from stripping tomorrow night to find them on the floor.

As pants the hart for cooling streams...

2009-05-18T09:56:00.001-07:00

"My little studio has never been profaned by superficial, feverish, mercenary work. It’s a temple of labour, but of leisure! Art is long. If we work for ourselves, of course we must hurry. If we work for her, we must often pause. She can wait!"
-- Henry James, "The Madonna of the Future"

Since I am working for Art and not myself I shall pause objectively and with good humor, trusting in my Muse's eventual return, rather than inwardly launch invectives of bitter self-reproach (today, at least).

I have noticed this capacity for objective thinking and prudent, pruned-in action emerges in me only when my emotions and physical impulses are at a very low ebb.

Example: I read 3 of the driest Henry James novels by 10 am today, and have no desire whatsoever to jog.

Other objective thoughts:

I have noticed that every time I date someone who captivates me physically, the focus and ardent attention I usually reserve for quiet union with the Divine seems to divert itself into entirely sensual channels upon which I concentrate instead.

Psalm 42 says:

"As pants the hart for cooling streams
When heated in the chase,
So longs my soul, O God, for thee,
And thy refreshing grace..."

Yet how easily does my mind substitute an inward-seeking "heated in the chase" longing for God with an outward-searching one for pleasure with Man!

Even so, I refuse to believe any interaction rooted in true affection (on my end, at least, I can confirm) is otherwise than blessed by, as well as the essence of, true Divinity.

PS It was my little brother's birthday yesterday. He is now 15. I hope to see his dear little self very soon, and figure out some way to do it which does not involve him finding out I'm an "Off-Broadway dancer for matinee shows" as a friend recently and politely termed my occupation.

PS 2 I just realized, with the exception of art modeling, which I did for 7 years, most of my other jobs have all lasted almost precisely 6 months apiece. I wonder if this will hold true for dancing?

So AMERICAN

2009-05-17T15:48:00.000-07:00

"We may take the stories least like poetry as our guide to the truth"
-- Plutarch, "Parallel Lives"

The romance of poetry holds neither appeal nor ring of truth for me in these times of exhaustion. I long for plain words, comfort food, also to give and receive service impersonally and efficiently.

In fact, all I wanted/was able to do today (so far) was:

Read short stories as well as Ovid and Plutarch, clean my house, eat junk food and sleep. Again.

Around 3, feeling as gray and gloomy as the overcast sky, I shuffled slowly down the 2-block stretch of Broadway that is my particular stomping grounds for groceries and treats here in Brooklyn and bought myself a bag of vegan Doritos. A friend told me about them recently-- a new flavor blissfully produced sans milk. Since I haven't had Doritos in 14 years being able to eat them again is quite a treat-- it's a repeat of the joy I experienced a few months ago, when another helpful companion told me Oreos are now vegan also, and I devoured them on a daily basis, dunked in soy milk, for weeks. These discoveries neither aid me in my eternal quest to lose weight nor curb my bouts of binge-eating, but whatevs.

Somehow, eating this kind of food makes me feel so AMERICAN:

PS I smooshed an avocado as dip, after waking up this morning with an unbearable craving for one. The cause was a vivid dream I had last night, the gist of which involved a fellow dancer I know, recently come back to Tryst after a month in Brazil, lavishly rubbing my scalp with "avos", which may or may not be the word for avocados in Portuguese as well as Spanish. That's the word she used in my dream, anyway.

In reality, it would take more than an avocado to fix my hair woes. If my hair were a person, I'd drop 'bows on him/her. My track weave, which has undoubtedly been good for business because, surprise surprise, men generally like long hair better than short hair on strippers, has become an enormous source of annoyance. No matter how much I wash, dry and style my extensions, the sad truth is they have begun to smell musty and look ratty. Gross.

It makes me want to shave my head, give up trying to be "attractive" and get me to a nunnery.

I hate my fucking hair. 600 dollars and counting since late February and it still sucks.

PS The "Tin House" volume I'm reading was given to me by the Asian lawyer on our last date aka his birthday. That night, trumping my efforts at gift-giving (cookies I baked myself, fish I drew myself, a card, etc.) he gave *me* dozens of expensive presents, with the promise of a puppy the next day, but, truly, as wonderful as getting to know him was, it had to end. I was just not attracted to him, and he deserves a fabulous relationship with a loving woman who wants to be with him for all the right reasons. So I figured I'd just remove myself from the picture so she could show up in his life that much sooner-- his last couple of emails are still unanswered in my mailbox, ah well. God bless.

PS 2 Re: me reading a lot of Plutarch and Ovid lately-- I know I'm really in the doldrums when I start resorting to my comforting childhood refuge of snuggling under a blanket in the pouring rain and reading Greek/Roman mythology/history. When I also start making Cream of Wheat I know a sad call to my mother is inevitable. But I shouldn't worry her. I'm just a depressed person sometimes. She can't solve that one for me.

Solitude/Sleep Hallucinations/Narcolepsy/Champagne Room

2009-05-16T19:10:00.001-07:00

"Dreams are jealous of being remembered; they dissipate instantly and angrily if you try to hold them. When newly awaked from lively dreams, we are so near them, still agitated by them, still in their sphere..."
--Emerson

This week my sleep disorder became almost unbearable. I felt so totally spent I could barely breathe. The advent of spring itself may have triggered it, for in my experience the spring rain is more soporific than any poppy. Dancing so much and dealing with the overload stemming from so much time spent in the ever-chaotic, sexually charged atmosphere of Tryst are also factors. Truly, it seemed my body was worn as thin as ancient, tattered lace, and, in a fit of active self-abandonment, I longed to clandestinely fold myself into a forgotten steamer trunk in our attic, thereafter to enjoy a few dusty decades (at least!) of delicious, sleepy solitude.

In short I wanted to dream and be alone.

Eventually, for good or ill, like a shipwrecked passenger tossed too long on battering waves I simply surrendered, allowing my miserable sense of gravity to sink me like a stone till, translucent with exhaustion, my ghost lay dark fathoms below, on the cold sand with all the other bottom-dwellers unable to get in the swim of life... life which I am nonetheless grateful to possess, in as much as a vessel of water can be said to possess the greater seas..

Though I tried to still my mind and listen to my inner voice, no great inspirations seized me; however, when I meditated with Megan Tuesday night, we both feel strange, helpful forces stirring immediately afterward.

So I've also been having my annual/sometimes-seasonal spate of weird sleep-related hallucinations, which are symptoms of the aforementioned low-grade narcolepsy that is, apparently, my endless cross to bear in this lifetime... what happens is the split second I wake from my dream I retain the image of a figure or object which last appeared in it to such a vivid degree that I believe it actually exists for a moment-- much like the imprint of the sun one gets after a bold, unwise glance skyward on a bright day. Monday night I awakened in alarm, quite sure my dream's star figure-- a strange monsieur (rotund, fatuous-- a plushly outfitted gentleman I felt I had seen in a Monet canvas that probably does not exist who was holding a canary in an ornate cage identical to the ceramic bird my mother sent, which I decided to display in a little metal lantern I bought at Pearl River Market, one of my favorite stores in New York) was in the room with me, demanding a sexual service of some sort I was unwilling to perform.

At least I didn't scream aloud this time, and was fortunately spared, also, the ordeal of waking a boy sharing my bed with my sleep issues, which make me seem insane at times, though I am not. Yet.

Insanity is a family tradition that hits most of my relatives at age 29 or so, after all...

This week I felt, indeed, so worn out and overwhelmed that I could not bear to work at the strip club for the first four days of the week. I decided to call in for a personal day, a first since I started working at Tryst nearly two months ago (the bout of laryngitis that rendered me genuinely unfit for two shifts awhile back was a different matter entirely).

Using manual labor and color therapy-- the only remotely effective measures for managing my narcolepsy of which I am aware, since pills rob me of all my creativity and are therefore off limits-- I painted my home, frustratingly-vexing-to-tape wainscoting and all, for two days straight. By the end of my second 12 hour day I was calling it "The Bataan Death March of painting" to myself, which just proves-- months of regular meditation aside-- that I have an extravagant amount of disgusting self- pity in reserve yet.

After more meditation and prayer I am absolutely sure such unwholesome tendencies/expressions of ego-based sentiment will eventually be shed from me in the manner of, say, toxins held deep in pockets of fatty tissue which, poisonous though they may be, do come to the surface and dissolve after faithful adherence to a fitness regiment.

When I went in Thursday I made a grand total of 75 dollars, due to my 50 dollar fine for skipping work Monday as well as the pouring rain, which always spells a miserable vibe and lack of customers at Tryst. Friday I was also doing poorly until five minutes before my shift was over, upon which a ridiculously drunken heating/air conditioning apprentice who deemed me "way too good-looking and sweet for this place" whisked me up to the champagne room for 3 hours, which meant I made about 750 instead of merely 300 for the day, and therefore the week, not counting that pathetic 75 from the day before.... he told me to get dressed for the last hour and offered to "get me out of this place".

I told him I wanted to be a stripper for a little while longer, but if he wanted to really do me a favor he could buy me a p-o-m-e-r-a-n-i-a-n (spelled for the benefit of the reminder text he was sending himself) puppy in red or blue... however, I doubt he'll be coming anywhere near the club after he sobers up enough to cringe over that 1500 credit card bill...

PS I'm not over it yet. I am spending a large portion of my Saturday afternoon napping, or would be if my downstairs neighbor's banda music wasn't ridiculously loud today.

Money

2009-05-09T18:59:00.001-07:00

I counted up the profits for the last couple of weeks of diligent, single-minded labor and laid them in hundred dollar piles on my floor last night:

My goal is to have enough saved for the plastic surgery procedures and veneers I want by June 1st, After that I must plan for my little brother's extended visit, which means getting myself nipped, tucked and reasonably healed before he shows up. It probably means taking a hiatus from dancing, too, which could be a great thing by then, considering I'm getting a little burned out working four long shifts a week, and may be downright crispy a few weeks from now.

Actually, I wonder if I'll finally have the desire to strip out of my system entirely by then. Lord knows I cannot-- seemingly-- be a writer and a stripper at the same time. All of the finer artistic impulses which require me to concentrate for more than an hour have gone by the wayside since I started earning my living selling lap dances in a nightclub. I'm ok with that, because I still enjoy being a stripper, but I will need a free mind and schedule again soon.

PS Sharita, a street-wise veteran stripper who broke up with her boyfriend of six years recently, gave me some sound advice about money and men the other night:

"Don't tell anyone you date you're a dancer right away. And afterward, NEVER give your man ANY of your money. A man who won't treat you on a date because he assumes you have a lot of cash from dancing-- or any other reason-- is not worth your time."

I find her permanently-dilated pupils sad, but she does have a lot of sage insight to share about the perils of stripping.

I do know I have reached a stage in my life that totally precludes me from ever going dutch or picking up the tab for my date. The occasional dessert, cab ride, etc. for which I insist upon paying is a totally different matter, of course, because it's MY initiative, rather than his expectation that dictates my actions. This does not conflict with my feminist sensibilities whatsoever. In my opinion, the fact that I no longer wrangle with my dates to pay my half of the check simply means I've learned how to receive kindness with grace. Although most men I've dated typically spend a couple of hundred dollar per date on me, mas o menos, it's the thought, not the amount that counts.

A couple of months ago I witnessed a pathetic exchange which solidified my disgust for men who expect women to pay for their half of a given date. I was at a cafe in Williamburg, when a boy and girl in some sort of unfortunate relationship began arguing. Shockingly, he began berating her for having to pay for their coffee.

"I bought dinner AND drinks last night," he said, unashamed of his cheapness and horrible manners. He truly thought he had a valid point. It was horrendous.

"What an asshole." I thought at the time, 100% sure he did not love her, and that no man who truly loves his lady as such would ever expect her to pick up the tab, let alone bring it up in public in such a humiliating way.

"The mortgage lender I'm dating won't even let me buy him a bottle of water." I added to myself, sure I had-- at least!-- assurance of his civility, if not his love. Our relationship was brief, but would have been a lot briefer if he had ever suggested I pay for dinner.

Deradoorian Review from BUST Blog

2009-05-08T21:46:00.000-07:00

I reviewed the new (Angel) Deradoorian EP for the BUST blog the other day (May 5th-- am I ever on my game...). She's the singer from Dirty Projectors FYI... scroll down to read it there:

http://www.bust.com/index.php?option=com_mojo&Itemid=31&paged=2

Mind Raft
Lovepump United

While ostensibly a record made ‘for you to do drugs to, or something,’ Mind Raft, the debut EP from Dirty Projectors singer/bassist Angel Deradoorian, comes across just as easily as a study in deliberate deconstruction. Deradoorian, who uses only her surname as her solo moniker, diffuses the occasional New Age tang by singing with a slightly more mannered, downward-spiraling inflection here than we’re used to, creating a self-described ‘gothed out’ vibe. Highlights include ‘Weed Jam,’ with it’s multilayered vocals that consist exclusively of an evolving ‘ooh, ahh’ and sounds like a cross between a Gregorian chant and an undiscovered Andrews Sisters snippet from the vault, and the sweet, pastoral interludes of ‘You Carry The Deed.’ New Yorkers should catch the Deradoorian CD release tonight at Cake Shop to witness the superhip spitfire live. Also, stream the 5 song ep here for free all week. -Robin Holly

Swine Flu Is Not Sexy

2009-05-05T14:02:00.000-07:00

My mother sent a care package with anti-swine flu supplies (God bless her alarmist Midwestern sensibilities) and a little yellow ceramic bird with a matching vase and egg as well as a few other small presents, including seeds for poppies of the same gorgeous saffron hue... I believe I will try to grow them indoors.

In return I sent her some pretty tea towels, a hand-made card, a movie and drawings of fish for Mother's Day. I hope she likes the things I chose. If she knew what an ordeal mailing anything from the Bushwick post office can be, she would probably appreciate my efforts much more. At least it isn't as bad as the one on 125h street in Harlem, where I used to spend-- literally-- hours.

As much as I enjoy living in Brooklyn, I've been missing Harlem lately. I wish I had the funds to buy a brownstone for myself in West Harlem, where I would ideally hole up for the next five years or so, enjoying a blissfully insular existence and eating vegan Rastafarian food to my heart's content.

PS At work yesterday a fellow dancer sneezed onstage.

"Swine flu!!!" immediately yelled Rose, a crass punk-rock Russian girl.

"Stop it, Rose!" I exclaimed in horror, looking at the collective cringe appear instantly on the customer's faces, adding:

"Swine flu is not sexy."

If swine flu does appear at Tryst, I imagine we'll all get it. There is little ventilation in the club, and if my time working at a Dungeon with a similar lack of fresh air is any indicator, no amount of personal hygiene can really spare one being infected with-- oh, anything and everything-- in such an environment.

Semiotics and Love

2009-05-02T17:49:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about semiotics and love today, and drew this:

I'll be painting the picture frame white and cutting a mat soon...

Bled-White/Blood Red Sunsets

2009-05-02T16:48:00.000-07:00

The more depressed I get, the more I seek solace in bleak landscape paintings which feature either blood red or bled-white sunsets...

Two images that fit the bill for me lately:

Victor Hugo's "Setting Sun"

And J.M.W. Turner's "Sundown Over A Lake"

Maybe dancing four days a week is too much for me, and all this misery is merely exhaustion...

Depression/Van Gogh

2009-05-02T09:20:00.001-07:00

"The whore in question has more of my sympathy than my compassion.

Being a creature exiled, outcast from society, like you and me who are artists, she is certainly our friend and sister.

And in this condition of being an outcast she finds - just as we ourselves do - an independence which is not without its advantages after all, when you come to think of it. So let's beware of assuming an erroneous attitude by believing that we can do her a service by means of a social rehabilitation which for that matter is hardly practicable and would be fatal to her.

... And meanwhile I am in my own hide, and my hide within the cog-wheels of the Fine Arts, like corn between the mill-stones."
-- letters of Vincent Van Gogh

Every day I wake up at 7 and stare at the beautiful little study I set up for myself. I have everything I need to write, barring motivation and inspiration. I have an outline completed-- entirely completed in detail-- for a novella worth writing, if I could only manage to begin it properly. This period of stasis has been in effect for three weeks, and I am not exaggerating when I say it is crushing my spirit to an almost fatal degree. I am a stripper/artist creating no art at present, which means I am, right now, simply a stripper. And single. And relatively poor. At 28. Sigh.

The most difficult thing with which to reconcile myself is that I am secure in my ability to bring forth meaningful artistic output when I do work with a sense of purpose and energy, having done so before-- it is my inability to focus and make a start that is driving me utterly mad. Is it my dancing job that makes me so scattered and unfocused these days? I have a thousand beautiful words and images floating around in my perpetually exhausted brain. I have asked everyone for advice--

"Should I vary my process? What would you do?" I ask, time and again.

"Don't force it," they answer in universal consensus, often followed by:

"Maybe you need a new Muse."

Fine. Where is a reliable one to be found? After all, it's hard to know when a person, place or thing is going to suddenly be eclipsed out of one's life, or abandon one. I am here, open and waiting for the grace of God to deliver me from this state of unbearable tension. If I am created in God's own image, I must similarly be a creator, myself-- in capacity if not actuality (at present). I will pray quietly with gratitude that I have life, no matter if I am as a dam blocked by silt and rotting vegetation for the moment. Sadly, neither life nor the grace of God is granted the sensual, I am told-- I who dwell in the sensual realm more than in the temple invisible of the Holy Spirit these days. I must be the enemy of my own art. It must be so, for neither lack of God nor of opportunity is present.

This week both of my little fish died. I was feeling miserable before, but now I am also disgusted. Taking the rotting little bodies out of the tank was an ordeal. I couldn't eat and consequently felt faint at work, which was relatively very unprofitable for a Friday due to the rain pouring down in buckets.

I was propositioned by two married men in a very serious way in the span of about 16 hours, which made me sadder than ever.

I have taken to reading the letters of Van Gogh with great empathy. We apparently have much in common with a couple of minor disparities: he was a genius and actually able to produce works of art with regularity, despite his personal difficulties, whereas I am a dilettante who cannot do much except take my clothes off for money and elicit/solicit praise 24 hours a day.

Note to self: without his canvasses Van Gogh would have been just another poor, socially retarded redhead with a history of mental illness, somewhat similar to myself.

I must remember it's our work that defines us, and neurosis is never charming...

Jealousy

2009-04-29T19:56:00.000-07:00

Even though my life is a constant, swirling vortex of male sexual attention and proximity thereof, I can't handle it when I sense another woman in the immediate sphere of a man I like. My woman's intuition always tingles when someone with whom I'm even a little bit involved is seeing another girl or is around one who likes him a lot. I can feel the bitter tension in the air like a thunderstorm about to cause an unhappy downpour, for me, at least. I've been getting to know someone and have been feeling joyful lately, but I can tell all that is about to change, somehow.

I can dish it out but I can take it... however, the difference is, I'm not going to have sex with anyone, let alone be intimate with more than one person at a time. Unless you consider getting nude for hundreds of strangers a week intimate, sigh. But that's just a professional thing.

Maybe I should give up dating forever.

I think about it often.

My romantic relationships never seem to last.

I never do consider marrying for security to be a real option, and since I have never been in love, maybe marriage will remain permanently out of the question for me. It's just that I don't know what else to want for my adult life.

Sometimes it's as though I can feel life as I know it winding down altogether. I feel like a clock made gradually aware that I have been keeping time for a purpose no longer relevant, surrendering the momentum of my useless machinations until, at last, I am silent and still.

What can it all mean? Death? A life-altering revelation that dramatically makes defeat of my personality and lifestyle?

A Charnel Chanticleer

2009-04-29T17:52:00.000-07:00

"Alas!" said he, "O Chanticleer, alas!
I have to you," said he, "done offense,
In as much as I made you afraid."
-- Chaucer, "The Nun's Priest's Tale"

I had another day off from Tryst today, my only one for the week, and I spent my precious time alone thinking about my astrological prospects for the year.

According to my annual Chinese forecast the next 10 months will be an excellently successful and prosperous period of growth for me.

I'm a rooster, full of ego and vanity as well as ambition and trustworthiness, so, keeping these things in mind, I tried to draw a properly proud and crowing barnyard prince today, as a sort of self-portrait.

However, I soon thought of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, and her disgust for the prospective "one cock of the walk" in her world as well as the many customers I encounter, in turn, who make me feel the same way.

I also thought of Chaucer's Chanticleer, the rooster who dreamed of his own impending death, in the end happily, albeit narrowly averted. I imagined what it would be like to be nearly killed by a flattering, predatory creature, such as the Fox who ensnared Chanticleer, feeling deja vu as the razor-sharp jaws snapped me up and carried me away with devilish swiftness, to a secret lair where I would surely be devoured...

This put me in a disturbed and mordant frame of mind again, so as I drew it seemed as though the rooster's body was sprouting, rotting and going to seed even as I created it.

Today the hollow fruit of my material creativity-- an inevitably stillborn brain-child, which just so happened to be a drawing in this case-- was destined to be a vessel of decay because its genesis was confusion instead of Virtue.

I'll redo it tomorrow when I'm sure I'll be able to draw a bright, happy animal that doesn't look so much like a charnel Chia Pet, to me at least. It has other flaws anyway, as a drawing, and needs another go.

Yes, it's all settled-- tomorrow morning I'll imagine myself as a happy, enthusiastic rooster, overcoming all obstacles and predators, ruling myself primarily and try to envision the customers tomorrow as hens instead. I'll make a beautiful new drawing and go off to dance with a light heart.

PS Went over to my old building to feed Megan's hamsters while she is out of town with her parents in DC. I'm so happy I don't live in that dirty, crackish, wackish apartment building anymore.

Recession Strippers Are a Myth... Or Maybe It just Seems That Way to Me

2009-04-28T04:15:00.001-07:00

I wanted to be a stripper long before I was laid off my bread and butter writing job, the one that turned my three week holiday in New York into a permanent thing almost two years ago and ended in November, but I am not sure I ever would have actually taken the plunge if the job market didn't seem so impenetrable at the moment in NYC.

I keep hearing reports about the recession stripper phenomenon, yet I haven't seen any evidence of it. I've worked at three clubs here in NYC, and I have to say, although I only started in late February, I haven't met another American-born woman who could legitimately say she started stripping for the first time recently because she was laid off of her white collar job. In fact, with only a couple of exceptions at each club, no matter how large or posh, I have found that American-born women are nearly as rare as yetis in this industry altogether. Most white girls who dance seem to be Russian, with a smaller percentage of Eastern Europeans thrown into the mix.

I've been asking everyone where the girls born in the US dance here in NYC, and nobody seems to know. They can't all be escorts, can they?

It's a mystery to me...

Though MSNBC says it' a fact:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29824663/

PS Note how uncomfortable the anchor and correspondent appear to be while presenting this segment.

Bed

2009-04-25T19:06:00.000-07:00

Unflattering in my opinion mind yet possibly sensuous to a certain sort of sensibility...

Almost universally, compliments now ring hollow in my ears. The pretty face or body one boy or man says I possess is ugly in comparison to that of another, more classically beautiful woman.

Yet how can I honestly say I refuse to derive my identity from my physical characteristics on one hand while vowing to "improve" certain "flaws" through surgery?

I am so confused.

For the first time in a couple of months I wandered into the Pentecostal church near my home Friday night after work, immeasurably worn out after a day of dancing, and heard, for the first time, the songs sung by the congregants as if through a layer of cotton.

Was it simple exhaustion, the demands of my job or the sin that allegedly attends it that made me feel so cut off from the lightning bolt of spiritual intensity and connection I usually feel in that humble, yet vibrant sanctuary?

Time will tell...

Sensuality and Death, Francis Bacon

2009-04-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

Things divine are not attainable by mortals who understand sensual things, but only the light-armed arrive at the summit.
-- Zoroaster

I know I've said this before, but the way the material world constantly deconstructs/decays makes me question the wisdom of constantly investing my time and energy into making my surroundings and physical being more beautiful (to my sensibilities). Basically everything reduces itself to a pile of rubble or compost eventually. This life is so temporary, and my sense of beauty is becoming so inexorably associated with sensual things--especially ones which are made and meant to be commodified-- that I am struggling to find sure footing based on any Virtuous precepts while navigating this slippery slope that is sex industry work. Getting naked for fun and money in order to get plastic surgery may, perhaps, be the equivalent of placing marigolds on a Dia De Los Muertos ofrenda-- a conciliatory gesture made by the quick to bring beauty and enliven to a fear-inducing shrine of death (aka beautifying my imperfect mortal shell as it dies all around me). I fear ugliness and aging in equal measures. Perhaps I am, yet again, constructing my reality on a sure-to-crumble foundation of sand, whose shifting base is creating all this unrest in my soul. After all, it takes just one powerful tide to sweep away a castle made of sand.

This is the essence of separation from spiritual integrity. This is the essence of sin.

I've been jogging endlessly, trying to make up for the week and a half of regular exercise my recent illness caused me to miss, and yesterday I came upon a remarkable documentary of the painter Francis Bacon. Like Egon Schiele, his work possesses a mesmerizing, inky depth of morbidity that appeals to me when I'm in depressed and confused in the midst of the flesh-press of an objective world whose vagaries I can't seem to transcend. I know life is about to get sour when I begin correlating flesh with carrion and domestic spaces with cages.

Anyway I was transfixed by the endless parade of iconic, deformed figures that transcended the merely grotesque in the Bacon documentary:

One day soon I too will be a rotting pile of flesh.

Maybe the most noble thing I can do is be a vessel of light while my dying form can still telegraph some of the amorphous, yet unmistakable Divinity that still manages to shine through my increasingly manhandled body.

Provisional Intimacy

2009-04-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

My time off at home is so sweet, quiet and satisfying that I always try to make every second of it count. I have today and tomorrow to accomplish my own private creative endeavors. After that I'll be immersing myself in the neon bombast of Tryst for my typical Thursday-Friday shifts.

Today I painted the picture frames in my living room white, thinking now and then of a certain customer from yesterday evening... he was so handsome, he looked like an Iranian Eric Bana, and he was remarkably intelligent, too. He lives in the same neighborhood as the club, and says he has a look-alike brother who frequents Tryst also, bonus...

I have to admit part of me hopes he stays away. It's too difficult to deal with mutual attraction on a regular basis when it goes nowhere, even when the name of the game is ostensibly teasing and making some money while one is at it, rather than establishing a connection that's earmarked for eventual intimacy.

Provisional intimacy is actually the big thing at strip clubs. Yesterday evening I approached a customer who was polite but explained:

"I'm waiting for Sharita. We have a relationship (wink)."

From this I could infer he was waiting for her to get off the stage and be his fake girlfriend for 30 minute or an hour. It makes sense to me. I'd ideally like a marriage that functions with similar time constraints. Once a week is all I would need to feel good and related to my spouse. I like my private time, you see.

To the gentleman at hand, I responded:

"Can't hate on that!" I said, smiling. "You have fun, she's an awesome lady."

It must be delicious to have a harmless secret fantasy one indulges weekly. I'm starting to forget the desire for such lustful daydreams or experiences. It's a funny thing-- the longer I make being someone else's fantasy my profession, the fewer fantasies of my own I seem to have.

PS After work last night I stopped to get sushi (no good eating after 7 when one is trying to lose weight :( and sat near a pretty woman in her early 40's. She struck up a conversation with me-- she's an attorney-- big surprise, I meet almost no one in any other field of occupation-- and had quite a lot of insight about dating. Single herself, she exuded a slightly nutty vibe (she mentioned her mother twice in our 20-minute conversation, always red-flag behavior) yet had many bits of friendly advice:

"If you want a boyfriend, God will give you one, just make sure you are personally evolved enough to keep the man you attract, or you'll miss out."

So true!!!!!

Afterward I headed to the nearest big screen tv I could find in Tribeca and watched the Chicago Bull's heart-breaking playoff loss with a bunch of Celtics fans (booo). I'm thinking of making a Ray Allen voodoo doll-- a Chicago girl such as myself can only take so many unexpected 3-point shots before resorting to the occult begins to seem appealing. That'll stop you, jerk!

Baby Wants To Ride

2009-04-19T15:53:00.000-07:00

My all-time favorite dance artist is Jamie Principle, the king of early Chicago house music. I would strip to his music almost exclusively, if it wasn't too underground and alienatingly religious (lyrically) for a middle of the road place such as Tryst.

No musical artist with whom I'm familiar explored religion and sex with the depth and explicit honesty of Jamie Principle. In my mind, he's the middle deity in the Sam Cooke/R. Kelly Trinity of Chicago soul artists who made music for dancing.

Obviously coming to terms with his own homosexuality (or, possibly, bisexuality) and drawing parallels between his sexual experiences and religious ecstasy (ie "Your Love"), Principle also infuses his music with a social conscience that is all his own (see "Rebels (Get Righteous").

I met him once, a few years ago, after Frankie Knuckles was honored at Summerdance in Chicago's Grant Park. A few thousand smiling, joyful party people from two generations united in their love of house music danced in the rain that evening.

Afterward I ran into Jamie Principle himself, whose early collaboration with Knuckles had occasioned his participation. He looked remarkably young for his age, gave me a big hug and talked with me about life and music till they kicked us out of the park. I've never been so happy to meet an artist whom I admire.

God bless!

One of the dirtiest, sexiest, most religious songs ever made, "Baby Wants To Ride":

Tigerbeat Dr. King/Malcolm X/Mandela/Obama

2009-04-18T11:33:00.001-07:00

Recently I found this piece of amazing folk art on a card table set up on the sidewalk on Fulton St. in Tribeca, while on my usual late-morning walk to Tryst:

The thing was so weird but appealing to me I stopped dead in my tracks and openly laughed at it when first it caught my eye amidst the spread of strictly Obama-themed goods. I became aware I was having a singularly New York experience, looking up at the construction cranes rebuilding the WTC, enjoying the springtime sunshine and feeling lucky to have come across such a little find. I think the heart shape of the wooden tchotchke makes the famous men on it look like heartthrobs from "Tigerbeat" magazine, which is definitely not a bad thing.

I paid 5 dollars for it, haggled down from the original 6...

I haven't bartered in so long, it felt amazing, even though only a dollar was at stake.

I hung it up in the romance sector of my bedroom, as per my usual adherence to the the laws of Feng Shui-- that's where heart-shaped pieces belong:

Next time I walk down Malcolm X Blvd. here in Bushwick I'll have something new to think about...

PS My old roommate recently moved her things out of my house, where she'd been storing them in a spare room for a month while setting up things at her boyfriend's... her dad was on hand to help, and she worried for a minute when he disappeared (although he's a hale fireman, he also has diabetes, and has been having more trouble with it than usual lately).

After a few minutes he showed up beaming, procuring some "Master of Puppets" pajama bottoms that looked as though they were woven from some itchy-looking combination of felt and asbestos as well as a package of official Topps Obama trading cards, which I couldn't believe actually exist.

"You never know what you'll find at dollar stores in the hood!" he said happily.

Lexiland

2009-04-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

Lexi the hustler and I had another little chat today. She came in late to the strip club because she had to testify against her ex-boyfriend in court, in an effort to keep him locked up for reasons unknown (I didn't need to hear the specifics to recognize it as an awful situation).

We sat together in the early afternoon (not that time exists in the neon-lit bunker that is Tryst)

"Are you dating anyone now?" I asked.

"Nooooo," she said, shaking her head and looking at me with those blank eyes.

After finding out she lives by herself in Astoria, and is often lonesome, I moved onto the most interesting question (to me, since I'm struggling with lying by omission to my own family) I ask fellow dancers:

"Do your parents know what you do?" I asked her.

"Just my dad. The last time I talked to him on the phone, a few months ago, I told him I'm stripping cause fuck him, and he never talked to me again. He never took care of me."

"That sucks," I said, sighing. My father was very absent also.

Later on we sold double dances to an Indian man celebrating his 40th birthday. We writhed on top of one another, and she spanked me a little bit while I played the part of the giggling teenager, even though my schoolgirl outfit, donned for "Lingerie Fridays", the Tryst version of "casual Fridays" in which sexy costumes are also encouraged (as opposed to the slut gowns we usually wear) had been stripped off 15 minutes before. My pigtails were still in effect, though...

When we brought him to the register to charge his credit card and collect funny money for ourselves (funny money is the counterfeit paper "cash" a dancer gets when a man pays for lap dances with an credit card in a strip club, and is cashed out separately), she showed her true brilliance as a hustler:

"How many dances was it?" he asked affably, in the way of a truly friendly person or, perhaps, sucker.

(The correct answer here was 5 for me and 4 for her)

"Make it five and five" she said casually.

"Ok" he agreed.

I grinned, a little shocked but impressed.

"But make it 250 for the funny money" she said, trying to offset the fact that we only get 16 dollars per dance in funny money, as opposed to the 20 per dance we get in cash)

"225," he said, still smiling.

"Ok," she laughed.

We got dressed and left right afterward.

That girl is a trip.

PS I saw Lexi walking down the street outside work the other night, and I was shocked by how much of a busted hooker she appears to be compared with the typical female denizens of Tribeca out and about at 8 pm. The dim lighting in Tryst does wonders to offset these things. She's 21, but could pass for 31 anywhere else but the club.

These were just some observations, rather than criticisms.

Who am I to judge?

PS2 She sometimes says, "Papi." I could never do that with a straight face. It must be a cultural difference, or perhaps one in native temperament, but I would just laugh if I tried to ascribe paternity to a man in a sexual situation without laughing.

PS The manager gave me a plastic ruler to use as a prop with my schoolgirl outfit. I was into it, and so was a skinny, pretty girl named Jenny, who was also dressed in a plaid skirt for the day.

"Will you spank me with that?" she asked with genuine enthusiasm.

I obliged her happily, instantly *feeling* the eyes of about 50 men widen collectively.

She could really take it, so much so that the ruler broke.

Booo, but it was a cheap thing, anyway....

Visual Paranoia

2009-04-15T19:14:00.000-07:00

For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.
--Jose Ortega y Gasset

I had the day off from the strip club today, and spent my time recovering from my illness, meditating, sleeping, writing and making my home as beautiful as possible.

Thoughts for the day:

1.) Giving away sacred things too easily is the mark of either a fool or a prostitute.

In practice, I am a little of both today.

2.) As previously feared, I AM going aesthetically insane in the style of Mondrian-- I re-arranged all my furniture today, and this weekend am planning on painting almost everything I own-- including my entire drafting table/easel-- white. My descent into this state of constant visual paranoia/painful sensitivity promises to be formal, romantic and, ultimately, as destructive to my peace of mind as an atom bomb. So it begins:

3.) The beauty (or lack thereof) of my domestic sphere impacts my general state of well-being more than any other factor (or set of factors) in my life. If I leave a mess in my home when I run out the door in the morning, I am plagued by a niggling sensation something is--slightly-- rotten in the state of Denmark all day long at work. Making the most of every inch of space I have seems to create an overflow of happiness and resources into the rest of my life. A tidy, happy home allows me to channel my thoughts elsewhere. I can't wait to feel fully settled in here so I can basically stop thinking about it.

4.) Tomorrow I'm going to call my dentist and get a price quote on veneers and make an appointment to get another plastic surgery consultation. I need to know precise dollar amounts in order to start saving with enthusiasm. This time (unlike when I got my nose done last year) if a new doctor does agree to do my chin and possibly eyelids, I am not going to tell anyone until after it's over. It creates unnecessary static.

Sick Leave/Breakfast "Broadway Boogie Woogie"

2009-04-14T05:57:00.000-07:00

Suffer them once to begin the enumeration of their infirmities, and the sun will go down on the unfinished tale.
--Emerson

Since last Tuesday, I have been in a perpetual swoon of illness, which my most cheerful efforts at *being* well did not seem to negate (actually I think it's probably impossible to negate the negative-- one must concentrate on the positive to cause a fruitful shift in perception). However, I have been very productive here at home. I meditated with Megan three days in a row, with astounding results. Creative ideas began to saturate me explosively-- like bombs on Dresden. I had a wonderful idea for a novel (it's a secret), which I have started, and made drawings in my studio to my heart's content, focusing on flowers and creating my own personal/domestic iconography, since I am tired of buying/co-opting everyone else's:

Creative endeavors notwithstanding, I must go to the strip club today and see what fun, money and adventures I can manifest. I really am strapped for cash, yet I do wish I could skip work for just one more day to recover. The strip club is not the best place to take it easy.

PS I was so ill I couldn't even go to church on Easter :(

PS 2 The more visual art I make, the more I seem to unconsciously strive to assemble my environment in a more aesthetically pleasing way as a matter of course. Example, breakfast:

I decided I must paint all the picture frames in my living room white. I wonder if I will, eventually, end up like Mondrian, sick and crying in a white-walled ivory tower, watching reality reduce itself to abstract forms until I can no longer relate to anything objectively (which inevitably drives one insane...). All I know is when one's breakfast starts looking like "Broadway Boogie Woogie" and nothing seems sure in the material world, life is getting fucking strange,

I wouldn't be surprised if I do go insane. It's a tradition upheld by women in my family throughout many generations.

Why must I always take things to extremes?

Nite Jewel

2009-04-09T04:35:00.000-07:00

So I chose to review multidisciplinary Los Angeles artist Nite Jewel's debut LP "Good Evening" for the upcoming issue of BUST Magazine (June/July). I've been listening to it steadily for a couple of weeks now, and have found it to be the perfect soundtrack for candlelight seduction, baking cookies and drawing in my studio, respectively.

I highly recommend checking out her hypnotic single, "What Did He Say" as an intro.

The video for "Artificial Intelligence" is all sunglasses, palm trees and tongue-in-cheek celebrity ennui-- definitely worth a look-see if you want to see Nite Jewel at her adorable best:

Most of the tracks on "Good Evening" are like sonic frostbite; they evince a deep, slow burn which only becomes obvious later. Much later. Like 3:30 am in a downtown LA loft with 50 cool kids who venerate Giorgio Moroder's "E-MC2" as much as you do, or maybe poolside on the rooftop of the Standard Hotel.

I can't lie, this album makes me want to move back to LA.

PS I wish I could strip to this music, but it's not mainstream enough for Tribeca traders, sigh.

Voiceless

2009-04-08T16:13:00.001-07:00

As the result of going to work Tuesday and on a dinner date afterward (quite heedless considering my ongoing illness), I have laryngitis. I had been telling myself to eat an orange and to stop acting like a pansy all week re: my cold or whatever I have, but now I must-- at least nominally-- take stock of all the reasons I have been wearing myself so thin lately-- into exhausted, now-silent tatters, really.

I've had these periods of voicelessness at least once a year as far back as I can remember-- typically, they last 2 days, although once it was nearly 9. Luckily such prolonged bouts of silence always inspire introspection in me. Well, at worst I'll be keeping a forced vow of silence during the home stretch of Lent, in lieu of the voluntary one I wanted to implement. To be honest, I would be enjoying myself entirely if I didn't have a day job which required me to speak. When I was an art model this was less of a factor. Well, at least for today, I'll absolutely WALLOW in silence.

Since I started living as though the world is my playground instead of a material prison nothing seems half as terrible or serious as it did before.

PS Tuesday night my date and I showed up to the restaurant dressed remarkably alike. We were wearing such painfully similar jackets he took his off to negate the gross couples-who-dress-alike effect:

"Did you get your jacket at Marc Jacobs, too?" I asked, feeling my skin crawl.

As it turns out we'd both had other wardrobe issues at work that day, as well. His boss had asked him to stop wearing shirts with lavender stripes (he's a lawyer in finance) as a concession to the conservative tastes of certain prospective clients he was scheduled to meet with this week. My had manager requested I get a short black gown he insisted would flatter my "bangin' body" more than the green on I was wearing. When I mentioned this to my date he suggested I buy a schoolgirl outfit, since all the Wall St. brokers he deals with (which also make up the lion's share of Tryst's clientele) like teenage girls better than anything else.

"You know you could pass for 18 with those pigtails and a pleated skirt," he said, pointing playfully at my hair-do.

I replied with a smile:

"So buy me a schoolgirl outfit. I'll wear it."

Since we were in the West 4th area we comparison-shopped at a couple of nearby sex shops and found one, which he bought with barely-concealed enthusiasm. I'll take pics of it soon. It kind of sucks, but it was the best one to be had on the block.

Beards Are None of My Business/Heart-Tagged Fish

2009-04-08T09:41:00.000-07:00

"The sun does not shine upon this fair earth to meet frowning eyes, depend upon it."
-- Dickens, "Nicholas Nickleby"

Recently I spent some quality time with my intense, brilliant friend Jackie, whom I've known since we both lived in Chicago. She took me out to a Mexican restaurant on Bedford as a belated birthday present, and we were both bursting with good cheer and gratitude, a positive development for two such formerly depressed human beings as ourselves. I offloaded the rest of my birthday cake on her, happy to hear some fascinating/horrible/REAL stories of her former life in two major-label bands. Afterward, as we walked to Iona, a note of we negativity crept into our conversation as we noticed afresh the profusion of beards in Williamsburg, and wondered why every handsome boy of our acquaintance seems to be adhering to the trend.

"They can't all be trying to emulate Walt Whitman, can they, really?" I asked.

"I don't get it either!" Jackie scoffed, shaking her ponytail back and forth in confusion.

"It's like wearing a burqa that never comes off. That's no fun! Anyway, I don't believe in the masculine mystique, on principle." I sighed, looking wistfully at the parade of attractive lantern jaws willfully obscured by scruff.

But maybe beards are none of my business.

About two weeks ago I had occasion to lament the fact that one intelligent and very desirable young man in particular was sadly masking his soft cheeks. Lying in my bed together, I thought perhaps we'd be getting to know one another better in the future, and I began to envision all sorts of wanton things I could do in exchange for being allowed the privilege to shave off his beard at some later date, which now seems to be a moot point, after all. However, because I feel absolutely sure both of us want/focus on the very same things (love, connection, to write and be happy) I can't imagine viewing the situation negatively, even if he now seems to be lukewarm about exploring those things with me.

Anyway, how could I dislike someone who's writing a novel using Red Lobster as a major theme? It would be flatly impossible.

If he were here I'd hug him and wish him well. He's wonderful, not less so for apparently electing not to see me again. I enjoyed his wit and the silken feel of his flesh against mine enough to think of him-- not over-much, but very fondly, tempered with a sense of having been slightly thwarted. Ah well! I'd better hole up in the studio space I've set up in one of my spare bedrooms and channel that energy into something else, how grateful I am to be able to do so.

Sometimes it's nice to finally be an adult...

I'm probably spinning my wheels, anyway. I suppose I'd better wait until after I get plastic surgery in a month or two to think about dating again. Dating anyone new, that is.

Monday I bought two little fish from the pet store down the block. Usually I only like orange fish, but I couldn't resist taking home a white Tattoo Molly whose body is emblazoned with a perfect pink heart:

It looks like it stopped swimming for a little bit too long here in Bushwick and got tagged. I wouldn't be surprised. I bet even the aquariums are hard in this part of the hood.

I bought it a stripey friend for comfort and companionship, which my mercenary heart has already dubbed, "comparatively inconsequential".

I also briefly cuddled a Pomeranian puppy there (900 dollars, but I affirm now-- WITH TOTAL CONFIDENCE!-- that the material world is totally receptive to my heart's purest desires :) and willed that one just like it (except with red instead of gray fur /hair) should fall into my lap in the very near future.

Yesterday I told one of my customers at the strip club about my new pets.

"Oh! I've heard of that before." he said, referring to the phenomenon of the heart.

I pouted, having harbored the secret hope that my little fish is exceedingly rare, and special (because it is mine), then mentally swatted away such thoughts as if they were mosquitoes-- "Ego." I told myself, shaking off such a pestilent notion as specialness.

"Oh really?" I replied neutrally.

"Do you have any pets?" I asked, drawing nearer to him.

PS Drawings I made with amorphous affectionate energy:

Counterfeit of Heaven

2009-04-07T06:18:00.000-07:00

And one more for good measure, as I pack my g-strings into my Muji bag...

The Counterfeit of Heaven

The counterfeit of Heaven
Promises an "invincible" veil
Angels unravel
Like crepe
Draped on a mausoleum door
That's locked
from
the
outside

Daily Panic Over the Williamburg Bridge

2009-04-07T06:08:00.000-07:00

I wrote this poem a few minutes ago, ill and not looking forward to taking the train this morning. Not only do I long to snuggle in my bed instead of going to work, but I wish--just now, for once, today-- I could avoid seeing, yet again, the panoramic view of the waterfront that reminds me so much of someone I bless and curse (for silly reasons I know well that ultimately have nothing much to do with him) but never can-- quite-- forget. Maybe I'll close my eyes between Marcy and Essex just to be safe. But I'll allay my discomfort today by assuring myself (and showing others) the world is friendly to my perpetual cause, which is Universal: to live happily in the embrace of love, and peace, and unconditional joy.

Daily Panic Over the Williamburg Bridge

A bridge, one bridge, divides our hearts
But narrowly I missed my mark
For wont of better beggary
I must devise a separate scheme
Of hammered love dramatic
Of drowned love, sad, sincere
(Those panicked aspects never worn
By true love any year )

And a watchtower of panic now is every mantis crane
Even steel from afar seems fragile here
And I fall with the rain
You close-by are dreaming fondly
Of the same gray scene
That cuts me dead materially
And leaves me languishing

Old Age/Narcolepsy/Owl

2009-04-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

That the life of man is but a dream, many a man has surmised heretofore; and I, too, am everywhere pursued by this feeling.
--Goethe, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

Whether it's because I have a fever (again), or because I am just lately conducting my life as a sort of waking lucid dream, I find formerly harsh and immutable things soft, filmy and agreeable this evening.

Example:

I looked at my favorite birthday cards from the other day and came to terms with being a year older in a fairly peaceful manner. I tried to be grateful for the love the cards represent at the total exclusion of fretting over the old age they herald and very nearly succeeded. This is a big milestone. I have often thrown my birthday cards away as soon as they were opened. Hopefully that phase of childish (not to be confused with childlike) behavior is over.

Today is one of those days I could not fully wake up, no matter how hard I tried, until after 2pm. I had been up since 8, doing little chores and then periodically tumbling back to bed face-down, trying not to resort to drinking caffeine, and ultimatelly decided to be very happy about having a day off no matter how I spent it.

I remember initially hearing the word "narcolepsy" from a doctor's lips with a lot less trepidation than I had initially heard"clinical depression". That's the difference between 25 and 17, I suppose. These things all seem to work out in the end, and both have become livable conditions for me, even if medicine hasn't done me much lasting good. I wonder what it would be like to intimately know someone else who has a sleeping disorder. I have depressed friends, but their sleep patterns are normal. Maybe some day...

Megan and I meditated at her apartment this evening. Afterward my fever came back.

I drew this owl today. Lately I find drawing enjoyable again for the first time in years. I can't wait to get the rust off my all my latent creative faculties and really get in gear.

PS I hope I'm well enough to go to work tomorrow. Strippers don't get sick pay.

Revelation/Yes, Yes Oh Yes

2009-04-05T17:25:00.000-07:00

Today was so heavenly, which makes sense since Holy Week is here and my thoughts naturally gravitate toward the Divine.

The metaphysical aspects of Christ's sacred doctrine sometimes emerge in a new light for me around the holidays, and the excitement attending the countdown to Easter, which makes me literally beam with joy, seemed to function as a catalyst for profound spiritual discovery today.

Now that I have discovered the total freedom of subjective reality, "Treat Thy Neighbor AS Thyself" seems to make so much more sense to me, metaphysically as well as on a brass-tacks, practical level (two modalities which are not mutually exclusive, of course, since levels of any sort do not ultimately exist, and are merely transitory perceptions).

I decided to entirely surrender to the concept of subjective reality, to the belief I belong to the singular, Absolute field of consciousness and that no person is truly separate from me.

It was an entirely revelatory experience.

I simply BELIEVED everyone was friendly to my cause, and that no conflicts would arise, that peace would surround us all. And it happened.

At the grocery store, everyone seemed beautiful.

I smiled and everyone smiled back, constantly.

I cleaned up the back yard and everything was perfect.

I am totally happy.

I wonder if things will be any different at the strip club next week? I just bet...

PS I've finally realized why saying, "No" always feels so wrong to me. If every sentient being and material thing/circumstance/occurrence is aligned with my purest dominant belief, the only reason a negative objection could possibly be raised is if I am operating on the level of ego, thereby manifesting separation from the harmonious whole. I get it now...

PS 2 Ten minutes later, and my bliss is already gone! I'm all flushed from working really hard outside today... my cold has disappeared and I feel absolutely rampant with vitality. Spring fever, in combination with my new-found dedication to all that is positive has inspired all sorts of heart-pounding, "Yes, yes oh yes!" scenarios to flash through my brain. My body feels so alive, I'm experiencing one of the rare moments in which my abstinence seems slightly oppressive. Indeed, just now I feel like a citizen of Pompeii--flash-fried in a dynamic, desperate pose and buried under massive heaps of volcanic ash:

Abstinence sows sand all over
The ruddy limbs & flaming hair,
But desire gratified
Plants fruits of life & beauty there.
-- William Blake

I shall calm myself by looking meditatively at a reminder of the beauty of my beliefs, "An Allegory of Chastity" by Giorgione:

Sigh, it's not working.

Poetry/Careless Whispers/Surfer Boy

2009-04-04T16:41:00.000-07:00

Today I'm so burned out from dancing, hustling and the weight of the oppressive cloud of sexual energy that seems to have descended upon me lately that all I can do is soak my sore feet and painfully tense muscles in a hot bath.

Sweet words could not signify
From silent lips so dear
The church-bell of your sweat
I strain-- so ardently! to hear

-- I've also been writing a lot of poetry lately.

I've decided human speech is almost entirely useless as a form of communication, at least in the ineffective way I have been implementing it lately.

Megan and I were meditating again today. She gave me a cute birthday card and some fizzy Airborne tablets to help cure my cold. We chatted for quite awhile, but the only things I really needed to say were:

"Thank you. I love you also."

(I'm going to do her astrology chart next week.)

Why can't human beings cull the gems of honest sentiment from our swirling maelstroms of thoughts and say precisely what we mean and nothing more? Why must we collectively hide from raw expressions of sincere emotion? I often wonder. I generally surround myself with such intensely emotional people it would make sense if a certain amount of brevity of expression-- a natural shorthand among sympathetic souls-- developed over time. But it never does. We just let our tongues spin tangled webs of emotional filigree instead.

Anyway, the next time I'm on a date I'm going to think silently and fixedly of the real matter at hand, even if convention dictates that I must not say it:

"Do I want to wake up in your arms every morning for the next 50 years, drenched in your sweat, come and spit? Am I excited about this prospect? And, just as importantly, do you feel the same way about me?"

Nothing else seems to matter between men and women, romantically-speaking, unless children are involved.

On second thought, that doesn't seem very fun or a bit romantic, at that. Sigh.

PS Yesterday afternoon a young professional surfer I recognized from a big-wave documentary I saw last year came into the club alone. He sat next to the stage and looked up at me with warm brown yes.

"You're beautiful," he said simply and with the boyish ring of sincerity of a non-intellectual native Californian.

My heart began to beat fiercely.

I wobbled over to him afterward, nervously trying not to trip over my 5-inch heels. He was so handsome.

I gave him a couple of dances, resting my forehead against his (which I would normally avoid doing) and some Eskimo kisses (which would signify the remarkable advent of flying pigs regarding any other customer I've had thus far).*

Despite his most adorable efforts to get me to go out with him ("Do you like ARTIST X-- he's a friend of mine and I'm in town to see his show tonight. It's 6-8 in Chelsea, wanna go? " and "Are there any decent coffee shops near the SoHo Grand? Would you like to meet me there?" respectively) I couldn't really imagine that spending time outside of work with him would be a very good idea. He lives in Santa Cruz and is 24, end of story....

* Although I won't say it will never happen again because one never knows.

Birthday/Snailkiller/Kick the Dust

2009-04-01T06:04:00.000-07:00

I know perfectly well my own egotism,
Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.
--Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

Is it possible to acknowledge the ego's existence without unwittingly celebrating it? I wonder. I also wonder what it's like to denigrate people from a standpoint of constant superiority instead of viewing the world through a lens of perpetual inferiority, although both modes of being are equally stupid...

Now that I've been dancing for a month (mas o menos), I'm starting to notice the development of some appreciable muscle tone in my heretofore jiggly body. The process of toning up would probably be considerably expedited if I could manage to eat during my shift instead of afterward, but I can't seem to sit still long enough to nibble more than a few almonds in the strip club just yet. In order to gain some upper arm strength I've been practicing dangling from the bottom of the pole on the bar stage when nobody's around; hopefully I'll be hanging upside-down like a pro within the next few weeks; no sense in doing a job if one can't do it well...

My downstairs neighbors moved in the other day. Though the layout of the house is such that randomly bumping into one another will rarely, if ever, happen, I'm unbelievably glad to finally be sharing this big house with two other warm bodies-- it was starting to feel like the drafty, haunted house I lived in as a child, a converted hotel which was built in the 1800's and so creepy there were locks ON THE INSIDES of the closets. Shudder...

Anyway, in the interest of coming to terms with the horrible fact that I am now a year older, I decided the only way to stay sane yesterday was to do something useful and physically exhausting, thereby (theoretically) achieving some peace through physical catharsis.

My spacious-for-Brooklyn backyard has functioned as a trashheap of almost fantastic proportions (kind of like the mile-high leaf pile/dumping ground in the garden of the Gorgs from “Fraggle Rock”) for far too long for my pathologically resourceful Midwestern sensibilities, so I decided I'd do my new neighbors and myself a favor and clean it up so we can make the most of the patio and barbecue pit.

It looked horrible at first.

I was delighted to resuce a snail from the underside of a log I moved. It was cute.

A child talked to me from the window of the apartment building next door for awhile. She was cute, too.

After awhile I noticed a strange crunching sensation under my feet, as if I were walking on eggshells. With horror, I noticed-- too late-- the bodies of about a jillion yellow snails, smashed to fragments unwittingly under my feet, tragic victims killed in the process of clearing away the wood and cinderblocks under which they had been living. I tried valiantly to avoid them afterward, but to no avail. I cringed every time I stepped on one inadvertently, feeling like an SS soldier under Hitler “just doing my duty”. I rationalized that killing the snails was unavoidable and, really, sometimes one has to crack a few eggs to make an omelette in the name of a higher cause-- in this case, the facilitation of the twin virtues of utility and beauty.

Still, I really felt like a murderess.

It was fucking horrible to my delicate vegan sensibilities... you know, the ones that easily weathered 6 months spent stabbing men with large-gauge needles and beating them bloody in a Dungeon without a peep because of that magic-wand called CONSENT.

Poor snails. I hate myself!

It took a few hours, but I got some major work done; listening to soulful music made the time fly even more rapidly. I tried to limit my itunes playlist to Bushwick-friendly jams such as “PYT” (“Off the Wall” is played religiously at every block party in the summer round these parts) and old-school Keith Sweat to avoid alienating my neighbors/ getting the “Damn that's some honky shit, Pippy Longstocking” headshake listening to, say, New Kids on the Block would probably inspire. This is the hood, after all.

“Looks like you're doing some hard work!” my little neighbor from next door called from her window.

“Guess so, honey!” I said back to her, realizing this is, by the conservative American ethos, the only honorable way I've used my body for “work” in quite awhile. Achieving a goal using my physical being without factoring sexuality into the equation is pretty rare for me these days. It was a nice change.

Afterward, like the hookers after a catfight on the North Avenue Bridge I used to observe in Chicago and the disciples following Christ's sage advice after preaching to a rough crowd, I kicked the dust (or mud, in this case) from my shoes, gave myself a good, hard shake and met the rest of the evening's events as a fucking adult instead of a whining brat*.

Later on, I got a fabulous dinner, a beautiful cake from Babycakes, a bunch of (non-sexual) toys, books, treats, DVD's, cards, and other nice presents chosen thoughtfully and with impeccable taste.

I even heard the magic words:

“We should go look at puppies for you.”

Awww, maybe I'll get that Pomeranian puppy after all. Regardless, I can always buy one myself in a few weeks, though-- it's mostly a simple matter of decision, I suppose. Just like everything else in this life...

I still have high hopes that a POMERANIAN will be like CONSENT in that it will confer absolution and/or comfort in the aftermath of certain sticky situations.

PS I'm so emotionally retarded/dead sometimes I can't believe it. Blowing out the candles on a birthday cake that's a present from one man while thinking more fondly of another has gotta be the karmic equivalent of shooting a speedball-- spiritually, I'm sure I'll be kissing the floor pretty soon, but what else could I have done? I've been patient for so long, but I can't wait around forever... although I would, I suppose, if the circumstances were just right and the reason was love...

But that wasn't what happened last night.

I'm going to pray for an answer to this one ASAP. No way I want to do intentionally anything mean to anyone. I'm too grateful for the affection I receive than to treat the giver callously, even if the relationship is, by my estimate, a temporary one. I guess I can't coast anymore, wastes too much time and ultimately feels like a sin.

* I'd say bitch here, but I wisely avoid using that term pejoratively anymore

Birthday Blues

2009-03-30T19:30:00.000-07:00

Enough! enough! enough!
Somehow I have been stunn'd. Stand back!
Give me a little time beyond my cuff'd head, slumbers, dreams,
gaping,
I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.
-- Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

Tomorrow my two greatest neuroses (aging and eating) converge on what is, for me, traditionally the most miserable day of the year: my birthday. I don't mean to imply that I'm ungrateful for my life. In fact, I love my life fiercely almost every day except my birthday, the one 24-hour span per annum I am most guaranteed to be legitimately insane and railing against the heart-wrenchingly confusing fact of existence itself. My breakdowns are no joke. Example: I was so stupified with the abject horror of turning 24 I didn't (or maybe couldn't) speak for two solid weeks.

To be pathetically honest, I can't count the birthdays past I have flashed back to my glory days as a competitive eater and, burned out from trying not to hyperventilate or drop to the floor in inexplicable sadness after a night spent with friends, had a midnight fit of semi-narcoleptic despair face down in a huge vegan cake, bought lovingly by my mother *

A well-meaning-yet-delusional relative (the same one who insisted on buying me a tv "in case of emergencies" after four years of blissful existence without one, immediately causing me to spiral into unproductive co-obsessions with "Oprah" and "Lost") who knows I can't handle birthdays recently sent me a care package consisting of a simple white ceramic crucifix to hang over my bed and 140 Oxycontin tablets enclosed with a hand-made card that said:

"Just in case, sweetie! Happy Birthday!".

Awesome. Well, at least I'll have the option of dulling the terrible waves of existential dread in my brain with drugs and religion (none of my relative are particularly religious, so they do their best to accommodate me, hence the crucifix) instead of locking myself in this unused spare-bedroom closet in my home I have been eyeing (I don't really cry, usually, so the best I can do is hide away in a small, darkened space. Just kidding. Pretty much.) :

Actually, since I don't ever take recreational drugs, I'll probably just throw them away or maybe give them to a friend and forget about closets without resorting to any medicine stronger than a nap or two.

Sometimes I invent lame excuses about why I can't bear to see anyone on my birthday, but I can never manage to deliver them with a straight face.

"I gave up my birthday celebration for Lent. It's a pretty paltry sacrifice compared to fasting for 40 days and nights, though... haha, just kidding, I actually just need some private time to have my annual nervous breakdown, but ya never know, this year might be smooth sailing, I have high hopes."

Every ten years my birthday falls on Easter, which was especially helpful when, a newly minted tea-totaler, I turned 21. My friends still thought I was just kidding about not drinking anymore, and were pretty determined to see me drink my weight in tequila just like the good ol' days.

Friend on phone: "Yeah! Let's get you drunk tonight!"

Me: "No way! You're such a heathen, do you think I'm getting smashed on the day we celebrate the miracle of Christ's resurrection? Fuck you!" (phone slam.)

Then I snickered and read Harry Potter books to my 8-year old brother for four hours the way I'd wanted to all along. Bars stay open just fine without me, I've found, and my friends know I love them sober.

Anyway, since Saturday my phone has been randomly erasing my unread texts, which I consider an act of blessed Providence. If I don't read the friendly yet psychologically devastating early birthday "sup!"(s) my opinion is they don't officially exist. Besides me, who really cares if I freak out on my birthday and avoid social contact, anyhow? It's my (perceived) loss, right? I'm grateful people care at all, believe me, but it doesn't help assuage the sting of aging. I'll tell them so.... after *IT* is safely over.

Who knows, tomorrow I may be able to follow through with some of the kind invitations to meet up with friends etc. I have been lucky enough, despite myself, to have received, or I may just sleep all day, half comatose with grief over my emerging crow's feet, white hairs and the paralyzing fact of my creative stasis.

Who cares....

* Why can't I stop eating cake in bed this week? I spilled an entire teapot of constant comment on my favorite duvet, and now, despite my best efforts, I have to replace it. I also recently discovered chocolate-raspberry ganache stains on my sheets. How bestial! I'm not so far gone that I can't--at the very least!--sit upright at a table while I'm binge-eating like a civilized human being...

PS I'd make a lot of money if I went to work tomorrow. Today some of my soon-to-be-regulars shelled out for extra lap dances, bonus! when I told them I'd soon be turning 21 or 19 or 23 (hahaha)-- but I probably should have just worked tomorrow instead-- everybody loves a stripper on her birthday, it seems. Ra.

PS2 It's not facing up to my mortality which makes me so crazy. Death-shmeth, I have a much more significant fear of crumbling into useless decay. Luckily I have a strong feeling that I may die young, which makes me feel a little bit better, believe it or not.

PS3 Getting a Pomeranian puppy would instantly make all this horror disappear, I'm convinced.

PS4 Or maybe I'll be able to behave in a reasonable, sensible manner on my birthday. Finally.

Barefoot In the Park

2009-03-29T08:07:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a dream I lost my shoes and walked around Bryant Park barefoot. Nobody seemed to notice, even when I eventually wandered into the nearby subway station.

"Not again," I sighed.

PS Lately I've been weirdly preoccupied with the F Train. I wonder if I should ride it more just to discover the source of the attraction. Maybe I'll find a new hideout or soul mate of some variety...

PS I once sold a pair of my used panties to a craigslist pervert for 75 dollars in front of the Bryant Park F Train entrance. A lot of my friends were doing it, so I thought I'd give it a try. It's an experience not really worth repeating, though. I figure the odds of getting stalked after 3 or 4 such exchanges are about 100%. Who needs money that badly?

Tease/Stripper, wife, ecumenical nun, none of the above, whatevs

2009-03-28T14:53:00.000-07:00

"The mind mingles not with the breath, whether moving gently or violently, when it has once drawn itself apart and discovered its own power, and think also of all that thou hast heard and assented to about pain and pleasure and be quiet at last"
--Marcus Aurelius

My messy living room:

I'm so glad I'm finally objective enough to regard a man who calls my virginity "beautiful" and another state or country "home" as a lost cause, romantically-- no matter how undeniably gorgeous, Christian or charming he may be. These things just do not phase me anymore.

Luckily I can now spot a heart-breaking tease a mile away. In fact, I recognize without reservation, due to the extreme level of paraphilia with which I'm psychologically saddled, that I am often a tease also. I finally know better than to date the type of man who keeps me at arm's length, reserving his most intimate, engaging thoughts and experiences for long-time friends from out of town whom I never do seem to meet. I've done it, too, to men who serve a purpose in my life as opposed to the ones who strike me as relationship material. So I'm now wisely avoiding the sort of man who seems to like my innocence only as long as he fancies himself the potential possessor of it-- a resource he can toy with at his leisure. Till my panties drop, perhaps, in a desperate effort to connect with such an unavailable Adonis, which is not a likely event at this point. Even so, I wish all those boys well. They still want the same three things I want in life, just like everyone else.

Anyway, we're all only flawed or selfish when viewed from a limited human perspective-- eyes that can't see atoms (though they exist!) view things at face value and label another person as a jerk when the truth of that person's wholeness remains hidden, or possibly perfection is too vast to be perceived all at once. If I could step back and see the bigger picture, everyone's truly flawless nature would be revealed, so I just take the matter on faith and know nobody is a victim or a predator... we're all equals.

So now I'm trying to feel my way. However, I'm not relying upon the mutable mess of selfish human emotions I used to let rule me. Instead I'm using a deeper divining rod-- a telling sort of vibration that becomes fairly intense when I visualize someone or something currently meaningful in my life; it's an as-yet infallible method which tells me where to focus my energy, The only catch is that I can usually only feel it during meditation. Soon I hope I'll be able to let the particulars of the people and things drop, and be able to catch various vibrations anywhere, though.

My love is free, and unconditional, but from now on I will only flow with a partner who is as much of an open book as I am, or strive to be. I don't shrink from physical affection, especially after I get to know a man well, but potentially making myself a night-blooming garden of disease simply because I've got nothing better to do than be charmed by a handsome man seems to be a bad idea. I want to be tidy and pure, mind, body, and soul and share my secrets with just one man.

Sometimes it gets a little bit frustrating, though. I'm already impossible to fuck, so I have limited patience with the hard-to-get game.

If I count the five most attractive offers (ie intelligent, well-off, handsome, non-regulars) from the strip club patrons and the most interesting random guys from the train or craigslist (more about that tomorrow...) I suppose I was asked on about a dozen dates this week. It's overwhelming. If nobody I like makes sincere boyfriend overtures in the next week or two I'll probably get burned out and bury my genuine sensuality underground again, unearthing a modicum of it here and there, perhaps, as a reserve upon which to draw for method acting at work. I'll be happy either way.

I'm beginning to realize human beings have so many more similarities than differences that I just try to be sweet and have fun with the dating process. I'm ever-aware that the romantic formula I'm after (statistically speaking, the most successful for marriage) is: smitten guy who tries the hardest to win me plus me, pleasant yet detached-- maintaining a degree of emotional distance because I'm confident things are under the auspices of the Divine and can't help but work out well, rather than using my serene equanimity as a hard-to-get ploy. The attractive, honest man who really wants me most will probably get me in the end. Anyway, I can always become a sister at Taize if nobody snags me by 30. Stripper, wife, ecumenical nun, none of the above, whatevs. I have a lot of love to give and, as always, it'll inevitably get channeled in some constructive way and saturate those around me, thankfully-- I'm learning to be more of a giver every day.

Moving on...

I am considering buying some bad-ass, sewn-in hair extensions and getting a fake tan in the near-ish future. I kind of want to try the stripper look on for size and really go for it.

PS I just rediscovered this modest dress-- seems like a good dress for church or a date that doesn't involve teasing anyone:

PS 2 I guess I don't need to go to France to be a sister in an ecumenical community:

http://www.benedictinewomen.org/index.html

Kind of reminds me of Wesley Woods, the secluded Methodist retreat on Lake Geneva where I spent many long, happy weekends as a teenager.

Forbidden Fruit Leitmotif, Vivacious Vivi

2009-03-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

"No thank you, Creation,
no muse need apply.
I'm out for good times--
at the very least,
some painless convention."
-- Alice Walker, "I Said To Poetry"

I find it nearly impossible to write and have a job of any sort at the same time. Unconventional as my job may be, doing it well requires that I relegate my more fanciful artistic thoughts and impulses to an obscure part of my brain. Instead, I focus on behaving in a socially prescribed manner calculated to come across as adorable, fun and/or sexy. Hopefully I'll get used to stripping soon enough to get back to a regular writing schedule, for even when I leave the strip club I find myself keyed up and replaying the colorful events of my shift over and over in my mind. During my off time I get no respite-- a thousand distracting thoughts swirl madly and regroup like a swarm of bees without stingers, plaguing me in an amorphous, yet undeniably vexing way.

Inspired by William Blake, Fra Angelico and various Book of Hours-style illuminated manuscripts, I have been toying with the idea of illustrating some of the 60 or so poems I have written since Valentine's Day. However, I must choose one cohesive theme, such as Blake's "Songs of Experience". In fact, believe I will choose loss of innocence and forbidden fruit as my prevailing leitmotifs. I want to keep the illustrations simple and use a single figure as much as possible, like this:

I've also been running into a girl named Vivi all over town for several months now. A slender, friendly, vaguely Latina native New Yorker with a huge, magnetic smile, Vivi is obviously a very independent young lady. I first noticed her working behind the counter at my favorite little cafe to buy vegan goodies in the LES (sometimes, after beating men up at the Dungeon all day, I'd stop by with my best friend, a fellow vegan domme with whom I often worked, and order a pecan roll as big as a cartwheel). I especially like Vivi's long, wild, curly hair-- the sort I used to have when I was her age (20) and hadn't yet discovered the miracle of the Japanese straight perm (apparently I now have the same haircut as Anna Wintour, or so I was told by a guy who paid me to just sit and talk with him at the strip club last night).

Anyway, I saw her again two nights ago in the subway near her college in Tribeca. She asked when I'd be old enough to drink and I explained that I'm almost 28. She'd always assumed I was closer to her age. She asked what I was doing in the neighborhood, so I showed her my shoes-- standard black 5-inch stiletto platforms of the variety only transvestites and strippers ever wear. I thought she'd understand right away, but it took a few tries.

"You design shoes?" she asked.

"No. I wear them at work..."

"You write about shoes?" she tried again, which makes sense since I write for a women's magazine she often reads.

When I told her the real deal she didn't believe me.

"Nuh-uh!" She cried with a shocked smile, running her hands lightly over my smooth hair and laying her hands lightly on my cheeks. I like a girl who's unafraid to touch me. I'm the same way.

"With this baby face?" she asked, shaking her head and giving my shoulders a playful squeeze.

"It's true." I said simply, taking her hands in mine.

We parted with a hug. I like her enormously.

Last night I spotted her balancing trays outside an Irish pub, overwhelmed but still smiling, even at her second job. That girl can take care of herself.

"Hi Vivi!" I call over to her in passing.

"You look pretty!" she exclaimed.

"So do you!" I chirp in response and bounce off to the Brooklyn-bound F Train, blithely swinging a bag laden with cake for today's breakfast, which I enjoyed a little bit too much. I'll never be a size zero till I can stop eating so much sugar:

PS I also ran into Sister Corrine on my street-- I used to go to the Pentecostal church where she is a deaconess on Friday nights, but I get home too late these days... I made sure my bag was zipped up so she couldn't see the sheer lace gown or fishnet stockings inside.

Dream On

2009-03-26T20:22:00.001-07:00

"I don't like girls in the daytime," he said shortly, and then, thinking
this a bit abrupt, he added: "But I like you." He cleared his throat. "I
like you first and second and third."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "This Side of Paradise"

My horsie bag and stripper gear...

Today the "What the hell are you doing in a place like this?!" factor reached critical mass. Everyone thinks I'm 18 and just fell off the milk-truck, including the manager, who photo-copied my ID three times already. Then I start talking and the heads start to shake.

Finance Guy: "Were you an English Lit major?"

Me: "Uh, haha, no I'm just an avid reader, sometimes, when I'm not here taking my clothes off. You want a dance?"

But eventually it always comes down to:

"Seriously, you're too good to be true. Would you ever date a guy you met here?".

God bless all of us. It's so weird.

I know I set myself up for this, and that I have, by the deftest subconscious maneuvers, put myself in yet another fish-out-of-water scenario to garner attention. Nobody is special, though. I am not. We are all equally deserving of love and attention, and the day I can walk in the strip club and fit in will be the day my ego really is shed like the outmoded lizard skin it truly is.

A guy came in, for the second time ever, apparently, after meeting me on Monday and bought a few dances from me with my clothes on (this is how you know a guy REALLY likes you). He wants to date me. I don't think it's going to happen, because he met me naked in a STRIP CLUB and I have serious doubts about the odds of that sort of meeting panning out into an awesome relationship. He knew how lame it was, he mentioned it, yet he couldn't seem to help himself.

I talked about Camus and Vonnegut with some customers when it was slow (chatting with the tightwads who don't buy dances is something I do when only I'm bored of talking to the Ukranian cocktail waitresses) and got some tips from Lexi, the Bronx hustler who often makes me cringe even though she's got the hang of the money-making part of this business. Behaviorally, she's a totally different human animal than I. I observe her keenly. Her nose looks as though it's been broken at least once.

"Don't talk with them for more than one song, and if they don't buy a dance, bounce to the next guy," she told me.

Then she volunteered some personal information:

"I don't have no boyfriend or parents, so I have to take care of myself. I used to have a guy who supported me, but that ended, and now I just have to do everything. I don't got no one, so I just do it."

She doesn't have to be nice to me, or tell me anything. I appreciate it.

PS The other day I went on a date with a thoughtful lawyer who gave me some vegan cupcakes and a book of Marilyn Hacker poetry. It's so nice to have a man do all the simple things like pay for a cab home, email the same night to say he had a great time, etc., which I haven't put myself out there to experience in awhile. I forget the positive aspects of dating sometimes. Funny to be on yet another date at Wild Ginger with the latest in the series of conservative men interested in me and well-off enough to take me off the meat grinder circuit yet still balk at the prospect of being kept by someone who doesn't electrify me attraction-wise from the get-go. NEWSFLASH TO SELF: Apparently Mr. Right with a career in the arts doesn't marry strippers/ ex-dominatrixes!

PS2 It's so slow at this club. I'm not making very much money at all, though I'm doing as well as most of the other women. Being new doesn't help. Neither does the economy, but my living expenses are VERY low, so I'll be ok by next week, money-wise.

Friends

2009-03-24T12:08:00.000-07:00

I get sad that I never can post pics on my friends on here. It makes me feel tainted. Some of my friends say they wouldn't mind at all, but I still wonder if it's wise to put their faces up here. Or mine, either, probably. So I won't. Except when I crop them like this:

Two cute girlies + me in Astoria, one a fellow ex-domme I especially love, making the most of spring break before they return to their Ivy League school.

So many of us have secret lives...

Strip Club Schiele

2009-03-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

Huddled under three layers of chenille and still shivering from a chill that seems to have penetrated my bones, I'm so burned-out I can't seem to put my thoughts in an orderly sequence. They run over one another in an overwhelming, indistinct blur of female body parts and mordant juvenalia (I'm drawing a lot of pictures of the cutesy little tchotchkes in my room and they all seem creepy). All around me, facades of beauty are crumbling and morphing into carrion (ever seen an aging stripper cry under the harsh lights of the dressing room, makeup running down her face in black rivers as she run out the door, straight to her drug dealer?) so that I feel as though I'm channeling Egon Schiele or something.

However, I'm not sick, just overexposed. I feel like one of those delicate Victorian women who got fed up with her hopelessly static, unrewarding existence and decided to join a progressive, edgy organization to get as far out of her element as possible, only to end up dead of tuberculosis or scarlet fever.

Sometimes the wheel of progress crushes the unprepared unmercifully and spiritual deep-sea diving in the name of routing ennui seems to eat nice ladies alive.

I wonder if I am about to be devoured?

Shades of Flaubert! But I always hated Madame Bovary... if that's the kind of curious cat I am, after all, I welcome the poison. Time will tell, and if I am going wrong, I trust Virtue to throw me a lifesaver and myself to spot it before I go under completely.

Lately my cause is exploring subjective reality in the controlled environment of a strip club, but I must admit the pursuit seems a bit hollow lately. I've been viewing the events of my life with "the sovereign calm of aesthetic emotions" Sartre always seemed to be talking about. It nips drama in the bud, yet seems to have rubbed the bloom from some of my experiences, mainly because it seems I only know how to be joyful on the edge of hysteria or a great revelation.

I've also been meditating with Megan a lot, which frees me from my egoic machinations a little bit more every day. Bonus: I secretly get to pray for her, too, with ease and total confidence she's on the proper wavelength to receive the positive vibrations I send her way.

As to my recent activities...

After a series of look-sees and auditions I'm dancing at a new club in the Wall Street area. It's small and relatively low-key with intelligent customers, and, since a couple of smart punk-rock girls with feminist sensibilities work there also, I feel a little bit more in my element than at the working-class club in Queens where I was before (I knew it was my last night there when the dj on the mic started making up random obscene nursery rhymes which charmingly included words such as "twat".).

Notable occurrences at the new place, let's call it "Tryst":

1.) On Friday I was paired with a slightly chubby blonde girl for stage dances. Although her dance moves were unremarkable and she didn't do any pole tricks whatsoever, the way she moved very slowly, deliberately and sensuously, watching herself without any inhibition in the mirror made her-- as if by magic-- a thousand times more attractive, instantly. She was busy all night. Ever since then I have danced more slowly, practiced touching my reflection in the glass with as little shyness as possible and am even speaking at a less rapid clip, choosing my words more carefully and conveying my meaning by using a slow, sonorous, measured tone. This place is a goldmine! What a valuable lesson that girl taught me without even knowing it. However, the mystery of how I got to be 27 without figuring out such a basic tenet of female sensuality as "slow and self-aware is sexy" makes me shrug and cringe. But the idea that things are amplified and expedited in a strip club gives me hope I will figure these things out a bit more rapidly than has been my wont in the "straight world".

2.) Lexi is a totally nondescript brunette Greek/Latina girl with a large nose, long hair and average body, with the exception of her voluminous rear end, which she bounces in an ungraceful but effective manner, like a frog.

Watching her dance is painful for me, so often am I disgusted at the way she manages to isolate and exploit one part of her anatomy with as much undignified carnality as can possibly be imagined. It's like throwing a huge, bloody steak to a prim vegan, I guess, which I am.

As politely as possible, I asked,

"Is she from the Bronx?"

Her fingernails are like claws and, during her stage dances, her smile never reaches her dead eyes. I can't decide if, sadly, she is the only one of us who can't pass for a lady on the street or simply the smartest piece of meat in the room. Either way, she's a hustler who makes money. I'm mystified, and I know my pathetic feelings-- undeniably visceral as they are-- and ego-based judgements ultimately signify nothing. Nothing. After all, our minds will both be quiet in our respective graves, and till then I know it's my place to experience and radiate joy, not judgement.

3.) I have learned to accept compliments without involving my ego whatsoever. I follow up each compliment I receive with:

"Thanks you. Do you think so?"

And listen for the response with as little mental analysis as possible. I treat everything I hear in response as a koan and feel the tell-tale Zen *drop* in the urgency of my thought process when I repeat what they say. ie the manager, Jimmy, watched me practice pole spins on the small bar stage when no customers were around, and we had this conversation:

me: "I suck at these now. I know I look pretty ungraceful, but give me a week and I'll figure it out!"

Jimmy: "Oh stop, you have a beautiful body."

me (*drop*): "Thank you."

Jimmy: "And you KNOW it!"

me: "I do? (*drop*)?"

This really works. If I become totally unsusceptible to flattery as well as insult I suppose I will be on the royal road to peace from inner turmoil.

3.) From my inner thighs to the top of my feet, I have enormous, disgusting bruises on my legs from learning those pole spins. I appear to be legitimately battered. I actually gasped in pain (involuntarily) when I took my tight jeans off last night, feeling the sharp stab agony caused by the friction of the denim sliding along the egg-sized bruises. I'll have to buy pancake makeup to hide them when I go back for my shift on Thursday.

They look bad now, but I'm gonna reserve the money shots for later on in the week, when they'll be EPIC:

Pretty Piggy Bank

2009-03-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

"Self-Portrait of a Stripper"

Done from my favorite piggy-bank, a gift from my then-six-year-old brother, who insisted on sight that it be purchased (in Chicago's Chinatown) because:

"It looks like you."

If society say I'm a pretty piggy bank, do I agree? If so, is it from lack of self-esteem, admission of vice or the desire for total abasement in order to obliterate my ego?

Abasement/Ego/FUCKING SERIOUS ABOUT PANTERA

2009-03-17T06:49:00.000-07:00

"Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be. "
Ortega y Gasset

"Never esteem of anything as profitable, which shall ever constrain thee either to break thy faith, or to lose thy modesty; to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to dissemble, to lust after anything, that requireth the secret of walls or veils."
-- Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"

I really agree with the truth of above statements, yet, often, I do not live up to them. I continually distract myself with exercises in abasement, I never had any modesty, sometimes I hate men, if there's a place to learn fouler language than a strip club or Dungeon I haven't found it yet and I love secret walls and veils, etc. So what compels me so ardently to work in the sex industry these days, when it seems to flout the virtuous life I claim to seek? I suppose the most honest answer I can give now is this:

"To express myself sexually. To be beautiful and adored, as well as abased, in hopes that my ego will eventually drop like a leaf as a result of being mercilessly and constantly put through its paces."

For no longer do I believe in any fellow human being's right or ability to judge me in any way. So if I feel abasement I know it is only my own ego burning like dross in the furnace of my own consciousness.

That's it, I am going to shine a light of RADICAL honesty on my life and see what happens. No more shall I allow myself to hide.

PS I used to LOVE Pantera as a teenager. In fact, when Dimebag Darrell was so tragically murdered, I cried for the first time in three years. I wore this shirt every three days or so in my sophomore year of high school, until it fell apart, and now I want a replacement:

I hope nobody thinks my proximity to Williamsburg makes me a progenitor of irony by wearing it. Irony is a ruse, a pose, a sham! I'm FUCKING SERIOUS ABOUT PANTERA.

Obama Votes=Dolla Dolla Bills Y'all...

2009-03-16T22:58:00.000-07:00

At the strip club the other night a larger than life "man of leisure" type asked me where I was from.

"Chicago," I replied, taking his dollar with a smile.

"You vote for Obama?"

"Hell yeah, four times in the last three years!" I exclaimed gleefully, ticking off on my fingers the times I'd joyfully selected "Obama" in the voting booth:

"Illinois senate primary, Illinois senatorial election, national primary and, obviously, in November."

He gave me a dollar for each vote, deeming me "a progressive white girl" and throwing scads of cash at me thereafter.

Thanks, Barack!

PS In a random Illinois political note, since disgraced governor Rod Blagojevich (he ran his office like a teamster's union, in Illinois? Oh how shocking!) whom I voted for twice, btw, seems to be out of the running for Obama's senate seat, it looks like Alexi Giannoulias, Obama's wealthy basketball buddy (yes I voted for him in his successful bid for state treasurer) is going to throw his hat in:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2009/03/illinois_state_treasurer_alexi.html

Worthy of note: he's only 32! Also worthy of note: he fine.

My February/March BUST reviews

2009-03-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

So I write music journalism for BUST Magazine-- these reviews (of bands Asobi Seksu and These Are Powers) are currently featured in the February/March issue (Amber Tamblyn cover) still on stands if you grab it sharpish, yo. Ignore it being credited to (my other) pseudonym.

And (no pic, not worthy of a scan):

These Are Powers
All Aboard Future
Dead Oceans

Sonically amorphous yet stridently opposed to such catch-all phrases as no-wave and without a clearly discernible political agenda or polarizing allegiance to a particular scene, noise rock outfit These Are Powers, who spilt their time between New York and Chicago, are harder to pin down than most. With the release of their latest inscrutably hip effort “All Aboard Future”, whirling dervish front woman Anna Barie and company will no doubt continue to inspire an excess of superlatives in the underground media. Most of the nine tracks that comprise the album slither, stomp and stutter without a cohesive groove, adding credence to the rumor that much of the record is improvised (or at least strives consciously to sound like it). “Life of Birds” features dive-bombing guitars and wails as strangely avian as the title suggest, while the vocals on “Easy Answers” side-step between a sexy scat and striving-for-street rap, and “Sand Tassels”, comes across as a creepy and discordant urban sea chanty, proving that the territory of modern noise music can, in the hands of capable and enthusiastic artists, be expansively defined, transcending the cultural boundaries of Wicker Park loft parties and Williamsburg keggers without losing its edge.

xo,

Robin

Tools Celebrate Their Usefulness

2009-03-14T14:37:00.000-07:00

"Why do I make lists?" Amory asked him one night. "Lists of all sorts of
things?"
"Because you're a mediaevalist," Monsignor answered.
"We both are. It's the passion for classifying and finding a type."
"It's a desire to get something definite."
"It's the nucleus of scholastic philosophy."
"I was beginning to think I was growing eccentric till I came up here."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "This Side of Paradise"

My two favorite types of work g-strings look like this:

In order to express solidarity with Christ and to help my friend renovate the house, I've been learning how to do all sorts of things. Some of the tools we use look like this:

My work clothes look like this:

And my Bible looks like this (I've had it almost 15 years, since I got confirmed:

New Blonde Friend

2009-03-14T13:35:00.000-07:00

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge."
--Voltaire

I hung out three times this week with my neighbor Megan. Strangely, although we lived in adjoining apartments and even shared a living room wall, we never met until the evening before I moved out. Luckily I only moved down the block.

Blonde and attractive in that hale, classically conservative Utah Mormon way (Her mother is a lapsed Mormon, her Father is a Swiss-born Catholic, and she was brought up Catholic in the heart of LDS territory-- with an endlessly prosletyzing extended Mormon family-- talk about alienation!) she is, to my shock, another virgin and writer. Most worthy of note are her moments of awkwardness and distance when it comes to personal sexual matters-- the very mirror of my own! Since I've had many more intimate experiences than she, I have also found myself-- for once-- possessed of more carnal knowledge than a girl of my acquaintance.

The two of us have begun a regular practice of meditation in my new home. I can already feel the positive effects of sharing extended moments of unbroken awareness with another person in such close proximity, and I relish her company. I find it very easy to pray for her as well as myself, and I have every expectation that we will effect great changes in our respective mind-states the more we dedicate ourselves to the practice.

Observing her behavior, I noticed an interesting tendency she has to absolutely obscure her sexuality and attractiveness-- not by means of dress or even speech, necessarily, but by putting up a wall/withdrawing her personal sensuality to the far recesses of her being. I know she does it to minimize random approaches and confessions of love and lust from men in whom she's not interested; however, I'm sure it's difficult for her to loosen up when a man she is attracted to comes on the scene-- a sure-fire recipe for being an old maid if she isn't careful. I notice these things in her because I do them also. We discussed the matter and acknowledged it mutually, which will hopefully be the first step to overcoming the problem.

Truly, this joint effort to stop projecting unconscious frigidity is a matter of the blind leading the blind, but hopefully we're being led in the right direction. We're ignorant in some respects, having chosen (as yet) to not fully indulge ourselves sexually, but I believe we really can open ourselves fearlessly to a less guarded outlook and mode of behavior if we try.

I think our quiet moments together are going to bear immense fruit. We are two very similar souls lucky to have found one another.

Not that I believe in luck.

PS I've been wearing this robe my best friend in Chicago gave me. It cheers me up when I'm struggling with my sleep disorder.

PS I really like Mormons. Especially the young blonde missionary boys.

PS She doesn't have anything negative to say about my sex industry escapades, so I don't have to hide my true self from her.

The Difference Between Life and Art

2009-03-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

"There is a difference between life and art. That is why one is called life and the other art."
--Goethe

You perceive, then why it is that I write you this letter-- it is on account of my ennui and your sins.
-- Poe

With a painful sting (better felt sooner than later!) I have realized this blog is not art. Diaries unto themselves are only interesting when the person in question is notable for some worthy/infamous reason or other or a sterling representative of the zeitgeist of his or her time (no matter how unwittingly) ie "The Diary of Anne Frank". Since I am clearly neither famous nor imagine that I am a symbol of my particular as-yet-unnamed-for-posterity Age, I accept that this writing is merely a useful means of recording my state of mind and experiences on this, presumably my last foray into the sex industry, for an as-yet largely unwritten book (which must necessarily be one step removed from documenting my life as a matter of course to be considered proper art, as I see it).

After all, who cares what Shakespeare usually ate for dinner or what Milton thought about his landlord? It is their noble works we remember-- the ones which speak the universal language of truth, rather than the trifles of their personal lives they and history have wisely conspired to obscure.

Although I'm sure some would disagree, I remain convinced that the process of making or discovering how to make art is not, unto itself, art (whether living itself is the highest art itself I shall leave for wiser heads than mine to decide). I also believe the tools and detritus involved in creating works of art-- whether they are paintbrushes, to-do lists or microphones-- are, in my opinion, memorabilia, rather than objets d'arts in their own right.

This diary is my sounding-board and record of my life and aspirations if I should die before a more worthy relic is produced. I repeat: It is not art.

Apparently it is also the only place I feel compelled to flash my panties and NOT get paid.

Sometimes lately I do feel death to be close at hand, somehow. Whether that may mean death to my current personality or way of life or the actual physical end of it, I cannot say.

For myself, I would really like to leave behind at least an EP and book....

Maybe I'm just exaggerating because of ennui? I'll play it off like that, at least for now.

PS I really need to get out of the house more often.

The Void Stares Back With Many Eyes

2009-03-09T19:07:00.000-07:00

I think a spirit of my blood laments
The sin which down below there costs so much.
--Dante, "Inferno"

Last night I had a very vivid and terrifying dream-- an unexpected vision of hell, the sort I've never before imagined, even more remarkable considering I don't believe in Hell as a firmament or external territory of any sort.

However, I got the loud and clear message last night that such a Hell believes in ME.

I dreamed all sorts of Lovecraftian monsters from another dimension were surrounding me, ready to devour my flesh, and that, somehow, I had attracted them by my latest sinful activities. Even now I shudder when I recall the menacing creatures' ochre flesh, ripe as a succulent plant with mordant parasites ready to burst forth like maggots from a sun-swelled animal corpse...

Maybe stripping is a much more evil and destructive endeavor than I imagined-- I breezily thought I could have fun with it without tapping this chaotic, malevolent energy, that now seems to be flowing from me inwardly as well as bearing down on me from outward entities, if my subconscious is to be believed.

It appears that staring into the void with curiosity and, possibly a bit of haughtiness, has revealed to me a terrifying truth:

Not only does the void stare back, but it has many eyes.

PS I only believe in Nietzche once a year or so. I guess it's about that time...

In The Flesh

2009-03-09T15:23:00.000-07:00

All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase—'I love you.'"
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Out of the blue I've been thinking often and fondly about my friend Paul, a brilliant young lawyer I met in East Hampton this summer. A friend of his-- a beautiful dominatrix I worked with at the time-- brought me to his marathon birthday celebration at his vacation home with every expectation of seducing me, which fell flat when she discovered I was totally infatuated (needlessly, as it turns out) with someone else.

The upside of all of this was being introduced to Paul, who was and is, a kindred spirit of the sort one does not meet every day. Dashing, charismatic, and almost brutally intelligent, his self-assured smile made me feel welcome-- even coddled--immediately. At the time we met, he was in an open relationship with a girl I thought was very sweet but possibly a little bit too reserved for my tastes-- she was, however, of the same redheaded, fair-skinned white girl variety as myself, which I suppose must be Paul's type, based on the scant amount of time he spent dropping hints that he was very attracted to me also.

Surprisingly, he was charming, rather than vexing, in his attempts at seduction, never pushing me or pouncing, but playfully ruffling my hair or teasing me-- which I secretly loved-- and always carefully gauging my amused but distant reactions with his sparkling brown eyes.

In short, he is a bon vivant rather than a libertine, which I never do mind.

I found every conversation with him to be memorable, but our physical rapport was probably even more so. Every time we touched I felt my body relax, and every instinct told me, despite the way he openly flouted monogamy, Paul didn't have a truly mercenary or vulgar bone in his body. When we hugged it was so heavenly that I can still recall the press of his slender waist against mine, my head resting briefly against his lean but powerfully built shoulder. I wonder if he remembers my body as warmly?

However, although the sight of the sunlight dappling his dark, roguish curls as we sat by his backyard pool made my heart race, I kept things between us strictly friendly. I was hopelessly smitten with another man, and he had a girlfriend.

After all, to me a man in a relationship-- ANY kind of relationship-- becomes unappealing-- almost inhuman-- romantically speaking. Taken men are forbidden fruit of the strictly rotten variety in my estimation-- at least when it comes to cheating with them.

Anyhow, he let me know as soon as he broke up with his girlfriend, although, at the time, he was back on the West Coast where he works and lives with as much good humor as he can muster while still longing for New York.

After our summer encounters I saw him briefly in October, after he showed up-- to my delight-- at my friend Pearl's birthday party. He met the person who had been the object of my infatuation over the summer (whom he knew by name and openly loathed on sight, which shocked me) but I kept the fact that there was, after all, nothing going on between the two of us to myself. Paul just assumed otherwise, and I was somehow reticent to disabuse him of the notion.

Maybe it's the disparity in our social classes that makes me so wary-- after all, he can't even join any social-networking sites because of the gossip blogs that constantly try to unjustly portray him as a rich, reckless party animal in order to paint his endlessly Forbes-featured father in a bad light, and I'm... a stripper (at least for now).

When I told him that, in addition to my ghostwriting job, I was working as a dominatrix, he hardly cared. He was more fascinated with my religious beliefs and having conversations about ethical quandries, astral projection, etc. I suppose it's the same way I feel about him, unless I'm much mistaken, or a fool-- our occupations are only so much stage business compared to the lively affection we feel for one another. I don't really want to tell him I'm stripping just yet, though.

Anyhow, he recently invited me "Come see him in the flesh" on the west coast. I'm considering it. Since he's now fully aware I'm saving myself for marriage, he can't possibly imagine I'm an easy lay, not that finding willing girls has ostensibly been much of a problem for him. Yet, in my mind, regarding an in-person encounter, all roads lead to his bed, and I can't imagine that he feels much differently. However, I'm sure it would be very frustrating for him to take things back to junior high in terms of physical intimacy, which is my basic M.O. In fact, I get so dizzy just thinking about the possibility of his lips brushing mine that I wonder if a weekend spent together wouldn't be more like torture for both of us, really.

I've accepted that my ideas about virginity are not the only valid ones. I wish other people would do the same... it's difficult enough to be divided from such a critical aspect of human life without being thought of as backwards. What Paul will say at the critical moment, I do not know, and slightly fear.

Even so, I'd be lying if I didn't admit the half of me that still believes that romance with a man is possible, despite all my previous strike-outs, longs to find out. I would love to give him my finest attempts at intimacy and partnership for a few days and see what happens.

Would he break my heart?

Would I end up becoming as frozen and out of control as I fear and say or do something cruel to him, as a coping mechanism?

Should I go?

I wonder...

PS The way Paul signs his emails with a single capital X makes me bite my lip.

PS I got so much paint on my clothes they were starting to actually drip. Consequently, after stripping them off to finish I got so splattered with paint my skin began to look as mottled as Zartan's in the swamp (Remember that villaneous changeling from GI Joe?). It's even in my hair.

Useless G-String

2009-03-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

Today I tested a certain style of nude g-string I've had for awhile, trying to determine whether it would:

1.)Ride up too much when I dance

2.)Expose more than is acceptable when I bend over

3.)Be too transparent for comfort in strong lighting (just in case)

The answer to all three is apparently yes, so I guess I'll hold onto my 6-pack of these for private use, most likely to be worn under white dresses in the summertime...

PS Sorry my house is still busted up in these pics-- the detritus of my painting and houseplant re-potting should be removed by this afternoon, when I'm all finished...

Good Songs That Get Me Naked

2009-03-06T07:41:00.001-08:00

Alright, so I've been a stripper for two weeks now, and I have to say the music is becoming pretty intolerable. I had a serious dj career in Chicago for years (about to start up again when my gay sugar-pop dance EP is finished) and bad trance remixes and generic reggaeton make me itch and convulse inwardly when I know how much fabulous hip hop and dirty disco is out there.

I'm going to have to start bringing my own selections to the dj-- I'll just use the songs that keep me motivated to jog/walk on my treadmill every day. For 100 minutes.

Anyway, I'm really feeling "Bounce" by Mstrkrft. Sorry, I have no idea how to embed video yet, so here's the YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXvYZzXzyD0

It's awesome to see them blowing up after a few years on the circuit... I remember seeing them play at a deliciously sleazy warehouse party @ the Winter Music Conference in Miami awhile back when they first got together (they were unknowns wearing masks, so at first it was kind of like, "Are these guys secretly Daft Punk or what?".) and they really threw down.

Ah, sweet memories of South Beach.

This song makes me wanna tear my clothes off at home (not that I wear much more that a bra and panties when I jog, unless it's cold), so I'm pretty sure it'll be a good one for work, too.

PS So this is, hopefully, gonna be the raunchiest thing I say on here for awhile, but their video for "Easy Love" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEfKBEWGQwg is worth checking out, too if, like me, you enjoy seeing beautiful, smiling women having their faces and busts drenched with sticky, vicous fluids. Makes me want to reline in a danish modern chair or get down on my knees and get absolutely slathered with-- strawberry milkshakes (soy ones, now, I'm vegan...).

Bruises

2009-03-04T08:50:00.001-08:00

My legs are so banged-up I have to cake them with make-up when I dance. The bruises life leaves on my body are so obvious. I wonder how the ones on my mind and spirit manifest? I venture to say they're just as obvious, although perhaps not to me.

Lonely At Home/Romance in Modern Brooklyn

2009-03-04T08:02:00.001-08:00

I wish the composure but not the depression of solitude.
--Poe

Although I love spending quiet time on my own, I don't like living alone very much. With a couple of miserable exceptions, I've always lived with one girl at a time-- wry, skinny worry-worts who were gone all the time (that's my type of girl), but the idea that I'd see my roommate at least a couple of times a week always eased my mind and made me feel less isolated. In fact, until recently I've NEVER had a problem with loneliness WHATSOEVER, but these days I feel it descend on me like a heavy mantle fairly often.

What changed? Maybe my youthful optimism is being dampened slightly by the fact that I have been putting myself through the wringer coast to coast for a few years now. Maybe I feel so over-exposed from working in the sex industry I don't have the energy to emotionally bare myself after I leave work. Maybe I'm sick at heart, sick to death, sick and now scared of being an old maid. I know a person has to work pretty hard to maintain total disconnection from fellow humans in the NYC area, so I'm going to have to take responsibility for my condition when it gets totally intolerable, an eventuality which seems to be on the horizon. I know I'll only receive as much love as I give, so once I respect the immutability of that eternal equation and stop complaining, things will change. Maybe I just find romance in being miserable lately?! I need to pray about that one, what a waste of God-given life, which should be so full of joy...

Anyway, living alone on the second floor of a rambling old three-story house seems unnatural. Houses should be full of life and activity.

I rent my new place from a good friend... he's still renovating the first floor and basement, and his brother and father help him out. We all get along very well, and, when I need a break from the chaos in my brain and long to accomplish some innocent, tangible and constructive task, I ask him to teach me how to lay wall tiles or parquet flooring. He is, perhaps, the most honorable man I've ever met. I appreciate the company, and so does he...

I adore his wife, too. He's Peruvian, she's Hasidic, or was when they met... every time some guy doesn't call me and I start making excuses for him, I remember my friend's love story, and how he spotted his future bride on the train and knew no matter what, he was going to be with her EVEN THOUGH SHE WASN'T EVEN ALLOWED TO TALK TO HIM. He must have felt as though he was hit with a hammer the first time he saw her. He never let her go, that's for sure. What they must feel when they look at one another... I can sense it sometimes, but the inner reality must be paradise. They're the happiest couple I've ever met. She's a blunt person with a lot of integrity, which I admire-- being nobody's fool is one of Barbara's specialties.

Today I made everyone chocolate chip/hazlenut/coconut cookies and put hers in little heart-shaped tart forms. They gamely tolerate my vegan cooking, but I usually spare them and just make them baked goods instead, which are not so obviously weird.

It's so inspiring to know true romance really does exist in modern Brooklyn.

I wonder what they would think of me if they knew about my secret life.

To a degree, they probably have one, too.

PS I bought this print in a furniture store on Broadway. Bushwick is full of surprises.

Strip Miners

2009-03-03T17:46:00.000-08:00

Apparently goldmine is the word men at the strip club use on me by default. Maybe they do it to everyone, I have no idea.

The thing about goldmines is this:

They are elusive, and some men search for them their whole lives. After they find the goldmine, they guard it with insane jealousy, strip it of every rare and valuable resource and, when it is barren of its treasure, they abandon it.

I'm not a goldmine.

I'm a girl.

And I want a boyfriend, not a strip miner.

More Plastic Surgery

2009-03-03T07:08:00.001-08:00

I'm seriously considering undergoing more plastic surgery. Last autumn I got a nose job, which turned out really well, but my plastic surgeon wouldn't even consider giving me a chin implant or doing my upper eyelids, which, to be frank, I still really, really want. He said those procedures are totally unnecessary for me (his boss actually called me crazy), that the scar from the implant would be very hard to hide, etc. but I *like* scars! And it would only be under my chin, anyway. Who notices that sort of thing, or cares, anyway? I could always lie and say I got it from a brutal pirate knife fight or saving a child from being run over by a semi truck. Or just tell the truth...

I'm completely fascinated with the idea that, to be more beautiful, I must be cut up, have my bones broken with a mallet, my skin stitched with needles etc. I mean, the process of cosmetic overhaul is no different than any other sort of renovation. Half my house is busted up and being re-done, does the ugliness of the process mean the renovation should be avoided? I don't think so!!!! My living room looks pretty crazy right now because I'm painting everything, but the idea that I have to tolerate a little bit of inconvenience for a whole lot of benefit makes it an entirely tolerable process... much like plastic surgery.

Note: I think bruises are hot, too.

Sometimes my surgeon IM's me to say hello (never anything inappropriate), and it's always a treat to pick his brain. We get along remarkably well and have interesting conversations about his time spent doing reconstructive surgeries, his main passion. I find it very admirable-- a young surgeon correcting the cruel ravages of outrageous fortune and restoring normalcy to accident victims, children with harelips, all those sort of things. Last Friday night he told me a particularly inspiring tale about a breast cancer survivor upon whom he'd recently operated, and I wondered what it would be like to be able to tell the truth about my occupation and actually garner praise instead of infamy. Maybe someday...

I could anonymously send him some of the fetish magazines I've been in, with "Thanks for the new nose, Dr. L!" scrawled across the front or something.

Nah.

It's a funny thing, when even your plastic surgeon says you don't need more plastic surgery, yet the vision you have of yourself override his objections with ease. It's just that I have a very clear vision of the way I want to look, and what I see in the mirror doesn't match just yet, no matter what anybody says.

Guess I'd better get a second opinion-- boy is he going to be mad at me for not listening to him!!! He's a jovial but very dominant personality, and I sense that he would be very unhappy if I so flagrantly flouted his advice. What's he gonna do about it, though? Hate me? Spank me? I sorta wish, too bad he's my doctor and married, ah well!

PS I have to wait till Venus retrograde is over to get anything done-- April 17th, to be precise. One doesn't want to go under the knife when the planet of love, Beauty and sensuality is sleeping. I didn't write astrology for two years for nothing.

Silence

2009-03-02T17:27:00.000-08:00

“Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words”
-- Spinoza

As I get older, I seem to get a lot more lackadasical about communication, but these things come in phases for everyone, and I know my friends and family are aware I love them even if we don't speak as often as we used to, and that I'll get in touch again eventually. However, I'm a little ashamed to admit I've been blowing off birthday parties without a phone call, that sort of thing lately. In fact, I haven't seen my phone in days-- I think it may have gotten lost in the move, which means I can be M.I.A. without being rude, but only for a little longer. Lately I don't miss or desire socializing outside work and errands whatsoever, but I'll have to be careful not be too much of a hermit.

It must be the effects of winter and/or the Lenten season, or maybe I'm just adjusting to the fun, horror and fascination of being a stripper.

This time of year I always think of Christ in the desert, fasting and purifying himself for his coming trials. By intrinsic inclination and custom as a Protestant, I don't venerate Saints, but I often find inspiration in re-reading "Lives of the Saints" around this time of year. Although the "holy" men and women who indulged in voluntary mortification of the body strike me as having severely missed the mark, every time I read the story of St. Francis or Bernadette I feel renewed in spirit on an idealistic level. Transcending, rather than giving free rein to, the grossest and most indulgent demands of the flesh seems to be one of the key ingredients to a Virtuous life. I don't want to learn how to manipulate the material world to my advantage by adapting to its vagaries. I don't even believe such a thing is possible. The only thing to do is use prayer as an anchor and foundation and project one's inner world outward.

Funny how I spend so much time thinking thoughts like this, have been born again a few times and still can't seem to stay away from the sex industry. Obviously my intellectual machinations and physical being are barriers in this instance, rather than catalysts for further spiritual growth. My flesh itself yields no insight, that's for sure, although I've found I become more radiant the less I let my own brutish animal instincts run the show. Believe it or not.

I need to find a partner with whom to pray/meditate. I think my blonde friend down the block would be into it.

I am considering taking an informal vow of silence until Easter outside work, which I was able to do with a fair amount of success in 8th grade. Maybe I can do it again.

Most words are wasted, anyway. A touch, a prayer, a vow, a simple explanation-- all of these things can be sacred, profane, or inconsequential, depending on the context.

I might make more money at work if I talk less, anyhow. I seriously doubt most men come in to a strip club to have a meaningful conversation, right?

I Love Lawyers

2009-03-02T17:12:00.000-08:00

Although it’s true every man who comes into a strip club is a potential source of income, and therefore somewhat of a mark, it’s impossible not to like some of the customers. Occasionally I’m even attracted to them. I asked my old roommate if she thought I’d ever meet a man to date who would treat me like a lady if we met at a strip club, and she replied:

“No. Never”

I believe she’s right, so I have decided to simply settle for dropping the pretense of hustling the men I really like in exchange for a few minutes of honest conversation and not expect or court anything else. Nobody wants to bring a stripper home to mother, right? Even if she’s a published writer and a virgin it’s too much stigma for the average man. It makes my soul bleed to admit it, though. I’m not a nice girl anymore.

I’m not a nice girl. I’m a sex worker. Repeat, believe it, stop the denials.

Saturday night I met a really amazing young lawyer from Colorado , in for a friend’s birthday party, who asked me,

“You’re way too well-adjusted to work here. What’s really going on?”

When I explained I write for a feminist magazine and I’m on the last leg of a journey of exploration into the sex industry, focusing on the apparent duality (particularly when one considers my religious beliefs) I experience, I could see his expression change in such a way that I would have believed his eyes had alighted on a goldmine in any other situation. However, because I’m a stripper and ex-dominatrix, and not doing this experiment strictly for the sake of investigative journalism or as a private sociology experiment, I simply asked him what he was doing in a profession notoriously full of people who go to extremes since he, too, seemed very even-keeled.

I explained the known phenomenon of raging sexually dominant and submissive men in law, and how my time as a dominatrix was mainly spent with lawyers. I also told him because I like staring down submissive men on the street and am looking for a dominant man in my private life I’m a lawyer magnet, since so many men attracted to codified rules gravitate to the law as a profession and seem to sense that I’m pretty kinky, too. I haven't even dated a non-lawyer in quite awhile.

He was pretty wonderful, and even though he looked pointedly and with a lot of longing at me as I ducked out of the club in my street clothes, I knew there was no point in giving him anything but a smile in parting. You can't tell me someone that fabulous is single. I refuse to believe it.

C’este la vie beautiful boy.

You know you dodged a bullet, anyway.

Safe Haven/Vulgar

2009-03-02T15:24:00.000-08:00

"I'm awful," he said sadly. "I'm diff'runt. I don't know why I make faux
pas. 'Cause I don't care, I s'pose."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "This Side of Paradise"

I spent the afternoon ordering this vintage wallpaper and some damask pillows for my new house. The figure on the wallpaper reminds me of a Mercury dime, which I love.

Sometimes, achingly lonely after riding the subway home all by myself after a night of hearing how pretty I am, and how lucky any man would be with to be with me, etc., I attempt to mollify my screaming psyche with home décor. It’s not mere retail therapy, more like some eternal, feminine nestling instinct that emerges when I am sinking in some sort of moral or situational quagmire and desperately need to create a safe, beautiful haven for myself.

Random note: if there’s one word I remember from my three years of Spanish classes as a teenager, it’s salvavidas: lifeaver. I guess it makes sense that I retained that particular palabra, when I give it some thought. After all, I’m the type who perpetually relies on the kindness of strangers, so I always have my eye on the buoy, branch, ladder, and, ultimately, exit. It’s a survival instinct. In fact, I’m lost so often these days that I’m actually getting used to it-- I have a horrible sense of direction. However, I often enjoy it, especially when I have to ask for directions and I get to meet someone new. I wonder if strangers can sense the gratitude and friendliness I feel for them in those instances. I try to convey it as ardently as possible-- it's safe to say it fairly radiates from me, so I guess I'm doing my part.

I find it so easy to love people I barely know. I wish familiarity didn't breed contempt, or that I was able to care about people personally for longer, which is difficult for me sometimes. I try to love everyone unconditionally and make few distinctions, which is Zen but occasionally alienating. Sometimes. However, I often find it just as satisfying to love others from a distance as when they are near, if not moreso in some instances.

That's probably why I occasionally have a difficult time letting go of crushes I rarely see, for whatever reason. It seems I'm attracted to men with the same predilection because my phone and email get absolutely blown up on every major holiday-- I even hear from guys with whom I went on one date years ago.

The weirdest one I got this Valentine's Day was from a person I was infatuated with to the point of distraction this summer. After an apology for not keeping in touch he sent some random text about his jock as if we were bro's... it really hurt my feelings. The fact that I had a raging fever didn't help, either. He apologized, but clearly that's that between us. Regardless, he's a brilliant painter of industrial landscapes, and I think one of his prints would go nicely on the western wall of my living room, which is the metal/metallic-themed area according to the laws of Feng Shui, which I try to observe faithfully..

However, after thinking about how vulgar he was (I once had a dream I was scrubbing his studio floor naked a few months ago, I liked him so much!) I'm suddenly inspired to take a deep breath and order some curtains, too...

Sex and Violence

2009-03-02T15:19:00.000-08:00

I cannot forbear to mention among these precepts a new device for
study which, although it may seem but trivial and almost ludicrous,
is nevertheless extremely useful in arousing the mind to various
inventions. And this is, when you look at a wall spotted with
stains, or with a mixture of stones, if you have to devise some
scene, you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes,
beautified with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide
valleys and hills in varied arrangement; or again you may see
battles and figures in action; or strange faces and costumes, and an
endless variety of objects, which you could reduce to complete and
well drawn forms. And these appear on such walls confusedly, like
the sound of bells in whose jangle you may find any name or word you
choose to imagine.
-- Da Vinci

I’ve recently surrendered to the fact that overages of sexual energy often activate the most violent part of my brain. On some level, I’ve always felt, for me, sex and fatalism go hand in hand, but working in a strip club has, believe it or not, kicked my my sado-masochistic fantasies and inclinations into overdrive in a way being a dominatrix never did. So I guess I’ve answered the chicken or the egg question of whether my sadism was a product of working as a domme or one of the many reasons I wanted to become one in the first place.

Examples of random sexual/violent thoughts I've had recently:
Last night, as the hot water in the bathtub lapped across my bare breasts, my eyes hazy and unfocused, I found myself casually viewing the tiles in my bathroom as a strictly solipsistic Rorschach test, picking out images of myself as Salome, with the head of a certain customer I’d recently met on a charger before me, as well as a blank sort of Persephone, with my foot on the head of a smiling man in profile.

I had a dream the other night that a near-stranger with whom I recently had a naughty dalliance on a long train trip was inexplicably trying to steal my gown after I was done dancing onstage. We had a violent tug of war and he stuck his finger in my mouth, upon which I bit it so hard I actually felt the bone and gristle snap, my mouth full of his blood and his actual fingertip. The dream was so vivid I actually believe if I ever had a mouthful of someone else’s blood I’d recognize the coppery taste as surely as if it really had happened to me in reality.

Scary.

I'm not insane, though-- just dealing with a raging tidal wave of lust from strangers in a new form. Again.

PS Maybe one of the reasons I always draw a correlation between sex and death is that I always feel intimate physical connections with men distance me from the Divine, which is, in essence, the true wellspring of my existence. In that sense it is like death— voluntarily separating myself from the Absolute and laying my flesh on the altar for a carnal connection that is comparatively cheap. As much as I love to touch and be touched, since I've never been in love, I recognize that further effort to connect is fruitless, and it becomes like drowning, I hate it so. It was only different with one boy, ever, who pulled my hair and told me no but loved me fiercely and would have married me if only I hadn't sensed we were not quite destined to be together forever.

A good friend recently told me I’d probably feel an easier and more fulfilling communion with the man I eventually marry, since intercourse itself is such a source of bonding. I hope it turns out that way for me if and when I ever do find that person.