Second Chances and Stripping Sober

Full moon has come and gone. The Harvest Moon at that. Time to be reaping what was sown, and I am.

And it’s not so terrible this time around.

I can only surmise that I wasn’t as bad as I thought I was when I was here last. I was pretty fucking bad.

“We needed someone like you for a long time. I am glad you are here.”

“I am glad you came back, I would have lost a really good friend if you had stayed gone.”

“Don’t let that bitch bother you, you are the queen of this place, straighten your crown already and own it, we all love you and you’re killing it.”

That last one came when I needed it. I got some nasty messages a week or so after I got here. So did the bartender.

She just called the bar. Asked who was working. Asked for Mark. Then asked for you. When I said you weren’t in tonight she said “that’s fine I’ll deal with that little slut myself”

Sigh

 

 

Sigh is right. Let it go sis.

You weren’t happy or capable.

Running strippers when she had never been one, nor worked a day in her life. Treating girls like numbers, and shit.

I am a little slut, but not in the way she meant it. And if by “dealing with me” she meant drinking a few bottles of wine and burning any and all bridges she had to me, ya, I’m totally dealt with.
I spent the better part of 3 hours a day for over 4 months on the phone with the woman basically doing her job for her, but we bonded, somewhat. And she tore all that down with a wrecking ball of misspelled insults.

She was making mountains out of a molehill then getting pissy when I just stepped around it. Attempted sabotage and blackmail that I also stepped around. I understand leverage and I don’t need it to do my job.

She showed up at the bar throwing sloppy drunk shade…why? I don’t know. This isn’t your house anymore, never really was. It’s not my house either, but I keep it clean and functioning.
I am literally just doing a job, which I am rather fond of, even if it means cleaning up mess after mess. And it does. It is my wheelhouse, I got this.

I was given permission to drink one night, and a regular bought me a double whiskey. I looked at it, literally drooling and wanting. But I couldn’t go back to zero, so I walked into the changeroom, shaking and gave it away. It wouldn’t have tasted as good as the words ‘I am 9 days sober’ did coming out of my mouth. And Mark’s haunting request “please don’t be like S_____.” I won’t. I love Mark more than I love whisky and that’s saying something.

I was 23 days sober last night. Everything still hurts, but it is getting marginally easier. I danced sober the first 3 years. I have no muscle memory left from those days, the car wreck erased everything and took 60% of my flexibility, but it’s just practice, like anything. I can do this. It’s on the list.

People are still trying to buy me shots. Old habits die harder in others. Like showing up for work.

I don’t get to pick my shifts anymore, I just get to pick them up as I am needed, whether it be behind the bar in a dress or on the floor in my underwear. It is nice to be necessary.

I think I always was, or I wouldn’t have this job. There was a me shaped void.

Seems like everyone wanted it, but they don’t want to do the actual work. The cleaning up puke of a table in Denny’s at 4am. The locker checks when something goes missing. The working of the shit shifts. Bribing the girls with food, finding what is needed, handing out smokes and tampons like Halloween candy. Sending my man out for actual candy as we all synced up our periods to the moon. Buying shots out of pocket on the dead nights when I know it’s going to get better soon, just wait.

It’s NOT being Mermaid and waltzing in like I own the place and hate everyone. I ask permission to come late, the girls have to agree. I love my fellow strippers, always have always will, even when they make it hard. We are all equal, just taking our clothes off for money. There is no status here.

Mermaid made it hardest of all, took every little thing I had for comfort out of spite, over a boy I wouldn’t touch with my worst enemy’s dead dick. She falsified emails from ‘customers’ and got rid of the cards on dead nights, my blanket on the cold ones. But she quit in a stompy blaze of glory, tried to walk into the only other strip club on this tiny rock and was turned away after 80% of the staff threatened to quit if she was allowed back.

I was welcomed back in Hamilton with open arms and listened to my old boss go off about her for about an hour, so if anyone is winning here…it might be me, the one that was asked to come back. I am welcome everywhere I have ever worked.

Because I work.

I had to reiterate last night, “no I do not pad the schedule in my favor, I am sick as a dog and I am here because I knew one of the girls wanted to leave early.” Mark chimed in and said she is only here because she has to be here. And it’s true. 3 girls bailed and 2 needed the night off, so I came. These girls I have asking me not to over hire like the one that came before me, then blowing shifts like it’s nothing.
It isn’t nothing, it’s my night off, and it’s one more night in heels sober.
It’s hard.
But it’s my job.

Had another one lose her mind because I get a filler shift at another bar that belongs to my boss. You wanna work til 3am and be at another job to open for noon and stand around for 7 hours? Take a good look at what you are so jealous of sis. She guaranteed never working again by blowing up at my boss over it.

On a long enough timeline the trash takes itself out.

There are women here who do not want me to succeed. They don’t want me here at all. But they don’t want to put in the work either. And all three torched their own bridges.

I make way less money now. Carrying trays watching all my girls book VIPs. Staying sober and shy as fuck on the weekends while they drink and dance. I missed it so bad on several occasions I was ready to quit my current position and rejoin them. But I won’t.

There have been miracles here and there wherein I thought I wouldn’t be able to make it, where I thought I wasn’t going to pull something off, then my phone rings and a girl comes just in time. I see them and I say thank you.

It’s easier this time around. My dog is here, my living room is coming together, my bed is made and my closet is overflowing with the things I missed. I stopped by the girl’s house at 5am to put out a proverbial fire the other night. Popped my head into room one and was struck by memories of misery. I have no fondness for that chunk of my life. It got a little better when I moved up to the third floor, but better than absolute shit is still shit.

I didn’t think I was gone long enough to be missed, but I was. This time I am supported and loved, and I am sober enough to see it. I have a good man by my side, I picked the right friend this time. I have respect because I have earned it. I have my tiny dog and my things. I have a home instead of a room in a house. And everything is coming together, slowly but surely.

That’s how it always goes, a big void of nothing, then everything all at once.

I have never been one to squander second chances, and life is a lot smoother now than it once was.