Just messing around

Just wasting time, playing around with the Nikon.

So what's your real name, in color

I've been a lot of time playing around with photography recently. I haven't been writing blog posts recently, which also explains my blogs non-existent traffic. To give my self a goal I've decided to try to create some stripper meme images. My first attempt is to capture what a dancer is thinking when you ask "So what's your real name. let me know if you like the images or which one you like best. Please ignore the white balance problems, these are only rough edits.

It takes all kinds.

I work with a lot of different professions and, generally speaking, you can make some assumptions about a person by their occupation. Engineers are typically good at math. They like gadgets and are usually socially awkward. Accountants are organized and thorough. However I am always amazed at the wide variety of people who become strippers. In my opinion you cannot make any real generalizations about who becomes a dancer.

The first time I ran into a dancer who said she was working her way through college I didn’t really believe her. I figured it was the typical sale pitch. If she won’t tell me her real name, why should I believe anything else? I had a lot to learn then. While I don’t know if that particular girl was really in college or not, I have met a lot of dancers who really are working their way through college. It’s pretty easy to tell if a dancer is really going to college or not. Just check her schedule. During finals week she’ll be gone. Just before the start of the term when they have to buy books and pay for tuition she’ll be working like crazy.

Most people don’t associate strippers with intelligence. I know I didn’t when I first started hanging out at strip clubs. Diablo Cody won an Oscar, yet she still is referred to as a former stripper.  As if being a stripper is some sort of enormous handicap to be overcome. The media makes it sound like a stripper getting an award for writing is like a paraplegic growing a new pair of legs and learning to walk.  This is just an unfortunately stereotype the general public has about dancers.

If you drop your preconceptions and really talk to a dancer, you discover a lot of them are smarter than you. Not only that, a lot of dancers are very ambitious business people.  The general public’s stereotypical view of a dancer is somebody that doesn’t get out of bed before 2pm, their net worth is whatever they happen to have in their purse, and have no idea what they are going to do once they are done dancing. I’ve met some that have started their own very successful businesses. Dancing gave them the ability to make the money to support themselves while they got started and the scheduling flexibility to work when they needed to. I’ve also met some that doesn’t get out of bed before 2pm, their net worth is whatever they happen to have in their purse, and have no idea what they are going to do once they are done dancing. Most fall somewhere in between.

I’ve also met a lot of dancers who are on the other end of the spectrum from the type A business girls and college graduates. These dancers have nicknames like ‘train wreck’ and ‘psychobitch’. These girls represent the minority of strippers, but they seem to get the majority of the attention of the press. The minimum requirements to be a stripper are pretty low. I’ve met some dancers who are really out there. One dancer absolutely believed she could modify DNA with her mind. She really believed she alter somebody’s genetic structure just concentrating really hard. Except for some rather bizarre beliefs about physics and biology, she was pretty smart. I asked her to fix my DNA so my scalp would grow hair again. She closed her eyes and waved her hands over my heads for a couple seconds then pronounced me fixed. Then she charged me $20. So far it hasn’t worked, but I’m holding out hope (not). I’ve decided her new stage name is now Rogaine. This also may be a case of her being a lot smarter than me.

And I’ve also met a few dancers that weren’t the brightest bulb in the stage lighting. The topic of world war two came up once with one dancer. It was an odd conversation:

• Her:  “Did we fight the Germans in world war two?”
• Me: “Umm, yeah, did you ever see the movie Saving private Ryan?”
• Her: “Yes! I loved that movie, I saw it three times”
• Me: “All those guys trying to kill private Ryan, they were German.”
• Her: “Really? I thought it was something all made up. I’ll have to watch it again and check”

I wonder if she new Hitler was a German? I don’t know if she went to college or not. If she did, I don’t think she was a history major.

I don’t think there is such a thing as a typical stripper, probably because the girls are stripping for so many different reasons. Some are just trying to survive. Some are just trying to make some extra money. Some are professionals who make a career out of it, other strip because it’s all they can do.  Like everything else, it’s what you make of it.

Test your stripper skills and win (kinda) big money

Every dancer friend I have claim they can look at a stack of singles and tell exactly how much it is. I decided to put it to the test and came up with a contest. Who ever guesses the value of this stack of ones (or comes closest) wins the money! The stack of singles below could be yours. Of course there will be a few rules for this contest. Please read closely.

1. The contest is only open to active dancers in the Portland Oregon area. (This includes Salem). I will show up and make it rain or, more likely, neatly place it on the rack so its easier for you to pick up.
2. You must work either weekends or weekday evening shifts. I have a 9 to 5, Monday through Friday job. My bosses tend to frown on me heading to strip clubs during work hours.
3. You can only make one guess. You make the guess by leaving a comment on this post. You must also leave your stage name, what club you work at, and the dollar value of your guess.
4. If two or more guesses are the same, the earliest guess posted on the blog will win. The time and date blogspot tags the comment will be the official entry time
5. The guess closest to the value of stack (either above or below the amount) wins.
6. If two guesses have the same differential, the guess that did not exceed the actual value of the stack will win. Example, if the value of the stack is $20 and there was an $18 and $22 guesses (both $2 off) the $18 dollar guess wins since it did not exceed the value of the stack.
7. The contest will end 6am October 12th. 

The stack is all non-sequential one dollar bills. Any questions e-mail me at pdxstoney@gmail.com. Good luck!

Does she or doesn't she, only the CDC knows for sure

Ethic’s isn’t usually a subject you associate with strip club. Yet, I found myself in an ethical dilemma a while ago. I’m going to be really vague about a lot of specific details about this situation. I cannot verify a lot of the major details, to avoid damaging somebody’s reputation through innuendo I’m going be vague, but I can get my point across without them. You generally don't think about health issues when you go to a strip club, but sometimes you have to.

There are some diseases that aren’t curable but not fatal either. Once you have it, you have it until you die. Most of the time the virus lays dormant, but occasionally flairs up and causes problem. There diseases usually require some sort of intimate contact or the exchange of bodily fluids to contract. Not really an issue for a customer at a strip club.

Sometime ago a dancer (Stripper X) at my favorite club had supposedly contracted one of these diseases. I didn’t find out about this until after she had left. I’m not sure if she was fired, quit or just decided to not show up any more. Dancers come and go at a club on a regular basis. I never really talked to her, but I heard later about Stripper X’s condition from a couple of different dancers I trust. Granted a lot of dancers are major league gossips, but I trusted these dancers to be pretty down to earth and factual about their stuff. However, I had no real confirmation, just trusted sources. Stripper X also lead a life style that was at risk for this type of disease.

Stripper X disappeared and I quickly forgot about her. It was a couple years later when I stopped by a different club to see a long time favorite dancer when I saw Stripper X working there. She was still using the same stage name, she even recognized me.

When my dancer friend sat down next to me Stripper X was the topic of conversation. After a few minutes of catching up I realized my friend know nothing of Stripper X's health risk. This left me with a little bit of a quandary. Do I tell my friend? The easy thing to do would be gossip, “Did you hear that Stripper X had gotten suspended for having...”. The problem with this is that I’m leveling a serious accusation without any real proof.

There are consequences to my actions. Customers talk crap all the time about dancers, but there is more to this allegation than the usual “I think she does more outside the club" type of comments. There are legal implications to this situation for the club. If a club knows that a contractor presents a potential health risk to customers, the club could be sued. One of the riders on the contracts I have to sign with trade show companies is an acknowledgement of health. Basically I have to state that nobody working our booth knowingly has a communicable disease. I’m not sure how much legal protection this really provides, but if somebody works a trade show with the bubonic plague and makes somebody really sick, the trade show company will basically say the company renting the booth space lied and they are liable.

The parallels between a renting space at a trade show and a dancer contracting are striking. I’ll blog about that later. Besides the potential legal aspects I don’t think a club would want to be known as the place a customer caught a serious disease from. This would be bad for business. The upshot of all this is that there is a fairly decent chance a new dancer could get fired over a rumor this. Getting somebody fired because you think that something might be true is completely unethical to me. A lot of dancers tend to live week to week financially. Getting fired at the end of the month could result in them losing their place to live. Oops I’m sorry about getting you fired and evicted, doesn’t really cut it if it’s a false claim.

Another really nasty thing about an allegation like that is it’s almost impossible to prove a negative. Even if you don’t have the disease, people may think it’s just in remission and you’re lying about it. The strip club industry isn’t that big. Even if you walk around with a copy of the results of your latest blood work, people can still think the document is fake or,” that was last week, what about now?” You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

I was not going to mention the health issue to my friend initially. The only way to spread this disease is by sharing bodily fluids and wouldn’t be spread at a club under even normal conditions. Then my dancer friend, who is into alternate life styles. mentions that she is hanging out with Stripper X outside the club. This presented a direct risk to my friend’s health. Sorry, I should have told you about the land mines are not acceptable. I told her about Stripper X.

There is a broader issue of health when it comes to strip clubs. at what point are you too sick to go into a strip club? It’s an ideal environment for spreading illness. Even if you don’t get any dances, the dancer will usually sit right next to you, most of the time you are drinking something too. You have the trifecta of possible vectors: physical contact, airborne transmission, and ingestion.

Dancers are more at risk than the customers. I’ll probably only meet and talk to one or two dancers during a visit. The dancer we’ll probably meet a dozen or more people every shift. One thing I always hated about working big trade shows like CES or Comdex (when Comdex was big) was you were guaranteed to meet and shake hands at least one sick person. I’d say 30% of the time I worked large trade shows I came home sick.

The dancer also has the added problem of not being able to take sick time off. If she has to make rent she doesn’t have to a choice. She has to load up on decongestants and cold medicines and fake a smile. That is one of the most miserable part of sales Feeling like absolute shit, yet having to paint on smile and pretend you like dealing with a customer. That is longest conversation ever. 

A new scam

I ran into a new stripper scam a couple weeks ago. It wasn’t a very good scam but I’d never seen it before. I haven’t run into many girls trying to scam me recently. This is mostly because I only talk to dancers who have been working for the club for some time. Dancers who try to rip off customers usually don’t last that long. 

There really isn’t many ways dancers can blatantly rip off customers. Either they flat lie about the number of dances or the try to min-max a dance. A min-max dance is where the dancer does absolutely the least amount of work for the maximum amount of money. Typically she’ll start the dance halfway though the first song. Then end the last dance halfway through the last song. In between she’ll do as little as possible, mostly just posing. If it was possible to take a nap while doing a lap dance, she’d do that. This girl had a new strategy. She got to pay for all the dances up front and then tried to get kick out during the first dance. I'm pretty sure she'd keep the money, for her troubles. 

I normally wouldn’t have even approached this particular, but the waitress told me I should really get dances from her. The dancer was her friend and really cool, she also was having a bad day too. I don’t know why but it never ends well when a waitress tries to set me up.  Maybe it’s just confirmation bias and I only remember the terrible dancers. In any case they always seem to end up being a bad experience. But a few shots of Jack Daniels had pretty much erased any reluctance I had at that point, so I asked the waitress to invite the dancer over.

I recognized her when she sat down with me. She had been a pretty high profile performer about five years ago. You couldn’t open a copy of exotic magazine with out seeing her in an ad. Apparently her post stripping career had hit a bump and she was back dancing again. We chatted for a bit. She seemed a bit drunk, but I really couldn’t tell how much. Some people are better at hiding it then others. She asked for some dances.

She asked me to pay for the dancers up front. I’m fine with that. As a customer I’m guilt till proven innocent. Until I build up trust with a dancer she’s best served by treating me as a deranged psychopath. I paid for four dances. She started out by breaking a several club rules about what to wear and other things. Like I said, I’m guilty till proven innocent so I keep my hands at the 10 and 2 o’clock position by my side. If she wants to break the rules then that’s her business. She did a quick check to see where the bouncer was.

I’ve been going to the club long enough that the bouncers basically ignore me. I don’t have any special privileges but in the scheme of things I’m the least of their problems. I don’t drink too much, the dancers like me, I spend money.  As long as I don’t cause any drama they are happy to spend their time on more important things. The bouncer was else where in the club.

The dance progressed on normally until the bouncer returned. Once the bouncer was close she grabbed my hand and pushed it into an inappropriate location. I tried to pull it away but she was keeping where it was. It would have resulted in a pretty obvious tug of war so I left it where it was.  It was the least conspicuous thing to do. Also, I’m a nice guy but not a monk. The bouncer still ignored us and turned to walk off. The dancer then began to slap her ass really hard with her free hand and kept my other hand in place. She kept leaning back trying to get the bouncers attention. The bounce walked off anyway.

Once the bouncer walked away she let go of my hand. I put my hands back. As the second song started the bouncer returned. The dancer tried again to relocate my hands. This time I just kept my hands where they should be. She got frustrated. She was basically trying to get me kicked out for having my hands where they shouldn’t be. Unfortunately for her, neither I nor the bouncer was going to play along.

Eventually she switched to a more straight forward method. She just got up and walked off. I didn’t object. It wasn’t worth going after her for the money. After that day I never saw that dancer again. I suspect the bouncer probably knew what was going on the entire time. I’m pretty sure she got kicked out after trying that scam on a few guys. I probably should have said something if the dancer is scamming customers. It’s easier to keep my mouth shut. I’m just trying to relax and have a good time.