The great thing about Alaska

I got up super early yesterday (like, after three hours of sleep), and went walking through the cold morning woods with a friend to check his burbot lines. There was a burbot! I don’t know how I’d managed to get through life without knowing about them before, because now that the world of burbot has been opened to me it seems like everyone fishes them. They have the neatest skin, kind of like shark skin, maybe? I think you could sew things out of it.

We walked all around a bluff and watched bald eagles playing, listened to magpies, and talked to camp robbers. I was totally inspired that we were only twenty minutes from the big little city but we were really on the absolute edge of town and you could have walked for miles without seeing another person. Suddenly there’s this whole new world of not-so-far-away wilderness.

Also my friend gave me a big bag of salad greens from his garden. He sells this stuff at the farmers market, but he tries to balance out the commercialism by giving food to good people.

Then I went back to sleep, and when I woke up it was time for work.

I’d realised that yesterday was early bird permanent fund day, the day that everyone who filed early for direct deposit is getting $1600 deposited in their accounts by the state. Sadly, I do not qualify for this anymore because I’m not in the state enough. But I figured I’d take advantage of other peoples good fortune and good will by making my lapdances available to the newly rich public.

It was really slow. Really really slow.

When I got there it was totally dead, so I took a long time doing my make up and making my hair all pretty (this is probably shocking to some people that have worked with me, but: yes, I did my hair. It was totally pornified). Out on the floor there were absolutely zero customers, so I sat in the dressing room reading the latest issue of $pread magazine, which has taken a really long time to catch up with me because of how my mail tends to go in circles. I think this is the best issue of $pread ever. There were some really, really great articles and features. (More on that tomorrow or soon).

In the dressing room, there was a new girl. She looked like a neat person, with long dreads and lots of pagan jewelry. There was a rather strong odor about her though. I guess all the other girls have been being mean to her because of her stink. I missed it, but she went home early (with a good attitude) over it.

Then it started to get busy. I made the rounds a few times, but I couldn’t quite flip on my extrovert switch. I was like, “hi, um, wanna dance? Okay bye.” Usually I like being social at work. After a few weeks though, my social-ness totally wears off and I don’t want to talk to anyone. Times like that I wish I had a sexy accent and could pull of not knowing english. “Hello. You Hansome Man. I dance you now.” It’s crazy, but it works really well for some people. I know one woman who’s been dancing in the same place for ten years, and her conversations go entirely like this: “Hi, I am Geisha, hahaha. I love you long time, hahaha. What? I from Thailand, hahaha. I dance you now, twenty dollar, come on. Twenty dollar, I love you long time, twenty dollar, haha.” She fucking banks with that shit, even though after ten years people’ve gotta understand that she speaks english.

Just as I was running out of steam and considering retreating to the dressing room, I had to go on stage.

“Hey, Tara.” The bouncer called me over on my way to the stage.

“Yeah?”

“You gotta get all the way naked. None of that dress rolled up around your waist shit, I wanna see your birthday suit.”

Now I am not an employee. This man doesn’t pay me and he has no right to tell me what to do. In fact, I pay him, but I am courteous enough to make polite requests of him rather than tell him what to do. However, the strange power structure of the club allows him some kind of supposed power over me and I know I’m perhaps too often too confrontational. So I nodded and walked away.

“Hey!” he yelled after me.

I looked over my shoulder.

“Make that money, girl.”

The stage awaited me, so I ignored him and climbed the pink stairs. The DJ at this place never fails to put me in a great mood with great music.

After my stage a sweet confused young woman grabbed me. She’d joined the military by accident and she was afraid of dying. They were discharging her for having a personality disorder and it was dishonorable and it would be on her record forever and they could still send her to war. I spent a couple hours listening to her and hugging her while she cried. I do this sometimes. It balances out the way I commercialise my loving attention other times.

When I finally sent her home with her asshole military friends it was an hour till closing, I only had sixty bucks, and the club was almost empty again. Maybe it was just a freebie kinda night for me, I decided. You gotta get naked for practically free every once in a while. It keeps you humble, right?

Luckily, right then a nice older man came in and got fifteen dances from me. The whole time I danced for him I had cyber sex with his internet girlfriend on his fancy phone. It was great. It was funny. It was one of those moments that should be preserved forever, me standing in front of him, wiggling my ass, then turning around to tease him with our latest sex texts.

Unfortunately, the night ended. They stopped playing music and I had to stop lapdancing.

In the dressing room everyone was bitching about the stinky new girl. A room full of half drunk, half nude women at the end of a slow night in the titty bar can be a hilarious and vicious thing. For real.

Finally I asked, “does she even know why you guys are being so mean to her? Has anyone told her she stinks?”

Apparently not. “You a woman. You gotta know you fucking stink. How you gonna be a woman and not know to wash your ass every day?! My momma woulda whooped my ass if I smelled like that for one second,” one girl declared.

“Why don’t you tell her Tara? You’re good at that kinda thing.”

Um, no, not really. But I guess I will.

Then the bouncer came back to the dressing room. At this club we’re not supposed to tip the bouncers, but they’re used to getting nice tips from me anyways. He sidled up to me. “Hey girl, ya got ten bucks for your friendly neighborhood bouncer?”

I glared at him. “I don’t pay people who tell me what to do.”

“Oh.” He looked around and saw a room full of half drunk, half naked strippers at the end of a slow night staring at him and he ran.