Memorable Day

And fractured fragments of last night filter into my aching head this morning as I confront the 8am Stairmaster to sweat out the alcohol from the previous night of drinking with Carlos. Carlos is now back together with the ex who can't orgasm, and was toying with the idea of bringing her to Pussies on Friday for a little lapdance from moi.

"But that's kinda strange, right? I mean, how am I going to explain how I know you?"

Hey Delia, this is Mimi, one time shag and text partner-in-crime who gives great head and now grinds cock for a living.

One potential avenue, perhaps.

Pussies is slow today. Pussies is always slow, but the day after Memorial Day is memorable for being the slowest day in all of my four week Pussies history. Julio, the Brazilian bathroom attendent, teaches me how to say "I want to put my tongue in your ass", in Portuguese. The joke quickly wears thin. Mr Cum-in-His-Pants enters, wearing dark glasses, and in the dimly lit club immediately walks straight into a mirror, effectively dispelling any vague potential of exuding the desired 'cool' vibe.

"So sexy, you're dancin' on Friday, right? What about if I pay for you to give a lap dance, all slow and sultry, to Aishwarya over there, then you guys can make out, then you give me a dance, and then maybe if I'm in the mood, we can think about another Champagne Room visit? How does an hour of grinding against my rock-hard cock sound?"

So intensely stimulating that I had to excuse myself in order to mop up my flowing juices at such an enticing prospect. From what I recall the rock-hard member of Mr Cum-in-his-Pants, whilst ever eager, was certainly not the ferocious and enormous beast he would like me to believe, but fantasy, fantasy. We live in a fantasy world. He pays my bills and provides me with amusing anecdotes for the other waitresses, who fall off their six-inches at his latest gem. Bless Mr Cum-in-His-Pants. Bless all sad men on earth, for they have paid my rent this month. Bless Pimping Pussies.

The hot topic amongst waitresses today is: Mimi's butt. Opinion is divided. It's certainly derivative of Puerto Rico... does it have its own zip-code, Pedro-the-enormous-doorman enquires? Large, but not disproportionately so. Cellulite free (unless in the wrong lighting, we shall not discuss that), well-rounded, certainly not a white girl's butt. Are you sure your Momma didn't fool around some?

Opinion settles on the side of favorable. Mimi can breathe a thankful sigh of relief as female subjectivity swings around to that most challenging and controversial of questions: fake or real?

Appearance is prime in Pussies. Tits, ass, legs, hips, hair, face, all are subject to constant scrutiny and criticism every day. And appraisals are brutal. I want a bigger butt, but certainly not as big as yours. Her tits are a little droopy. Ooh, I love her nipples, so cute. She's beautiful but she's not my type. Check out her legs, so sexy, I love that little muscle at the back...

Women check out women far more than men check out women. Men are happy with a pair of tits, some legs, an ass and a vagina, and have the indiscriminate ability to overlook a little extra weight on the hips, a bad haircut, a few varicose veins. Women observe, collate, tut, discuss and cherish imperfection as proof of their own innate superiority. In a ranking of Pussies beauties, I'm high on the list, which is nice to know, but have slipped because of the recent severing of my long, curly blonde hair into an ash blonde cute baby doll cut. Real tits, they approve, a nice shape, but are you really 32C? Oh I guess... Hey Bettina, grab hold of these, they're real! Nice legs, butt a little large for the girls' tastes, more of a man's butt really, but it looks good perched on top of those erotic plastic, transparent stilettos...

As women, we're poked, prodded, weighed, measured... by the other women in the club, the true voyeurs in the den of iniquity which is Pimping Pussies.

I've settled in there now. Routine of gym, morning coffee, chat to jack-of-all-trades Mike, the Pussies' handyman, about politics and filibustering, chomp down a salad, pull on the waitress outfit, adjust my hair and makeup with the House Mom, gossip to the girls, answer questions, yes, I am dancing, starting Friday, got sick of being a waitress... stand in line with the other waitresses, music starts up, doors open, old Ernie wanders in, hands out chocolate to us all, the dancers file past, Pedro gives me a hug and asks me out on a date, Aishwarya stares at herself in the mirror, Bettina stares at her ass in the mirror, they all stare at Elena in the mirror. We dance when we get bored, drink when we get bought drinks, crouch on our heels as if we're peeing in a row when standing for 8 hours on stilettoes gets too much, talk, gossip, laugh, flirt. Today, Holly, a 26 year old studying for a Masters at NYU, made about $1000 with one drunk guy in the Blue Room. The Blue Room is the rich asshole's version of the Champagne Room, and costs about $1200 for an hour. A pretty packet if you can find an appopriate cock with a wallet, as Holly certainly did today. Extra brownie points for Holly, Mimi why didn't you get that guy into the Champagne Room yesterday? Hmm. Because he was buying me drinks, making me laugh, and slipping me money for taking the time to talk to him...

Time to talk. This always pre-empts the date situation, when they try and lure you out in the open for post-work drinks and getting-to-know-each other. I avoid this. A writing habit and zero-asshole-tolerance threshold helps in those times of temptation. And oh there are many. How could one resist Mr Cum-in-his-Pants outside the confines of Pussies? Yummy. Down girl.

So another day ends, my fate locked in this seedy cavern, at least until I can find an alternative source of income. But it's not so bad. I'm growing quite fond of my odd, incestuous, screwed up family.

God Bless Pimping Pussies.

A Peace Flag for Juanita and the Office

A little offering from Meanie Mimi to all of you who I offended with the blog. Juanita, do email me if you'd like to take me up on the offer of an apology drink sometime - newyorkmimi@yahoo.co.uk.

Drunken Post

Saturday night, tiny chic bar with gay friend, Billy Holliday, a million miles away from visa stress, just NY and a sultry Saturday night/Sunday morning, frivolous, warm and beautiful. It reminds me of Cambridge, believing you've left the past behind, praying for the morning not to come. So we talk and talk, and it's 5am, and the morning does come, visa worries, cheap wine hangover, bad hair, a cat stuck underneath the floorboards, problems with keyboards.

Monday. Diet, gym, work. Ten texts from the personal trainer. Shit from the waitresses.

"You got a haircut! It looks like crap."

Sex, sex, sex. Rise above. Drink tequila (and break diet, shhh) with a client. Meet Carlos for drinks.

"You're so thin... you lost weight... "

That's what being illegal does for you baby. Red wine, midtown, idiot tourists. A bad replay of many other nights. I'm home, and I can't remember how I got here. Doh. 7 phone numbers on paper napkins in my bag. I start dancing full time on Friday. You're welcome to come. I've given up on love. Surviving is enough. Money is enough.

I'm kind of drunk. I say that a lot nowadays.

The Death of Popular Culture

Pop Culture is what we think of when we think of America. Blue jeans, Coca Cola, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Andy Warhol… America is condemned for ruthlessly wiping out the corner shop and individuality, and replacing it with sameness, with mass-marketed produce, with stereotypes. And then it’s simultaneously hailed for contributing to the world economy, for giving us a fizzy drink in a can we all recognize and feel safe with. America confuses me. The inter-relationship between event and the consequent spawning of low-brow culture as an offshoot confuses me. The fact that everything in America becomes a commodity, something we all recognize, we can all buy in a store, we can all slag off publicly but go home and enjoy privately, confuses me. Giddy consumerism, laissez faire attitudes, hard partying, excess… this defined New York up until September 11th 2001. New York itself was a product of popular culture. And then it all changed when the twin towers came crumbling. And the twin towers were chosen because they were the defining emblems of that braggart assuredness of the 80’s and 90’s, that untouchability the United States exuded to the poorer countries in the world, that hated and exhorted machine of globalization consuming us all.

So there, I mentioned it, my first ‘pop culture’ event, an event which has been written about to death, photographed, studied, argued over, which started a war, which gave birth to a sickening new 21st century. Although 9/11 wasn’t pop culture, what happened afterwards was - the newspaper articles, the books, the films, the TV programs, even the War. It started a chain of events which has led to the irrevocable sadness of this once exuberant city that I love, that I desperately want to call my home.

I sat with a gay friend in an Italian restaurant several days ago and the more Martinis he consumed, the more the words flowed, words you never say until the alcohol unleashes them.

“The city changed immediately. You hugged people in the street, people were holding hands and singing in Union Square. I came out of the subway three days afterwards, and suddenly I’m praising Jesus and praying to God with a fat black lady from Harlem who I’d never met before. The streets were always crowded in New York, people were spending, and then they weren’t. And it’s still recovering. It’s still going on. I don’t know if it’ll ever recover.”

I went for a sedate journalist’s lunch with some photographers and writers for Harpers and Outside magazine at the weekend. The travel writer who was hosting the lunch suddenly whipped out a picture he took of the planes going overhead his apartment. We were all of us non-native New Yorkers, and sat quiet and sickly fascinated as he described waking up, looking out of his window, seeing a plane go careering past, getting that first phone call, heading up to the roof of his building, watching, watching in silence with the rest of the city. There are some things you never forget, some stories you will repeat over and over again, and some stories which become engrained into the consciousness of the people, into the popular culture, transforming it irreparably, affecting the government, the economy, the social make-up of the people.

What 9/11 means to myself and my friends is immigration. After that fateful day, the United States government issued a call for ‘Special Registration’ – the demand that men over a certain age from predominantly Muslim countries come forward for interview. Kamal Essaheb, a 23 year old talented young law student originally from Morocco who I interviewed for an article several weeks ago, took his family along. He recalls how undignified the procedure was. The waiting. The questions. “Do you know Osama Bin Laden?” “Do you hate the United States government?” Special Registration resulted in a deportation order going ahead against Kamal and his family – they had slipped out of status through his father’s employer screwing up his visa application. He’s an amazing young man. He volunteers for victims of domestic violence, and has the potential to be one of the country’s top lawyers. That's not enough for the US though. The INS put their foot down. His story was finally picked up by the
New York Times this week. I wonder if it’s too late.

After 9/11 popular culture changed. It became ferocious. It was OK to hate – to hate the French because they opposed the war, to hate Muslims because ‘they’ had instigated the attack, to hate immigrants because they were responsible for the loss of lives in the tragedy, to hate Mexicans, to hate anything or anybody who disagreed with certain accepted doctrines, beliefs, behaviors. And it spread across the world. It’s OK to hate Americans now, it’s OK to blame every American for an unfair war, for the fact a Starbucks replaces your favorite local coffee shop, for the decisions one man makes regarding the lives of millions of others. It seems like the heady consumerist days of the 20th century have just led to unmitigated anger, indiscriminate fury, a Greek tragedy of national proportions, the desire to strike out as if that could assuage all the fear and the anger and the confusion of 2001. The Patriot Act was passed. Immigration laws tightened. The number of work visas was reduced, if you got married the wait time for a green card was extended from 3 to 6 months, it became a more convoluted, bureaucratic procedure to gain even a tourist visa, immigration backlog increased dramatically. Even in 2005 the REAL ID act is a direct consequence of the fear gripping the US after 9/11 regarding immigrants and ‘difference’. It’s a racial fear. Immigration inefficiency is borne out of racism. Yet it is indiscriminate in whose lives it complicates, and as a white girl from the UK, despite my 'preferential' color, I too am suffering because of this.

The fear is irrational. The killers of 9/11 were all in the United States legally. One even got issued a visa posthumously after the attack by the INS. Special Registration didn’t reveal a single thing about Osama Bin Laden’s whereabouts. Iraq had no relation to 9/11. Immigrants rarely take American jobs – we take the jobs American’s don’t want. We all know this. We’ve all argued, attended demonstrations, read The New York Times and the BBC. But it needs repeating. It has led to a terrifying concentration of power in a government who are telling their people it’s acceptable to hate, and who are holding them continually in fear. The popular culture I see around me now thinly veils a predominant feeling of hatred and suspicion. I see this more than the average person because I’m an illegal, and like my friends Kamal and Amy, we’re the ones who don’t have a voice. We can observe though, and observe we do. We’re the butt of society, because now there’s no Iraq to hate, or Afghanistan to hate, they need somebody else – the people who make this country so different from the blonde-haired, blue eyed, apple-pie ideal. ‘They’ isn’t all ‘you’. I would never be so presumptious as to lump in all the Liberals and brave people who deplore war and sympathise with those who’ve suffered needlessly because of extremist Al-Qaeda supporters. But the facts have to be faced. The driving force in the United States are those who started a war, who sent messages to the people directly after the 9/11 attack that ‘Muslims’ were ‘to blame’, and have increasingly concentrated power into one solo, clown like figure, to the detriment of many honest, hardworking people – the man who read ‘My Pet Goat’ on that fateful day.

2001, 9/11, Special Registration, the War and fear of difference – this saw popular culture turn into exclusive culture, a culture solely for ‘real’ Americans, ‘non-Muslim’ Americans, Americans who were born here. Indirectly, it’s led to me being stuck in this country while my visa gets mulled over by INS officials, and probably rejected. It's led to Kamal facing deportation proceedings. It's led to my friend Amy having to work in the service industry despite her 23 years in the United States, her college degree, her intelligence and her ambition. They can’t be too careful you see. After 9/11 and all.

It makes me so sad.

A Saturday Morning Muse

There's a little old lady in my gym who sits in the locker room and waits for people to talk to, her belly hanging sadly in a sagging, threadbare swimsuit. The gym attendant enters.

"Hey Denise, how are ya?"

"I'm bipolar. I'm on medication. Have I told ya how I'm bipolar and on medication? It's real disturbing..."

Ten minutes later a fresh victim enters, and Denise (who is bipolar and on medication) launches into a renewed effort to describe the woes of her bipolar existence. I don't think she ever goes in the pool. She just comes to the gym for her locker room release, to find people to unload onto, to unwind and talk and talk, as if she's been storing up her humdrum, daily terrors for some existential locker room therapy session.

There are so many lonely people in New York. There's Tony, who comes into Pimping Pussies on a regular basis, and asks every waitress who serves him to sit down for a drink. Then he gets out the photos - of his son, his son's girlfriend, his ex-wife, him when he was in the navy, his vacation in Florida, and he talks and talks and talks. He pays for us to go into the Champagne Room with him, yet he never wants a lapdance, never requests physical contact or nudity of any kind. He pays $400 an hour for our company. He pays for our 'friendship'. Bambi sat with a Russian mafia guy the other day for half an hour, drank a couple of cocktails, talked to him. He gave her $150 for the conversation. Every stripper has one man who is love with her. Really in love. They come in regularly, pay for the time, take care of the girl, entertain fantasies that one day they'll be with that girl, not realizing that the stripper is not the woman who walks out of the door at the end of her shift. I heard a Norwegian girl talking about it the other day.

"I feel so mean. I keep telling him, 'Please don't get attached, please don't break your heart over me'. They are so stupid."

The House Mom sniffs impatiently and throws a spare thong at the girl.

"You're playin' em. They're dumb if they don't realize that. You gotta be hard."

Loneliness, fear, isolation. It's the biggest killer in this city. Everyone wants friends, human contact, but it seems as if few know really how to find it. When I first came to New York, I talked to everyone. I answered the questions directly, honestly. I learned the hard way you just can't do that, and I suffered. And slowly, I started to make real friends, friends who have stayed, friends who know my story and don't judge me for it. Carlos from Queens, B., S., Kelly who works at the Village Voice, Amy. It's long and hard and it takes time, and time was something which I never previously had as a constant traveller. My time here is indefinite. I could be asked to leave any day, and I pray it won't happen. Three months to get this far, three months left to try and consolidate it. The thought of leaving and starting somewhere afresh is incomprehensible to me. As Giovanni tells me, I'm a survivor. But even survivors have their limits.

You know what topped off my shit week? The text message from a personal trainer who's been giving me advice on diet and exercise. He asked me for my vital statistics. Tits 32, waist 25, Ass 38. He replied immediately. Ass 38? Yikes!

But as Simi, the bouncer in Pimping Pussies tells me, that's just the white girl in me talking.

Rumors

I've been gone rather a while - so sorry, dearest readers, but life has overwhelmed me of late, 3 full days of 16 hour shifts took its toll, as did the extraordinary occurrences which consistently plague me...

Hearing whisperings of foul things afoot in the office, I've been having to edit the blog quite considerably, and unfortunately I'll have to continue to do so. All is not lost, as the full story will be revealed at a later date. Mimi, Michelle, ----.... all so confusing. I don't know who or what I am at the moment. 'Unemployed' is one adjective which could be seen as appropriate. Rumor in the office has it that this is a direct result of my blog circulating amongst the employees. Another whisper reveals that apparently someone outside the office read the blog, and called one of my employers to reveal my 'Mimi' identity and alert them to my writing. Another tale has it that several co-workers are furious at my caricaturing them on one post. A further rumor suggests that my termination of employment is a direct result of my previous illegal exploits catching up with me. But all deny being 'the one' who told tales to HR. Could it be britpop boy? Hog boar boy? Book club girl? Who can tell...

And the truth?

There's no such thing as definitive truth. Like I said before, we're all liars. Life is a lie.

You'll just have to wait it out and see what happens...

How to Make the Wife Hate You

I wandered into work late this morning after a bad encounter with Chinese food last night. Thanks B. honey. Check your takeouts next time sweetie.

Kate regards me with disgust.

"Mimi. You're late. We're taking twenny-five dollars off your pay."

Bambi swans in, her wig at a jaunty angle. She pauses dramatically.

"Ah'm auditionin' tomorrow."

The bitches don't look impressed.

"Last week you were scared of the Champagne room."

"Ah'm sick of all these fuckin' bitch dancers lookin' at me like ah'm a piece o' shit. Mimi, I'm auditionin' with you tomorrow, and we're gonna show these fuckin Hoes how to fuckin' dance baby."

Aishwarya giggles.

"Is money baby. No one shy when money at stake."

She winks and slithers onto the lap of a slightly rotund businessman. He looks thrilled. Hank, the manager, appears from nowhere. He has an uncanny knack of apparating from midair like the dungeonmaster from Dungeons and Dragons. He pats me on the butt fatherly, opens his mouth as if to say something, pauses, disappears again. R'n B pounds out over the speaker system. Naked girls loll apathetically on stage. A Russian mafia member gawps at my ass for five minutes, until the bouncer tells him to pay up or fuck off. Two scruffy, drunken men slither onto a nearby table, and invite me for a drink. They pass the body odour test, so I accept. They make me laugh, and in a spirit of charity, I reveal to them the secrets of the stripper - How to get a Man into the Champagne Room.

1) Conversation focusing around the Pubic Area

In the first five minutes of acquaintance, one must draw the victim's attention to your genitalia. This can be achieved through a variety of methods. Mention in passing that your beauty salon is really near the office. No matter that the victim works in D.C. By chance, you were there just days ago en route to getting your
Brazilian wax. Does the victim know what a Brazilian wax is? No? Well, describe in detail, omitting the obvious painful aspect of this procedure, and tell him it's something that his wife should really consider, so smooth, so young looking... albeit a tad uncomfortable at the moment due to the fact your satin hot pants are a little on the small side and you forgot to pick up the laundry this morning, hence you are wearing no underwear, what a good job you're not gyrating around a pole today...

2) Laugh in the Right Places

Through bitter experience, one has learned that laughing in the right places is an arduous task when dealing with humorless corporate types. Thus, the obvious remedy is to make them laugh. The male species is usually so overcome at the proximity of breasts and a vagina that this is achievable though picking on the nearest unattractive female with fake breasts and caricaturing them, whilst simultanaeously lauding the benefits of natural cleavage. A sure winner. Throw in a few well chosen 'cunts' and 'assholes', and the foul cuss words emanating from such a sweet mouth are sure to get them drooling.

3) Listen Attentively

A hard one. I always re-run Macbeth through my head to drone out the intricate details of the office, relived through the mouth of an intellectually challenged sex-starved, portly corporate figure.

4) Global Positioning System

The hands, the hands. Position. Never give too much, but always enough to promise more. You're lying, there is no more, but hell, they don't know that.

Eyes - look directly into theirs. Achievable through much practice, the perfect liar always looks straight into the sordid eyes of the male victim. And you know what? I couldn't tell you what color any of my victim's eyes were. Because you see without seeing.

5) Character

Choice of three, dependent on situation

1. Innocent schoolgirl
2. Beer swilling, cuss-hurling sex-bitch (my favorite)
3. Humorless vagina on autopilot (average stripper's favorite)

Combinations are acceptable.

The most important detail to remember: You are not their wife. This will always go in your favor.

Happy Hooking readers!

Virtual Fans

When you write everyday about the intimate details of your life on the internet, it's only natural, perhaps, to attract a certain degree of unwanted attention. My pet Republican Red was the first Virtual Freak to honor this site with his presence, followed closely by Anal-Fixator Mark, several anonymous commentators posting explicit bile, and lately Kurdish Stalker Medya, a fellow contestant on the Ultimate Blogger competition, and author of this little gem greeting me in my inbox today:

oh poor Mimi, you wanna buy me an ipod? you have to give your ass fucked 10 times , to buy an i pod ...no no thanx , save your money and buy some good candoms so you dont get HIV , I already have enough money

sorry that you put your time in this game...and you loose some customers ...to fuck you in the ass and put penis in your throat...

poor mimi...no please save your money for yourself I dont wanna receive an ipod from a whore.

A pleasant enough greeting which made me long for the days of yore, when the most I could expect from this blog was graphic details of young Mark's encounters with the female anus, or Red's attempts to convert me to Christianity.

As I read this message, I received a phone call from Brian, gay friend and heartbreaker of former boyfriend C.

"Mimi, he's outside my apartment!"

"Who is?"

"C.! He brought me some flowers, and said he wanted to get back together, and now he's just sitting on my doorstep and won't go away."

"So call the police. How long has be been there?"

"Like, an hour... Can you stay on the phone while I unlock the door in case he attacks me or something?"

Is psychosis becoming an acceptable personality trait in the 21st Century?

Visiting a friend several weeks ago I was introduced to the American phenomenon of internet dating. Now in the United Kingdom, anyone sad and desperate enough to advertise their lack of dating success and desire for a life partner on the internet would be cast out of society and sent to the corner of the pub occupied by drooling, red-nosed old men drinking Wild Hog Boar Ale and tittering to themselves about pretty little Agnes back in 1947. Not so in the United States. In a country where evolution is banned from the school curriculum, it's perfectly acceptable to advertise one's succesful thwarting of Natural Selection on the worldwide forum that is the internet. My friend, an attractive Asian girl, was immediately enamoured of one fine red blooded male, 'White Knight'.

I am an out-going, active and fun male. I like to travel, enjoy sports and fine dining. I know what I want and tend to attract women who are looking for something different. I am a take-charge kind of guy.

To the single asian ladies out there looking for a white male like me, no worries with me. I enjoy and have dated many asians and understand where you are coming from. I've had great times with many who have had poor self esteem and self hate issues...I will be 'the prize' you have been dreaming of. I am your white knight.

I was particularly enchanted by the delicate phraseology 'I enjoy... asians', followed closely by the sensitive and sympathetic declaration that 'many... have had poor self esteem and self hate issues'. Was this before, or after an encounter with Mr White Knight, one is compelled to ask?

After my continued exposure to oddballs and, shall we say, the socially-challenged, I can quite see the appeal of internet dating sites. A virtual space for freaks and personality disordered people to chat and mingle with like-minded individuals. But should we really be encouraging such people to breed? Imagine a Medya crossed with an Anal Fixator, with a little stalker C. thrown in. The prospect makes Bin Laden look like Barbie. Should we start to close down the internet, that great forum of free expression which is continually giving voice to the sad, the lonely and the downright insane? Is this a Republican ploy to eliminate the decent, liberal, sexually-satiated people and replace them with the Medyas, the White Knights, the Anal Fixators and the Reds of this world?

A little fact I thought I'd throw in - from an adhoc survey of approximately 100 males encountered in the strip club, 100 percent were Bush supporters.

Could it all be related?

Lazy Sundays

...and home at 3am, to find sailors with pin-prick pupils comatose on my sofa, several lines of coke neatly chopped up on the kitchen table. Catto sniffs at it gingerly, pauses, considers, and rejects it for Kitty Treats. Rick groans slightly.

"An' there was this chick... in the guy's restroom... an' I... said..."

"Fucked... up... man..."

"Mi..mi... where's Buffalo? We're gonna... go... Buffalo...tomorrow..."

I go to bed, and hope they're gone in the morning.

Several hours and goodbyes to red-eyed sailor types later, and I'm sitting in Bon Giorno with my friend S., who I met in Honduras a year ago, and with whom I was reunited on the subway the other day. S. has her own apartment on Granmercy Park, works for Columbia University, and is a tiny, crackling, pretty Indian girl. She's a good person to know. Giovanni bounds up, still effervescing the energy of the newly married.

"Mimi! 'Ow are you? I mees you Mimi. We want you back Mimi. You are so t'een now, too too t'een. You must eat ze pasta!"

Going back to Bon Giorno is like visiting my family. Sitting at my desk writing, gyrating against a horny businessman, watching endless episodes of home-improvement series in the office, I long for the Italian arguments and the sneaky shots of sambuca smuggled beneath the bar, whilst Zsa-zsa and Mama Franco argue about the capuccino, and Lucia, heroin-slut waitress, lolls in an incandescent high against the door, greeting people with a lethargic puff of cigarette smoke. They were my first New York family, and they're always, in some way, there for me. Giovanni laughs, a tarry, throaty rumble, when I tell him about Pimping Pussies.

"I must come see you! You wear ze 'eels, yes? You show ze boobies? Ees OK I bring my wife?"

There was a time when I thought I would never be able to sit indoors in a chic SoHo restaurant and order wine and Italian food at lunchtime, with shopping bags at my feet, an article to write, chatting about boys and dating with friends. S. is another dating casualty, a perfect relationship which was turned upside down by a phonecall from an ex.

"It's so much better just hanging out with friends. It's so much less stress. Why do guys have to make it so complicated? It was easy. It was fun. And then it turned into some kind of emotional warfare."

But is it ever easy? Personally if I date someone with whom it's 'easy', the sex is bound to be 'comfortable' and 'sweet' for a while, and then, inevitably, crap. Unless emotion kicks in, friendship just isn't enough to sustain sexual interest. Guys always rave about their 'fuck buddies', but a fuck buddy is just the personification of a wank. Give me a pre-work fiddle any damned day.

But we all need a new obsession to keep us interested. Life is, I hate to admit, a tad dull without someone to obsess over, someone who provides us with a reason for not leaving the house without mascara and heels. In the strip club, sex is so overt it's non-sexual. It's a turn off. Then I leave, and can look at men with dawning interest again, fantasizing about a relationship with this guy, waking up with that guy, going down on that guy, what this guy would be like in bed... I used to have a thing about men in suits. Suits signify power, control of your own destiny, responsibility, and if it's a good suit, a certain sense of dynamism. Now I see so many suited men it's tawdry. Instead I go for the smile. The eyes - brown eyes. Hands. Too soft and they have small cocks. Too calloused and they're rammers. Personal hygiene, an absolute must. Well read. Funny. Not too much of an analyzer. Someone who certainly does not visit the Champagne Room.

A guy sitting across the bar looks at me as I chat to S. It's odd, I almost ask him if he wants to go to the Champagne Room, before remembering that this is a real bar, hence economic bargaining may not be an appropriate conversation-starter for a Sunday lunch in SoHo. So many lives, so many rules. Tch.

After Bon Giorno : pre-office pedicure with Brian. We discussed my disgusting feet (flip flops in NY - no, no, no) and the need for a new obsession in our lives.

"What about E.?" says Brian, as a small Chinese lady snips away at his cuticles.

"I'd feel like a paedophile."

E. is a tiny, cute Hispanic guy from the Bronx. His parents were illegals. They got their green cards when they gave birth to an American child - him. He offered to marry me the other day. In which case fucking and/or obsessing over him is certainly out of the question. Besides which he's 30, but looks like a 15 year old homeboy.

"Anyone from the strip club?"

"Hmmm, no," I muse distractedly as second small Chinese lady tuts in digust at my city-stained, blistered toes.

"Maybe Simi?"

Simi is the huge black bouncer in Pimping Pussies. Intelligent, funny, studying for a Masters, married.

Married.

The problem is that the desirables are already hooked up. We were too slow. We missed out on the first round. Now we're just going to have to sit it out until people get divorced and come back on the market. The sexual economy is in severe crisis at the present time. Share prices are falling. Personally I blame Enron. All we can do until then is practise self-preservation while the married settle into misguided domesticity and let their personal appearance suffer. Then when the alimony sets in, we can capitalise on our single self-obsession, superior physical well being, established social lives and feed off the broken victims of marital break ups. I find the prospect vaguely exciting.

Pedicure over and back to the office, obsession still sadly lacking, but feet a definite improvement. Watching lazy Sunday TV as the warm, May rain falls on Park Avenue, shopping bags at my feet. If it wasn't for the red thong poking out of my purse, the fake tan starting to streak, someone could almost mistake me for the perfect JAP.

Exes and Sex

I have established an office routine which consists of ice cream and ex-talk whilst avoiding bad home-improvement series.

Brian, the gay friend, is currently going through a break up with C. C has taken the news badly. C is now phoning, texting, IM-ing and emailing Brian constantly. Brian is a little stressed.

"D'you ever feel kind of... dirty when you break up with people, and they reveal themselves to be psychos?"

I ask, scooping oreos and ice cream into my mouth. Brian looks contemplative.

"Yeah. Then you start to question yourself and your own character, because of the shit the other person throws at you."

We pause on Park Avenue, cabs swooshing past, slick, chill streets, slippery sidewalks, a grey evening, a nondescript night. We all date the wrong people. We all say 'I love you' believing it to be true. And then sometimes we make that terrifying discovery - we didn't mean a word. It doesn't mean we're liars. It means we're wrong. I prefer to be dumped than to do the dumping. There's something purifying about pain and ice cream, while shame and doubt just make you feel dirty. I have very few exes I can think of with any semblance of affection. My first boyfriend, my Argentinian boyfriend... and then the other assholes, which runs well into double figures. I should feel dirty, but I can't help thinking, we all make mistakes. It's horrible when the mistake affects another person, but that's life.

It's all just life.

I'm not sure if there's someone for everyone. I'm not sure if I even believe in love, true love, movie love. I believe in being happy though. For me that's writing, ex-talk, and making a living. If one man came along and could put up with a neurotic stripper who gets absurdly stressed after only a few hours away from the keyboard, all well and good. But I don't really, in my heart, believe this will ever happen, and that's fine with me.

I wonder if Brian believes me when I say all this. I have a feeling he doesn't.

The 3am Phone Call

"Hey Mimi, it's Rick! I'm back in town!"

When you work on boats for an extended period of time, you never really leave. You become part of an international network of disparate itinerants who wander in and out of life with alarming infrequency, and even more alarming unpredictability.

Rick is from the time in between ---- and Mimi. He knows me as both, and he knows me on the way to becoming who I am now. Talking to Rick I'm reminded of long, hard ocean crossings, drunken nights in Antibes and Cannes, mellow evenings on Pigeon Beach in Antigua drinking Rum Punch and talking about what we'd do when we left boats. I left, but Rick did not. But I never really left, because as long as my phone number and email is kept in circulation, I'll be hosting yachties and sailors for years to come, an infinity stretching before me of 3am phone calls, the joyous announcement "I'm back in town!" - any town, any time, they're all the same after a while, and we always, eventually, ineluctably, return.

It's just a case of when.

How to Piss Off a Stripper You Don't Like

...so George, who claims to have mafia connections, turns to me with a smug grin on his lined, corporate face, one hand planted firmly on Becky's ass, the other stroking a silicone tit.

"Ah. You're taking Becky into the Champagne Room?"

"Yup."

"That's great. That's great. She's been a little paranoid ever since the sex change op. I keep telling her she's all woman, but the emotional repercussions are always hard to deal with."

George (who has mafia connections) freezes. Becky doesn't do so well that day. Perhaps Becky should think again before fucking with Mimi.

Poor Becky.

nada

Today I spent 1.35 hours waving my behind erotically around a divorcee's groin area whilst talking about his ex-wife (bitch) and children (8 and 10), 0.45 minutes laughing with two 30 year old lawyers on their way to the Emmy Awards (hot), 8.0 hours getting yelled at by the boss (bitch), eyed up by wolfish loners (not), serving cocktails, dancing occasionally, and listening to Bambi, the new waitress who's just discovered sex.

"Oh my. That man is damn fine. I'm gonna be havin' me a piece o' that after ma shift ends."

"He payin' for you to go to the Champagne Room?"

Bambi sniffs and flicks a ringlet from her eye, dislodging her wig slightly so that her afro peeps out jauntily from beneath.

"No. We talked about it and he decided we should jus' hook up after work."

There's a ripple of disapproval through the ranks.

That damn bitch is givin' it out fer free now. What hope is there for the rest of us, y'all?

When I go into work I switch off. I feel nothing, I have no opinions. I have no sense of shame, no emotion, everything closed, tucked neatly out of sight. In that way you become a negated space, a void for people to fill in however they desire. I'm Mimi the walking, talking doll, the paint-by-numbers English chick, whatever you want, I'll name the price. I'm the cute, young, private table dancer who makes people laugh and does things men in their forties only wish their first wives had taught them...(incredulously) Where do the kids get it from nowadays? (curiously) How many people you slept with Mimi? (nonchalantly) Oh only 2 or 3. I don't really believe in sex before marriage, letting a sly knee slip between legs, a breast stroke the side of a man's face, a careless sigh escape, look deep into someone's eyes -

They say you can always tell a liar because they can look you straight in the eye. Someone should tell these pricks that. "You havin' a good time Mimi? You glad we met? I'm different from the average guy, right?" But of course, mi amor, but of course.

How do I find this job tolerable? I don't kiss. It's Julia Roberts, it's pretty fucking woman, and the time when one Champagne Room client did slip his tongue in my mouth, I got drunk on tequila and cried and cried and cried. My body is not my mind. But somehow my mouth is supremely intimate. I use it to tease but never to clinch the deal. You learn to let everything else wash over you. You learn to deal with loneliness. You learn how to dance like you believe it, with tricks and lies, wielded by the experts - women. Life is a lie, it's all about lying. I defy anyone who can claim to live without lying.

The other day I thought I heard someone whisper my name behind me. Not Mimi, my real name, the one my parents gave me. I almost didn't stop, until I recalled vaguely, 'That's me'. There was no one there, of course, of course. A cliché movie moment. It's almost too easy, giving up my past life to take on this new one. I leave her behind, the student, the scholar, the graduate, the good girl, and become Mimi instead - writer, traveller, sex-worker. Somewhere in between are the parts I prefer to forget. And as strange as it may seem, the pain is all the more pure because of it.

Although I wonder, sometimes, if I really have left her behind, or if every time I gaze steadily without seeing into someone's eyes as I murmur another lie, another name, the emptiness gazing back is just a confrontation with the other me.

A little bit of background

Ophelia asked me these questions, and here are my answers:

Do you ever have the urge to go back home when it gets too hard being alone?

No. I started travelling because I needed to figure out my place in the world, and then it hit me four years later that you never really know where or what that is. You just have to take the leap one day and try and make it work. And that's why I'm here, and however lonely I feel in New York, it's always outweighed by the fact that I'm doing what I love. This is my home now, and there's no other place which I feel I could say that about. If I went back to the UK, there's no family home for me to go to, no set of friends in one defined place I could visit. Everything's so diffused in my past, it was time to settle down in the present and make a home after leaving the little I had in the UK a long time ago. I knew it would be hard. But it's getting easier and easier every day.

If someone offered you a life of riches, the only stipulation being that you had to stop writing, would you take it?

No no no! I prefer writing for money, but I'll write for free and take my clothes off for money if that's what it takes... I can't give up writing. It's what I think about every day and is my reason for getting up in the morning, how I make sense of the good and the bad. Trying to get through New York without writing what I've seen would have been unbearable. I would have exploded from the pressure.

How did you come about the name Mimi?

The men with whom I sailed across the Atlantic said I used to talk about myself all the time. Arseholes. It's very weird having two names and two identities. They become inextricable - and yet so hugely differentiated. Mimi is the lapdancer, the traveller and the writer - and where does that leave ---- ? In the past? Before I came to New York? The people here who know me by Mimi only know one side of the story, the people who know me by ---- think they know both, but they only hear what Mimi gets up to, they never witness it. It's liberating, but also confusing, deceptive, strange...

When did you realize you were a writer?

I was a reader for years - of everything, novels, plays, biography, history... and then I got to university and started writing articles and plays. Then I took a huge break and didn't pick up a pen for two years after my heart was broken and I partied hard all over the world to try and heal the wounds. The day I started sailing across the Atlantic, I started writing again, and since then I've written compulsively every day. I never called myself a writer until the day I got my first article published, and after that, I did.

If you could only have one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Hmmm. Jamón Serrano.

A lap dance is so much better when the stripper is cryin'

Ole Hank was hustling the bitches like his life depended on it. The doors opened at 12 and the lustful wandered in, the bitches got primped up and the new waitress stood uneasily in the corner.

"How you finding it?" I asked.

She looked at me with enormous eyes, like fucking Bambi or something.

"It don't pay so good. How d'you get guys in the Champagne Room?"

"You play on their minds and their cocks."

"Oh."

Pause.

"What you do in there?"

"You dance."

Pause.

"You don't have to take your clothes off though, right?"

"No, you do have to take your clothes off, unless the guy knows beforehand he's paying 400 bucks for a dry grind."

Pause. Huge, liquid eyes. Whispers -

"I feel kinda self-conscious about my body."

So don't do it baby. You gotta choice.

Two hours later Bambi's flirting like a fucking pro as Mimi eyes her from the corner, where she's holding a conversation with Mr Cum-in-his-pants, who everyone knows because he cums in his fucking pants all the time.

"What's your real name Mimi?"

"Michelle"

"You're such a sweet girl. I can tell you're genuine because you look straight at me with those huge eyes of yours. You look kinda like Heather Graham."

Heather Graham from Boogie Nights. How fucking appropriate. One hand on your cock, the other on your credit card. Take it for what it is baby and stop deceiving yourself. It ain't nothing genuine, but the money's real enough. Mark the DJ wanders up, and he and Mr Cum-in-his-pants talk about their kidney stones. Did you know you have to piss those fuckers out? Well neither did I, but fortunately for Mimi, this means Mr Cum-in-his-pants' thingy ain't working too darned good at the moment. Champagne Room? But of course, sweetheart. Anything for you. Hank is hustling the bitches like his life depended on it. Extra brownie points for Mimi, the quickest learner in all of Pussies. Four shifts, three Champagne Room visits, some more money in the bank. Hank hustles the bitches like his life depends on it, and enters the Champagne Room to call a time out five minutes early when it looks like Mr Cum-in-his-pants' thingy may have made a miraculous recovery. Thanks Hank baby, I owe you one.

Mimi stumbles out and straight to the bar, where tequilas are lined up for the 5 o'clock watershed, courtesy of Mr High Ranking UN official from the good ole United Kingdom. Mr UN is playing a dangerous game fucking with Mimi the writer, but of course Mr UN doesn't know this, and instead makes Mimi's life pretty fucking miserable, the middle-aged cunt. 45, never been married, never said 'I love you', never known what it's like to wake up curled next to someone you care about. I drink two Margaritas. It's enough. I turn around, and the lights are swirling pretty bad now to match my head, and Mr Paedophile is standing next to me.

"Can you be a little girl? Can you be a little girl for me?"

Honey, I'm 26. Buy a fucking Cabbage Patch kid if that's what you want.

The response don't go down too well with Mr Paedophile, but Kate the Manager gets the joke, and we laugh and laugh and laugh, and then suddenly it's 8pm, I'm standing outside the club, ready to go to my next job, and the elastic around my ankle snaps, dollar bills floating down Broadway, dancing and twirling in the faint breeze of passing traffic. A guy stoops down and gathers them up for me. Mr UN.

"Good god girl. What the hell are you doing? You're drunk. Come with me."

He points to a nearby wine bar.

"Have you eaten?"

I shake my head no. You never see clients outside the club, but this place is close enough to feel safe. I know the bouncer.

Diet coke, expensive italian meats, Mr UN regards me thoughtfully.

"Christ, you look like you're about 12."

I see what this is so clearly. Mr fucking UN, lives for his job, never made love, always fucked like a goddamned terrier. Trying to reach out, trying to be nice. But there's a reason why guys are 45 and alone, and I saw that reason in the club. I down the last slurps of my Diet Coke, grab a piece of ciabatta to go, and make my excuses and leave. I stand up, trip over the chair, fall down on my butt. Hey look guys, look at the high-ranking UN official with the 12 year old slut stripper, ain't it cute? Call the goddamm Daily Star! Heads are shaking, Mimi steps straight into a cab downtown. 30 minutes later, I'm sitting blankly watching a TV program I couldn't tell you the name of if I tried, and it's very strange, because I'm just crying and crying and crying. Must be the tequilas, must be exhaustion. The walking, talking Mimi doll's batteries are running low. I leave work without telling anyone. I sit at home with my roommate drinking tea, smoking cigarettes, and we both cry, and neither of us quite know why.

Today I walked past the Men Who Hiss At You on the street. They smiled sweetly at me. One of them called out, "God Bless you Baby".


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I was lonelier than Kunta Kinte at a Merle Haggard concert that night I strolled on into Uncle Limpy's Hump Palace lookin' for love. It had been a while. In fact, three hundred and sixty-five had come and went since that midnight run haulin' hog to Shakey Town on I-10. I had picked up this hitchhiker that was sweatin' gallons through a pair of Daisy Duke cut-offs and one of those Fruit Of The Loom tank-tops. Well, that night I lost myself to ruby red lips, milky white skin and baby blue eyes. Name was Russell.

Yes a lap dance is so much better when the stripper is cryin'
Yes a lap dance is so much better when the stripper is cryin'
Well I find it's quite a thrill
When she grinds me against her will
Yes a lap dance is so much better when the stripper is cryin'

Well, faster than you can say, "shallow grave", this pretty little thing come up to me and starts kneadin' my balls like hard-boiled eggs in a tube sock. Said her name was Bambi and I said, "Well that's a coincidence darlin', ‘cause I was just thinkin' about skinnin' you like a deer." Well she smiled, had about as much teeth as a Jack-O-Lantern, and I went on to tell her how I would wear her face like a mask as I do my little kooky dance. And then she told me to shush. I guess she could sense my desperation. ‘Course, it's hard to hide a hard-on when you're dressed like Minnie Pearl.

Yes a lap dance is so much better when the stripper is cryin'
Yes a lap dance is so much better when the stripper is cryin'
Well I find it's quite a thrill
When she grinds me against her will
Yes a lap dance is so much better when the stripper is cryin'

So, Bambi's goin' on about how she can make all my fantasies come true. So I says, "Even this one I have where Jesus Christ is jackhammering Mickey Mouse in the doo-doo hole with a lawn dart as Garth Brooks gives birth to something resembling a cheddar cheese log with almonds on
Santa Claus's tummy-tum?" Well, ten beers, twenty minutes and thirty dollars later I'm parkin' the beef bus in tuna town if you know what I mean. Got to nail her back at her trailer. Heh. That rhymes. I have to admit it was even more of a turn-on when I found out she was doin' me to buy baby formula.

Yes a lap dance is so much better when the stripper is cryin'
Yes a lap dance is so much better when the stripper is cryin'
Well I find it's quite a thrill
When she grinds me against her will
Yes a lap dance is so much better when the stripper is cryin'

Day or so had passed when I popped the clutch, gave the tranny a spin and slid on into The Stinky Pinky Gulp N' Guzzle Big Rig Snooze-A-Stop. There I was browsin' through the latest issue of "Throb", when I saw Bambi starin' at me from the back of a milk carton. Well, my heart just dropped. So, I decided to do what any good Christian would. You can not imagine how difficult it is to hold a half gallon of moo juice and polish the one-eyed gopher when your doin' seventy-five in an eighteen-wheeler. I never thought missing children could be so sexy. Did I say that out loud?

Yes a lap dance is so much better when the stripper is cryin'
Yes a lap dance is so much better when the stripper is cryin'
Well I find it's quite a thrill
When she grinds me against her will
Yes a lap dance is so much better when the stripper is cryin'

- Bloodhound Gang

22.14

Only 22.14 and I'm tired, tired, tired. Sometimes it gets to you. Sometimes it's so turgid and sleazy you feel like you need to scrub your skin a hundred times over to feel clean again. The money's in your pocket, the alcohol's in your belly, but the haunting of a hundred disillusioned, sad, lonely men is imprinted on your brain in a tattoo which no laser surgery can erase. It's not so bad. It's like something I've seen and lived before, but which I naively thought I could forget. You can never forget. It's every day, every subway stop, every tiny human interaction, every look, every comment. So many times I listen patiently to the poison of the dregs of society telling me this is where I end up, this is where my life is.

It takes a lot not to listen, but after all, this is why I'm here - because I refused to listen. It'll improve.

Maybe tomorrow.

This one's for you Mum and Dad

Hair free and Satsuma-ed

What better way to spend a Sunday than in a midtown beauty salon with legs splayed and arms akimbo, whilst a 300 pound Russian lady called Olga expertly rips out the hairs from your entire pubic region, simultaneously peppering the whimpers of pain by grunting, "Come Mammie, be brave Mammie, I no wanna hear crying from you Mammie." Whether Mammie was me, or she was referring to herself in the third person I was unable to ascertain, and our conversation never reached a level at which I felt comfortable enough to enquire. Ten minutes of pain for a smooth, hair-free pussy just ripe for Pussies. It hurts like hell when I pee. But damn it looks good, albeit a tad pre-pubescent. After the Brazilian, I ventured forth into the 'Mystic Tan' booth, which involved standing in a cubicle for thirty seconds and being sprayed with some kind of venomous chemical produce which takes about 6 hours to develop into a bronzed, golden glow.

By the time I turned up for work at the office, I was an elegant sun-kissed brown. I watched ABC's 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition', and marvelled at the sheer ingenuity of the producers for devising such a concept. Go into the ghetto, locate the worst house there, destroy, and replace with a lavish mansion. A mansion in the ghetto. Pure genius. I'm waiting with bated breath for 'Extreme Makeover: Second Edition', when they revisit all these mansions in ghettoes and report on how the local community has contributed to a new form of communal extreme makeover: graffiti, burned out cars, gang warfare etc. What drama. Only America could compose such brilliance.

By the time I left work at 2am, I noticed a few strange glances from people on the subway, which culminated, by the time I reach 14 Street Union Square, with out-and-out hysterical laughter and finger pointing. When I reached home, I realised this was because my Mystic Tan had moved on from elegant sun-kissed brown, to lurid dayglo satsuma. A worrying phenomenon. I wonder how long these things take to fade. Fortunately in the darkened interior of the club, my satsuma skin went unnoticed today, and I was able to blend in with the glistening, bronzed bodies of the rest of the dancers and waitresses.

I spent all day sitting up front with the enormous black bouncer Simi, and talking for hours about nothing, in one of those rambling, purposeless conversations which characterise work interactions. I bonded with Dolores the Manager, who confided in me that she had lost 103 pounds on the gastric-bypass diet and had recently recovered from a face lift, could you see? they'd hidden the scars really well, and I shortchanged a French tourist by 40 dollars, thus considerably increasing my tips, so all-in-all a dull, Champagne Room-free, but cashworthy day. I always marvel at my 8pm turnaround ready for the 8.30 office stop - pull off the tiny hotpants, slut hair tied up, throw on flip flops and an old pair of tatty Diesel Jeans, and step out into the warm evening, swallowed up into the midtown crowd as I wander down 7th Avenue, the only hint of my day's work the dollars still strapped around my ankle and a little too much make up. Life is good. Life is paying. I no longer have to worry about the rent or the visa. The sex - well, I'm still not getting any, but working sixteen hour days three times a week, and 8 hour days the other three, is deadening me sufficiently that I don't feel this so acutely.

"Damn girl, you need to get laid. You need some damn you time," says Simi every day as we shoot the shit, laughing at life amongst the sleazy and the sad, the pathetic and the humorous, in our little darkened corner of the club.

"An' I don't mean take time out to do writin' either. You need to do summat jus' for you."

Perhaps something more enjoyable than a 300 pound Russian lady plucking at my pubic region. Ah me... I have dreams of dinner dates with charming men, wandering through the West Village dressed in airy, expensive fabrics, musing on the next chapter of my book as my Basset Hound wanders at my side, and the husband stays at home fucking the filipino maid from behind (in today's fantasy, she'd be a squealer in case you're interested). Maybe one day. You have to dream a little at a time, perhaps, to make it all come true. For now, it's enough that I'm surviving here. New York pushed me to the limit, and doubtless will again, but for now she's sweet as candy, twice as nice, a marvel of clichés I can almost quite believe. I ate my first non-bagel meal today, courtesy of Joe-the-Banker-From-Boston's little foray to the Champagne Room. And then I sat in the cool evening air on Park Avenue eating Heath bar ice-cream and chatting about boys and break-ups with my gay friend Brian.

It was all so bizarrely, so surreally normal. Although it still hurts when I pee, and I am, after all, just a shade away from satsuma.

Saturdays at Pussies

Saturday's always a slow day. Saturday is a get-out-of-bed-at-noon, put-the-coffee on, open-the-paper, do-your-laundry, lazy, luxurious catch-up-with-household-tasks day. Until I started working Saturdays at Pussies.

Everyone hates working Saturday afternoon. What kind of person goes into a strip joint at midday on the weekend?

A person with no money, that's what.

When the doors open, old Ernie wanders in with a fake ginger cat on his head, a yellow bow tie, and an array of neatly packaged gift boxes he aligns in perfect precision on his regular table, to the left of the stage. Ernie orders a Diet Coke with ice and lemon, nestles himself into the upright chair, and Ernie sits there, staring enraptured and mesmerized at the stage for the next 10-12 hours, nursing his boner like a cherished pet, barely touching his solo beverage, until he eventually leaves at around midnight, but not before doling out the gifts to his favorite dancers of the day. The sad, the ignored, the ugly and the repulsive wander in between the hours of 12 and 5. The club takes on a bored, indolent ambience as waitresses stand uncomfortably in heels with no one to serve, the dancers sit half-asleep at the bar, or clutch their arms around them tightly, shivering in the chill of the a/c on stage, where they writhe their hips without interest, without effort. Yes, Saturday's a dull day. Saturday at Pussies sucks. Saturday drags it's heels like the six-inches you've worn for eight hours.

But Saturday was the day when I finally got into the Champagne Room.

What happens in the Champagne Room is between the client and the dancer. Some girls make out with guys, some girls don't. Everyone 'entertains' men they wouldn't give the time of day to in the real world. For the dancer, it's a simple transaction. My body and my time are expensive. You pay. For the men, it is, surprisingly, a little more complex. To get a guy into the Champagne Room you have to play on both their cocks and their minds, whereas to get a guy to pay for a 20 buck lapdance, I'd say 100 percent of that decision is cock-based. The Champagne Room client needs to believe that something about you, and you with them, is special and different. They want to know your real name, they want to know what you think, they want to know if you're repulsed by them or not, they want to know if you're into it, and more than anything, they want to be liked. And for the most part, if someone's paying you 150 bucks to be there, you like them. You like them with your hips, with your legs, with the way you move your butt, with the way you look at them, with the way you tease them, with the words you whisper. But never, never with your heart and your head. My friend Brian says it's high-school fumbling. He's right. These men are paying for that long-ago teenage time when sex wasn't just a given, when sex was something you didn't know whether you could get or not. They're paying for the tease. They're paying for the vain hope that they may get something more than just a smooth butt expertly gyrating inches from their face. They're paying, in part, because unlike prostitutes, the dancer feigns affection and interest for the duration of that 3 minute song, that 400 dollar hour.

And thanks to Joe, the banker from Boston, with whom I flirted, drank with, laughed with and finally lured into the Champagne Room, I'm starting to realize what this business is all about. A slight nudge of the knee, a casual hand on the thigh, staring into someone's alcohol-blurred eyes, until you get their Visa card. Poor old Joe from Boston had a teensy problem in the crotch department which may have had something to do with the ten Coronas consumed in the main bar. And how do I know?

What happens in the Champagne Room is between the dancer and her client.

But what I will say is that it's all in the butt, it's all in the pressure, and it's all in the embarrassed murmurings of the men who don't realize that you're desperately trying not to figure out what the hell's going on down there, and the less information the better. I met an ex-dancer from Pussies on Bedford Avenue the other day. I asked her why she gave up. She sighed.

"You start to hate men after a while. You get burned-out."

The club feeds off the burnt - the men, the dancers, the workers. It's easy money, getting paid to flirt with whom you choose. It doesn't make me feel like a slut - yet. But already it makes me view men differently, use the tricks I've learned in my short time there in everyday life. Eddie, the Haitian doorman, always tells me to keep grounded. "Don't get caught up in it. Keep it in perspective. Use the club, don't let it use you." Who's using who? The men, the dancers, the owners? I get my cut of the money, the managers' get theirs, the men got their three minute thrill, or the hour long version if they've paid for it. Who loses out?

Perhaps the person who treats it too carelessly, with too much abandon, riding high on the thrill of being wanted, of being paid. Most dancers are over that by now. They can dance with as much feigned, practiced sensuality to Ernie as they can to the cute Hispanic guy dragged along against his will by his buddies on a bachelor's night. They're all the same. Cocks with wallets. They say that strippers - lap dancers - whatever you want to call them, are born and not made. I wonder if, at the age of 26, I've been born again, because The Champagne Room was easy. The moves were easy. The thong wearing, the mental shutdown, the calculated enjoyment and the thrill of the tease was easy.

In all honesty, it feels like I'm getting paid to do something I've done all my life.

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An interview with the average male client

This was written for a different website... but fuck it, I'll put it here too. Hey, I spent all afternoon in a thong. You can't blame me for writer's block after that.

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I work sixteen hour days. I spend maybe six hours a day in my house, sleeping, before getting off to work at the strip club. I finish there at 8 and hop in a cab to start work in my other job at 8.30pm. The strip club is the sex industry. It's strange how your view of men becomes distorted by this, until after a certain amount of time you know exactly what buttons to press, exactly how to hook them in, exactly how to pose, how to bend over, how to whisper and flirt and stretch in ways which produce the desired results. As a woman, you forget that men, in these places, have other lives apart from the time they spend drinking and soaking up the endorphins of an oiled-up dancer in the timeless world of the strip bar.

And sometimes, you remember.

Yesterday I perched on a bar stool when the club was particularly slow, talking to my friend from Belarus, Renata, about her plans to apply for law school. Renata used to be a dancer, until her boyfriend gave her an ultimatum. Give up, marry him and get her green card, or stay dancing. She now bartends instead. To my right sat a burned-out, thirty-something from Wall Street nursing his beer and looking disconsolately at a writhing dancer in various poses of exotic display. I asked him why he was here. He looked up, surprised by a question other than 'Would you like a dance?'.

"I had a bad day. I work long hours on Wall Street. It's hard, sometimes. This place is where I come to hide, I guess."

Hide from what? Was he lonely? He laughed.

"No, no. Life is good. I'm married to an amazing woman, a clinical psychologist - geez, she'd have a field day if she knew I was here! I have a two year old back at home. But sometimes... I dunno. You come to these places because no one can find you. Your phone doesn't work down here, you're surrounded by women, but it's not like a regular bar, with all the issues and the flirting and the sexual politics. Here it's straightforward. It's a man's world. It's a fantasy, I guess."

Does he ever get lap-dances?

"Before, yeah. But now... I gotta daughter, you know? And if she was ever doing this, I'd go crazy. I look at these girls, and now I see that they're someone's daughter. Being a father changes you. It's hard. I heard these people sitting behind me and my wife at the cinema the other day, a young couple, arguing about having children. The guy was like 'How much more difficult could it be than having Sandy?'. Sandy was obviously their dog. I turned around and was like, 'Buddy, believe me, having a kid is not like having a fucking dog'." He laughs dryly, and then buys me a beer.

"What you doing working here anyway? You're not like the rest of them."

What does that mean? I ask him. We're all women, we're all the same. We're playing a part as soon as we step in this place. Me, I don't play the part that well. I usually end up telling the men they're assholes instead of laughing in the right places. But we're all here to earn a living. There are mothers here working to pay for their kids. Students dancing to pay their fees. People just trying to earn a living. I'm here to get some writing ideas, make some cash, observe the world, until the day I can survive from the printed word alone. He looks thoughtful.

"I'm gonna tell you something Mimi. I was a musician, a long time ago, when I was 25. My band just signed a record deal. We played all over the East Village. It was gonna be big. I'd worked for ten years to make it big in music, and after years of scraping together a living, and eating shit to pay for gigs, it was happening. And then the record company folded two days before our first single came out. And I'd had it. I left music and got a job on Wall Street. Married at 28. Had my daughter two years ago. Nice place in the Village. A nanny. And now, for the first time in years, I'm happy. I'm real happy. Maybe you should think about that."

Think about giving it all up? Nothing could induce me to ever give up my dream of being a writer. And the longer I work in a seedy, sweaty world where sex is the currency and my body a hundred dollar bill, the more I know that writing isn't just an escape. It's what I will do for the rest of my life. And this is just a means to make that happen.

He pauses mid-sip.

"Everyone's different I guess. But how do you cope with someone like that?"

He points at a fat forty year-old in tight jeans, white sneakers, his arm wrapped around a tiny dancer, a lecherous grin spread across his face.

"I mean, that guy looks like he's never even heard of The New York fucking Times, apart from as something to wipe his damn ass with. How do you put up with men like that?"

I look at him. Kate, the Chinese Manager from Brooklyn who pimps us out, marches over purposefully and confronts Wall Street Man.

"You gonna take this nice lady to the Champagne Room or you gonna just sit there and waste her time?"

Wall Street Man gibbers an excuse. Kate shoots me a 'give-up-he's-a-tightwad' look, and disappears. I look at Wall Street Man.

"To us, you guys are all the same in this place. Some you can talk to, some it's difficult, but at the end of the day, you're all just a cock with a wallet."

He smiles wryly.

"I gotta go home before my wife gets mad. Thanks for talking to me Mimi. And don't give up. Maybe music just wasn't for me."

He tosses me a ten dollar bill, smiles, and leaves looking lighter than before. I wonder if this was his last visit. And then realise it was probably just one among many. Renata comes over.

"Hey Mimi, these guys are givin' you money when you talk to them, right? It's a waste of time if they're not."

I flash her the bill, strapped around my ankle, tucked into the strap of my six-inch heeled shoes, where I keep all the money I earn in a shift. She nods, appeased.

"When you giving up this waitressing and lapdancing shit? You know you should be on stage with the rest of them. You got the body. You got the moves. There's more money there."

Me? I know. I have the shoes ready, the dress and the audition booked, plus the thick skin to go with it. But after my encounter with Wall Street man, I can't help thinking, I'm someone's daughter. He's someone's father. If I can forget that for just 8 hours a day, if I see them all as just a cock with a wallet, then I'll be fine. Just fine.

There's no pictures for this entry. I think the words are probably enough.

Pimping Pussies

11.45 am. The owner of Pimping Pussies holds a meeting for the girls.

"It's come to mawy attention that undercover police officers are posing as guests in awder to try and close us down. If a guest asks you for a fuck, a blow job, a hand job, aw to masturbate in front of him, the correct answer isn't, 'Maybe', 'If you come to the Champagne room we can tawlk about it', or even, 'Let's discuss this later'. The correct answer is, 'I'm not that kinda girl', and ; 'This is not that kinda place'. Got it?"

The girls all nod in agreement, apart from the Russians, who don't understand, and instead groom their pubic hair for lack of more stimulating entertainment. One cannot help but harbor the suspicion that this is that 'kinda place', but having not yet ventured into the Champagne room, one can only idly entertain these thoughts without concrete proof.

I enter the girl's dressing room, where dancers are dousing themselves in baby oil and preening in front of mirrors. An old fat lady sits in front of the mirror doling out fake eyelashes and thongs.

"I'm Maw. You can call me Mawm."

'Mawm' does not like me. The waitresses are the lowest of the low. Dancers pay $75 bucks to ply their trade in a day shift, $175 for a night shift. They have earned their way into Pussies. Waitresses, in contrast, just hang around with their butts hanging out of satin hot pants getting dollar tips for selling Budweiser to drooling fat men on their corporate lunch break, and indulging in the odd 20 buck lap dance. The hot topic of the day for cocktail waitresses is: Would you enter the Champagne Room?

Aishwarya, 23 from India, would and does. She is a stunning, slim beauty who could earn a fortune as a dancer, but draws the line at gyrating around a pole in a g-string. However, for 20 bucks a dance in the main bar, or $150 for an hour in the Champagne room, she'll throw her Hindu ideals out the window along with the tight satin waistcoat we are privileged to wear (cost = $68, taken out of our shift pay) and shimmy and shake with the rest of them. Basia, 26 from Poland, has more scruples. "I just can't", she explains. "Don't become a dancer will you? It's not good". Hank, one of the managers, has decided that I have the physique for a dancer. Indeed physique is prided over skill, although sometimes, looking at the girls close-up, with their stretch-marks and varicose veins threading idly through fake-tanned, oiled-up skin, one cannot help but hope that skill was the deciding factor in their employment, as aesthetics, most certainly, was not.

Pablo, the enormous doorman, approves of me.

"If anyone pisses you off sweetheart, if anyone touches you or treats you with disrespect, he is going to be sayin' sorry to you at the end of the night. Got it? You have fuckin' great legs by the way. You wanna beer wi' me sometime?"

The day is slow. The same guys, sad, single, sweaty, return day after day, waiting for Heavenly or Angel or Deelite to press up against their sad, underused cocks, their beers nursed for three or four hours for the pleasure of a single lap dance, several hours of ogling. The dancers sit in the back with Mawm, and gripe about the excessive sweat dripping off their clientele from a humid New York day.

"One man, 'e ees so disgusteeng, 'e say to me, I must wait 20 minutes for ze lapdance so 'e can dry off. So sweatee. So filthee."

"But that was sweet, waiting, real considerate. Although at the end of the day, it's still dry fuckin' sweat."

"Yes, ees 'orrible. Tch."

Hair is flicked, more baby oil applied, the familiar whines trail off into the bump n'grind of Gwen Stefani, and huge, fake smiles are plastered on heavily made-up faces to match the state of the breasts. I get into an involved conversation with a balding forty-something.

"I always come here to see Heavenly. Heavenly's my favorite. I've been coming here every day for seven years, just for her. She's amazing."

Heavenly wanders past in a slinky polyester number, leading a drunken Asian businessman by the tie into the Champagne Room. Balding forty-something shoots her an adoring glance, and then launches into a long diatribe on the virtues of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California. Pablo picks me up and relocates me next to the bar.

"Don't talk to him sweetie. He don't spend. I'll point out the ones you gotta head for."

He pats my head in a fatherly fashion.

"You know your ass looks real hot in those pants?"

I finish at 8pm, and head over to my other job in time to start at 8.30pm. It's now 1.42 am, I'm still in the office, and tomorrow it starts over again at around 10 in the morning, when I must leave my apartment in Brooklyn for the commute to midtown.

But at least my ass looks real hot.

4.03am

New York feels it hardest at 4.03 am. I know. I'm there. It's a chill echo, an empty beat, a despondent chord knocked out by the rattle of metal on dirt, the blissful discomfort of the longed for sleep, alone, head on hand, arm deadened by drink and exhaustion. New York feels it hardest at 4.03 am. I feel for her. I'm there.

A little about the workplace

Having learned from previous posts that it is, perhaps, best not to muse on whether your boss takes it up the arse on the public worldwide forum that is the internet, I am reluctant to divulge too much information regarding my present employment. I have two jobs at the moment. One is in a strip joint. I am currently harvesting the many stories blooming in the seedy and sweaty greenhouse atmosphere of this bar for a future post that has yet to reach puberty. My other job involves watching TV, and writing questions about the programs for an online magazine. For some - a dream job. However, over-exposure to primetime America is proving taxing for me, as is the writer's block which prevails from having to compose multiple choice questions in an Ameri-friendly format on a regular basis.

Last night I watched The Cosby Show. Nothing happens in The Cosby Show. Cliff Huxtable smooches over his wife, the delectable Clair, and Theo responds with some smart-assed teenage crap adapted from ibonics. The drama, if it can be called that, usually takes place on the sofa, with perhaps an occasional daring foray to the kitchen in order to challenge the comfort zone of the regular viewer. Last night Denise passed her driving test. I had to compose eight questions related to this fact. The questions I can cope with, but the composition of the four differing answers often stumps me.

What happened when Denise stopped at a four-way stop sign?

1) Couldn't start car
2) Ran over old person
3) Ran over dog
4) Brakes malfunctioned

Now answers 2) and 3) were rendered unacceptable, because I had used these answers in a previous question. How many times can one potentially run over a dog or an old person in a thirty-minute show? Rewrite! Answer 4) was deemed too intellectually demanding. The average American finds anything over two syllables akin to brain implosion. Rewrite!

Other potential hazards of the job are referring to anything which may be scatological, sexual or offensive to race, politics and religion. Hence theoretical responses:

1) Ran over Hasidic Jew on his way to synagogue
2) Needed a dump
3) Whipped out her vibrator
4) Ran over Republican

- were similarly rendered defunct. This job is challenging me in ways I could never have conceived possible.

Entry into the corporate world has not been without its issues. I find myself on the verge of frequent panic attacks after yet another email from the boss is revealed as not a shocking expose of the illegal in their midst, but more corporate loving and impressive facts and figures, followed by the selfless American cry "I love you guys. You guys rock. Let's work even harder guys. Let's make this office rock. Let's make this company - the best".

They have not yet resorted to inspirational music ('Eye of the Tiger', 'We will rock you') or group hugs, but I feel this will shortly be on the agenda.

Friday Night

It's Friday night and the office is breaking loose.

"Hey Mimi, come out with us, we're gonna grab a couple of drinks on 15th then head over to the East village."

I protest. I have no money after barely managing to scrape the rent together last Friday, and my bank account is woefully overdrawn.

"We're payin'. C'mon."

I follow my coworkers to a bar. A pint of Stella and a Tequila shot is plopped in front of me. A large and tedious man hustles me into a corner.

"So then we decided that we just had to get a divorce, which obviously affected my acting career and which is why I haven't been able to get any work since, however I'm currently working on a theater production where I play a complete asshole, you have to come see it, I have a real talent for playing assholes..."

In my generic experience I have found that most actors have a talent for playing self-obsessed assholes. I'm rescued by a drunken girl I don't know. She drags me outside for a cigarette.

"You see that guy? The dark one with the glasses?"

"Um, yeah?"

"I really like him. You think he likes me? I always talk to him, but he never seems that into me. What shall I do?"

I'm swept up back into the bar, and introduced to Damien, the office heart-throb, who sports Britpop hair and several skinny girls in clickety-clackety heels hanging off his arm like a bad skin condition. One of them is talking in a high-pitched drone which slices through the hiphop with the precision of a nail gun.

"He's a fucking cunt, like, I can't believe anyone would act like such a fucking cunt..."

The trendies all nod in unison, and jostle for a position from which they can admire themselves in the mirror behind the bar. Damien sneers at me, in what I take to be a smile. Juanita the emaciated Guatemalan girl announces her arrival by falling into the crowd, and lying in a giggling heap on the floor. Several nerdy guys from the Sports department eye her in confusion.

"Uh. Are you... ok?"

Juanita launches into a rendition of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Girl-who-rescued me reappears.

"So, like, do you think he likes me? Shall I go talk to him?"

James, official office gayboy, simpers up, and envelops me in a hug. James is ostensibly married. Attention turns to me. So who do you write for? What kind of articles do you write? Where have you been published? The office is the home of the freelance journalist, and credentials are important for acceptance. I procrastinate, and gibber, and invent excuses, feeling the night take an insidious twist as the lies which wrap around me begin to unfold. Suddenly Juanita bursts into another round of Bohemian Rhapsody. I escape outside for a cigarette. Eduardo, the short, cute Hispanic guy from Sports sits outside disconsolately. In exchange for ex-girlfriend counselling, he walks me back to the subway. I get home at 5am.

It's hard being accepted anywhere, when you're not what people think you are. It's hard to accept yourself. My room feels cool and empty as I slip into solitude. Sometimes, the more people are around you, the lonelier you feel.

Tomorrow I have to write a piece for The Guardian on dating. I have become the English expert on the New York dating scene and sexual habits of the New Yorker, despite the fact that I rarely 'date', and I'm certainly not having sex.

The irony amuses me.

A Labour Victory

Whoopee. More rimming of Bush's ass from the delectable Blair and his charming wife Cherie. I was up all night celebrating.

Hey Boys

I was in Bon Giorno one evening when I overheard a customer talking enthusiastically to his date. He had the look of the masturbator about him, and his words served only to confirm my suspicions.

"So, like I patented this design for virtual sex, it's fucking amazing, you have this computer animated suction device for the penis which is directly stimulated by the onscreen images..."

His date looked slightly less enthusiastic, and her longing for the privacy of her own bedroom, Mr Buzzy and a little bit of self-loving was painfully palpable. It got me thinking. What's happened to the good old-fashioned fuck? It seems technology is always hauling out the latest battery-operated device for solo pleasures. I constantly hear my female friends extolling the virtues of 'The Rabbit', or 'The Dolphin' and its infinite superiority to Dave the Guy who works on Wall Street and has absolutely no idea what to do with his tongue. Thank god for the man who invented the vibrator. But what happened before the vibrator? Were women just getting more sex? Has the advent of sexual liberation in the form of a lubed-up Ever-ready rubber cock merely halted the evolution of mankind in their ability to pleasure women?

It seems that women's sexual frustration has been a concern for centuries - yet it was seen as a 'mental' sickness which could be cured by 'physical', and specifically not sexual means. In 1653, doctors concerned over 'female hysteria' were recommending midwives to:

"...massage the genitalia with one finger inside using oil of lilies, musk root, crocus or [something] similar. And in this way the afflicted woman can be aroused to paroxysm... most especially for widows, those who live chaste lives, and female religious...it is less often recommended for very young women, or married women, for whom it is a better remedy to engage in intercourse with their spouses."

Other remedies suggested were rocking chairs, bouncing women rhythmically up and down on their pelvis and using swings. It sounds exhausting. Fortunately an American physician in 1872 came up with the first steam powered massage and vibratory apparatus, which came with a clear warning: 'Patients should be watched to avoid over manipulation of apparatus'. Those hysterical females couldn't get enough of it. And neither could the doctors, who with the new vibrators flooding into the medical market, could complete in minutes what had taken them up to an hour by manual means. In 1903, Dr Samuel Howard Mondell wrote that "pelvic massage (in gynecology) has its brilliant advocates and they report wonderful results." But he noted that many doctors had difficulty treating patients "with their own fingers," (No kidding) and hailed the vibrator as a godsend: "Special applicators (motor driven) give practical value and office convenience to what otherwise is impractical."

The vibrator became the fifth household device to be electrified, after the sewing machine, fan, electric kettle and toaster - and before the vacuum cleaner and the iron.

The Vibrator was a socially acceptable medical device - until the 1920's when its appearance in porn films started the rumor-monging. In short, by the 1960's, the orgasm was not seen as 'medically' necessary for women, but as something shameful that one's husband certainly didn't ask the doctor to do. It became the device Mommy didn't want little Teddy to see her playing with - particularly not if they lived in Alabama.

In 1999, the obscenity statute of Alabama (Ala. Code. § 13A-12-200.1) made it "unlawful to produce, distribute or otherwise sell sexual devices that are marketed primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." Alabama put forth that these products were obscene, and also stated that there was "no fundamental right to purchase a product to use in pursuit of having an orgasm."

It was constitutional to own firearms, but not to bond with Mr Buzzy when Bubba was down the the pool hall knockin' back beers with the boys. The ACLU ('Fighting for America's Right to Cum') challenged the statute, and a company called Good Vibrations distributed free vibrators to the poor, orgasm-deprived women of Alabama. The statute was eventually overturned in 2002.

It seems as technology advances, as you can buy every and any kind of fake cock, butt plug, orgiastic DVD and kinky crotchless panty you could possibly desire, in certain sections of the States sex, even sex with oneself, is considered a dirty secret that noone wants to admit to. There is a vast difference between a healthy and pleasurable sex life, an interest and appreciation of the female and male form, and perverted sexual deviance, but some don't seem to recognise the distinction. As recently as April 18th 2005 there was a ruling in New York which stated that sex shops and strip joints could only operate in certain zoning areas such as the far West Side of Manhattan. Mayor Bloomberg, hailed the court's decision as a victory for families who don't want porn peddlers next to churches and day care centers:

"New Yorkers won't have to push their strollers past porn shops, have topless bars for neighbors or have to worry about peep booths in the back of their corner magazine store."

Hmm, point taken, but somehow it seems that pushing smut in one dirty little corner just makes it seem more socially unacceptable - when the reality is that everyone is feeding into the soft-core sex industry, whether it's through their choice of vibrator, watching porn films, drinking in strip joints, buying 'Playboy' magazine, or breaking out and going for the ribbed ultra-horny condoms instead of the regular kind. Everyone is doing it, but noone wants to admit to it, and perhaps this is because there is very little distinction in the eyes of many between a good, healthy sexual appetite, and shameful perversion. The New York ruling means that one strip joint, Scores, may be forced out of its premises on the East Side where it's been operating for over thirty years, well away from day care centers and Churches. You have to actually go into these places to see anything remotely titillating, but it seems the very presence of such a place is anathema to Mayor Bloomberg. At the same time as we congratulate ourselves on protecting our children from the evils of sex, this country allows the State of Texas to forbid the promotion of any kind of sex education, barring that of abstinence. My guess is that those sixteen year old girls are probably sending out some pleading letters to the kind folks over at Good Vibrations, in between churning out illegitimate children and wondering how the hell that happened.

I find it hard to comprehend how a country so far advanced economically and technologically, can be, in many ways, incredibly backward. All the money poured into a ridiculous case in Alabama banning vibrators could well have been spent investigating and preventing the 50,000 children brought into this country every year by sex-traffickers. But no. Margery might start preferring a little bit of Duracell-loving rather than Hank's clumsy advances in the sack and we couldn't have that. Priorities, priorities.

Hey America, listen up! It was you who first came up with the steam-powered vibrator! Well done you! Now let's move on and catch up with rest of the sexually liberated world. Perhaps the Masturbator from Bon Giorno should get that computer-animated suction device out there alongside the Rabbits, Dolphins and Black Mambas which have come so far from the pedal-powered, steam driven vibrators of the past. And I for one, would be sending it out to every goddamned, sexually repressed Right-Winger in this country.

The Man Who Prays Outside Starbucks

Clutching his bottle of liquor, the Good Book and several lottery tickets, the man who prays outside Starbucks rocks himself into a veritable frenzy of Heavenly rapture amidst the 5 o'clock commuters. Why do you do this? I enquire. Can one not do such things in the privacy of their own home? There are children present...

The man looks at me through vodka-blurred eyes.

"Hey hon, 'Ah jes' doin' it fer attention. I don't do it fer the Lord goddammit!"

He collapses into laughter, and presents me with a lottery ticket and a swig of vodka, before arranging himself back into his accustomed position of the man who prays outside Starbucks.

New York Weeping

I open the paper, and read about two sixteen year old girls arrested for being Muslim. My friend tells me about her new article on the sex trafficking of illegals lured into this country with the promise of citizenship. The REAL ID act is passed in the House of Representatives. I sit in a dark, humid bar with listless, thin, over made-up girls with huge inflated tits talking quietly with the insidious beat of remixed pop music pulsing through the scent of beer and desperation, talking to a beat-up old blonde chick called Dolores, a chain-smoking old hag oblivious to the tight buttocked, thin thighed dancers. The club's half-full of bored businessmen, strange Asian guys, hungry loners with wolfish smiles. I leave, and go to see my friend on West 10th St. who's writing a book about Cuba, and we discuss Cuban whores, jinateros, which culminates in a review of whores-we-have-known across the world.

This time last year I was working on a sailboat in Aruba. After beating through a 40 knot gale, we crept into port, battered, exhausted and broken. Immediately, the guys slunk off the boat to the strip clubs. The next day the Captain appeared looking dehydrated and oddly disturbed. What's wrong? I asked him. I knew he frequently used prostitutes. All the men did on boats, separated from their wives, girlfriends, lovers for months on end. Sometimes they came back from the whores emptier than before they left, their thirst for sex quenched, but intimacy still elusive.

"This whore came up to me in a bar. She was like 'Sucky-sucky, fucky-fucky, five-dollar, five-dollar'. I was like, 'Nah mate. I'm just here for a beer'. She had no fuckin' teeth for Christ's sake! And then she's like 'Sucky-sucky, fucky-fucky, sin condom, sin condom'. That's fucking wrong Mimi."

He shook his head.

"It's just wrong."

Carlos told me about some crack addict he found in Central Park the other day, a black dude in a dribbling stupor, his cock, twisted with herpes, hanging out in plain view as kids played touchball nearby. Carlos and his friends carried the guy off, away from the kids. His face contorted in confusion and disgust as he told me.

It's all disconnected but intricately entwined. Sex, politics, fear and pain.

Sometimes, New York is the centre of the world, the place where things happen, where anything is possible, where life begins and ends.

And sometimes I think I see the Statue of Liberty silently observing the world with tears rolling down her face.

The Day the Men Stopped Hissing at me

Like the majority of those in possession of a vagina, I have become accustomed to the hisses of the Latino and Caribbean community whilst wandering around my neighbourhood. Whilst I must profess my initial irritation at being communicated with as if one were a python, I never noticed how much this had become an affirmation of my superlative physical appearance, until… the day the men stopped hissing at me.

The day started off badly. I woke up at 6.30 am and was unable to get back to sleep. Hungover and concerned about the loss of our new communal cat, which I had unfortunately mislaid after taking for a small promenade earlier the previous day, I lay in a stupor until forced into activity by a phonecall from the BBC, who were interviewing me for an online features article. After the supreme effort of managing coherence for an entire half-hour, I relapsed into hungover apathy which culminated in a violent vomiting session. I blame over-exposure to Stephanie Klein’s blog.

I was eventually forced to leave my apartment, and take the long trek to Bedford Avenue Station. It was then that the reality hit me. Noone was hissing at me or molesting me for blow jobs and/or sex. This could have been due to the encounter I had with a Homeboy on the street last night.

“Hey baby, you’re hot baby! What about you and me together baby?”

“Right sweetheart, get your fucking cock out and let’s do it here and now. Come on. I’m waiting. Get it out. I want eight inches or nothing.”

Pause.

“You have a good night baby.”

Today – nothing. The truth was evident. I had aged over night and hit the nearly-thirty mark. It wasn’t that I smelt of vomit, had on no make-up and had failed to shower that morning. I had somehow become unworthy of the men who hiss at you on the street. Combined with writer’s block, the day has not been charitable.

When in doubt, locate some latin loving. I found myself in front of Bon Giorno, ready to be drooled over by the Venezuelan bar tender who kindly provided me with my SS number. Jorge greeted me with a hug and a kiss, and then proceeded to fill me in on the details of his new affair with Monique, the stony-faced Belgian bitch behind the bar. He looked at me with doe-like eyes.

"I think it's love Mimi."

I had been overlooked for a permanently menstruating younger frigid cow. Reality is cruel. Giovanni the Italian hipster waiter appeared, fresh from his marriage to the delightful Delilah and invigorated from a week of honeymoon shagging in Florida and the imminent arrival of his Green Card.

"Mimi! 'Ow are you Mimi? We meess you Mimi. You must come work wi' us again."

He pinched my cheek and hugged his new wife adoringly. Finding this display of genuine affection truly nauseating, I instead turned to the bottle and sat outside on the street with a brown paper bag and shared a cigarette with Jo-jo, the hobbit-like cuatralingual French drug dealer.

A fine figure of a man.

When proximity did not even produce so much as a faint hard on, I knew it was time to invest in some super-power Clinique reverse ageing products, and reconsider the effects of vomit-breath upon one's pulling power. Lucia, large-assed slut waitress, joined me outside, and sighed deeply. Lucia did not find a husband in ten days, and instead overstayed her tourist visa to join ranks with the status-less. After attending a meeting at the New York Immigration Coalition last night, I found it hard to sympathise with anyone who voluntarily chooses this route. Oh the irony, I hear you cry, you dirty little illegal, you... Well, actually, I'm still in status, and when my visa arrives, I'll be a little more legal than previously. Whatever happens, I am not leaving this country. But then neither will I voluntarily disempower myself any more than I already have done by living the life I've lived for the last eight weeks.

Lucia looked at me with huge dilated eyes, opened her mouth, closed it, and slunk against the wall.

"Mimi. I 'ave no fuckin' drugs Mimi. This country steenk."

I got up to leave. On the subway ride home, a guy gave up his seat for me.

It is official. I have joined the ranks of the ancient.

A little note for you all... the REAL ID act, which you may all be familiar with through my article on the DREAM act (located in the sidebar to my right) has just been presented in Congress, and looks set to go through. This act has serious repercussions for immigrant rights and immigrants' recourse to the judicial system, and is in a similar vein to the Patriot Act in its violation of civil liberties. I urge you all to read up about this, and if you're in the States, start kicking your Congressman's behind. If you're not in the States and you're a journalist, get onto it. There was a huge front page article about this in The New York Times yesterday, which fails, largely to address the true nature of this bill. Please educate yourself, especially my American readers, who may or may not be aware of the gradual erosion of civil liberties under the present administration.

Food for Fuck's Sake?

So my first ultimate blogger challenge has been assigned as writing about food. I protest. I survive largely on a diet of bagels purchased from Faidr at the Convenience Store, cigarettes and tea. Excessive cups of tea. Occasionally I'll break out and go for the bourgeois luxury of a can of beans, followed by the altogether risque option of stealing my roommate's Ben & Jerry's. I have become an expert at delicately scooping off the first initial inch of ice cream and reforming the layers below into an identical sculpture, so that one is totally unable to perceive the theft. Sometimes, if I'm really desperate, I'll munch on the kitty-kat treats set aside for our communal cat. I have found that combined with taste buds destroyed by nicotine, they have a taste and a texture akin to Japanese Rice Crackers.

In the grand scheme of things (illegality, poverty, lack of sex), a varying diet is the least of my concerns. Faced with an option of nutritious, tasty food or a pint of beer, I'll go the beer route. A constant hangover, I have discovered, has the pleasant and beneficial side effect of eliminating any kind of appetite I may once have entertained. Food for the soul baby. Oh yeah.

But all this talk of food leads me onto the altogether more flavorsome topic, How to Eat Someone Out. I met Carlos from Queens last night, one time shag now male best-friend, for an in-depth analysis of this topic. Men, I have recently discovered, have been reading Cosmopolitan far too much recently, and their liberation is both a blessing and a curse. Having located the g-spot, their appetites have been whetted, and the taboo of rimming, once purely an arena for the adventurous, the Cuba of sexual destinations, has opened up and started a democratic fan base anyone can join.

Every guy now wants to stick his tongue up one's derriere. I have discussed this topic previously with my ex-roommate and honorary prick Raoul. Whilst a human bidet can be a useful attribute for any relationship, the thought of my nether regions being hoovered out with the gusto of an energetic tongue wielded like a lawn strimmer doesn't immediately make me wet and dripping with lust. Unlike, incidentally, the rather gorgeous picture of Mr Lyova sporting an impressive boner, which I have placed for maximum effect above my bed, on my porn hall of fame, which also includes portraits of Chancellor Kohl (Hot!Hot!Hot!) and the little fat kid from The Goonies. No, I'm an old fashioned girl. Perhaps I would be more amenable to the idea if I cast off my repression and learned to love my anus with the same deep affection with which I regard cigarettes and beer. To this end, I propose the inauguration of a 'Respect Your Anus' Day, which I hope will culminate in everyone throwing aside their prejudices, putting dinner on hold, and progressing from the first orifice (passé) onto that exciting, oily and rich pooper hole where few venture.

I'm not convincing myself. Indeed, the peanut butter crackers I ate for breakfast are in danger of a rapid reappearance, hastened on by my imminent hangover. I've found many things in life vomit-inducing recently. Stephanie Klein's repulsively onanistic blog, which has just been sold for a six figure sum, followed by the small child on the subway who excreted a large booger onto my bagel the other day, plus of course, Republicans, and Right Wing Christians, who keep sending me emails exhorting me to 'pray for them'. Well, who the fuck's praying for me? I want to know. Prioritise, for fuck's sake.

I'm going out for dinner with a man tonight. Divorced, rich, screwed up.

Yummy.

Oh, and if you feel like lending some support for the cause, click here.

The Girls Who Wait on the Corner

Maria, Julia et al. arrive at the corner of Marcy and Bedford every morning at 7.30am. They are joined by up to 50 other women. Marcy and Bedford is not the scene for some mass exodus of migrant Mexican women hoping to give hand jobs to passing Hasidics - rather these ladies wait here every day in the hope that someone will give them work cleaning houses, cooking, shopping... anything really.

"None of us have papers," says Maria. "I've been in the States for maybe twenny years. This is how we get work. We just wait and hope."

I jog past at 9am, and the corner is full of predominantly Mexican and Dominican women, in a uniform of cheap denim. By 12 midday, only Maria, Julia and two others are left. Do the police ever bother them? They look mockingly at an NYPD vehicle parked behind them.

"They do nothing. This country can't survive without us to do the work they won't do."

Has anyone ever gone missing after getting into a car with a stranger? They eye me sharply, suspicious of the blonde bitch who talks like a porteña but looks like an American. As soon as I get out my camera, they melt rapidly away.

"Suerte, chica," Maria calls out, as I walk slowly away.

The Convenience Store Worker

Faidr has been in the States for approximately five years - he arrived from the Yemen to join his uncle and his cousins in the US. He's currently waiting for his citizenship to come through. So this is a family run business? I ask.

"Yeah. We all work the shifts. The store's open 24 hours, so sometimes I don't get to bed until 7am. Othertimes I'll start work at 4am. It depends really."

Faidr's American name is Mike. He says it's easier for Americans to get to grips with than his Yemen name. Does Faidr consider himself an American?

"Oh yeah. But I miss the Yemen too. I got family there, you know?"

The phone rings and Faidr leaps upon it, and babbles away rapidly in Arabic. He pushes my coffee and bagel towards me, and mouths an apology, before the next influx of customers push into the store for their pre-work coffee. It's 8am. Faidr still has ten hours left to work. One of his relatives, dressed in baggy pants and a baseball shirt, hisses at me as I leave.

"Hey baby, you got it goin' on".

And so, my dear, have you.

The Domino Players

Soto, Dennis and friends have been meeting on the corner of Marcy Avenue and Broadway for over thirty years to play Dominoes together. The majority of the players are Hispanic, mainly Puerto-Rican and Dominicano, with the odd Polish and Ukrainian dropping in occasionally. Why aren't they at work? I ask.

"Honey, We're done with work. We're old men baby. We just wanna sit in the sun for a little while, play some Dominoes, shoot the shit, ya know?"

Most of the players have been in the States for thirty years or more. None of them were born here. Two of them have no papers - they declined to be photographed, but asked me would I like to join them for a late-night Domino session on Friday. A tempting offer I found hard to decline. Is there any tension between Hispanics and Jews in this area? I ask Dennis.

"Nah. The only tension comes from them, ya know, the White people. The rest of us just get on with it."

Is Dominoes a purely male arena? Does one need a cock to partake? A toothless old Dominicano looks at me and laughs.

"Hablás mierda linda. Sentáte."

You talk shit baby. Sit down.

I pull up a crate, and play my first game of Dominoes with the boys.

The Busker

Jorge sings every Monday and Wednesday in Bedford Avenue Station. Jorge is originally from Ecuador, but now lives here with his family. He makes his living from busking and regaling his thrilled subway passengers with such classics as "Besa me mucho" - Kiss me. A lot.

It involved a deep mental struggle, but I refrained.

Jorge admits he finds it difficult to survive on the wage earned solely from busking. He moves from station to station as the mood hits him, his tenor voice filling the station with a little bit of Latin-America to counteract the tinny ring of cellphones. Has Jorge ever thought of claiming welfare? He looks shocked at the idea.

"We don't do that in my country. We work. And now this is my country, so I work."

He gives me a sad smile, and picks up his guitar.

Besa me, como si fuera la noche de la última vez...

Kiss me as if it were the last time.

A man in front of me regards Jorge silently beneath his Rangers cap. He turns back to face the subway line, thoughtfully inserts an exploratory dirty finger up one nostril, and hawks a brown glob onto an empty packet of Cheetos with unerring accuracy.

Besa me mucho...