For the past few years, I have been trying to convince a friend of mine to blog under a pseudonym about her sex work. (She is working on it.) Then I realized how hypocritical it is of me to give her the push while I "have" experience of my own - "have" as in I did not partake in the sexual stimulations, but worked as a waitress in a strip club in Texas. I posted on Facebook, asking who would be interested in reading my stories and observations from when I did that, and I received an overwhelming positive response. So here we go.
I am going to make this into a series on this blog, but I am not sure about how many posts I will end up making, or if the series will ever truly end. For the safety of the joint, customers, and workers, I am not going to publicly disclose the name of the place I worked. Remember that while I do have a unique experience, I am only one person in a sea full of people in the industry, and experiences will definitely vary by location as well as by individual. However, I do think with my BA in anthropology, my insights are worth looking at.
In 2011, a former friend convinced me to start working as a stripper before I went off to college. I knew that my family would not be accepting of this, so I decided to look into being a waitress. Depending on the days, waitresses can sometimes make more than the strippers, which is a positive. However, I liked the freedom that the strippers had of being independent contractors, a system that would work better for my situation anyhow, since I wanted to do this near the end of summer, nearing the time I had to fly into Washington for my first quarter. Luckily, I was able to work out a deal with the establishment where I could work as an independent contractor but as a waitress.
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| Just because I didn't work as a stripper doesn't mean I didn't play around on the poles with other waitresses when things were slow. |
I do not remember how I ended up choosing that - maybe because it was the closest to where I lived? Despite only going to be working as a waitress, my parents were the opposite of thrilled. After a lot of arguing and crying, they begrudgingly "let" me work there. I was 19 at the time. Since I did not have a car of my own and had no license, I had to pay them $10 for gas money each day I worked.
We agreed that my first day of work would be on a Sunday. Little did we know that Sundays are actually (one of) the busiest days of the week there. I did not want to work night shifts for several reasons, so I would only do day shifts. Day shifts were from 11 am to 7 pm, and evening shifts from 7 pm to 2 am. I ended up working almost solely on Sundays, until I came back the next summer (and some other times) to work on Sundays and Fridays.
Overall, I enjoyed working at a strip club. I would recommend it for those interested working in any aspect of it, with a few caveats. I would consider working there again if I needed a lot of money (according to my standards) in short notice.
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about my experience, or if you would like me to address a certain topic in a later post.
