I scheduled off next week to focus on the 8-12 looks that R___ and I need to finish for the fashion show.  On top of all that, I have costumes to make for my camp’s V-Day gogo dancers, workshops to host at the shop, furniture to get rid of, a garden to tend to, and a motorcycle battery connector being held together by a key ring and a binder clip.  I cut myself some slack Tuesday night after a long day sewing and a longer night at work and spent a lazy Wednesday morning in bed with J____ and her partner.  We grabbed brunch at the diner and then I squirreled myself away in the shop for a couple of hours to work on a corset for the show.  My original plan for tomorrow was a lazy Friday at The Baths with my roommate followed by the first proper mani/pedi in months before dinner and zombie flicks with Frenchie, but it looks like I’ll be hand-stitching Victorian lace and satin covered buttons to a capelet, scrambling for the right lengths of 1/4″ flat steel boning, and then running to the store for spaghetti makings.

Oddly enough, I couldn’t be happier.

We’d been talking about bondage and domination, sadism and masochism for the past couple of days. He wasn’t into it, he said, although he could see the objective appeal. I thought he would make a great top, hoped he’d come around to it. “It’s a lot to ask to be the sub,” I told him, “Doms are incredibly generous by nature if you think about it,” I added, appealing to the nurturing alpha provider ingrained in his masculinity. The best tops are incredibly romantic, I should have told him, the pinnacle of sensitivity.

“I think it is in my nature,” I looked up at his pouty French lips from where my head lay on his smooth, broad chest, “but I’ve been fighting it for awhile now. Force of habit,” I smiled.

“Don’t ever lose it,” he said almost sternly, his countenance quickly melting into a smile, “It’s irresistible.”

That momentary sternness was all it took for me to imagine him tying my limbs to the bedposts neither of us have, learning the topography of my shoulder blades and rib cage lovingly as I wait in anticipation for the ferocious smack of his broad hand.

Having invested in another creative business in the past, which he is now seeing returns on, he wants to reinvest in another artistic endeavor. Unlike the Kickstarter route that we were going to (and probably still will) employ, this would be a proper business agreement, contracted and all. We’ve recently costed our products and now need to find a sellthrough rate and the distribution avenues that work best for us. What really pleases me is that there are strip club patrons who are able to see us as human beings, neither pigeon-holed sex workers or princesses to dote on (although I’m not opposed to the latter, it has no place in entrepreneurship).  Likewise, I intend to see the people I meet at work as human beings of limitless potential, whether they become fond friends and business partners or are simply that guy who comes in for prime rib every week and tells me about his morning commute.

Yeah, we made that.

Thursdays I’m exhausted.  Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays I try to sew at the shop from noon-ish until I have to high tail it to work.  I stop at home to feed myself and my (new) cat.  I’m usually at least mildly hungover the next  morning, but I do it all over again anyway because sitting in the shop’s sunny window is so uplifting, because the dream of R___ and I having a line and small shop of our own someday is so motivating, and not as farfetched as I used to think.

Work has been less than exciting.  Two of J____’s regulars have stopped spending money with me since hearing about our roll in the proverbial hay.  They never fail to ask about her and what we’re doing (nudge nudge, wink wink!), but they’re both in unrequited lust with her, which has made me someone to be jealous of.  They’re very dear humans, both of them, and I still sit and drink and chat with them as long as I can without missing out on the rest of my night, but it’s a bummer to know that our working relationship has gone sour in a sense.

NQB is no longer a concrete presence in my life, but hovers in the periphery.  Although we haven’t had a chance to talk about it, we’re essentially not seeing each other anymore, and I’m sure he knows it.  Nothing about our year together was defined or committed, which makes the “break up” that much easier.  I will be mourning the loss of some spectacular sex, though.

Last night a man I’d seen looking at me briefly came up to me as soon as I stepped back onto the floor.

“Excuse me,” he said, “Would you give me a dance?”

“Of course!” I said, mildly taken aback.  Over the past year my club’s clientele has shifted noticeably from gentlemanly worshipers of goddesses and entertainers to cheap dudes out for a laugh.

He walked straight to the $60 dance area.  After one set he said he wanted to get more dances, but didn’t want to tire me out.  I had just gotten off stage before our dance and was hotter than sin under my wig.  We had a drink at the bar and talked about entrepreneurship before going back for two more $60 sets.  He asked me if I ever did “day dates”.

“Day dates?” I played dumber than I am, although I only had very little idea what he was getting at anyway.

“Yeah, you know, like hanging out all day.  Going shopping, having lunch… just a day date.”

The part of the job I’m terrible at is knowing how to steer conversations in my favor.  There are plenty of men (and a few women) who’ve expressed interest in doing nice things for me, asked for dances, tipped without being asked.  I know girls who could turn these type of lovelies into great business, and maybe make them even happier than I do by being able to say the right things, but I just nod and smile and say something awkward.

The night before a semi-regular who dances with a handful of girls got a few dances with me.  “There are plenty of good looking girls here,” he always says, “but most of them I wouldn’t be seen outside of the club with.  You, you’re arm candy.  I want to take you to Venice… Hawaii, the Caribbean.  Where haven’t you been that you’ve always wanted to visit?”  He’s sweet, and handsome, and not a chore to sit with, unlike some folks who are a guaranteed dance but only after half an hour of willing your eyelids open through some conversation.  I know that if I could find a way to better understand what people want to hear, I could make my work-life easier and make folks happier at the same time.  If only my club was more like an okiya, but alas San Francisco has no hanamachi, only titty bars.

In a sense, I’m not talking about the single partner/small group of close friends/larger group of acquaintances standard that most people’s social circles ascribe to, but in another sense that’s exactly what I’m talking about.  Why is that the generally accepted structure of our relationships?  How is that fulfilling enough to the majority of people for it to have become the norm?!

I’ve pondered this as I’ve examined my own relationships and the Venn diagram they superimpose on my life.  I’m immeasurably happy within this moment, but concerned as ever for the sustainability of it.  “We don’t ever have to break up!” J____ giggled as the three of us lay in bed the other morning.  “I mean,” she explained, “This is good.  It can keep working forever.”  I hope she’s right, but it’s hard for my mind to be at peace with the possibility when so much of our culture says otherwise.  Even if it is possible, it’s a delicate dance dependent on the right partners for true coexistence; But if it is possible, it’s worth all the fancy footwork in the world.

I haven’t talked to NQB about J____.  He has been out of town for as long as it’s been going on, save for one afternoon when I picked him up from the airport before he jetted off for a New Year’s vacation, and that wasn’t the time for serious talks.  The last time we had a serious talk it took a series of conversations over a period of weeks to determine that our relationship held little reasonable potential future.  We broke up.  Months later, we started seeing each other again, and we haven’t revisited the subject since the summer.  Little has changed about our objective positions in life.  He’s still older, settled, and reticent to the possibility of failure.  I’m still younger, undecided, and wary of wasting his time.  “I never want to break up again,” he said last time we talked about relationships.  At first I thought he was being hyperbolic, but he stood by the statement.  “Last time I went through a break up,” he explained, “I realized I never wanted to go through that again.  Enough so that I’d rather not have a relationship than experience that again at my age.  I thought I was going to marry her.  I won’t go through that kind of heartache again.”  And I don’t want him to have to, so the hamster in my skull spins my brain wheel furiously looking for a way for us to be together without end without losing the other parts of ourselves that are best nourished by other relationships.

We’ve sustained our relationship thus far by not defining it, but the longer we hover in this cryogenic freeze the more I worry about what will happen when we do define it.  What if I can’t give him enough security?  What if I’m still too much of a risk to bet on?

My relationship with J____ is much easier.  She has two boyfriends, who are friends with each other, and a reality that seems to exist exempt from the influence of petty concerns like jealousy and practicality.  During the day we work out of the tiny shop she and one of her boyfriends run, sewing and talking about sustainable business practices, selling the llama yarn her mother spins and the organic vegan balms and butters she makes.  When we’re at work together we tell our stories salaciously, relishing the ability to make a good living by doing things we already like with people we genuinely care for.  Her body is small, soft, and almost delicate.  Sleeping curled around her, calling her roommate in from the kitchen for a lazy hour of giggling in bed before brunching and sewing falls somewhere so differently on the spectrum than being with either NQB or my best friend do.  None of them replace each other, encroach on the importance or respect of one another, so they should have no problem coexisting, right?

Usually once a week I see Mark, who has gone from non-essential lover to so-essential friend over the past two years.  He calls more often to hang out at night since he and his girlfriend broke up, but I don’t bring it up.  I never invite NQB to places he will be, and he doesn’t bring that up.  Our relationship is not physical, but I worry more about jealousy around him that I do with most friends.  Our emotional investment in each other is much higher than I’ve had with most male friends.  He’s a rock in my landscape, an anchor, always thoughtful, always reliable.  I try to be the best person I can for him, reliable, honest, a wingman, and never flirtatious or coyly misleading in that way that ruins so many friendships with even an ounce of romantic potential.  I am more honest with him than maybe anyone else in my life, even my best friend.  In many ways, he holds more space in my life than J____ does, and I wonder about the implications of open relationships so much more in the ways that they pertain to emotional availability than sex because of friendships like this.

NQB once described my relationship with my best friend as daunting to potential partners.  These days, she’s in a committed relationship — her first in the six years I’ve known her.  Early on, she felt torn between the two of us, struggling to meet both of our expectations and invariably failing both of us in some ways.  On New Year’s Eve, her boyfriend made a point to talk to me about it, to tell me how much he loves her and appreciates my support of their relationship.  “It doesn’t matter who I’m with!” my best friend has often said, “You come first.  You’ve been here six years.” I’ve generally been on board with this idea, but for the first time found myself telling him that their time together had clearly impacted each of them in such a way that he is now just as important a part of her life as I am, and that by being respectful of all of her needs, including the time she wants to spend with each of us, there’s no reason that our love as friends and roommates should get in the way of their love and their relationship.

But while I’m optimistic about the coexistence of all these varying relationships, with their unique measures of social, sexual, and psychological importance, I wonder what prevents all of our relationships from becoming more or less indistinguishable.  Will the unique peaks  and valleys of their compositions blend to become one giant muddle of bastardized free love and intention-less interaction?  Luckily, I think there’s something about being human and having these worries that keeps them from coming true.

“I wish you had taken me home before I got friend-zoned!” R___ told J____ after hearing about us.  R___ had told me the same thing on multiple occasions when I told her how attracted I was to J____.

“I didn’t know that was an option!” J____ retorted.  We sat in the winter cold sun lit shop sewing busks into their channels, making corsets from fabric scraps.  In the window, handmade underwear hung from a clothesline in discordant prints.  Behind the counter, J____’s roommate gave friends a virtual tour of the shop on skype.

“See there in the window?” he beamed, “I made those budgie smugglers!” he aimed the laptop’s camera at the boxer briefs I had helped him pattern the week before.  Periodically, passers by wandered in and asked about the shop.  Mostly friends stopped by to pick up trinkets and organic dry goods.  When the sun went down I rode home and got ready for work.

She gargled the salt water rinse someone had brought her and smiled from the glass shower, “All the time, Honey. Don’t you?”

“Sometimes,” I admitted, “But I was born with the one I have now. I watched it evolve slowly, otherwise I’m sure it would be a constant shock.” Juliette smiled and told me that if I had any questions about the scene I had just watched her in that her and her partner would be glad to answer them. I thanked her for letting me pee while she showered — we were at a party in a private house with only one bathroom, and the occasion had necessitated the consumption of many cocktails.

I thought again about her “scene”, as I’ve learned to call them, my co-worker J____ squeezing my hand as we sat on the floor in fear and fascination some ten minutes ago. Juliette had been naked in front of us, dominated by a woman who, half an hour prior, had been suspending someone else from the basement ceiling. I thought about the definition of beauty and physical contentment. I realized that in some way, Juliette is more of a woman that I am. That her constant efforts toward the feminine that her body denied her at birth sort of make the fact that she has a penis more curious than gender-defining…

[I went to a rope bondage performance/holiday party this past weekend -- my first real experience with the kinky community, which is large and ever present in San Francisco.  I was invited by a lovely co-worker, who has much more knowledge about this realm than I do, and I must admit I was truly fascinated.  Even the things that weren't up my alley -- weren't even on my map -- were pretty damn interesting.  The mutual respect and emphasis on consent amongst everyone there really made the event.  That, and all the hot naked ladies.  Anyway, there's much more to write about it, but I'm working extra this week to combat the holiday slump, so it'll have to wait.]

“Do you ever really know if you’re ready?” a customer asked me the other night.  We were talking about grad school and he was telling me that despite being a doctor, he still thought most grad school wasn’t worth it.  “Maybe not,” I said, “But you know when you’re not ready.”  We talked about Burning Man and he lamented his business partners all being so stiflingly straight-laced and I was suddenly extremely glad to be young and free, but sad to know in the same breath how little time I have left to be truly unfettered before I have to make plans to take care of Future Me instead of just Present Me.

So I dyed my hair magenta.

Anyway, I have things to sew and a secret advent calendar to take part in (and get in the mail by 5pm) and I want to write more, but then I always want to do more and I hardly ever appreciate what I’ve actually done.  I’ve been making myself take pictures of my life lately so that when I’m feeling underwhelming and it’s getting overwhelming I can take a step back and look at it and make it feel smaller or warmer or more  like whatever I need it to feel like in order for it to be manageable.  This is what it looks like lately:

Thanksgiving with my family.  We make ice cream with liquid nitrogen and serve it with chocolate heart pie.  We love by feeding each other food instead of reassuring words.  This was soon after my sister told me that she had talked to my mother about my stripping, but that my mother hadn’t really acknowledged it beyond cracking a few jokes.  She still hasn’t asked me about it, but will make oblique references to it like calling me around eleven and saying, “Oh good, you’re awake!  I just figured I’d leave a message since I know how late you get home…”  Maybe next year I’ll make a pumpkin pie with a crust cut-out of someone in Gemini pose.

The weekend after Thanksgiving my mother’s little sister came to visit.  She had just started taking pole fitness classes and asked if we could go to a strip club or burlesque show.  I showed her the pole in my room and she told me how she danced on and off in small strip clubs  around southern Oregon for years.  We connected over our family’s notoriety for approval by silence and realized how much we’ve always had in common.  I took her to a rave that night and the next morning we walked the Golden Gate bridge and scattered her old dog’s ashes off of Fort Point.  I realized I have no cousins my age, nor was I ever friends with any of our family friends’ children.  The idea of fostering closeness with any family member other than my sister is still terrifying to me, although it’s nice to know it’s possible.

This old 50′s table top Singer followed me home one day.  Sometimes I wish I lived in a time when society considered homemaking enough.  Then I feel guilty for wishing that and think of all the reasons I could still find to be unsatisfied even without the pressure of constantly wondering what more I can do to be enough.  Still, sewing is the greatest meditation I’ve ever experienced.

NQB took me on a day trip to Point Reyes after I finished the GRE.  It was the first time I can remember in years that spending a whole day with someone didn’t make me uncomfortable by the end.  It made me seriously consider the appeal of spending one’s romantic life tied to one other person for as long as humanly possible.  As a general rule, I still doubt the feasibility of monogamy, but it sure was nice to imagine for a day.

Once Sunday recently, my best friend, her boyfriend and I volunteered at a local urban farm.  We turned compost and pressed seed blocks and talked optimistically about urban sustainability, and I could see how in love they were, and for the first time I wasn’t jealous.

Down the street from Hayes Valley Farm, the Octavia corridor is booming.  Things like this make me question whether I could ever actually leave San Francisco.

I bake when I’m sad, I bake when I’m lonely, and I bake because I love (I think it goes back to the family pie thing).  I made these cupcakes for a girl whose stage name used to be Cookie (we also know someone who’s name in Vegas was Cupcake).  Happy birthday, Cookie!

This was on the floor of my studio, where I am off to now.

When I first hit the floor around 9, I sat at a table with a couple of older dancers who work pretty much every Monday.  M___ and A___ may be “more mature”, as they say, but they’re both attractive, commanding women, and between the two of them a veritable brain trust on the industry in our area.  M___ was telling a story about the last time C____ came in; a daytime customer of the club who apparently comes in quite regularly and spends upward of $10,000 a day.  I’d heard his name, but never seen him.  Why don’t I have regulars like that? I thought to myself, but soon regretted it.

“He was so drunk he threw up on Housemom L___,” M___ explained.  “He was probably about to go home, but I guess one of the waitresses upstairs caught his eye, and since the waitresses can’t do a room without a dancer, and I had just come in for the night shift, the daytime DJ grabbed me.  I’d only done a room with him once before — with his friend, who was totally sweet and just wanted to play with my boobs and talk about his job — but I felt bad for the poor girl who C____ picked.  You don’t say no to C____.”  M___ proceeded to tell A___ and I how this customer has the management in his pocket because of how much he spends, and how girls who don’t do what he asks get terminated and blacklisted from every club in the city owned by the same parent company.

“What about G___ and all them?  The daytime girls who all got fired at once,” A___ asked.

“They were C____’s girls,” M___ nodded somberly.  “We drank four bottles of $1,200 champagne that night.  It’s not on the menu…has gold flakes in it or something.  Anyway, you have to drink when you’re with C____.  He only orders these shots that have, like, everything in them– just straight booze — and if you don’t take them, he’ll kick you out of the room,” she paused, “And then you’ll probably get fired anyway, too.”  She grimaced remembering the shots and went on with her story, “The first time I did a room with him and his friend, I saw some things, so when G___ [the daytime DJ] grabbed me for a room the second time, I was like, ‘Oh great…’  He and Housemom were in the room with the waitress, and I kept trying to distract C____ from doing anything crazy, but then G___ said, ‘You know you’re only in here because C____ wants the waitress, so chill out and have some champagne!’  I did that for awhile, but C____ wanted G___ to have a good time, too, which was apparently what he thought I was there for, so…” she trailed off and A___ and I grimaced.  “Nothing bad bad,” M___ assured us, “but I had to remind G___ a few times that we were just playing a part, you know?  Like, ‘Okay… Look like you’re having fun, but get your tongue out of my throat…’  I told him, ‘I know you’re just doing your part to make your money, too… And we’re drunk, but if that’s not it, I don’t want to know, because I’m already terrified of pissing C____ off, and I cannot take enough showers after the first room I saw him in, so let’s just get through this!’”  My naive mind was still reeling at the idea that girls could actually get fired for not putting out.

“Then C____ whipped out his little dick, which is like this big,” she said, holding up her thumb and forefinger about two inches apart, “And that’s hard.  I bet you can’t even see it otherwise.  And the waitress was freaking out.  She had been saying, ‘Oh, someone’s coming.  I think someone’s coming!’ while she was on his lap before, and finally G___ said, ‘No one’s coming.  No one’s ever coming to this room,’ so she didn’t know what to do.  C____ told her to sit on it, and when she finally moved closer to him he said, ‘No.  Without your skirt!’ which totally freaked her out, so he kept saying, ‘I’m clean, Baby!  Trust me!  I’m clean!’ and then I said, ‘Yeah, about as clean as the five other girls you were in here with all afternoon!’ which was terrible!  I’m so lucky he was so drunk or I would have been screwed.”

“M___ standby for the main.  M___ will be joining you on the main right after this song,” the night DJ announced over the speakers.

“Aaaaanyway,” M___ stood up to leave, “All I’m saying is that I left with $4,000 that night last week, but I earned every penny.  Oh, and don’t piss off C____.”  She walked away as A___ and I looked at each other in disbelief, but it wasn’t a minute before another girl walked over to the table and began talking to A___ about some mutual friend… or customer… I couldn’t tell.  All I heard were snippets of their conversation before I waked away.

“So I had a few girlfriends meet me there, and we decided to all go back to his house, but they rode separately and I rode with him.  I guess his friends must’ve given my friends the wrong address because they said their GPS couldn’t find it, and then on the way there he pulled over the car, pulled out his thing, and then reached around the back of my head to pull it down toward him!”

All this talk of sexual assault really wasn’t putting me in the mood to work the room, and it was after midnight by the time I reached the stage a second time and started making money.  A group of three guys were kind and friendly and tipped the stage while we chatted and I did what limited pole tricks I could in my long wig.  I told them I couldn’t come talk to them at the stage once someone else was dancing, so one of them peeled off from the group and sat with me at a cocktail table.  We had a $60 dance and then he introduced me to his friend.

“Oh wait– you can’t come to the stage, right?” he said after our dance.  “Hey B____!  He yelled to one of his stageside friends, “Come meet Holly!” he smiled as he took B____’s seat.

After a couple of minutes of chit chat, I explained to B____ that I wasn’t quite sure why his friend had singled him out and dumped me on him.  I didn’t want to bother him or waste either of our time, I said, ready for rejection.  He told me that he and his friend, now co-workers, had known each other since they were fourteen, and than he had called him over because he knew I was exactly B____’s type.  I sighed a giant sigh of relief internally and began to loosen up.  We did three $100 dances upstairs, and he tipped me $100 in cash when I mentioned how much the club takes from our credit card transactions ($20 from every $100 dance, plus $15 from every $100 payed by credit card, leaving the dancer with $65 of every $100 before tip out!).  He was young and attractive, and we talked about motorcycles and gardening.  I was glad to finally be making money, and grateful to be doing it with someone kind and easy on the eyes.  More than once he commented on my perfume.

“What is it?!” he kept asking.

“Jasmine oil!” I kept telling him

“Really?  That’s all?” he said.  I resisted the urge to explain how essential oils react differently to different skin types.  How they change over time, and how I had put mine on, as I always do first thing after getting out of the shower; How maybe he was smelling more of me than the jasmine.  “You also kind of smell like coconut,” he mused.  “Not the piña-colada-apple-pie-berry-surprise stripper kind of coconut, though,” he added.

“The lotion I wear is coconut oil based,” I said.  “With shea butter and apricot kernel oil, and…jasmine oil!  I make it myself,” I explained.

“Are you sure that’s it, though?” he kept asking.  And then finally, “What do you think you really smell like?”  I’ve encountered this phenomenon before, but no man’s ever inquired directly about it.  I don’t know if it’s pheromones, or sweat, or some combination of other totally un-sexy things like dander and hormones, but something changes at a chemical level during that time of the month that makes us that much more irresistible to men once they’re in our sphere.

I decided to level with him, in a sort of half-way, “Really?” he nodded slowly, his eyes on me, “Really, it’s probably part lotion part human.”

“Human?” he asked.

“Yes, human,” I answered.  “Person smell; Everyone has one.”

“I think you’re probably right,” he said after some consideration, “And yours is intoxicating.

He stayed until the very end and left without making a fuss or asking me to come home with him/meet up “sometime”/give him my number.  I’m always torn about how much of my “real” self to project at work — the persona is real, if fortified for work purposes, but one might barely recognize me outside the club without the push up bras, false lashes, lip gloss, and wigs.  It felt as though my body was trying to reassure me it would not (could not) lose itself, forget its identity under the pancake makeup and corsets, on a night when I was clearly having doubts about my ability to persevere in an environment made of of extremes I still hope I’ll never give into.

It’s been quite a week of updates already, and I haven’t even gotten into my family finding out about my job or taking my aunt to a rave on Thanksgiving weekend!

Some days, I bake to have something to concrete to accomplish, and other times I don’t even know how the hours pass.  The closer I get to application deadlines the more I wonder if I’m ready for grad school at all.  At least once a day I wonder what would be so bad about stripping and writing for as long as it takes for writing to become its own financially solvent affair, but I’m either too practical or too chickenshit to give it a serious try.  In between, I’ve filled my nights off with friends and bars and birthday parties which leave me hung over and feeling lazy for not having the energy to create when I do have the energy for escapism.

I feel like I occupy a large limbo space between so many potential lynchpins of personal satisfaction.  Do I want to pursue a career as a writer, or should I use my BFA in fashion design?  Can I devote enough time to sewing in my studio without sabotaging my manuscript and paid writing gigs?  Do I want to settle down with NQB after nearly a year on the fence, or am I not willing to give up being single?  Are those options even available to me, or should we just put off having the conversation all together?  The only thing I’m sure of is that dancing buys me the time I need to make those decisions.  I would argue that my disparate passions shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, but I’ve watched the effects of trying to do it all and ending up with very little of everything affect my own happiness.  Maybe a couple of years ago I would try to juggle a little bit of everything instead of having to give anything up.  Maybe in retrospect that is what I did and why I’m in this mess in the first place.

I went over two letters of recommendation I received this morning and felt a wave of guilt so strong it almost made me nauseous.  How can I be willing to ask for people to lend me their support when I don’t even know what it is that I’m asking them to support?  Me the writer?  Me the seamstress?  Me the dancer?  Or me the self indulgent twenty-something who most mornings can’t even seem to get out of bed for at least half an hour after waking?