Before leaving for Stripper Paradise I had every intention of writing like mad, sharing story after story about my first experiences in a real strip club. Alas, after working 8+ hour shifts (by choice), leaving in the evening tired, smelly, hungry, both myself and Crush desperately needing to vent to each other about the day's profits and losses, endearing patrons and creeps, and wanting to do nothing more than take a hot bath to sooth our swollen knees and overstimulated minds, I just couldn't physically do it.
Today was my least profitable, least memorable, shortest, and last day in the New Mexican strip club. The game is now old hat, today a blur of yays and nays, grinding and whining, and, surprisingly, I was even approached by a fresh dancer for the strip club low-down. I have certainly learned a lot in the last 7 days, for which I must forever be thankful to my travel companion Crush and my incredible good luck. I boarded a plane, landing in a new city without a money-making back-up plan and hoping to get hired at my audition, going all or nothing.
After a few days of recovery and relaxation I will write more about what I have seen, felt, heard, and inferred within the four dark walls of the typical Southwestern club, but I promise it will take some time. I am exhausted both physically and emotionally, battered and bolstered in ways I never thought possible and now it is time to fly back to my regular crazy life and hope to find some time to process everything I have experienced. As I heard Cage The Elephant sing a thousands times over the past week, "there ain't no rest for the wicked."
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
Relationship By Choice
For all of you who know me in real life I'm really not into the "hippy-dippy infinite love and world peace for all" zeitgeist, but this is one warm and fuzzy concept I do dig.
Sometimes I think people forget that their commitment to their relationships is a choice. Instigating a relationship does not mean that there is no room for change in its form or appearance and if the relationship no longer works for either parties, whether it be romantic or platonic (and I would even extend this to familial relationships as well but obviously there are other layers going on there too), they have the choice to dissolve the connection. I am thankful to have met and made connections with many amazing people, to whom I make a conscious effort to acknowledge their graciousness in choosing me to be their partner, lover, or friend, and I hope they do the same for me.
Prior to becoming polyamorous (about this time last year actually!) this concept hadn't even crossed my mind. My partner and I had been together since we were 14 and we both assumed that's how it was and would always be. We locked ourselves into routines, patterns of communication, and ultimatums based upon the "fact" that we had certainly made the choice to get together in the first place, but we never thought of our relationships continuation and the model we followed to be anything more. As I've become more conscious of my own relationships I can't help but notice how other's treat theirs as static, immovable, unquestionable, unbending and overwhelmingly above their own personal growth and independence.
While the human capacity for healthy and loving connections may or may not have a ceiling, we certainly do have logistical limits like time. As a busy woman I have to budget my schedule day-by-day between work, family, friends, and my more intimate relations. I treat my time as precious, which it is as is yours, and only give it to people and projects that I feel are deserving of it and have learned to appropriately and unselfishly drop hindering projects and people out of my budgeting process. Assuming that other's do this at least to some extent I treat other's allowance of their time to me as a special connection, one that they consciously chose, as I have.
Sometimes I think people forget that their commitment to their relationships is a choice. Instigating a relationship does not mean that there is no room for change in its form or appearance and if the relationship no longer works for either parties, whether it be romantic or platonic (and I would even extend this to familial relationships as well but obviously there are other layers going on there too), they have the choice to dissolve the connection. I am thankful to have met and made connections with many amazing people, to whom I make a conscious effort to acknowledge their graciousness in choosing me to be their partner, lover, or friend, and I hope they do the same for me.
Prior to becoming polyamorous (about this time last year actually!) this concept hadn't even crossed my mind. My partner and I had been together since we were 14 and we both assumed that's how it was and would always be. We locked ourselves into routines, patterns of communication, and ultimatums based upon the "fact" that we had certainly made the choice to get together in the first place, but we never thought of our relationships continuation and the model we followed to be anything more. As I've become more conscious of my own relationships I can't help but notice how other's treat theirs as static, immovable, unquestionable, unbending and overwhelmingly above their own personal growth and independence.
While the human capacity for healthy and loving connections may or may not have a ceiling, we certainly do have logistical limits like time. As a busy woman I have to budget my schedule day-by-day between work, family, friends, and my more intimate relations. I treat my time as precious, which it is as is yours, and only give it to people and projects that I feel are deserving of it and have learned to appropriately and unselfishly drop hindering projects and people out of my budgeting process. Assuming that other's do this at least to some extent I treat other's allowance of their time to me as a special connection, one that they consciously chose, as I have.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Made of Words Questionnaire!
*Spank Spank* Bad Sandy!
I've been meaning to post a link to the questionnaire I filled out for Ali Oh's amazing blog Made of Words! Queer and sex-positivity focused, her blog is super sexy and rad just like her.
Made of Words!
If smarts aren't enough to entice you I promise she's also included a super scandalous photo of model Kitty McMuffin and I.
I've been meaning to post a link to the questionnaire I filled out for Ali Oh's amazing blog Made of Words! Queer and sex-positivity focused, her blog is super sexy and rad just like her.
Made of Words!
If smarts aren't enough to entice you I promise she's also included a super scandalous photo of model Kitty McMuffin and I.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Going Home
Sometimes I get hungry for "home." Sometimes I get so starved for it that I make believe one exists and I head back to my East Bay home town to visit my family. In my absence my brain likes to create this fictitious place. A place of structure, free and unconditional love, mutual understanding, real "mom" and "dad" relationships that I truly forget never existed in my lifetime.
Weeks away always diminish the reality, which I have to admit isn't all bad or terrible and, considering the extreme conditions other people live in, maybe I shouldn't complain. Time makes me forget the horrible ways my mom and step-dad communicate, the mental hell my mom is experiencing and refusing help for, my brother's obvious need for positive encouragement and stability, their isolation from one another, their continued cohabitation in a house that is no longer a home if it ever was one. They've even given away the dining room table in the last few months.
Driving to my parent's house I pass my old high school (my parent's high school too) where my brother now goes. I pass by restaurants I used to frequent, stores I used to buy school clothes at, hills I used to sit on with friends watching the happenings of the suburb below. When I drive by these things I can't be anything but thankful to be out of this place, but I often feel guilty leaving my parent's house the way it is - empty, loveless, charged. I know there is absolutely nothing I can do about it, but sometimes I get so hungry, so ravenous, that I make believe there once was something palatable.
Weeks away always diminish the reality, which I have to admit isn't all bad or terrible and, considering the extreme conditions other people live in, maybe I shouldn't complain. Time makes me forget the horrible ways my mom and step-dad communicate, the mental hell my mom is experiencing and refusing help for, my brother's obvious need for positive encouragement and stability, their isolation from one another, their continued cohabitation in a house that is no longer a home if it ever was one. They've even given away the dining room table in the last few months.
Driving to my parent's house I pass my old high school (my parent's high school too) where my brother now goes. I pass by restaurants I used to frequent, stores I used to buy school clothes at, hills I used to sit on with friends watching the happenings of the suburb below. When I drive by these things I can't be anything but thankful to be out of this place, but I often feel guilty leaving my parent's house the way it is - empty, loveless, charged. I know there is absolutely nothing I can do about it, but sometimes I get so hungry, so ravenous, that I make believe there once was something palatable.
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