March 2021

I had a rapid session of good luck over the last couple days and I am grateful.

A couple unexpected windfalls, a tarot reading from my Colorado witch (2 really) and the girl that I was working with who I felt invisible next to, has decided to leave.

Do not get me wrong, I fucking love this girl. She is beautiful, sweet, personable and a really good stripper. I am a bad stripper. I overthink everything, I forget to smile, I don’t talk to as many customers as I should and I talk to some of them for too long. A, B, C always be closing, I suck at closing. I was never a good sales girl. I have that whole ‘freewill is paramount’ loop in my head, always. I figure if they wanted to they would, even though I have anecdotal proof to the contrary.

I look like a bitch.

And I know it.

I have lost track of the number of times some dude has said “I wanted you for a long time but I was too scared to talk to you.”

I am also very sweet, funny and kind when you get to know me but for the bulk of clientele who wander into a stripclub, they want approachable girls who approach them. And although I know this, I am still bad at it.

I am also shy in new venues.

My entire career has been x number of years at club A, B or C.

Too many close call fights over customers. But this place doesn’t seem to be like that.

I should know by now (and have written) that there is no stripper mecca. There is no perfect place. But the one I am in now is pretty close. I just need to get my shit together a little  better.

The old days are long gone and I still maintain my ex husband stole my 30’s where I could have been doing things differently aka ‘right’.

I still danced when I was married. On and off, sometimes in secret so I could leave, after physiotherapy for that bad car wreck, my old boss at one of my clubs took pity on bent and broken me and let me do my 3 stages when there was no one around. I do acknowledge that dancing was a huge part of my recovery. I lost my grace and found it again. And I made enough to put first, last and next on my old apartment and furnish it without him knowing.

And there was a club up in the wilds near the farm.

Where the Birthday Sex fire occurred and I met one of my best friends.

There are a few things worse than being a pimp. Peophile, murderer, rapist, politician, especially the one who approved paying the mentally challenged 45 cents an hour for manual labour, pimp and then rat…in that order.

Hubby knew I worked there and took the money I made, then denied I ever gave it to him and after a while, I stopped giving it to him. After another while, I left him and stayed in the cathouse above the club.

Every cathouse I have ever stayed in is a bizarre palette of mistints from the local hardware store coating the walls either in all the colors of an easter egg or varying shades of band aid beige. Lists of rules that no one really follows, aged and water stained, peeling up at the corners placed randomly throughout, punctuated with artwork salvaged from the garbage leftover after rummage sales, always slightly crooked and a clock, like we want to know what time it is. The air is filled with ancient and fresh cigarette smoke, steam from someone’s shower and a hint of expensive shampoo and cheap body spray.

This particular one was garish shades of pink, like pepto bismol left in the sun to darken and harden or in the rain to dilute and fade and by the time I moved in, streaks of smoke from a house fire.

It all started with the Birthday Sex song.

…

To read the rest please become a patron on my Patreon
$1 per month gets you access to extra articles like this one

https://www.patreon.com/sarahthegoodwitch

It has been a long minute since I spoke to you fine folks. This is going to come out like a diary entry.

The catfish poet was constantly criticizing my blog posts. “You’re too open, it’s not a diary darling.” But it is. I say my truth, and this part of what I write isn’t for the money, it is for my memory and sanity, so ya, it is a fucking diary. Neglected as of late, but here I am, trying and shit.

I had plans to bring my Roku north so this old laptop wasn’t my only source of entertainment and stuck on the weird side table at the end of my cat house bed and instead, in my la[p where it belongs. But I forgot, for like 3 weeks straight.

My routine is not great. Up at 11 or so. Down for coffee, watch a movie or two while doing stretches in my room. Eat a tapas style lunch around 2, nap til 3, shower, work, eat, rinse, repeat.
Kept meaning to bring my yoga mat too, forgot that also.

I got stuck in the new book at the part where they finally get together because for a long while that felt like an impossibility, but i think I can now.

I also meant to take a couple pics of my stripper room, I don’t think most folks understand how that works. Why would you, unless you yourself are a traveling stripper. I had one whole experience in my 22 years dancing and that place got lit on fire during a fight about the birthday sex song. But that whole experience was atypical and a story for another day.

I could just buy another Roku. But I haven’t.

Stripper money is a funny thing. It comes and goes in waves. Sometimes overlapping. I was treating myself to a blow out the day before heading to work, a polish change on my claws or new nails, pop into the grocery store across the street to feed myself for the week and suddenly a night or two’s worth of money, poof, gone. Then the phone bill comes due on a bad week and my car still needs fixing, I paid my taxes this morning. I keep waiting for a bonus night at work, and it hasn’t happened yet, in 5 weeks. Just steady, always with one garbage night to throw off my average. 5 weeks running. I am due 5 bonus nights in the near future. Let those overlap instead.

Last week I made meals with what I had on hand, snapped a nail moving furniture the day before I was to work, my roots are coming in and I just left all of it. An experiment to see if it made a difference, it didn’t. I have bigger goals, I don’t need to be fancy. I do need to work harder.

I have decided to lean into what is. Roommate moves into his new house in Belize in 4 days. That leaves me the house I am in all to myself. In all of it’s smoky, leather, grey, bachelor glory.

For at least a year.

I spent last tuesday decluttering, wiping down, sorting and ultimately filling 2 bins worth of donations at Value Village.

I got rid of 8 bags of my own clothes and leftover crap. Next will be the uncomfortable leather couches and the glass tables.

I’d be a fool to move. And it might be foolish to redecorate, but the stuff I salvaged from Newfoundland sits 200 yards from my front door in a now unnecessary storage space. The money saved in storage fees is enough to justify a coat of paint and a new couch. Besides, I nest, it’s what I do. And I will have this place looking like something out of a magazine soon, Good for resale when we get there right? And good for my brain, I hated feeling that ‘ugh’ when I walked in the door after 4 days gone. Anyone who follows my Instagram knows what I am capable of as far as making houses into homes goes. It’s my thing.

My favorite saying, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” One of the Roosevelts, Teddy I think. I have nice things across the street and I live here now. It is what is.

There are some downsides. My last friend here left last Thursday. I am doing all of this alone. I mean, it’s just Milton part 2 after the Potato moved out. I did all of that alone. We are back in grey lockdown so I couldn’t go meet new people even if I had any idea how to do that. No social media. I am isolated as fuuuuuck.

No fuck boys to play with neither here nor there, which sucks.

I did try. Only found one that might work and after 2 failed attempts I got a 4:26am ‘babe’ text. That is a privilege, not a right. After which I did give him a shot at redemption and he made out with a 19 year old at the bar 20 minutes after inviting me home, so that is dead in the water. I think the idea is dead in the water really. I should know better than to think anything viable would be found at a small town strip club. That only ever happened 3 times in all my years.

And besides, it is just a distraction. I am there to make money and lots of it. I have a condo, a jeep and trailer to buy, and now a couch. I am seriously thinking pink, never had a pink couch before.

And then there is the tit issue.

I really should have written something last week after the appointment. I finally got to the consultation stage of this horrendous adventure and wow that was not what I had expected.

Apparently there is no rupture.

Which means nothing is covered by insurance or the manufacturer and they still don’t know why I am sick exactly. I know 10 things it isn’t.

Doesn’t explain the lump I keep feeling, nor the way I have been feeling in general. I mean Breast Implant Illness isn’t dependent on a rupture, my body could just be fighting and rejecting the intact implants. And there is an anomaly and a lot of swelling they can’t explain. But now it’s a multi thousand dollar venture for me to get these out to see if I feel better and ya. Fuck. 

I am waiting on a mammogram and another ultrasound, then I will be getting a second opinion. But for now, I am still in expensive limbo. The stretching, constant movement and my renewed drinking has helped with pain management. I limp most mornings, exacerbated by giving myself a B 12 shot and having that butt cheek grabbed extra hard by a customer 12 hours post injection, that wasn’t a fun morning. But at least I knew what was wrong.

So that’s it. You’re all caught up.

Still sick, but better. No good dick at work or home. No tit replacement, yet. But I get to redecorate. I am safe, relatively happy and about to go get my nails done and refill my vegetable crisper and in 2 days I can keep filling my coffers.

It’s been over 3 years.

The whole thing lasted less than a year, but it was an important and strange time in my life.

He will protest this, but I was good while he was away. I know my truth and that is enough.

The trend for being faithful was started then and there. I decided to do the thing and I did. It was not easy, an angel of the lord came down and flirted with me, stole my heart really, but I stayed stubborn until I wasn’t.

Scratch that, I have always been faithful. I waited 26 years and destroyed every relationship I was ever in for High School Sweetheart even when he had 3 babies by 2 other women and married the second. He got his shit together a couple years after I had given up and I did not bend.
When I am with you, I am with you and when I am done I am done. I will still be kind, that is who I am. All of these things are in my marrow. Time doesn’t matter to my heart. Never has.

Less than a year after I met Final Boss I helped him pack his things and kissed him goodbye in a hotel parking lot as he flew away to go make a better life for himself. He said he’d be back for me and I had all the anecdotal proof in the world that it wasn’t going to happen, and I was already done.

I followed suit that same winter and here I be. Life is better.

A year ago right around now farm hubby and I went out for coffee as I tried to be the sympathetic ex and help him get over the loss of sisterwife. I had my own issues that needed airing out about that whole situation and it should have been cathartic, apologetic and full of forgiveness.

Except he called me the next day with plans for me to move back in, 8 years later. I cannot begin to imagine the mess he has been able to make in the last 8 years and the 7 years of busy work and constant cleaning was more than enough for me. I will take my little attic and my weird little life over that chaos any day. I was pretty insulted that he thought me no better than some girl who would wait on hold for someone else to die and then move back in like nothing happened.

No. Fuck no.

Honestly, I should have known. The others have done the same “wait here while I go try this girl on for size and wifery” and when she doesn’t fit, I get a phone call. It isn’t flattering. Appreciate me in real time or leave and stay gone. 

When Final Boss got on the plane he was (and I believe this) trying to do better, be better. And to tell the god’s honest truth, from the day we met until the day he left, I would have stood by him as he did do that very thing. And I would have been really good at it. I am the girl who carried aspirin in her purse in case he had a heart attack. Did triage in the VIP with his friends while they were bleeding. Picked him up at all hours and made 5am sandwiches.

A few months later he was back in town, back at his old shit and back with his ex. We all know this story. I didn’t like the way my name sounded coming out of his mouth and I told him so. I cried and I was done, like really done.

I both understood what he was doing and didn’t like it. A concept he had a hard time wrapping his head around, ya, I get it and ya, I was still angry. Understanding doesn’t have to denote forgiveness.

I have seen him once since, met his new pupper and he paid me back.
Then I forgave.

We talk on occasion. 5 minutes here or there. I ask if he’s okay, spit a little truth, he tells me to give it up (playfully) and I remind him I have (seriously). He called me at 5am when I was heading to the airport in November, he was also heading to the airport. I was landing at my destination as he was landing at the airport I flew out of. Metaphorical actuality.

The last conversation he was asking for the address of a place he had been to 4 times in the 4 days prior to the call. And I am not the kind of girl to wonder what a dude meant when he said ‘x,y,z’…but ya, it was an excuse to talk to me. Subtle this is not.

Turns out he has been building his empire like he said he would.
And it is going well from all accounts and there is a space for me.

This is a twist. And I am flattered.
Field of Dreams with dogs and drugs instead of corn and baseball.
He built it, but I am not coming.

I understand better than most how awful the universe’s timing seems to be on occasion.

And, full disclosure, as I struggle being the new girl in a new bar, the familiarity and status I achieved out east is so tempting. But I remember the price I paid for it. My sanity and sobriety.
But, being the Queen of Everything in a microcosm is just big fish, small pond. There is no challenge there for me anymore. It has been conquered, dissected and learned from. This latest revelation is just one more jewel in a tawdry crown that was always too small.

There is an old adage which dictates “god will give you everything you ever wanted and then send you a distraction to see what you will do.”

I feel like I could reach back into the archives and find something similar that happened years ago. I mean I did have the trailer, I was ready to go and I panicked and settled for the familiarity of the town I am in now and my stable full of fuck boys. But they are all cuffed now and my girls are gone. 

And I have indisputable proof that I was supposed to be exactly where I was, when I was. Arduous journey? Yep. Worth it? Absolutely.

His job was to keep me there a bit longer, not to bring me back.

I don’t want to go back and redo the things I have already done. 

It is time for something new.

For a minute there, I lost myself ~ Radiohead

We all knew that. I am tired of talking about it and I am sure you are all tired of hearing about it.

But for a minute there I was also a writer with no pen.

The lesser known horseman of my apocalypse, Frustration. He rides a dumpy lame nag of a non descript color and she is very slow and kinda blind.

A song came on my Spotify and I am desperate for better sets to dance to so I was scrambling for pen and paper before the newly formed brain bubble burst and leaked out.

Wednesday night work was not, not great.

I had this renewed sense of hustle and higher purpose, I looked stupid cute. Did lame shows, but kept my balance and rhythm and my legs doth not protest too much during the transitions from kneeling to standing BUT the clientele was 90% coked out townies with no desire to go for dances but they all said I am SOOOOOO PRETTY. I cannot finance my fabulous future with their words, but at least I didn’t feel like a total bag of shit.

I stumbled back upon the realization that sometimes I allow my nightly income to affect how I see myself and when my period is added to the mix the results can be disastrous. But I did not cry. I logically assessed the situation and just said fuck it by the end.

I did end up reminiscing like a motherfucker that night. I had a mini audience at rapt attention.

One of the girls asked me about perdition, and the diet red bull I consumed had me both rotted of gut and loose of tongue. She specifically wanted to know about the process of firing the girls who had flown to that strange little island to work.

It was never easy, except when it was.

I waxed nostalgic about getting a split lip for firing a very aggressive girl who was terrorizing all the other girls while holding a tray. The descent down the stairs with an intact tray full of shots and my other hand cupped under my chin to catch the blood, I really liked the shirt I was wearing.

I did have a theory that there was some kind of malevolent spirit that resided in the bar who, in order to be appeased, needed a blood sacrifice on occasion. It was just my turn.

And I realized the only other 3 fights that ever happened inside the bar while I was working happened during my stage shows, except the one where I saw it coming, warned the bouncer and then walked out the door because said bouncer gave me attitude and I figured an “I told you so” would be more fun and satisfying if he got a couple shots to the head. He did. It was.

I am contemplating a Twitch account wherein I can deep dive into my strip club memories and keep them safe while simultaneously broadcasting them. I have really good stories, some you know, some you don’t. I am fairly locked in my room from noon to 4 doing stretches and bed yoga. Why not? 

I am also having a hard time adjusting to the 3 song sets instead of 2 songs so I am going way back in my playbook and digging into the oldies sets. My body remembers them and I flow differently. It works, I am in a retirement town full of farmers. I realized one of the sets I picked was from a time long long ago in a city pretty far away.

I looked out into the audience once upon a time and saw 3 out of 4 men that I had slept with, during the same time period, never all at once.
Faithful readers will recall the Four Horsemen of My Apocalypse.
This second great conjunction happened probably 7 years after the first. They knew OF each other and as I climbed down from stage and got dressed, they all followed me outside for a cigarette and it did not take long for them to figure out the connection. They all teased me gently and I felt very loved, cherished and safe in that moment.

The last song in the set was 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover and we all had a good giggle about that too.

I hadn’t danced to it since then. Until Wednesday night. No such magic happened except that I smiled reminiscing about my 30 something self who was in yet another bad relationship, and for a minute got to remember what it was like to feel loved.

When I look back over my life I see many high places, many chances taken and for the most part, no regrets. Dancing has both been a part of my low self esteem, before I accepted it for what it was and myself for who I am. The highs are bookended with lows of course. Everything is cyclical. And honestly I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My life got better when I started being honest. About who I am, what I love and the things I have done. Shame is a terrible burden to carry, it is heavy and it is really just made up of other people’s opinions of us, and like compliments at a strip club on a Wednesday, they don’t pay the bills so, pretty useless really.. 

I have also decided that things will get better (and are getting better) as I accept where I am and what I am doing instead of living in a future that is unpredictable at best. Yes I am holding the vision, but for a good chunk of time there, I forgot to trust the process. I am sitting in my cute attic now. My room at the girl’s house is clean and smells good at least. I have my screen grab from A Streetcar Named Desire tucked into the side of my mirror and although he was never on his knees, it pleases me. I left my crystals to charge in the window. Found some acceptable incense at the health food store and brought my sheets home to wash, next week is a new week.

This past week at work was the transition from the county’s yellow to green phase. We knew going in work was going to be hard, the clientele would be unpredictable and the extended hours were going to be exhausting. It really really was. 5 shows instead of 2 meant I was on stage doing cardio in stilettos for about an hour a night. 5pm to 2am instead of 11 or 12. The last 2 hours being the busiest of the night. I barely left my room unless it was to prep for work or go downstairs to work. I watched some movies, did bed yoga and started this article last Thursday. I needed to be nice to my body and except for a decent amount of tequila, I was.

I accepted this.

I did a mini spell and would have hit that amount, except a friend from high school showed up and I chose to chill with him and his woman instead of hustling. No regrets.

I also made zero on Wednesday, a little harder to accept, but I came home with the same amount as the week prior, so I am not mad about it. Every dollar brings me closer to my goal. I have almost stopped comparing myself to the other girls. So that is good too. I did my squats and my bed yoga. I corrected my behavior from the week prior and there is still room for improvement, but I am getting better. 

Spring is coming, I can feel it. I am driving myself up this week after my MRI. One step closer to getting this silicone out of my body and time has started to move faster than the molasses of January and February.

This week was a little better than the last and I am excited for the next one and the one after that.

Now I am off to find sexy knee pads and look up this Twitch shit.

The rest of this article is available on Patreon for a $1 subscription per month. Link at the bottom.
Half Wild Thing goes live at midnight tonight, $5 subscription gets you digital access to both books I wrote.

---

Good Morning my loves. A warm hello to my new patrons and a huge thank you to the ones who are sticking around while I fumble through this bumpy transition. It’s getting better.

The groundhog days of February wherein time slowed to a standstill and I would shovel 8 inches of snow just to have 8 more fall, seem to have left us.First night in my own bed in a few days. That is a nice feeling. Both being away and back to it.

Walked in the door to no power. S’okay. Didn’t last long and I am ⅓ of the way through American Gods (the book), plus I was so anxious to get home I was the first girl awake in the house and got a nice long and hot shower.

Oh, girls house life. I think I kinda missed it.

Although the first rule of staying in a stripper house is if you decide you have time for a nap and the house has been quiet all day everyone else will wake up and invade the kitchen as soon as your head hits the pillow. I remembered a black out curtain and forgot ear plugs.

Once upon a time my room was this little dormered thing on a cracky street in Newfoundland. On government cheque day we could hear them celebrating through the walls, there were always fights outside at all hours. Inside our house was less chaotic most of the time. I got launched out of bed to stop a few fights and make sure the puking girl hit the toilet. There were enough beds for 15 or 16 girls. I had one of 2 single rooms, a reward for being the keeper of the keys and the taker out of the trash. My room was always too hot or too cold, too bright or too dark. The walls were the color of bandaids and my door was always open. The third floor was like that, unless we were sleeping or jerking off, there were rules.

It got hot up there so we had strategically placed floor fans and a pact to keep our doors open for the cross breeze.

Plus, I gave out the room assignments so I got to be in charge of who my immediate neighbours were…mostly. I rarely locked my door and was never robbed. The doors were so old and had been broken down so many times they barely shut right, I had a butter knife outside my room for the days I forgot my keys, worked just as well.

My room was the meeting place, the venting place, the chilling place and the safe space.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-cathouse-48179794