I’ve been here a while, and my gas funds were somewhat depleted (I paid for medicine for a friend, and it was expensive). I had about enough to get halfway through Canada.
Luckily, I am a stripper. I can make quick cash anywhere there’s a tittie bar.
So I took myself down to this crazy little club that I haven’t been at in a couple years, rushing to get there as soon as I woke up. My sleeping schedule is completely backwards now, having indulged myself with friends with just as backwards schedules for the last few days.
One of the bouncers remembered me, so they let me work even though I rushed in twenty minutes late. It was after-christmas slow, and there were four new girls from the lower 48. Why do these people come thousands of miles to work in Alaska at the deadest time of year? If anybody out there is googling “Alaska stripper money” in hopes of getting rich: don’t do it. In the summer the travel expenses make it not worth it, and in the winter it is not any better then where you are.
About halfway through the night I’d just gotten off stage and was talking to the DJ, who I’d worked with at another club a decade ago (turns out she’d been living on a sailboat for the last ten years). We were both surveying the entire club full of about eight customers, when three of them got up to leave. Birthday boy, who was extremely inebriated and old, tripped on the step coming down to the stage. He fell slowmotion, and his head made a loud thunk as it hit the stage. Everyone rushed to him. A few years ago I’d have been pushing my way in to do some healing, too, but at this stage in life I just try not to add to the chaos.
Old guy’s wife and son are right there (I guess that’s how birthdays are celebrated at a certain point: wife, son, strip club) and they want to keep him still and call 911 because he has a pacemaker and he was unconscious for a couple seconds. Meanwhile, two Reiki practicing strippers, an “energy shaman” stripper, a witch stripper, and an ex-nurse stripper are laying on their hands. The bouncer is on hold with 911, because that’s what happens when you call 911 here: “your emergency is important. Please hold and the next available…”
So this dude comes up and he wants to lay his hands, too. On some stripper flesh. The bouncers like, “dude, step back.”
Dude feels incredibly disrespected by this, so he hits the bouncer. Now, dude is apparently some kinda boxer or something, but our bouncer is 430 pounds and a lot of it’s muscle. He hands the phone to the waitress and carries the guy outside, but when he puts the guy down the guy starts swinging again. By then the guys friends are trying to restrain him from hitting the bouncer, the bouncers trying to get back to the phone, and we’ve got two functional customers left.
Then they get up to leave. This is a travesty I must do something about, so I wander over to the young one who tipped me on stage, shove my cleavage in his face, and inform him that I am ready to dance for him. His friend wanted to leave, but he told him to just chill out and not be jealous that he couldn’t afford strippers. So I broke his credit card, but it was only $100.
The paramedics came in while I was dancing for him, and they had a cop with them. I was breaking all kinds of laws, and I knew it (twelve inches between you and them! any contact is prostitution! whoo, lets have a stripper-hunt!). The OG disaster was around a corner from me, though, so the cop didn’t get to see my unlawfulness.
At the end of the night I had done more dances than anyone else and it was still a pretty shitty cash night. The money situation isn’t helped by all these pro-stripper laws. Let me explain. A long time ago, someone decided that strippers are employees, not independent contractors, and should be paid an hourly wage. They were right, in that we are often treated as employees, but wrong because I like the freedoms we do get. Anyways, this became law, so that all over Alaska strip clubs can tell you when and where to be there, and instead of paying a house fee you pay them hourly to work. Presumably, if you stay around long enough, you’ll eventually get paid back at a lower hourly rate. So, I paid $80 ($10/hour, plus $20 for being late). It sucked. But at least it made for some good writing material.
When the bouncer walked me out he showed me his van. It’s his house, too.
This is easily the best strip club adventure I’ve seen.
I hate is when things don’t go smoothly when traveling ! I’ll cross my fingers for you for better money in Cananda very soon ! ~C
Hope you have a smooth & successful trip south. Love the blog. Wish the night hadn’t been such a screwup. Thining about this huge bouncer living in a van as well it pretty funny though. Hope it was a full sized one! LOL
Would love to talk to you if you make Florida but I’ve given up tittie bars many years ago. Probably sometime after my daughter started dancing in them. Hmmmm.
Take care.
Personally, I appreciated being an independent contractor who could be protected by bouncers. Once the laws changed so that the club was not responsible (we were already indie contractors)
it just meant I had to let the bouncers know what my boundaries were and what to keep an eye out for…most dancers asked them to look the other way, but, for the way I worked, it was “look this way, please” or really, “keep your antennae up for me”
especially in clubs where there were hundreds of dancers and customers filled it to capacity.
I love how practicing Reiki turned into defending self from customer for at least one of the dancers…lol…I can empathize with not adding to the chaos now…also, it’s interesting to read that Alaska is the kind of place that lets you go when it’s ready to and not a moment before (New Orleans was like that too)…best wishes on your trip. May you come across many more credit cards that take more than $100 worth of dances to break.