Alaskans I have loved, v1

The first time I met him was my first night back at my favorite titty bar in the whole damn state.

“Don’t bother getting out your hustle. I’m furniture around here.” That was the first thing he said to me. I’d heard those kinds of lines from guys all over the country who thought they were too cool to pay for a lapdance and had hung out at strip clubs enough to feel entitled to a stripper’s time for free.

I nodded and tried to think of a polite way to excuse myself, but he wasn’t done. “I hear you have a degree.” Goddess, word gets around fast in these small towns.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Why?”

“You wanna job?” He bobbed his head up and down and his hat teetered dangerously close to falling on the floor.

“Um, doing what?”

“Residential treatment for teenager’s who’ve been incarcerated.”

That was actually right up my ally, back in the days when I was into wage slavery and still believed in changing the system from the inside out. “Possibly,” I told him. “But I’m not sure that the good people of this very small town want a stripper working with their troubled youth.”

“The good people of this very small town…” he paused, dramatically, “can go fuck themselves.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “So you’re offering me a job? After, like, thirty seconds?”

“I heard about you.” He squinted at me, his hat tipping down over his eyes. “I know you’re good people.”

Ah, the joys of small town living.

It’s been a few summers now. I stay on his wife’s empty land, and I stash my visiting stripper friends in their spare bedrooms.

The other day I walked into the bathroom and found my friend Hat-ma sitting on the floor, all three make up bags dumped out around her. My thongs were covering every inch of counter space, drying.

“Hey,” I called out to him. “We’ve stripperized your bathroom.”

He poked his head in for a second and laughed. “Good thing my son isn’t home. He ain’t used to strippers for sisters.”

Goddess, I love these people.