I’ve been spoiled.

Which is why, on my first night stripping in New York, I was a little shocked when the house Madam, Winnie, a former stripper who tucked one last Washington into her g-string in the early nineties, started breezing through the club rules.

At first I was fine.

RULE #1. You may not refuse a drink, ever.

I had no qualms with Rule #1, since in addition to eleven-dollar Bud Lights, your client can also buy you a nine-dollar bottle of Norwegian-import water. When you’re doing what equals out to an 8-hour pulsing wall-sit, it’s important to stay hydrated.

RULE #2. The g-string stays on at all times.

Admittedly, Rule #2 bummed me out some as I really like flashing my gash. It freaks the younger, less experienced and more frugal men and has a hypnotic effect on the old ones. In a club where clients are allowed a peek of pussy, dancers are showered in Benjamins before you can say SHAVED.

Then Winnie announced Rule #3.

RULE #3. To whatever happens in the Champagne Room, the management turns a blind eye.

My reaction to this, both then and now: THIS RULE IS COMPLETELY INSANE AND UNSAFE PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND PROTECT THY HONEY POT.

***

Before stripping in New York, I had never even heard of the Champagne Room, except for that one spoken word ditty, which seemed to advertise it as a safely sex-free zone. To add to the confusion, the fluorescent sign that reads “Champagne Room” in bubblegum-pink cursive lettering is accented by the silhouette of a martini glass with an olive in it.

Up until Winnie brought it up, I had chosen not to think about it. I decided that it sounded like a nice place to giggle and have a bubble bath.

NOTE TO ASPIRING STRIPPERS: THIS IS NOT WHAT THE CHAMPAGNE ROOM IS FOR.

What I soon learned through the grapevine of stripper shoes and bitch stick breaks was that the Champagne Room is a place where you will find some small tables, slightly more comfortable seating and several couples of entangled bodies. According to the veterans, the Champagne Room often involves saliva and fingers going into no-go zones. AKA my honey pot.

Essentially, in the Champagne Room, you are no longer a stripper but a prostitute. My top-earning colleagues rub out a lot of hand jobs on a nightly basis.

As a full-blown lesbot, I’m not really into gripping dicks. So after Winnie’s run-down and the subsequent light-shedding gossip, I decided to do anything humanly possible to avoid the place without losing my job.

What follows is an account my first successful thwarting of Champagne Room shenanigans. (Note to all my stripper friends: the following can also be used as a guide for remaining professional while keeping prying fingers away from your holiest of holes.)

***

It is midnight. The house Madam comes up to me and my client. She sees that he’s already blown away a handful of twenties for me to bounce on his bumpy lap. On this particular night, my client, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Weird Al (if Weird Al had boils on his face) is delightfully intoxicated and shows no signs of wanting to end this off-roading affair.

“Would you like to take the lovely lady to the Champagne Room?” Winnie asks.

“GgggrrrrYeeeaaAHHHhhh whhhaaaa whha-t happensinthechampagneroom?”

“Anything you want.”

He’s interested. “Anything?”

To which Madam replies,

“It’s full contact.”

At this point, I am still a bit green to the particulars, but as far as I know we aren’t going in the Champagne Room to play football—the only ‘full contact’ sort of American interaction with which I am even vaguely familiar.

I balk.

I strategize.

IT IS OFFICIALLY TIME TO BECOME UNSEXY.

Now picture me again: perched above Weird Al’s lumpy lap parts, doing my thing, listening to the Madame try to pimp my cheeks out to a guy who deems bathing frivolous. I want to simply tell her ‘That’s not in my personal job description—didn’t you get my resume?’—but that would reflect poorly on me and seriously fuck with my job security.

And Madam’s already keen on having my head because earlier that night we had an altercation about the politics of my g-string (she said it was too much like underwear, I asked if it was too tasteful.)

Weird Al is getting decisively grabbier with this dangling carrot of champagne football.

I remain silent. I decide against coaxing Weird Al into motorboating my tits (although he clearly doesn’t need any coaxing) and continue on with my dance.

Once Madam’s on to the next couple I change the tone of my dance from Sharon Stone seductress c. 1992, shifting down to Pee Wee’s Playhouse, wiggling my hips like a Mouseketeer with a shit-eating grin to match.

Madam returns to see what the verdict is on our potential sojourn to the champagne-martini-football(!!!) room.

“Naaaaaaggghhh maybelater.”

I exhale. My sabotage was successful.

***

Don’t get me wrong, I love stripping. I love dancing naked for money. I love the game, and I love the little men who come in so willing to play it. And, yes, I understand that the club charges 600 dollars for a visit to the Champagne Room, and yes, that’s a lot of scrilla. But if it comes down to allowing dirty fingers to contaminate my cooch, I can do without my $200 cut, thank you very much, Madam Winnie. Why not legalize full frontal on your dance floor before asking us to deep throat in your back rooms? God knows I’d rather flash some gash than be a sheath to strange cock.

The post Evading The Champagne Room: Another Successful Story From the Trenches of Titty-Shaking appeared first on The Faster Times.

Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Iris Greene and I am a stripper.

I dance.

Naked.

For large (and occasionally insultingly modest) sums of money.

I took up this vocation over a year ago and have since graced the laps of men (and the occasional woman) in several cities across the Oceanic and North American continents.

Let me tell you something about us strippers: we need vacations. Long ones. I’ve been on one for the past six weeks, taking a break from callused palms, absurd sleeping patterns and earning mad scrilla. It is now time to accelerate to vixen velocity and get back on that pole. This requires a rigorous program I’ve haphazardly put together to get me from scraggly, twenty-something wayward daughter to bleached-out cyborg megababe in ten days. The main tasks of this program are to get my hair and nails did, lose those vacation-inspired love handles and remind myself what it means to appeal to the male demographic who love porn and hate their finance jobs.

In essence, I’ve spent the majority of the past week and a half watching Ellen in my mom’s suburban basement whilst dragging my elephant feet ever so swiftly along a treadmill.

Of course, I’ve also done some squats, eaten kale, and strutted around my apartment in six-inch plastic platforms.

Day 1: Haggard, I arrive at my mother’s suburban sanctuary. Greeted by the canine security system, our darling family pup, Nala – although hardly a pup anymore – remembers my essence and high-pitched squeals of enthusiasm, but shows few signs of excitement. She rolls over, demanding a belly rub as she does with all welcome and unwelcome guests. I find some running shoes in my Mom’s closet. They are a size too big for me. I make for the basement, turn on the TV, and find some .5 lb weights on a shelf. I set the timer for thirty minutes and get strutting on the noisiest exercise machine to grace the planet. I crank the volume of the television to ensure I don’t miss a beat of Ellen’s opening monologue. I hate running. I’d rather be doing anything else – cycling, dance classes, swimming laps – and if I hadn’t spent all my cash on plane tickets and expensive cheese maybe I’d have some scrilla to blow on Zumba classes. But I don’t. I remind myself that I’m dragging my ass on this machine so I can start spending money on cheese and plane tickets again soon. It’s been five minutes. My shoulders are slouching. I’m wheezing. Nala shows up at the front of the machine, barking. I assume she senses my weakness and, just like in the animal-hero movies, is barking at me to encourage me to pull through the burn and keep on truckin’. Like Lassie. Nala proves that this is not the case by vomiting on one of my sneakers.

The stench is too great and my breath is too short to power through the 21 minutes remaining on my work out. I step off, legs like jelly, and clean up pooch’s rancid mess.

Days 2 / 3 / 4: Nala is locked upstairs and I successfully complete my designated thirty-minute workout, being so bold to crank it to forty minutes on Day 4.

Mom: “I’m so happy you’re taking an interest in your health, honey. It inspires me to eat healthier, too.” Mother Dearest is not privy to my chosen profession – she thinks I am a penny-wise waitress. Mothers are worriers and I’d rather not give her reason to lose any more sleep at night. So instead of answering we cook from her South Beach Recipe Book, leave the wine in the cellar, and watch Bridesmaids and Moonstruck.

Day 5: Did I mention that my vacation included a visit to Burning Man, where I was inspired by hallucinatory drugs to grow forests in my armpits? Not everyone is impressed by such things; in fact, when I punched the air for maximum effect during one of the funnier parts of Bridesmaids, Mother Dearest looked over at my pits with a kind disappointment, and later placed her moustache waxing kit on the kitchen counter for me. Today is the day I would bid farewell to my Ani DiFranco sartorial senses. Adieu, chères catacombes.

Day 6: Today, all day, I am in the hair salon. I’m saying goodbye to my naturally sandy-blonde locks with their grown-out highlights and HELLO to Barbie Platinum. The stylists often refer my preferred shade as “Stripper White,” so there you go. Strip clubs are dark, you see. If you want to stand out, you need your hair to glow under the black light.

“Then what do the brunettes wear” you ask? Well, my dear disciple, they wear neon green, pink, white and orange g-strings. My fair complexion, combined with my adamant refusal to spray-tan, could never support such a palette, and so I must resort to looking somewhat like Billy Idol.

Day 7 / 8: Thanks to Groupon and free-first-class promotions found on the information superhighway, Days 7 and 8 are spent taking free spin classes at different health clubs in the sprawl surrounding Suburban Sanctuary! The thighs are firming up and the tuckus is lifting. In addition, no more wiggling round my middle while driving when I hit a gravely patch of highway.

Day 9: Today I flee the nest. Mother Dearest sends me back to New York City with a care package of health-conscious snacks like oven-roasted almonds and pears. I plan on attending a by-donation yoga class in the evening, but by the time I arrive in my new digs I just want to pass out. I may or may not have sleep-eaten the almonds.

Day 10: Clearing a space in my living room, I put on my stripper shoes and remind myself of what it feels like to have my center of gravity increased by six inches. Fortunately, I don’t fall. NIGHTFALL: I have to show up, look hot and in two songs get naked and WOW the manager with my outstanding abilities to sway, bump and grind.

The stage is my favourite place in the universe, but I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that every time before I go on I kind of want to shit my pants. Wish me luck.

The post A Stripper’s Guide to Fitness appeared first on The Faster Times.