Don't smoke you drunken idiot!!!

If there are several butts wiggling in front of you whilst their tiny streaky-lined panties are tangled around their ankles, perhaps there is a bottle of £180 champagne within reach, I can understand that a man may get fairly distracted. He may lay back, observe the sensual scene unfolding in front of him that he has shelled out a succession of twenty pound notes and card swipes for, and feel relaxed. Totally relaxed. Relaxed enough to feel like he is at home, reaching into his suit, pulling out a cigarette, and lighting it up.
Deep pull, close your eyes..... and then BAM!!! Every bouncer and manager in the building rushes in helter-skelter,the cigarette gets pulled from your fingers, hot rocks and ash falling onto your Savile Row whistle, the girls start screaming, they are herded out, half naked, stumbling over their dropped lacy panties, and you are surrounded.
This whole scene takes barely a minute.
You lost concentration, you silly drunken idiot, revelling in the moment.
Because whatever goes on in the champagne rooms, nowadays, smoking is definately not allowed.
Uh- uh.
London's got a smoking ban, as has half of Europe.
You mighht get a quick feel, you might get laid, you might even get a phone number - but a quick pull on a fag???
Forget about it.  It's a ten thousand pound fine, whereas a bit of bad perverted behaviour will either get you cuffed round the ear, or perhaps the stripper might get suspended.
I've had a guy pull his pants down and waggle his dick at me, many others who have grabbed me so hard that I've screamed, people stick out their slobbery tongues and try and lick my nipples - and to be honest, many one or two bouncers and managers have perhaps waded in.  Slap on the wrist.
But light up inside the club, and you're out mate.  Pronto.

Funny that isn't it? Is my welfare that unimportant, or do all gentleman's club managers have asthma.......???

where's my copy?! 'Stripped; The Bare Reality of Lap dancing'

Ooohhh, there is a new book out on stripping, and I'm eager to get a copy. But damnnit! Amazon has sold out.  This means that it's probably massively popular already, which is great news for me as I'm currently scribbling away on a lapdancing novel of my own.  Ahhh, how I dream of a major retailer selling out of my own silly scribblings....
So, the new book out is;


'Stripped; The Bare reality of Lap Dancing' by Jennifer Hayashi Danns & Leveque Sandrine and here's an Amazon link


I first heard about it after a Twitter follower (thankyou honey!) alerted me to a review in the Guardian.  I read and reread the piece with some interest as the views purported seem to be the exact opposite of mine - Jennifer worked for two years as a lapdancer and she didn't like it.  At all.


The review said that she drank daily, daily meaning before, whilst prepping and during work.  Lots of girls took cocaine or drank-drived home.  I agree that a lot of women in the stripping profession turn to drink or drugs, but so do many women nowadays in their twenties - drinking and drugtaking are so normalised into social culture and practices that I am more suprised if somebody doesn't drink or dab in a little coke now and then.


But I really emphasised with her stories, collected from various dancers in conjunction with a campaigning co-author, Leveque Sandrine.  God, they make them sound so nasty - and I suppose a lot of them are.  Guys making you feel like shit, whether it's through the levying of pointless fines by a misogynistic management or customers making degrading comments, which get increasingly tiring as they stack up though the night.


The books main thrust, as far as I can tell from the review, is that lapdancing is psychologically damaging.  (I'm really hoping that this isn't true, as I've been in the business for so long now, and would hate to turn out as a crackpot)  But seriously, I think that stripping is harmful for many girls.  In my experiences, their ability to deal with it centers on just a few aspects; the average customers attitude, the level of contact, and how strong a base the dancer has herself.  A girl away from home for the first time at university may find it very difficult.  A journeying dancer - a stripper on tour - in a different bedsit/friends couch/club every week, may find that she gets more worn out and snappy, more introspective.  A girl who is falling in and out of love shouldn't be working till she becomes steady Eddie once more.  A girl who has failed to budget properly, and then work turns quiet, and she doesn't get that windfall she was counting on, well they always say that desperation leads to drink and drugs and ruin.


Yeah, we all have bad days at work.  But if you are a lapdancer without a strong mental barrier to block it all out a bad shift or comment can linger and fester, as Dann notes;  
"While you are dancing you don't talk about it – because if you are not going to stop, what possible value is there in letting [those thoughts] fester? That's why I would question research which only talks to people who are still working."


The book is clearly written with an agenda - a moralistic, anti-stripping one.  I'm a bit scared actually that it will be so full of depressing stories which strike a chord with me that I will go slightly loopy. I started this blog as a way to filter out a lot of the bad comments and soul-destroying evenings - writing has always been a cleansing and cathartic experience for me.  My first blog, the stripper bride, was often written when I was in a bad place, and many of my shifts did make me unhappy.  Even more petrifying is the knowledge that many of their arguments will be heavily researched, and coming from all directions - political, psychological and sociological - directions which I have studied myself.  What if through reading, I am turned away from my profession; "Danns hopes her book will persuade others that this industry harms men and women alike. "There's something uncomfortable and unbalanced in a fully clothed man paying a woman to strip naked."


Anyways, I'm not going to form a valid opinion until I read the book, which I will probably read with a good bottle of red, just to make the nasty truth medicine go down a little better. 

When the going gets tough, the tough get going

It's half term here in England, the first half term of the school year, and in the strange world of the West End, it's always the quietest week.
The parents are at home, struggling to cope with the reality of having the kids around all day, every day, and the masses without responsibilities stay in too; Halloween is days away, and next to Christmas & the August Bank Holiday, it's a HUGE party weekender.  Plus no-one has got used to the cold and rain yet, and it will take until mid-November till people ignore the weather and go out regardless.

Of course, just coz the punters stop coming in doesn't mean that us exotic dancers stay at home too.

Nah, we still turn up in droves....

if you go to a stripclub in London this week you will have your pick, there will be ten beautiful girls to your one man (or woman!)

I'd say go down and support a stripper, but I'm getting the hell out of dodge and going on an impromptu holiday to Italy to see the sights and a few friends.  It's been a crappy week moneywise and rather than losing my curves to stress I'm gonna go eat hot steaming plates of creamy carbs, drink red wine till it dribbles down my chin and remember how sensitive my teeth are sucking on my gelato ( teeth whitening - you need pearly gnashers to be a smily stripper but that bleach makes them as sensitive as an octogenarians)

As they say in Italy, ciao!

Oops I did it again

Oops seems I have done it again.

What, you ask?

That's exactly the thought that was running through my mind tonight. It's barely midnight, it's a Monday, it's raining outside and both the streets ofnlobfon and my club are empty.

So i might have had a few drinks, but so what? Apparently whatever I've done is enough to piss a bouncer off. So he shouts at me, then I complain in the changing room over what a cock he us, then a manager overhears and before you know it

WHAM! A big fat £50 fine.

If you think I am being vague over what happened, it's because I don't know what happened. Specifically some lame customer complained about me - I refused to let him touch me in the dance, so he snitched to a bouncer that I had ripped him off. Usually this kind of complaint would be ignored, but he had to choose the bouncer that didn't like me....