KIDNAPPED!

One of my stalkers tracked me down to my club, plied me with alcohol and money, dressed me like a slut, forced me to party until the early hours of the morning and refused to make out with me.

Bitch.

11pm and it's a hollow evening, full of memories of the past, worries and concerns of the present, real life breaking into the Emerald City and leaching it of colour. The manager grabs me.

"Hey Mimi. Dere's some girl askin' for you. Daisy."

In the corner a petite curvy latina smiles widely and greets me with a hug. "I love your blog! Come, sit down, let's talk." On stage a sulky looking Japanese girl examines her reflection. The girls huddle in the corner sipping Red Bull. Daisy gets the drinks in, and within an hour is expertly straddling the manager in a wholly successful attempt to convince him to dispose of my services for the night.

"Mimi," he clears his throat nervously. "I'll let you go Mimi. As long as you dance for her too." So I dance for Daisy. It's amazing what a little faux lesbianism can do to improve work relations. Daisy giggles and whispers in my ear as she slips a wad of notes into my garter, "I'm bi, but don't worry, I never hit on my friends. I got the manager to agree to let you leave early. I'm taking you out tonight."

Curious. Was this some convoluted plot to wisk me away to a dark corner of Manhattan and a gang bang? I felt obliged to find out, plus it's been a while since I indulged in lesbian group sex - my confidence was shattered when Jenna Jameson turned me down in an orgy at Hef's place a couple of years back, and I sat on the side sipping Kool-Aid wistfully watching tongues whip around like frenzied lawn strimmers.

We grab a cab downtown, to Daisy's apartment.

"What do you wanna wear?" she asks, rooting through her closet while a small, fluffy white dog lay in some kind of traumatised coma on the bed.

"Slut clothes".

Leather trousers, fake hair and a small, white dog. Goddammit I look the part. Now lead me to the gang bang.

We end up at Butter.

"We're drinking Cristal!" Daisy cries, shortly before being sucked up into a crowd of young, rich, drunken assholes. I decide to get into the spirit of things by pretending to be a lesbian and hitting on every woman in the room. I was unsuccessful. Girls nowadays are just pathetic. If you're going to do the faux lesbian thing you really have to go the whole hog and start making out with people, you know? It's just not enough to dance like a slut and feel a bit of boob. Women, goddammit. Still, there's always Daisy.

"Oh no we can't make out!" she laughs in horror. What kind of kidnapping was this? Where are the forced sex acts? Degrading and humiliating encounters with large dildoes? I resort to grinding a young Investment Banker whose table we've slipped onto, and drinking more.

4am. "Time to go home?" We're both wasted. Curled on Daisy's bed eating sandwiches while the small white dog quivers in exactly the same position we found it. Daisy looks at me drunkenly. "You wanna go to Vegas next week?"

5am. Home. Tea. Blog.

Then, drunk, I cry all the shock and worry from yesterday out.

But it felt good, even if I didn't make out with any girls.

Thanks Daisy, you're an absolute sweetheart!

Mistress Mimi

"Me, I am Colombian. I love the garlic, the onion, the spice. When I fart, you know about it, yes? But still, I do not like when my boyfriend fart and hold my head under the covers. It is not nice."

"Is this the new boyfriend?" Roxy asks, examining a long plastic talon. "Big dick?"

"Ah, but of course! Is important."

"Very fuckin' important. I dated this one guy who was hung like a rabbit and fucked like one too. Hey, you wanna see a picture of my bunny?"

I recoil as Roxy coos and whips a pink, rhinestone encrusted cellphone out of her rhinestone encrusted fake Chanel purse, and reveals a picture - of a small, brown rabbit.

"Ain't he cute? He's my bunny. Hey Mimi! Come see this picture of my bunny!"

I prudently decide to disappear downstairs. My head's banging from lack of sleep and I'm grumpy and bored, but I plaster an inane grin on my face and slip into a seat next to a guy with floppy dark hair and big brown eyes. He greets me with a dazzling smile which almost makes me run upstairs again - too fucking genuine for this place. He's probably a pervert. His friend looks at me - "Hey, dance for my buddy?" So I do. A crap dance, an air dance, because we're too busy talking to bother with the dancing, and besides, the club's empty and we're in the middle of the floor, twelve bored girls eyeing us listlessly. He buys me a drink. He makes me laugh, bounding around the club with the energy and enthusiasm of a good-natured puppy. I go onstage and ignore him as he laughs and tries to catch my eye. I sit back down again.

I suddenly realise he's really fucking hot.

I take his hand and lead him to the corner of the room, and give him a real dance.

The difference between dancing for someone who's attractive and the average punter is phenomenal. I've only ever danced for two guys previous to this who I've been attracted to - one of whom I dated for over six months and is still a close friend. Dancing for someone who's hot is like foreplay, your body pressed against his, the light brushing of lips against cheek, warm breath on neck, a leg pressed against a muscular thigh... and throughout the evocative tease of no touching, the knowledge that this supreme intimacy is actually locked in a taboo. Because your body is so trained to move into poses, you flow into them naturally, fluidly - enhanced by the one missing ingredient in the majority of lapdances.

Sexual desire.

HALLELUJAH! My libido is back! My hymen had practically regrown through lack of sex! I feel like a person again!

Mr Nice and his friends leave after a few more dances and a conversation about Anna Karenina, and I'm left to seven hours of no customers. Kimora sits down next to me and gazes across the empty club.

"I can't take much more of this. I'm gonna go back to my other job."

"What's your other job?"

"I'm a Dominatrix"

I do a double take. Kimora has the face of an angelic Renaissance beauty - porcelain skin, a toned, dancer's body, a soft, melodic voice. She's polite, attractive, gentle, very well-educated, what many would consider one of the 'softer' girls in the club. She laughs.

"Come on. We'll go to a diner after work. I'll tell you about it. You'd better go see the DJ now, he's been calling for you."

I go backstage to pay the DJ, and he locks me into the tiny cramped booth before pulling up his T-shirt and flashing me his man boobs, cackling insanely to himself.

"Hey Mimi! Look at my tits!"

I thankfully manage to wrestle the door from him and escape before the image is seared too harshly upon my retinas.

There's a bizarre recurrent theme currently punctuating my life. I don't know if you've noticed at all.

4am. Somewhere downtown. A packed diner full of hipsters and clubgoers. A girl sits down next to me and hollers across the room at a scared looking foreigner "HEY YOU! GIMME ONE O' DOSE CHEESY FRIES!". We're ushered into a booth, and a fat Mexican guy rushes around frantically throwing pancakes, eggs, bacon and potatoes onto our table.

"So yeah, I'm a Dominatrix. I got into it in Texas. One of the House Moms taught me everything - what to wear, how to act, where to find your dungeon and everything. She passed on a lot of her clients to me. I like it. Interesting. Foot fetishists are fun. I've peed on a few people. I've never been able to shit on anyone though."

I chew some bacon thoughtfully.

"I imagine it takes a lot of skill to time a shit to perfection. You know, keep it on the boil and just churn it out on demand."

Kimora nods.

"Oh yes."

I look out across the diner, onto 6th Avenue, inky black, the yellow blur of passing cabs, steam rising from the pavement, the scent of coffee and bacon irrevocably entwined into this scene, melded to New York, so that every time I smell that scent it's 4am in some diner in downtown Manhattan after an 8 hour dancing shift. I look at all this - and reflect on how the hell I managed to find myself, nearly a year after I arrived, sharing breakfast with a Dominatrix and fantasising about fucking a guy I danced for in a stripclub.

Life is remarkably interesting, I've found. Those damned curveballs. Get you every time.

Life Update

"There is nothin' - nothin' you kin tell me about hookers. Ah know my hookers. Ah was in the navy for ten years before Ah became an Investment Banker, and believe me - Ah know my hookers. Filipinos. Man they're the best."

Kimora's mouth drops open.

"I hope you've been tested since then" I say pragmatically.

"Well, fifteen years on, ain't nothin' dropped offa me yit!"

He chortles and slaps his tweed-encased thigh with a resounding 'thwack'. I lean in close and whisper seductively -

"You need to be careful you know. It could happen at any time. Tomorrow you might wake up, take a look down, and find your penis on the floor - a small, shrivelled pink raisin next to your foot."

He looks aghast.

"Yer think?"

Kimora giggles.

It's gems like this which continually punctuate my dancing career, and make an eight hour shift worthwhile. I've found the new club starting to improve rapidly, and I've also found my forte - hustling, and avoidance of the Champagne Room. I despise the CR. I'm bored of striving to entertain some idiot for an entire hour as he hoovers up as many G&T's as the waitress can carry and tries to convince me it would be in my interest to touch his 'quivering member'. I'm sick to death of acting as counsellor for some middle-aged twice-divorced lawyer with erectile disfunction and halitosis. But I quite enjoy dancing on the stage, sliding into a big group of men and becoming their bestest buddy with tits for the evening. I made 450 after tipouts last night, which brings the rent tally to 700, and allowed me to eat something other than those shitty 99 cent noodles from Duane Reade. Only 350 dollars to go before the rent is met. I'm also starting yoga school in a couple of weeks - every weekend until May, daily classes and meeting up with my 'mentor' group is filling the gap where friends and lovers should be. New York is so strange the way it constantly changes, transforms. In one month I managed to lose my best friend (he went back to England), a whole group of other friends (they went back to England) my job, my money, my US agent (through choice) and the man I was dating. It wasn't a pretty time. Stress gnaws away at the edges of my existence continually, and has done since I arrived in NY. It's hard to deal with alone and with no safety net. It's hard to meet new people and feel, in comparison to their glittering careers, like a dirty street urchin. It's hard continually turning down dates because you really don't want to have the 'this is what I do for a living' conversation. It's hard turning down opportunities to meet friends because, believe it or not, you can't even afford the coffee, the beer, the dinner. And it's hard being treated like a retard when you're probably more intelligent and better qualified than 95% of the people you encounter. I would be extremely lonely and fucked off if it weren't for my yoga center, the girls I work with and the guys I hang out with in the club who (aside from Mr BO yesterday) are actually a vast improvement on the complete dickwads from Flash or the wankers from Scores.

Well, I'm giving myself until my graduation as a yoga teacher for life to improve 100% in NY. I'm selling more articles sure. I have more contacts. I get daily emails from agents, requests for interviews etc etc. But life just fucking sucks without financial security, without friends, without a good night's sleep and without the career I want at the point I want it to be. Which is why, once I can earn money as a yoga teacher, I'll up and move elsewhere, using yoga to fund the book I'm striving over in between the blog and no sleep. I'm itching to travel again. I miss India. I miss Europe. I'd like to try the West coast at some point. I have images of renting a small apartment in Paris and writing this book in peace minus the pretention of New York. The traveller in me is yearning to move, and while happy to keep chipping away at making this existence in NY into a life, the thought of leaving at the end of May gives me a sense of relief and excitement... who knows when I'll be back? Maybe September. That's the good thing about being a strange, solitary travelling creature. You can do what the fuck you want whenever you want, money and circumstance permitting.

In the meantime, I'm leaving this apartment at the end of February, and looking for a sublet in Williamsburg or downtown close to Union Square (LES, Flatiron, West Village etc) for three months, hoping to pay about 8-900 per month. Anyone know of anything?

The blog will also be back up to scratch now Piu-Piu has gone and I'll have more sleeping and writing time... it's been a little dull of late, but then I've been writing quite a few articles, working pretty hard to make the rent, and nothing has bloody happened!

P.S. Re comments - I think everyone's had their little chance to insult, denigrate and wish me dead over the last year. I'll still keep comments, and I'll still keep comments which don't agree with me. I will, however, be blocking more stringently assholes who are using the comments post to offend or unnecessarily insult - I'm thinking predominantly of the 'You suck you'll always be nothing more than a stripper' vein. This is not a point. It's an insult. You're wrong, and I don't wish to listen to that kind of crap. If you don't like me, go away. If you've already been blocked - it's because you're a prick and unwelcome on this site. Think about it, or even better - just fuck right off.

The Slump

The manager sits, head in hand, and the girls loll listlessly and it's a slump in Manhattan, no other word for it.

"Is it always like this?" the new girl, Kimora, asks, scrunching her tiny nose up in disgust. "I've never seen this in Texas. Like, there's no one" Her voice is like a tumbleweed in the echoing club.

New York, New York. Every place I ever stepped into goes through The Slump at some stage. We lucked out this week.

We hover upstairs, the music muffled through thin, paper walls, huddled around an electric fire drinking red wine and talking like we rarely do on the floor, when we're wrapped around stiff, bloated bodies heavy with money and drink. Elly sighs and runs a finger through her waist-length, jet black hair. "I need to find a yoga class to go to at 5am. Used to do that in Austin. Finish at 4, and I'd be buzzing so much I'd have to run off to yoga, chill out a little. That's all I was thinking when I was dancing for guys - how I couldn't wait to get to yoga and do sarvasana." We all have tricks to keep our sanity in this job - just happens mine's the same as hers. Without yoga the stress levels rise and it becomes unbearable.

"When is enough enough?" murmurs Kimora, eyeing the empty club. "When do you just say stick it?" One of the older dancers strides around the dressing room, eyes flashing angrily.

"Fuckin' industry is goin' downhill. You know why? The clubs are full of fuckin' bitches who just dance to get attention. They dance to get guys to drool all over 'em. In my day it was about the money. I was a fuckin' streetkid, I danced to get myself off the street. These girls are jus' doin' it for fun. It's not professional anymore. They don't know how to hustle."

The insults slide off us, evaporate with the weak heat of the fire. A cigarette smoulders in the ashtray. The manager walks in.

"Hey, can I go home?" Elly whispers, and sighs again as he shakes his head no. We all slump back down on the sofa. "There anyone downstairs?"

Shakes his head no. Sip more wine. Back to the slump.

When is enough, enough? When do you let the slump drag you down with asphyxiating, cloying stealth, let you believe you're not worth even this, that you're not even a dancer on an empty Manhattan stage, never mind an actress, a writer, a schoolteacher, whatever your dreams are? When you remove the safety belt, it's not a choice to keep going. It's something you do because there's no other option. I dance because, financially, in the here and now, the money's essential to my survival. But sometimes the slump leaks the cash and the spirit out of you, and when we go home at 4am, I owe the club more money than it's paid me.

It's a slump in Manhattan. I give it till May. Then I'll say stick it.

48 hours with the twins

We are, to most British people, 'pikeys', which roughly translates as common plebeians who lie, embezzle and thieve their way through life. In contrast, to the average New Yorker we're a delightful pair of English girls who work for a top British fashion magazine and are out on the town snapping the young and beautiful in the run up to fashion week. Amazing what an English accent, big, batting eyes and a little red wine can do to the average American's judgment. So - poor and desperate for free drinks, Piu-piu and I headed out to The Hudson Bar with some cameras and lied to the general public in order to snap them when inebriated, and contribute to their drinks tab.



Do you recognize this delightful couple soon to be married? If so, do pass on our best wishes and thanks for the free drinks that evening. Sadly, they won't be appearing in British Vogue as we convinced them, but... they get to be on a stripper's blog instead! How's that for compensation?

Or what about these two young raconteurs with a peculiar fondness for bad cocktails, and a willingness to be led onto the dance floor and indulge in some seventies moves? (Thanks for the offer of dinner boys, but quite frankly, neither of us can be bothered)



And then of course, there's Mr Who-ate-all-the-pies



A camel Gap jacket and American Apparel T? No wonder you're looking to the heavens young sir, caught on camera wearing the worst of mass-produced trash in The Hudson no less....

We found this small social experiment worked particularly well, and even joined, briefly, one of the owners of The Hudson Hotel at his private table, before he was led away to be inebriated far from the prying eyes of the English 'Press'. The next day the excessive drinking continued - In my workplace with a pair of Vivid Films Porn Producers desperate for me to write a porn film ('We're really on the lookout for plot'), my sister with some friends in the East Village. The Porn Producers tried to bribe me to go to Staten Island with them for a "party" - a gang bang and a camera up my ass on Staten fucking Island? Tempting - but no. At around 3.30am my sister stumbled out of a friend's apartment, and was kidnapped by two small hispanic children, who ostensibly 'took her home' (back to my apartment) and in the process cleaned her out of cash and credit cards. My sister wept and cleaned me out of milk and noodles, until this morning balance was restored by a wire of cash from her boyfriend in England. I could do with one of those, if anyone wants to oblige. Disabled, single and poor is bad for the temperament - and money always helps!

I'm looking forward to the return of the giggly Asians. I just hope Piu doesn't get kidnapped on the way to JFK.

And... Vote for Me! Or send me money! Rent due in 10 days and I've made 500 bucks of it - only 600 to go...

Blog Wars

After a week of publicity - from The New York Post, The Sun, Gawker, my local paper back home, to Chinese TV and PR companies - I wrote an article for the Village Voice entitled 'blog whores'. I interviewed four prominent female bloggers who've managed to turn media interest in their blog into the start of a new career. I asked every one of them the same questions - Why your blog and no one elses? Is it talent or marketing which turns a blog into a book deal?

These questions nag at me, because I was a writer before I was a blogger. As an unknown I was already pitching magazines and newspapers, and toiling over a first novel, having doors slammed shut in my face. People first noticed my blog because of my words elsewhere - The Village Voice articles back in March. I didn't get any 'real' publicity until August aside from my own words, and then suddenly I was subsumed beneath a barrage of media interest and people telling me 'you have to do this to get a book deal'. I felt manipulated, and worse, I felt like the people telling me what to do - were simply wrong. But who did I have to turn to? No one. I was still an unknown. I had no contacts or friends in high places, just my own determination and ambition, and a complete inability to give up my dreams of becoming a novel writer and journalist. So I quietly withdrew from the attention, and started working on a book I wanted to write, which had my voice, which charted the gradual decline of my hopes and dreams into a drunken, miserable pool of pain, but through the voice of a character which wasn't me. 'Mimi', you must understand, isn't me, and never has been. She's just a convenient tool for making life a little more bearable. Well, I was surprisingly outed once again and the press jumped on my story and are proceeding to worry it like a terrier on heat - and I'm quite content to let them do so. As long as, in the end, I write the book I want to write, and I have the career I want to have.

In response to my question above, 'Is it talent or marketing?' Jessica Cutler laughed and said, "If I was a novelist working on my craft for years, and someone like me came along and got a book deal with a 13 day old blog I'd be really pissed!". I had lunch with a features editor at a major magazine yesterday and he sniffed disgustedly over sushi and commented that it seemed easier to get a book deal nowadays than a magazine contract. Well, he didn't give me a magazine contract, but I was happy with the corporate lunch and the possibility of future work. He's right and he's wrong. When you start becoming the darling of the press, you learn how to manipulate it to maximum and ruthless effect, and that's something learned through cold, hard experience and having the intelligence to become media savvy very quickly. Melissa of Opinionistas suddenly found several mentions on Gawker and major press interest was enough to convince her to chuck in her job as a lawyer, and meticulously plan a daring outing in The New York Observer, carefully orchestrated to coincide with the launch of her new website and career as a writer. Brooke Parkhurst of Belle in the Big Apple is frenziedly, as we speak, attempting to drag her poor, obscure boyfriend from the South out of his innocuous existence into the realm of blogebrity, launching an, erm, interesting new site and plastering her face across the blogosphere. Bloggers become greedy as we quickly learn how to work the press. And once one book deal has been signed, it seems oh-so-easy to try and get another - as 'Belle' plans her new book with Chef Jamie called 'Romancing the Stove'. I've met both Jamie and Belle. Believe me, the girl is going to eat up that little Southern boy if he doesn't show some promising signs of celebrity pretty darned soon. Hey Gawker! Attention Please!

In the end, despite my scepticism about blogging book deals (when you've struggled through Stephanie Klein's website and gasped in horror at the absence of punctuation and coherent thought, and realised this is the girl purportedly worth half-a-million, you'll see what I mean) the flipside is, it takes tremendous work to hand in a proposal which has been honed to suit 'what's hot' in the publishing industry right now. It takes a certain degree of compromise. It takes facing the fact that this silly little blog you started for a laugh has suddenly gotten dollar signs plastered all over it, and if you want to capitalise on that, you have to give them what they want. It takes skill to handle media interest, and, in Melissa's case, use it effectively and gracefully to further your new career. It takes time, effort and frustration to produce 80,000 words which can captivate and entertain, even if it's not 'the great American novel'. I admire Jessica for writing her book in only two months. I respect Melissa for having the balls and the sense to ease into her new role as writer with professionalism, and attempting to control the terrifying offensive of press manipulation with dignity. I always call up Nadine when I need some press advice, after this girl was subjected to a barrage of media interest back in August and consequently has the PR skills of a jaded mincing Publicist who's been working for 20 years - with the added benefit of being neither gay nor jaded. I marvel at Brooke's single-handed takeover of the tabloid press.

There's a big part of me, which is determined for more than a one-hit wonder - a long and successful career in fiction and journalism, a career dependent on more than an article in a tabloid labelling me 'stripper'or 'dinner whore'. And I know that some of these girls feel the same. When I read an article about me which doesn't even mention this damned blog, or what I've done to fund my writing dreams these past few months, then I'll be happy.

But one thing I've learned from these girls? Call that Publicist back right away, and kiss that new agent's hand. Talent or marketing? It pisses me off, but you need a good healthy dose of both, and the ability, like Brooke, Melissa, Jessica and Nadine, to assiduously and ingeniously milk every opportunity for all it's worth.

Does this make sense? My internet went down and I got drunk with my sis....Here are the gratuitous pics, as becomes a blog whore, taken by my sister, Piu-Piu today

4am

Too fucking tired. Remind me never to work holidays again. Still can't afford the mystic tan. Still, at least I have some goddammed hair now, an improvement on these pics.

Courtesy of John Chapple.

The Acropolis, Portland OR - Stripclub of Evil

OK, I get it. Don't sit on the stage unless you're willing to tip. It used to piss me off too. But there were no other seats, apart from next to the drooling man wearing a raccoon hat and lumberjack shirt dribbling over a raw hunk of beef. So we sat. She was ugly, the girl onstage. We thought four dollars would be enough to appease her. It was the Pacific Northwest after all. We were giving them a free show, two English twins and a pleasant tattooed companion. They were probably all related anyway, it must be nice for them to see strangers from outa town.

How wrong we were.

She sauntered over and generously poked her sagging bottom in my face before playfully licking her nipples. Always a move guaranteed to generate my antipathy. (Mine won't reach, even though I've tried to stretch them)

"You wanna give me some money?" She sighed breathily, sticking her finger in the region of her anus. I do hope she washes her hand before reaching for the peanuts.

My sister, B and I looked at each other, communicating telepathically that we really didn't want to give this irritating girl with little to offer besides the marvels of 1980's silicone breast technology, any money. So I slipped her a quarter, and my sister screwed up her nose and said -

"We're waiting to get change."

I disappeared to get in the beers ($4! The wonders of Oregon!) and returned to find my sister and B sniffing disgustedly.

"We gave the stupid girl four dollars and she told us it was her dream to work in Scores. So I told her you used to work there and she got really excited, then asked us for more money, and got kind of angry. So I told her to piss off. I think we should move."

The girl writhed unexcitedly next to an ageing, decrepit, toothless man in a lumberjack shirt, and then rippled over to us.

"It's not a free show! Is four dollars all you're gonna give?"

We shrugged.

I hate to say it girl, but if you're ugly, annoying, drunk and not even dancing, don't expect any fucking sympathy or more than four dollars from me during your little five minute naked window. If I'm staring at your ass it's certainly not a free show, and feel free to hassle me. But if I'm drinking a goddammned four dollar beer, talking about green card marriages and trying not to look at your disgusting vag as it gets pushed in my face, I'd shut the fuck up if I were you, and try and figure out why the hell you're working at The Acropolis on a Sunday night and not Scores on a Saturday.

God help us if she ever ends up in NY. There's already an over-abundance of sagging breasts and Xanaxed-up bitches slithering around our pole-less Manhattan stages desperate to meet Howard Stern (Yeah, nice party for Ronnie that night big guy). One more small-town girl worth less than four dollars, and the stripclub economy of New York may just collapse.

I'm just bitter because I haven't danced for six weeks and I miss the Xanax.

That was sarcasm.

Welcome back to New York Mimi. Rent due in two weeks, unemployed and about to embark upon - yoga school! What other career options are left for size 4, Cambridge- educated, poverty-stricken ex-stripper freelance writers working on their first novel? Do tell. Playboy spread? Anyone?

Willametting

I figured it out. What's going on with these Oregonians. The first 24 hours were a little creepy.

"Ron, why do they keep....smiling?"

My initial reaction was to reach for the pepper spray and every New Yorker's defence against the dark side, those two little words - "Fuck off". But no one does that in Oregon. You got the feeling they might cry if you said that, or else get third cousin Dirk with the mullet and the three-legged dog to hunt you down in a beat up SUV and a raccoon hat.

Oregonians are just nice. When people talk to you, it's with genuine interest and not with a vested concern about the potential publicity or contacts you could garner for them. You don't need to wear heels when you go out. No one gives a crap if your purse is a fake fendi from TJ Maxx. No one's craning to get a look at your shoes to see if they're Choos or knock offs from Aldo. And it's perfectly acceptable to buy clothes from Target and Old Navy and talk about what a good bargain you got, in between chugging your fourth pint of beer and nodding happily at various strangers as they nod happily at you. Oregon is a mecca for the unoffensive, Jerusalem for the liberal, prerequisites for entry - a nice smile. Even in the strip clubs the girls chat to you pleasantly, ignoring the quarters you sneak guiltily onto the stage. I noticed no one has yet informed Oregon that Sienna Miller has burned her cowboy boots and floaty skirts. But when you're paying three dollars a pop for a drink, who cares what the person next to you is wearing?

My brother and his wife invited some friends round for a drink to welcome my sister and I Saturday night. It rained miserably outside, the marsh turned into a creek and I drank red wine while small children shrieked happily. D, a smiling blond woman in her mid-thirties. eyed her tiny, pouting doll-like daughter with a laugh. "You know, she just loves to get naked. If she knew she could get paid for it, she'd be on the damned stage at Union Jacks every night". Hayley, my eleven year old niece Kat's best friend, explained to us all why she would never use the words 'ass' or 'crap'.

"My Mom says we can't because the government doesn't like us to say those words".

We all paused and considered.

In Oregon no one cares what the government thinks. Oregonians don't like the government. Oregonians drink good coffee and snowboard and are vegan tree-huggers with a taste for beer. Oregonians like art and culture and films and foreigners. Oregonians consider stripping a valid career option. Oregonians are cool, though they need to work on the smiling.

Well, minus wheels or a willing man with a car, I only got up Mount Hood once, and with the state of my finances it'll probably be another year before I get the opportunity to go up there again and get my snowboarding back to scratch. I'll be sadly waving goodbye to Oregon on Tuesday and back in NY renewing my job-hunting efforts, scowling at strangers and hiding my fake Balenciaga defensively under the table.

------------------
Sorry for the poor post - but hey. I'm drinking and enjoying Oregon. I need a break from the words.

Ha-de-Fucking-Ha

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Flight to Oregon

This was my view from the 737 yesterday morning descending into Portland, Oregon. I'm off to Mount Hood snowboarding today - I'll try and post something in the next 24 hours. In the meantime - nominate your favorite blogs in the Bloggies 2006! Closing Date, January 20th.

Scheherazade

I find it hard to believe it was simply the stories which kept her alive - unless she was serializing 'Lost' over the thousand-and-one-nights. A tale for the Martha Stewart generation - "Woman, keep your man entertained every night!" and make sure the place settings match your outfit. Like the King demonstrated, relationships are as disposable as Paris Hilton's income - any and every excuse can end them. Consequently we need to twist, twirl and pirouette into the positions which make everything seem new again. Regenerate every day, never let the tale slip vapidly away or subside elegantly into an ending. It's not a tale for the feminist, but it's a tale for the strippers, the escorts, the sex workers, spinning out the narrative every day, always the same, yet strangely different, a step away from the truth. Living life as fiction, it keeps us from certain death, allows us to harbor the dreams of an ending to our thousand and one nights, tentatively embroidering the story once again the next night to avoid the swish of that blade, the connection between skin and steel.

I found him in a club - Flashdancers. It was a Saturday afternoon, warm, sultry, not yet the scathing heat of July. He looked oddly out of place, impossibly English, young. I danced for him twice, and he invited me for dinner. I refused, but then leaned over and kissed him - a real kiss - the strippers behind me hissing and tutting in disapproval. Half of me wanted him to come back, the other half simply forgot. When he did come back, I didn't see him. I was sitting at the side of the stage hustling a rich Mexican relentlessly, twisting onto his lip, curling my body, dodging the contact, retreating back again, seducing him into giving me more money, trying to draw out the tale until he got bored. After $800, he got bored, and the tale came to an abrupt end until I could pick it up again the next night. So I went into the dressing room, laughed drunkenly with Bambi, dressed, walked to the Subway happy. Two days off, and money to spend. Two days of not being Scheherazade, no men to weave into my tale.

In Brooklyn there was an email. From him. The man I kissed. He could write - I mean write. He intrigued me, a little lost rich boy from England, and giddy with the money, bored and lonely, I replied, and agreed to meet him.

I'd been dancing for two weeks, but I had a story ready. My jeans were too big, my hair too short. I looked scruffy, but I didn't care. I was merely curious. Needed a friend. Somehow trusted him. Maybe it was the fact he was sitting in Dean and Deluca reading a book about Apes when I met him. Endearing somehow. A man who likes monkeys can't be a potential rapist, especially if he says 'barth' and not 'bath'. He later laughed about my clothes. "You looked terrible! Your jeans were hanging off your waist..." But that night he was the perfect gentleman, courteously didn't register my deficient wardrobe. He asked me my story, and I began to unfurl it.

When I'd finished it was 3am, and there as was no ending to the story, we kissed, and we met again. And again. And again. Each time there'd be a new character, a new whiff of a seductive ending, something for him to grab onto, believe in, be mystified by. But when the fiction began to needle its way into my truth, it became harder and harder to tell a new tale. It was the same story, endlessly repetitive, a tautological hell, and I lost the ability to treat it as fiction. It's hard to be with someone when the story doesn't advance. We broke up and it crushed my heart, and suddenly the narrative moved on with a painful jolt, a battered old car heaving and creaking into volition.

It started to die again when I met the next one, the one who was another version of Scheherazade, using stories to make life more bearable, stave off what to us is worse than death - losing our voices. But again my story faltered, and I drifted lost in possible endings, potential plot twists, knowing, yearning for the climax, unable to enforce it onto this headstrong, untamed, unpredictable life. Scherezade became Dorothy wandering through the illusory Emerald City, playing the same role every night, no longer in control of the plot.

Like Scheherazade's, my story will go on. I'll keep writing, until the thousand-and-one-nights ends and I can peacefully lay down my pen, knowing that it can sit there for a while without fear of reprisal, cold steel. I'll always come back to it. But for now, there's no option. I write to stave off the collapse into dark oblivion. I have to keep writing. They're words borne of desperation as well as love.

I hope I get the ending I want well before night 1001.

2005 Compilation of Pricks

Ah, what a year on this little blog. I've veered between insulting editorials examining certain aspects of American life, to insidious little digs at certain aspects of American life, from musings on politics and immigration, to haunting tales of life surviving and stripping in New York. But throughout I'm proud to have flagrantly pissed off a vast margin of my readership. Without the Mimi Hate Club, this blog would have been nothing. So here's my top ten list of Pricks-I-Have-Encountered and subsequently managed to annoy throughout the ten month course of my time in New York.

1. Fatties

Surprisingly zooming into number one with a last minute cry for attention in those usually faltering moments of the year - obese, overweight, lazy, slothlike, immense, cheeto-guzzling, hog-boar eating FATTIES! I'm not talking about you in the corner, with the extra 30 pounds or so, the guy with a little beer belly or that woman with the bingo arms (hey Stephanie!). I'm talking FAT, can't-get-out-of-bed, can't-find-clothes-to-fit-me, 10,000 calories a day insatiable Orca Whales. You are disgusting. I'm glad to have offended you into some form of animation.

2. Right Wing Christians

Oh the hate mail! From Bill O'Reilly, the minutemen threatening to hunt me down, to 'Red Stater', it's been laugh a minute with the anti-abortion, 'fuck all immigrants' contingent as they've repeatedly levied that pleading cry across the blogosphere: "Go home you ungrateful, un-American bitch". According to the RWC's, I can't have an opinion about American politics, racial issues or American culture merely because I worked as a stripper in a seedy Manhattan club minus a visa for six months. I am the lowest of the low. I bow to you, oh creationist theorizers, for your consistent and entertaining stupidity.

3. Strip-Club Managers

Slithering through clubs with their gum snapping arrogance, strip club managers have yet to make their presence felt in the comments section, but the fact they haven't has probably increased my life span by several decades, because I've written all about their drug dealing, sex abusing little ways, and it ain't pretty. No sirree.

4. Hipsters

Blessed be, for the era of cowboy boots, floaty dresses and Sienna Miller cuts hath passed, yet on the streets of New York there are still hipsters wearing these repulsive ensembles. Fashion Capital of the world I'll be damned. It's not postmodern and it's not ironic, and it's over. Let go Williamsburg, set the floaty rags free! Embrace J Crew and spurn Urban Outfitters! And while you're at it, burn your fucking guitars!

5. Hasidics

It's just not the same without my half-hour trek from the Subway through Little Poland at the dead of night, with beat up old cars drifting past, drawing slowly to a halt, before a bearded man or two would venture his face forth into the night to enquire - "How much for you-me?". Encouragingly, the number of teenage girls going missing from Little Poland only to reappear six months later, heavily pregnant by their Puerto-Rican boyfriend from the Bronx has increased. Newsflash: HASIDS MIXING WITH OTHER ETHNIC GROUPS!

6. Investment Bankers, Hedge Fund Pricks and other forms of The Corporation

"If I give you an extra twenty, can I stick my fingers up there?"

I have faith that one day there will be a time when IB's and Hedge-Funders will see the light, and realise that strippers are not the same as the blow-up doll in the fraternity house or Layla the escort on speed-dial, and stop trying to explore our orifices for the ubiquitous twenty bucks. One can only hope.

7. Strippers

Not all, but a few. Remember 'day girl' from the August comments section who declared that my feet were the most disgusting things she had ever seen in the dressing rooms of FlashDancers? Drunken Russian girl who tried to beat me up outside Rick's Cabaret? Oh the drama. Oh the bitchiness. Four weeks without conversations about anti-depressants and men with huge schlongs and I am pining, pining I tell you, for the six-inch clear plastic heels again.

8. Men I have dated

It's not that hard is it? A nice allowance, fancy restaurants, a basset hound, apartment? Do we really have to do this 'get to know each other' thing first? And what about the 'commitment phobe' issues? Get it together boys. I don't want marriage. I just want your money and nights at The Ganesvoort.

9. People without a sense of humoUr

Yes, Humour. It has come to my attention that the differences in spelling not only denote an inadequacy on the part of Americans to absorb the key essentials of English grammar and spelling, but are also indicative of a complete absence of sarcasm, irony and the ability to laugh at themselves in any way, shape or form. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, but in general, it's safe to say that most Americans are lacking in this most essential attribute. In which case it makes wielding the light saber of sarcasm even more enjoyable, sadistic and rewarding. Europeans! Get over here! It's just so much FUN!

10. USCIS

You bastards! You took six long, hellish months to process a visa which should have taken six weeks! You SUCK! Sort it out, get rid of that immigration backlog! And while you're at it, fire this bitch.

Going Dutch

I was confused. He kept buying me drinks. Was there a catch? Was he putting rohypnol in my drinks? Using it as some kind of affirmation of male dominance? Lulling me into drunken security before slipping out his penis and revealing the real price of the evening?

Apparently, in America, that's what guys do. They foot the bill on dates.

Preposterous, to an English person. So instilled into our student psyches is this phenomenon of 'going dutch' that we're unable to comprehend the social niceties of the dating ritual. I felt so guilty at not contributing to my first American date that I ended up pressing a pile of bills I could ill afford into his hand. He was astonished, and ended up taking me on another date, revealing halfway through that he had forgotten his wallet, I'd have to pay, did I mind? He'd pay me back another time.

There wasn't another time because I had seen the light. No longer would I ever pay for my own drink, my own meal. No longer would I be constrained by the antiquated English feminist ideals which demand women pay their half of the bill. I was turning into a New Yorker. Make sure you leave a good tip

It's a complicated etiquette though. One must always act surprised that the man is paying. Expectancy must be concealed with graciousness. If a man does not, within the first five minutes, offer to buy you a drink after inviting you out, he is a schmuck. This is a tried and tested formula, and believe me, it is a litmus test for the jerk.

But sometimes this particular dating etiquette disturbs me. Take one friend. Pretty, unemployed, but still inexplicably wandering around in brand new Christian Louboutins declaring her love for the guy who did not pay for the Christian Louboutins. This does not impede said friend from numerous dates with other men at expensive restaurants and the acceptance of designer 'gifts' purely because she enjoys the high life someone else's platinum card provides. She assures me she is not fucking them. So it's OK. I assume 'not fucking' is a metaphor for giving head instead. If you have sex with them, it's prostitution. If you don't, then it's acceptable. Most strippers have this engrained into their psyche. We take money from 'them', but we don't date them, because that's prostitution. If a man is stupid enough to pay for nothing, he'll get nothing. I find it amazing that strippers are looked down on in society. Our actions merely mirror the average Manhattan female. Like the Manhattan female, we're looking for a man who can pay for our Christian Louboutins (though personally I'm happy with Aldo). But unlike the Manhattan female, we're not going to blow him.

I was sitting at the bar in my club one evening talking to a curvy, stunning girl called Desire. She told me about some Israeli guy who'd given her 1,000 dollars the night before in twenties stuck into the back of her dress. She'd assumed they were singles until she walked upstairs and the other girls gaped at her. 'Girl, you have a fuckin' fortune stickin' out of yo' dress!'. She immediately went downstairs and located the guy again.

"So I left early and then went and met him in Crobar. Does that mean I'm a prostitute?"

"Did you fuck him?" I ask, because it seems like the natural question.

"Nooooo," she looks offended. "But I kissed him." She glanced at me earnestly, holding her breath for my judgment.

"Did you kiss him because you liked him or you felt obliged?"

"Well, I liked him."

"So you're not a prostitute. If it's a transaction devoid of emotion then it's prostitution."

She looked pleased, and patted my leg. "Thanks Honey!"

"When are you seeing him again?"

"Oh, I'm not. Unless he comes in here. He's kinda old for me."

It struck me that if my equation were true, probably 90% of the women in Manhattan might aptly be labelled prostitutes. These are the women sharking for the perfect date - one who will match their Manolos and Marc Jacob clutch, and replace said items mutliple times well before next season. But the perfect date is not a life partner. The perfect date has little to do with love or emotion. The perfect date is one who foots the bill, spices up the evening with little gifts and provides the female with the necessary visits to Pastis, Balthasar, The Four Season, 60 Thompson, maybe even Marquee (if he's below 40). If money is exchanged in the less-palpable form of gifts and five-star restaurants, the Manhattan female can sleep easy at night knowing that the flirtation, the kiss, the occasional blow job, is not really what it appears.

I like the fact my dates don't cut into my paltry savings, but I'm astounded by how more and more men are seeing this skewed equation as a recipe for sex. 'I bought you a drink so now fuck me'. That's not how it works baby. Ask any stripper. And like the girls we despise who give 'extras' in the champagne room, my Manhattan female friend is ruining it for those who want to enjoy the high life without putting out. Like the best strippers, the key is to trick them into thinking they're getting something without getting anything. To give off that whiff of inaccessability. To ensure that the price for your company over dinner is equivalent to whatever goes on his platinum card, and the price for getting you into bed is something money can't buy. Sometimes, listening to the women around me and their activities, I feel like a prude in comparison. After all, I've only dated three guys in the last year. The second and third I liked too much to accept the big, fat allowances they seemed willing to throw my way. Now my stripper friends would not approve of that decision.

Unusually, my English friend who has studiously avoided his side of the dating bargain (rarely buying a woman a drink) has done particularly well in Manhattan, having screwed at least five women in the last month, all of whom have strangely shown some form of emotion for him.

Perhaps going dutch is a far better concept. As long as it doesn't apply to me.