It’s like a sticky, sweaty Christmas in July

It’s that time of year again: two weeks from now, the Sydney Sexpo will be up and running (well, grinding in a bored sort of way to “Milkshake”) again. Since the Big Porn company that owns my tits and soul is running the thing, my work is planning a few events in connection with it. Belladonna (of “Cock Pigs”, “Cum Buckets! 4”, “Ebony In Ivory” and my personal favourite, “Gee, Your Ass Stretches Terrific!”) will be doing a signing at the main shop one afternoon the week after next. I’m torn between trying to get that shift to score off the crowd that’s going to be there and wanting to stay as far away as possible, because any gimmick they’ve run in the past- bringing in a girl from Melbourne to pose as a “porn star” who just finished a shoot in LA was the latest hare-brained scheme, I swear they’re like the Bobsy Twins with extra fisting- seems to end up fucking over the regular girls one way or another.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Belladonna just fine and she seems like a cool lady. It’s just that with all the fuckery going on at work at the moment I’m starting to wince every time the boss says “Oh, before you go, one other thing I forgot to tell you…” I’m still not sure if the girls are going to be wanted to work at the Sexpo main event. They have in years past, and it’s been quite a good earner for them. But…I just plain don’t care for it. I’ve been twice before, mostly out of curiosity, and each time it just weirded me out. The whole thing is a weird, uncomfortable mix of a country town show day (minus the cow shit. Unless you pay extra) and a suburban middle-aged swingers’ meet. I know, it’s great for the industry people, and that we’re lucky enough to live in a country where adults can admit publicly that they actually (oh gosh, tee-hee) have sex and enjoy it.  The whole thing just leaves me feeling the same way I do when we get the Porno Turistas in at work: they shuffle along and giggle and prod and poke things, they mill around handling the merchandise and snickering in awe at the fact that someone would actually BUY a vibrator. It’s prudish and immature and I hate that shit.

On the up side, World Youth Day grows ever closer. With any luck, the presence of thousands of young people who are living in close quarters in a strange, big city for a week but aren’t allowed to stick their bits in each other will mean an upturn in business. if the lapsed-Catholic guilt wasn’t still running so strongly in my veins I’d get myself a nun’s habit.

You cannot stop the glorious march of progress, citizen!

So, next week our fair city is hosting World Youth Day, and I for one am looking forward to it. The main street that will be closed so that the faithful legions may march upon it in a most holy fashion also houses our little establishment of ill repute, and what with a nicely timed public transport strike and dark mutterings of protest plans I’m looking forward to a bit of chaos.

My old boss (a 6’1″ Lebanese drag queen with a preternatural fondness for the baseball bat, rumoured to be named “Dorothy”, which he kept behind the counter), whom I shall miss dearly, has been transferred to another location. The new guy seems okay, and certainly has no qualms about standing up to dickheads who harrass the girls- and really, what more could one ask? Meanwhile, the refurbishment plans of Management continue unabated. I was halfway out the door after a thoroughly fiscally unsatisfying shift today when the boss casually asked, “Oh, you’re on tomorrow night, aren’t you?”

“Yep, why?”

“Oh, they’re doing the wall.”

“They’re doing…the whatnow?” Visions of marching hammers and interminable acid-fuelled guitar noodling swam in my head.

“The wall. Knocking it down.”

So it seems that once again I shall be wading naked through piles of sawdust and Makita attachments in pursuit of a living wage.

Ye Olde Peep Showe

As I’ve said before, like any job, peep show work becomes pretty mundane after a while. At first, it’s all very naughty and a little thrilling in an exhibitionist sort of way, but after a few months you settle into a comfortable routine: take off this, wiggle that, pout, rinse, repeat. With a few notable exceptions, most of the punters are of a similar mindset- after all, we’re generally talking about dudes who visit every other day, spend the same amount of money on the same few girls, take the usual amount of time to come, and leave. After browsing through the frankly startlingly wide (heh) variety of amazingly graphic porn available even in a small shop like ours, I’m a little surprised that everyone isn’t completely numb to the idea of regular naked people who aren’t fisting a monitor lizard while on fire or something. Even the 18-year old kids we get will, after a few minutes of bravado and pack behaviour, settle down into either hurling vicious insults at me or quietly wanking (sometimes both).

Except for the country boys.

We get a few in every now and then and they are without a doubt the strangest punters I get. I don’t mean strange as in deviant or flat-out weird (for that I have the elderly gent who comes in after the funeral he goes to every time one of his friends dies and lies on the floor with his cock sandwiched between his legs, mewling and stroking my shoe), I mean from-another-time strange. I grew up in the country and, as evidenced by the fact that I ran off to the biggest city I could find when I was 17, have no great fondness for it, nor the salt of the fucking earth people who inhabit it. As I recall, country people are exactly like city people except they talk more slowly and don’t know how to make a decent coffee. And country boys, far from being plain-speaking old-fashioned types with Deep South manners, are exactly like city boys, albeit far more willing to have sex in the flatbed of a moving ute. So I find it quite puzzling that the country boys we get at my work are right out of Banjo Patterson. Everything’s Yes’m and Please and Ta, pet, and it freaks me right out. The first few times I thought they were taking the piss, but apparently something about a peep show turns them into gentlemen.

The pair we had in the other night were from somewhere west of Tamworth (Horse Capital of Australia), on their first trip into the big city. As far as I know, internet porn and girlie mags are still readily available outside the metropolitan area, but you wouldn’t guess it from the sheer glee and excitement with which these cowboys greeted Real, Actual Vagina. I do believe one of them Whoop’d. And they wanted to talk. Usually, I feign sudden deafness and shrug when a punter wants to chat through the glass, because fuck that. But these two boys were SO EXCITED to tell me all about how they’d seen the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House and the beach and the skyscrapers (and we got to ride a pony and the man with the pony said I rode it better than anyone and the pony was grey and it was called Silver and, and, and EVERYTHING!). It would have been churlish to refuse. They were grinning all over their corn-fed, fresh scrubbed faces and just losing it over even the most standard stripper moves I pulled and honestly, I got a little caught up in the moment. For a good ten minutes there I was the whore with a heart of gold, giving a couple of gleeful farm boys their first taste of the big, decadent sin city and ushering them into manhood. Then they whooped and hollered off into the night (after slipping me several notes with their hotel address and room numbers on it) with a cheerful wave and a chorus of “I love you, girl!”

Thank Christ, about two minutes later a guy came in and wanted me to show him my arse while he yelled at me in German. Any more of that Salinger bullshit and I might have started believing the hype.

Gung-Ho to the future

As I said before, the renovations at work have slowed business right down, so most of my regulars have disappeared (along with my rapidly dwindling savings). So naturally I was surprised to see the return of Gung-Ho Guy the other night.

It had been an absolutely wretched night- dead as hell, only one private show and that was with a complete arse who would not stop bitching and moaning because I wouldn’t give him head. Normally, that would get him kicked out, but unfortunately the only guy serving behind the counter was a wet, ineffectual idiot who merely shrugged and looked apologetic while the bastard was ranting and carrying on. Curiously, he regained his spine in record time when I berated him for his lack of balls after that nightmare private show, yelling that I was not to tell him how to do his job. I wouldn’t have to if I thought he were capable of such a thing- but I digress. Like I said, utterly shit night, ten minutes til closing and who should show up in his usual booth but my favourite enthusiastic wanker.

“HEY!”

“Hey, sweetie. How are you?”

“I’M GREAT! CAN YOU COME UP TO THE WINDOW I’D LIKE TO SEE YOUR PRETTY FACE!”

I do so. I’m pleased to see he’s maintained his MO- clothes hung over the back of the door, arm braced against the wall for support as he jerks himself like he’s starting an unusually resistant lawn mower.

“CAN YOU SEE MY COCK?”

“Uh, I sure can.”

At this point I’m hopng he doesn’t want me to talk dirty to him. I’m terrible at it- not only do words fail me when I’m naked, but I start giggling uncontrolably.

“TELL ME YOU CAN SEE IT!”

“I can see it, sure, it’s right there. It, uh…it sure is big.”

“AARRGH TELL ME YOU CAN SEE MY COCK!”

Now I’m slightly concerned- is it possible that as a result of a gamma-infused condom his cock has become invisible to everyone but he and I? Are we bound together as some kind of horrible X-rated Justice League- Twobuck and Invisicock? Either that or the dude needs to go back in time and introduce his parents, pronto.

“TELL ME YOU CAN SEE MY COCK!”

“I CAN SEE YOUR COCK!”

“LOOK AT IT!”

“I AM LOOKING AT IT! I CAN SEE YOUR COCK!”

“AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHaaaahh.”

“…”

“THANKS THAT WAS AWESOME. I LIKE WHAT YOU’VE DONE WITH YOUR HAIR.”

“Um. Thank you.”

But I’m such a Nice Guy

One thing that really, honestly baffles me every time it happens at work is the punters trying to talk me into sex. I don’t mean guys offering to pay me for sex: it’s annoying if they keep at it after I’ve said no, but I can see how the logic works. I mean, I’ve gotten naked for cash, so I can get that they think it might be worth a shot to ask for a hand job or something. What I really cannot understand is the guys who think that through the sheer force of their winning personality they can convince me to fuck them for free. At work. In a booth. Bear in mind, this is in a city where prostitution is not only legal but extremely widespread (heh)- one of the reasons I stopped doing full service work was that the glut of young, nubile and extremely attractive women in the industry made getting a decent amount of work difficult (yeah, book your flights now). So I can’t for the life of me imagine what their logic is, apart from maybe the misguided notion that someone who isn’t a full-time whore would be “cleaner” or something.

It’s happened often enough now that I’ve detected a strange and slightly worrying pattern in the guys who try it. Not that there’s any particularly common thread in terms of appearance or age or affluence- it’s rather more subtle than that. Namely, that every approach each of these guys take is exactly the same as a guy trying to get you to fuck him in high school. I don’t just mean it’s the same sort of “oh come on baby, it’ll be fun” kind of vibe- I mean it’s word-for-word taken straight from the mouth of a guy at a seniors party.

All the other girls here do it

Really? Well gee whiz, I guess if I want to get to go to Casey Nichol’s big party after the formal then I’ll have to get in with the cool crowd and WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE? I’m 23 years old, you idiot. Do you honestly think my main goal in life is to fit in with the cool kids at the peep show? I can guarantee you, if any of the other girls DO fuck you, which I doubt, they sure as hell aren’t doing it out of the kindness of their little stripper hearts.

I just broke up with my girlfriend

Sure, makes sense you’d come and watch strippers, then. What doesn’t make sense is you thinking that your tale of woe is going to move me right onto your naked lap. The fact that you’re here, now, paying to watch a woman dance naked tells me right off the bat that no, you probably don’t have a date this evening. Has this worked for you in the past? Have you walked up to women in bars and whined about what that lying cheating bitch did to you and had them leap upon you, cradling your head against their nurturing bosom and cooing softly “There now, brave little bear, let me kiss it better”?

I just think you’re really pretty

It didn’t work in the back of a Holden, and it’s not going to work now.

But I want to

That’s the one that always gets me. The bambi eyes, slightly quivering lip, like a horny little match girl staring wistfully through the wintery window of my crotch. “But I WANT to.” From a forty year old businessman. Well, golly, mister, if I’d known it meant that much to you I’d have bent over and grabbed my ankles the minute you walked through the door.

Just to reiternate, I’m not actually surprised that punters would try their luck, and a couple of hundred dollar bills can be pretty persuasive. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been at least tempted by a particularly pricey offer or two. But a grown man actually sulking because you won’t fuck him for a 50/50 split with the house of his forty bucks and a “I like your shoes”? That’s just sad, dude.

I’m up to my arse in sawdust

So management, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that while some desperately needed renovations are going on at my work it would cause an unacceptable loss in revnue to, say, shut the place down for a few days and just get the whole thing done in one go. Instead, the last few weeks have been a drawn-out series of confrontations between workmen and naked girls, like some particularly ratings-focused renovation show. While the scent of sawdust and new paint makes a pleasant change from the usual stench of spunk and despair, the punters seem to have found the constant screeching whine of angle-grinders and the presence of burly, leering dudes in King Gee shorts to be somewhat offputting. Combine that with management’s reluctance to tell the girls things which one might consider to be slightly important- such as, for instance, “Don’t bother making the trip in to work today because we’re painting the booths and they won’t be dry until the end of your shift so you’ll just have to go RIGHT the FUCK back home again with no money”- and you can understand that my work enviroment has become rather tense of late.

It’s not that I mind having to walk around in nothing but lingerie in front of a bunch of construction guys who aren’t paying me a damn cent, not at all. Nor do I care one whit that said construction guys choose to demonstrate their raffish and charming disregard for the lives of us all by, oh, using a circular saw to cut through metal surrounded by wood roped thickly with extremely precarious power cables. That’s just fucking dandy. What I DO mind is that after nearly a month of slow business and hassle, the only part of the entire place that’s been left in its natural state of rank decrepit filth is the GODDAMN DRESSING ROOM. Also, the performer’s couch in the booth is still held together with rapidly surrending duct-tape.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate.

Sorry to disappoint you

To anyone who came here from the following search terms: slightly nude girl (only slightly?), no clothes nude girls, nudegirl, show some pretty nude girls, and really nude girl- did you find what you were looking for?

Take your fancy cufflinks and GET OUT

So I’m a big update slacker- apologies, it’s been an odd, slow week. I’ve been working on something about the ongoing takeover of my workplace by a far larger company, but I keep getting distracted by shiny objects and unexpected sounds. Instead, here’s some stories.

It’s Tight-Arse Tuesday

Every now and then a swarm of misers will descend, locust like, upon our humble sweaty establishment. I don’t know whether it’s the largely cash-based nature of the transactions, or some misplaced idea that strippers come in a “Buy three and get the fourth ABSOLUTELY FREE!” value pack, or possibly just having watched one too many of those A Current Affair “SAVINGS BONANZA” specials that tell people that you can haggle over every damn thing. Anyway. They all seem to show up on the same day, which this week was a Tuesday. The first guy I saw was part of the business lunch rush- youngish dude, expensive suit, matching Georg Jensen cufflinks and wedding ring.

“So how much if I want to jerk off?”

“That’ll cost another twenty.”

“But I just paid FORTY to see you!”

“Yes, and it’s another twenty if you want to jerk off.”

“Let’s call it fifteen.”

“What? No, I don’t think y-”

“Fine, eighteen. FINAL OFFER.”

Look, I don’t give a damn if someone’s a little short on cash- they’ve paid the forty to see me, and I don’t really chase for tips. I’m quite happy for them just to pay to watch. But a dude with a couple grand worth of shiny-man-pretty trying to use his Business Negotiation Skills to gyp me out of two bucks? I say nay.

The rest of the day was filled with douchebags demanding their money back (after they’ve jacked off, naturally), for many and varied reasons. “She’s not hot, she’s fat, she’s ugly, she didn’t even DO anything” and my all-time favourite, “I changed my mind”.

The Dude Is Just Not Comfortable

In any customer-service industry, the general rule is that five minutes before closing, the most irritating and time consuming customer will stroll right on in and make themselves at home. So it follows that the dude who comes in and books a private right before my shift ends is going to be the kind of sleazy weirdo who walks around silently narrating his own imaginary letter to the Penthouse forum.

From the beginning, something was off about him. He baulked at the $20 jerk-off charge and was all set to storm out until I politely informed him of our No Refunds policy. After a little whinging and moaning (“Can I touch you?” “No.” “What about just your tits?” “My tits are a part of me, so NO.”) he finally settled down with the option of a twenty buck jerk-yourself-off and thirty buck “take the girl’s clothes off yourself”, and all went well. For about two minutes. Then, in the mirror I see his hand snaking up to try and grab my crotch.

“I just said, no touching.”,

He stands bolt upright, and in the most stentorian tones yells like an eight year old in a Say No To Strangers PSA, “I AM NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THIS. THERE ARE TOO MANY RULES.” He strides out the door, leaving me to try and grab a towel before everyone in the damn shop gets a free show. But hey- fifty bucks for two minutes work, not so bad.

A stripper is a pet for life, not just for Christmas

I’ve never really had what you’d call a monogamous relationship- mostly I’d pick up girls in bars or at parties, girls I knew through friends or in the general scene about town. There were a few abortive attempts at girlfriend-type arrangements, but I never had the impetus to knuckle down and really try to make it work. Mostly, I’d tend to see them on and off for a while before either I drifted away or they got frustrated and bailed. It wasn’t until last year that I actually managed to maintain a relationship with some semblance of normalcy, and that ended when she went overseas. So with her away for anything from a year to forever, I’d pretty much resigned myself to casual flings. Then a whole bunch of stuff happened and the next thing I know I have a, well…fella.

Not so strange, really (unless you’re me)- while there’s a strong queer element in the sex industry, most of the strippers/peep girls I know are in fairly standard monogamous relationships with a dude. This would seem to go against the widely accepted wisdom passed down from bloke-in-pub to bloke-in-pub that while you should definitely have fun with a stripper, don’t ever try to keep her. Hey, I understand: I’m fairly Swedish when it comes to sexual morals, but a lot of people can’t deal with the idea of their partner being naked and performing sexually suggestive acts in the presence of other people. Just as it takes a person of strong mind and sense of self to work in the sex industry without being dragged down by all the societal and personal bullshit that can go along with it, it takes a fairly robust sort to love them and be with them. A lot of people seem to think they’ll be able to deal with it. At first it’s kind of exciting: you’re dating a Bad Girl, it’s all a bit illicit and naughty in a teenage sort of way. It’s the reason there are so many people who have (or claim to have) a stripper somewhere among their exes, that crazy girl who taught them a million new positions and gave them all these stories that they can now dole out at parties in a tedious attempt to make you all forget that they work in sales (but they were wild and crazy too once, at least vicariously).

There’s a point in any relationship, be it between stripper and boyfriend, wife and wife, master and gimp, me and a Walkman (you were so awesome and old-school and I made a million mixtapes for you. Why do you keep eating them, little one?), where the honeymoon period is over. Suddenly the partner is wondering, does “No Touching” really mean “NO Touching”? What if someone really hot books her for a private show? Is she going to do this forever? Stripping and peep show work is great, but the negative fallout for your relationships can be dire if it’s not handled properly.

Not that I have anything to complain about, personally: I’ve had two partners in the time I’ve worked in the industry as a whore and a peep girl, and both of them have been nothing but supportive and all-around lovely about it. A lot of the people I work with haven’t been so lucky. Part of the reason I’ve always chosen to be open with my friends and partners about what I do is that I’ve seen the strain it puts on girls who feel forced, whether through a misplaced sense of shame or fear of societal censure, to lead a double life. Imagine having a long, trying day at your job, coming home feeling like you just want to curl up into a ball and cry and not being able to tell the person you love what’s bothering you because they think you work in day-care. Fuck that, dude.

Although the fact that being part of a class that’s widely viewed as vulnerable (even more than most women) means there’s undeniable problems about the possibility of attracting some extremely predatory creepy fuckers, I’ve yet to know any girls with a truly Bad Boyfriend. You know, the prison-tattoed, wifebeater clad “Gimme some sugar, baby” sneering douche of legend. What I have seen, however, is an awful lot of ordinary guys who think they can handle it, get in way over their heads and end up being…That Guy. That Guy isn’t necessarily a guy, they’re whoever thought it would be fun to fuck around with a sex worker and didn’t stop to consider that he or she is a person, not a goddamn trophy or fodder for their attempt at Gonzo journalism. That guy who brags to his mates about dating a stripper, but won’t let her meet his family. That guy who phones or messages ten times an hour when she’s working “just to check in”. That guy who wouldn’t have a problem with his girlfriend not wanting sex because she’s tired from working in a bar all day, but who loses it because she’s “having sex for other people all day, don’t I deserve some?” That guy who manages to convince her and himself that since he “lets” her work as she does, it’s up to her to support his lazy arse. Fuck that guy right the hell off. And that’s the worst part of the stripper-as-novelty-girlfriend. If the partner does decide to leave, the girl is left wondering: is that what I deserve?

That was a lot longer and more rant-y then I’d intended, so here’s a story from last week:

So this older guy, thin on top and rocking a sizeable beach-ball under his jumper, comes in and books me for a private. As soon as we’re in the room he is Cecil B. DeMille and I am his starlet:

“Ok, so I’m going to take off my clothes now, is that alright? And then I would like you to take off your clothes and sit down on that stool there. I don’t want you to use any of the toys. And I’d rather you didn’t speak.”

He strips down to some distinctly un-tighty un-whiteys and black socks. I obligingly perch myself on the stool opposite him in the tiny, tacky private room (mirror balls and paper hearts and black pleather, oh my). He sits and begins giving me detailed instructions regarding what pose I am to adopt. The legs go like *this* and the arms out like *this* and hold your head like *so*. I felt like Chef’s “Miss May” (née December) from Apocalypse Now, minus a bird or two. Once I am properly positioned, he begins wanking with a fury, staring at a point somewhere to the left of my ear. He does not speak again until fifteen minutes later, fifteen minutes of me sitting still and quiet like a doll, when he finally blows his load.

“So tell me,” he gasps, pulling on his track pants, “Do you get off when you work?” It’s a fairly common question, and I know what they want to hear: oh yes baby, it makes me so hot, I’m getting my seat wet, blah blah blah. But dirty talk costs extra and I’m a mercenary bitch, so I answer (as always) truthfully.

“Sometimes, if I really feel like it. But not usually, no.”

“Did you get off this time?”

“No.”

“That’s good,” he smiles, and puts another twenty on the pile he’s already given me as he walks out the door. Halfway out, he stops and turns, not smiling anymore. “Because if you’d been lying to me, I would have known.” And then he’s gone.

If you play “Smooth Operator” I will fill your mouth with spiders

I’m slightly deaf at the moment, because today we had a visit from a HQ rep (the Peeps has recently been purchased by a Conglomo-Porn Co., more on which later) and apparently the music in my booth wasn’t blaring loud enough. He also wanted to have a word about “appropriate song choices”. This bodes ill: if I end up wearing a name-tag and a hair net at this place I shall be very put out.

Choosing the right music for work is more difficult than you’d think. At first the natural inclination is to just bring along your favourite CDs and let it roll, but after a few shifts on high rotation that band you really loved becomes Those Fucking Guys With That Goddamn Song pretty quickly. An MP3 player or laptop hookup is also a good idea in theory, but only works if you’re one of those freaks who could never be ashamed of anything that comes up on “Shuffle”. I learned this the hard way in my first few weeks when in the middle of a rush, with every booth full and my laptop in the back room where I couldn’t easily yank it out of the wall in shame, I heard the opening chords of “Tears In Heaven”. I don’t even remember downloading the damn thing, and I certainly had never had it come up on a playlist before- so naturally it decided to raise its hideous My-Child-Went-Out-The-Window when I’m naked with a six-inch rhinestone studded black dildo in my crotch. And you know what? That song is long. Like, really really long. And every second was agony. I think one dude might have started crying.

So now I stick with a pretty safe set: reasonably upbeat but not too twee, and nothing too obscure. A bit of Buzzcocks, the Shins, some Ramones, early Clash, dash of Pixies, you know. A lot of the other girls find it easier to work to real bump & grind hardcore or R&B, but I just can’t keep a straight face: the combination of “Milkshake”-level explicit lyrics and stifled grunting from the punters is a little overwhelming and I start snickering. Besides, if I really don’t want to be working that day I can just play “The Mercy Seat” for about five hours and make everyone wish they were dead.