Hows the writing going?

It's the Spring Equinox today.  I was bursting with ideas for making my stripper blog as funny, honest and sexy as possible - especially over the weekend, where I pulled some really quiet boring shifts.  I did a measly FIVE lapdances last Saturday night, which has to be my worst stripping shift ever!!!  However, today I've been in a funk, moping around feeling sorry for myself as my shoulder is killing from yoga and drunken pole dancing.
So concentrating on possible blog posts related to lapdancing can really lift my spirits, as well as giving my tired feet a rest whilst I sit my arse in front of a computer screen for an afternoon.  I've been getting lots of emails recently from readers who say my blog posts on stripping are funny and humourous, which I think is flattering but I wish sometimes that life was as funny as you think it is.  Most of the time a lapdancers life is pretty boring - you're either waiting to start work, waiting for a customer, waiting to go on stage - you get the idea.  That's why I started this blog - I needed to write a funny stripper blog that describes the good times as well as the crap we have to deal with on an average night at a stripclub, as well as trying to explain it to the outside world.  The number of times I've been cornered at parties by 'interested' people who ask me a million questions on whats it like, what I wear, and how much do I earn.  I've felt like throwing the punchbowl at them, except that London parties don't have punchbowls, as a rule.  Maybe I should start a trend.....I could bring my own as a conversational starter/stopper to the next houseparty...?

No confidence today as sex-industry women do it better....

I've been having a low day, a bad Friday.  Nothing in paticular has happened, I just feel awful.  I laid in bed and read a book or two, but the words just seem to wash over me.  I'm working tonight, and guess that I am going to have to buck up and get my head out of the sand.  I can't say that I am paticuarly looking forward to it, but I also know from experience that once I get into the club my smile will switch on and I will become a happy, flirty little automaton.
Working nights can be fun, hilarious even, and gives you the day to yourself.  I'm free to do whatever I want.  But sometimes those long hours seem to stretch out.  You wake up in your empty bed, sometimes in the morning, more usually around lunchtime, occassionally in the afternoon. You stare at the ceiling, perhaps open the curtains, look at the weather outside.  You know that there is no reason to venture outside the house right away, so you putter downstairs and make yourself a cup of tea.  Wipe smears of encrusted eyelash glue and sleepy eye from your puffy lids, and think about what you are going to have for breakfast.  Pick my nose. Scratch your bum.  Look at any fresh blisters on your toes and press them against the cold linoleum.  Then you check how many hours you have till your shift that evening and wonder what you are going to do with all that time.
If I'm feeling sprightly, I might go for a jog.  Hit the gym.  Do a few cat-like stretches and some yoga in the living room.
If I'm feeling numb and bored, I'll just slump back to bed.  Read a book. Open up the papers.  Jump on Twitter and see what the rest of the world is doing. Log on facebook.
Someone sent me a message today, that a new book on stripping was out.  I looked on Amazon.  There it was. A memoir of lapdancing in London.  "Stripped; A Life of Strip and Tease in Clubland" by Samantha Bailey. I recognised the author.  She looked happy and smiling in her promotional photo.  I felt a pang of jealousy, followed by a huge feeling of inadequacy.  Why wasn't it me in print? I've been faffing around with a novel for the best part of two years now, starting and stopping, changing the format. I started work on a memoir, but that seemed dull and formulaic, so I began on a novel.  A girl at university that becomes a stripper in London.  But that didn't seem to work, not properly, so I began again - condensing time, trying to fit an average night, an unusual week, the run-up to Christmas, into 20 chapters. I'm still fiddling, but the fiddling is going well. I feel like I am actually getting somewhere. Perhaps eventually I will see the publication of another girls memoirs as something exciting, and inspirational.  It certainly bodes well if there is a publishing precedent. 
I googled around a bit more, to see what other women in the sex industry were publishing.  Most interesting was Lorelei Lee, who has screenwritten a movie called 'Cherry', starrring the ridiculously gorgeous and talanted James Franco.  I felt a pang of jealousy at this too.  Here was a porn star whose writing prowess had landed her the opportunity to work with Hollywood's hottest talent.  The movie is still in post-production, and is on my must-see wish list.
Then there are the big-hitters - Diablo Cody, another stripper, this time American, who wrote the screenplay for Juno following the success of her stripping memoirs 'Candy Girl'.  Another girl who made it to Hollywood.  Belle de Jour, or Dr. Brooke Magnanti, is another British sex-industry worker done good, who is on her 3rd or 4th book already and had ITV turn her vice-girl memoirs into an awesome TV series.  Starring Billie Piper.  I remember Billie from when I was growing up, she was a teeny bopper pop music firehouse who was around my age and had grown up in London.  We were all jealous at my school and longed, secretly, that we were also prancing around with a record contract and the catchphrase 'coz we want too'!
I know that Rome wasn't built in a day, and that aspiring to be like others who have had success in a field similar to yours is a good thing.  But it is still dispiriting sometimes, especially when you wake up with bruised toes, in a hot bedroom, alone, with nothing but a few cups of tea and a computer screen to fill up the hours of a grey London day.  Sometimes I can't wait for dusk to fall.....

My Stripper blog's twin sister

Today I'm quiet excited.  I am off to visit a friend who promises me to use his geekerific magic and turn the ugly duckling of my blog, which I brutally disfigured a few days ago, into a fantastic swan.  It will be easier to read, easier to get around, more interactive and maybe even have a few photographs in there.  Lucky readers...
I've been doing some research into lap dancing blogs to see how other dancers do theres and found an interesting doppelganger - in blog format.  A ex-dancer in Australia must be as ditzy as me as she has produced a blog in the identical colour combo's and two bar look as mine - all black and pink.  I thank her for the compliment, and you can see it here
More lapdancing blogs like mine are springing up over the web all the time, and some of them make a great read.  Favourite lap dancing blogs of mine can be found on me links page of stripper blogs worth a tip which is basically a list of blogs from exotic dancers, stripclub industry blogs, escort blogs and lapdancing blogs, full of stripclub musings, and stripper thoughts.  I also love Peter Tips blog, who shows the lap dancing industry from a punters view.
For balance whilst I'm at it, here is a blog by a strip club researcher who is against lap dancing venues on her street.  Fair point I guess, unless they are in the town or city center, which are usually full of nightlife venues anyway.  To me, a nightlife venue is a nightlife venue, whether it does karaoke or go-go girls and boys. (There is actually a stripaoke night in the US run by one of my fave exotic dancing bloggers Rocket, see here)
Funny entries spring up on pole dancing especially - this article compares pole dancing to blogging, there are lots of websites on poledancing and poledancers, that sell instructional pole dancing videos and give pole dancing tips.

I'm always surfing the web to find lap dancing writings, or funny lap dancer stories - whether its an evening at a stripclub or the stripping industry in general. My favourite is Tits and Sass, which is written by sex workers.  It's beautiful, funny and when I see my computing genius pal later, I'll be using their site as inspiration!

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. 

Stripper blogs - why do we do it?

After reading 'Belle de Jour' many years ago, I thought, "I can do that!"

No, not that - blogging.  (you think I meant sex for money? ha!)

I really enjoy taking my clothes off for a living, and writing about it is pretty fun as well.  It's very cathartic to blog as a lapdancer, as stripping can be soul-destroying sometimes.  By writing a blog on my life as a lapdancer, I am able to vent out any frustrations that the previous nights antics have brought out in me.  It allows me to take time and review the idiot customer, the bitchy girl, the stubborn management, and instead of bottling up the feelings inside, I put it in my lapdancing blog.  I don't think I could work in this industry without a stripper blog!

Of course, I'm not alone.  There are lots of blogs and sites written by women in the sex industry, and you can find my favourites here.  I find it fascinating to see how women in similar industries, often living on the other side of the world to me, cope with their situation.

I see my blog as an ever-expanding resource, and if nothing else, if I have had a hard night stripping, I can look over past entries in my lapdancer blog and realise I've had worse!