It just occurred to me the other day that October marks my fifth anniversary of me starting my uber-awesome and frighteningly popular blog, The Plight of the StripperHerder. The actual date of my first published post was Oct 2nd, 2010, but I forgot and shit so therefore this will have to be close enough. Quite frankly you're all lucky I even managed to even get the month right because I'm not what you'd call an organized person.
So in honor of my stick-to-itiveness, I though I'd do sort of a retrospective look at my career in the medium paced, quasi-glamorous industry of the Titty Bar.
I have, as I've been told countless times, the greatest job in the world. And while I may have some objections to that title, I will agree that it's not altogether horrible on some nights. After all, I can pay my bills, sorta, by only working 16 hours a week. That's a combination of decent income per hours worked and my incredibly austere lifestyle, which affords no budget for anything but drinking in front of my computer and wanking myself silly to free porn.*1
My job leaves my all kinds of free time which I happily squander by doing wasteful things such as writing this blog and my other blog, The Dark Lord's Journal, http://darklordsjournal.blogspot.com/ which has yet to really catch on.
More's the pity.
So I sat around bored at work tonight and thought about what I'd like my five year contemplation of my chosen field to touch upon. What exactly has the effect of (going on) 15 years in the strip club industry had on my my psyche and my principles, much less my soul?
Ultimately I know that the answers to both those questions is "Who gives a fuck?" and I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly. But untold kajillions of people from all over our humble planet are apparently entertained by my asshole observations about working in a nip shack and I feel obligated to do something special for my 5th Anniversary.
So here goes. I'm gonna get raw here so please start/continue drinking. There's no judgement here.
The StripperHerder 5th Anniversary Mega-Recollection Special Done Medium Well With Extra Candor, Hold The Bullshit.
See what I did there? Done Medium Well? Implying that this won't be a top notch effort?
That's what keeps folks coming back, subtle humor like that. You're welcome.
Shit I was wrong about over the last 5 years.
1) I thought that the owner raising prices to what I considered to be out-of-market rates would sink this club. It turned out that I was wrong and he was right. I was a dumb, stubborn, ignorant cunt and he was (and continues to be) a successful capitalist.
This is why he has multiple expensive homes and I live in a filthy plaster habitrail situated over a food dispensary.
I'm a fucking economics idiot and a financial shithead.
2) I thought we were better than the last club I worked at as far as firing schizophrenic strippers. I was kidding myself based on initial results. Still, even having come to accept this, there are times where I'm still astounded by the level of stupidity it took to bring back some of the worst ones. The Raging Hydes, the Scary Gangsters and the fearsome Gin Harpies.
The problem I have with this horseshit is that we don't have the same stripper population problem that some of the former clubs I've worked at have had, namely a dearth of quality tail. We have plenty of hot Painted Jezebels to go around at this club. This means that we could fire some chubby, criminal skanks and still have more than enough cooze left over to maintain the show.
And we DO fire dancers. We fire them for heinous shit and then we hire 93% of them back within a month.
It's like a game between our management team. The Game of Crones.*2 One Manager will fire a loathesome felon and the other Manager will rehire it, safe in the knowledge that he works day shift and will rarely have to deal with the recurring trainwreck. It's kinda like two large countries that decide to go to war with each other but don't want to mess up their homelands so they mutually agree to hold the war in the small country that separates them.
The country where the Floor Guys live.
3) Vodzilla is still alive. I know I've mentioned many times that she's probably immortal, but I was just kidding about that. I thought for sure that by now she'd be an interesting burn pattern on an overpass support somewhere or a sad little Facebook obituary/fundraiser.
But once again, I'm wrong. The crazy Ketelvore is still going strong yet STILL hasn't been hired back at this club. Maybe I'm just going slightly insane in my old age, but sometimes I really miss watching her stagger around, volume stuck on high, while she mimics a highly localized booze tornado. Or the classy way she had of yelling at and assaulting people.
She may not be one of a kind, but she is definitely the queen of her Character Class.
Well played, Vodzilla. Well played.
4) I am not kidding you when I say that I have written easily 95% of this blog under the influence of alcohol. I'm not saying I was "drunk" every time that I penned something, but I AM saying that I very rarely penned anything at all without the literary lubricant of liquor.*3
That being said, I have learned these past five years that I prefer to write amidst a drinking binge alone in my apartment, and that I feel no shame nor regret about it whatsoever. As the years progress I grow more insular and reclusive, like a hermit slob struggling to fill the space around it and doing an admirable job via garbage and weight gain.
Shit I was right about over the last five years.
1) Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'm wrong about most everything, all the time. So for God's sake, please don't mistake this blog for an advice column.
Amurrika's current culture of butthurt and victim mentality.
It's an interesting time to be alive in the good ole US of A, especially if you enjoy being offended by stuff. You're allowed and even encouraged to be offended these days by pretty much anything that tickles your fancy. Some folks play it like a sport, the more things you can be offended by, the more points you get and the more respect you earn in your "That's Offensive" League.
I've been over this before in this blog, they're just words people. The only possible way words can hurt you is if you allow them to. It's the only way. Maybe I've developed a thicker skin than some others because of my prolonged deployment in the service industry field and that's why it's nearly impossible to insult or offend me. Part of my job frequently involves taunts and insults. They're normally pretty amusing.
To illustrate my point, here is a list of things which I could be all butthurt by, yet am not:
-I lived in a mobile home for 10 years. Did I ever get annoyed or hurt by someone saying 'trailer trash' or making trailer park jokes? Nope. Never occurred to me to be bothered by that.
-I'm quite overweight at this point in my life and except for a few years in my late teens/early twenties, have always had problems with my weight. Do I get offended by 'fat' jokes or images? Nope. Why? It's my own fault. I eat too much and exercise too little and that's all on me. Getting offended by fat jokes would only be displacing my shame and embarrassment onto the source of the ridicule rather than owning the problem in the first place.
-People in my family tend to go senile before they die. So I should be offended when someone makes statements that include "crazy, senile, alzheimer's, batty, or loony", right? If so, I'm going to be very busy being all offended for the rest of my life...
-I have no allergies that I'm aware of, but if I did I find it very hard to believe that it would upset me if my allergy were to be featured in a comic, meme or statement as a source of amusement for others. I might roll my eyes, think to myself "assholes" and then move on with my life, completely unbutthurt in any way.
People need to get the fuck over themselves. There's seven billion humans littering this Earth and none of us are special in any way no matter what Mommy and Daddy told us. If you desire to live your life in a perpetual state of anxiety and agitation, that's totally up to you, but leave me out of it, thanks.
What I really don't like is when a person makes it part of their agenda to impose their value system on me. I will write about, talk about and post about any topic I choose to whether it's offensive to people or not. Just as I have the right to do this, any person with the ability to read/hear what I'm saying has the equal right to fucking ignore me.
Yet this would be missing an opportunity to get their hackles all up and a chance to step forward and champion the cause of gluten freedom, or being nice to carrots, or not saying 'dummy' or whatever it is they're upset about this week.
So that's what I piled up nicely for you all and labelled as a 'Five Year Anniversary Special'. I hope you're as disappointed in it as I am because it took me a long time to write it. This is a prime example of the kind of rigid standards that I routinely fail to achieve.
Keepin it rare,
-The StripperHerder
*1 And since I sop the shame puddle with a sock, my Kleenex budget is negligible.
*2 The Games of Crones: When two or more Management Lords fight a war for supremacy using the club as their battleground and deranged strippers as the weapons of choice. I know many of the Management Class that have perished in this fashion and it's never a pretty or glorious way to die.
*3 which is literally alliterative.
