Been There, Did That…

A lot of Adult Industry professionals become alcohol ridden, drug-addicted crazies. But not all of them.

I am a retired Exotic Entertainer. I stripped in just about every club in the city for four years. I have never been ashamed of stripping for a living. It was a means to an end. It paid the bills. I didn’t have (or develop) any drug habits and I didn’t drink alcohol. Hell, I didn’t even smoke cigarettes.

These days I work at a desk, in a cube as part of a corporation just like the rest of Middle America and I still work in the Adult Industry. I am the Associate Editor for a popular Adult Industry magazine in the Carolinas and in the marketing / promotional department of an Internet porn company. I enjoy the work and the chance I have to talk to the ladies and gentlemen who work as I had in clubs and these days, on film and on the Internet.

At the time I began my career in the Adult Industry, I was fresh out of the USAF after a two-year stint in England. I left the military with an Honorable–Medical discharge so I lost all the money I had put aside to go to school. My High School grades were just not good enough for college scholarships.

Back then; I didn’t have any marketable skills other than waitressing. Unemployment was sky-high. All the restaurants I trolled were looking for strictly part-time help. Part-time waitress work just doesn’t cover rent and bills.

I didn’t have a car. I didn’t have a roof over my head. I had my belongings in a pile of boxes next to the couch I was sleeping on. I was lucky - I didn’t have kids.

I was out of options and the strip club down the street, only blocks away from where I was staying, was hiring.

I worked my ass off. Literally. I went from a size ten down to a size five just from the physical exercise alone. Five to six days a week, eight to ten hours of aerobic exercise teetering on high heels will do that to you. Six months into my career I had an apartment of my own. The rent was being paid and so were the bills. I worked very hard and to this day, my old managers still remember me as a good performer.

A few problems arose. I lost weight so fast that my body chemistry began to get weird on me. I began having very strange sleep patterns. I would be awake – wide, wide-awake for twenty-four hours at a time then sleep around the clock for twenty-four more. All of a sudden I had to drink a lot of coffee and sometimes use over-the counter Wake-Up pills to keep on, keeping on. When I couldn’t sleep I started taking over the counter sleeping pills.

The weird sleep habits coupled with the pills I was popping to maintain, threw my temperament into a really bizarre cycle. One minute I was screamingly happy and perky then ten minutes later, I was screamingly manic with moments of rage mixed in. There seemed to be no pattern for my radical mood swings. It changed from moment to moment.

I was nuts and it had nothing to do with cocaine or booze.

There were other hazards of the profession. I was approached by pimps and the ladies who worked for them: Why was I wasting the time dancing when I could make the same amount of money or more on my back? The drug dealers were just as bad. In most cases, the Pimps and the Drug-dealers were the same people.

I never dealt drugs and I never hooked. Let me tell you, those of us who danced for a living just didn’t have the time to play hooker after work or maintain the connections that drug-trafficking requires. There just weren’t enough hours in the day.

But there were those around us that took the pimps and the drug dealers up on their offers of better money. They had mouths to feed and bills to pay.

On top of this were the customers. I was playing the part of a Bad Girl, and I was playing it convincingly. I was told to my face several times that a dancer was a fancy way of saying I was a whore. Playing the Bad Girl made good money but I knew better than to go home with any of the guys that came for the show.

It was Us - Ladies of the Evening, against Them – John Q. Public. We flirted and played slut to coax money from their hands. They flirted and showered us with compliments and cash to coax us into sleeping with them. The competition was fierce.

Once the average guy knew what we did for a living they assumed that we would drop our panties for them. We lost every male friend we had and some of us lost family too. Lots of my friends became bisexual or straight lesbian because we just couldn’t trust the people around us.

In some cases, especially the girls who were new to the profession or really young, a girl would fall for a guy’s pretty words. The girls never met the guys’ friends but especially, not the guys’ family. The only time they shared with their guy was in the sack. No dates, no going out – they might be seen together.

Two weeks later they were crying over the guy because he was treating her like a dirty little secret or worse, a convenient piece of ass. You get really tired of being good enough to sleep with, but not good enough to openly date. Most of these schmucks had ‘official girlfriends’ or wives that went to all the dinner parties or visited with his family.

There are always stories of abusive managers but most Adult Industry Professionals knew which clubs they managed and word got around overnight. The clubs closed because we refused to work for them.

Surprisingly, most of the men who actually worked in the clubs as bouncers, bartenders or management cared more for us then our own family. They saw up close and personal the battle we waged nightly with the customers, pimps and drug dealers. They saw what we had to do to feed ourselves.

They walked us out to our cars at night facing knives and sometimes guns to keep us safe from the predators. They drove us home when our boyfriends or family threw righteous tantrums over how we paid the bills and refused to take us home. Most of the bouncers I knew had a girl on their couch almost every night. Their couch not their bed.

I’m not saying that some few of us didn’t sleep with the men who watched over us. Gratitude is a powerful emotion and feeling safe is a rare thing in this profession.

The Mental Balancing Act

In the Adult Industry environment the average performer (male and female,) plays a slut. The sluttier they are, the more popular amongst the customers. The more popular the performer the better the money they make and the money can be very good.

On top of this everyone knows that Sluts are Bad People, including the Adult Industry Professionals themselves. The media and the law support this ‘Bad Person’ attitude.

Most people start working in the Adult Industry because they can’t get a job elsewhere. The average stripper I worked with was trying to put themselves through college or supporting themselves and their kids, as a single parent.

In many states, Adult Industry Professionals can be declared unfit parents and lose their children – simply because of ‘how’ they make their paychecks.

The average Exotic Dancer works for eight to ten hours a night, anywhere from four to six nights in a row. I did it for weeks in row, non-stop, during the Holidays when I needed the money. Then the performer goes home to the real world, the world everyone else lives in. After playing The Slut all night, they have to switch gears and play The Good College Kid or Loving Parent at home.

Some Adult Industry Professionals can keep their heads together and maintain this delicate mental balancing act by realizing that they are playing a game of ‘Let's make-pretend we’re a Slut’.

I was 26 when I began my career in the Adult Industry, but many, many dancers begin their careers while they are still in High School. Talk about teen-age ‘peer pressure’ problems! When I started dancing professionally it was still perfectly legal to dance topless at the age of 16. A customer couldn’t enter the same club if they were under 21.

A lot of Adult Industry professionals snap. People get lost. They forget that ‘What You DO is NOT Who You Are’. It is very hard to maintain your personal integrity of ‘Who You Are’, when you go from playing The Slut, to playing The Good Girl then back to playing The Slut day after day. Especially when the most attention and approval (a la Cold Hard Cash,) they receive is from successfully playing The Slut (when everyone around you knows that Sluts are Bad.)

Many Professionals literally become two separate people in their own head – just to do their job.

“I’m Tammy and I’m a good girl, I go to college but at night I’m Rose and Rose is a party girl who will do anything with anyone!”

This is called schizophrenia.

For those who need help to do their jobs there’s booze and high-dollar pick-me-up drugs available. These are supplied by the customers, boyfriends or in some cases – the other dancers. When they need more help to change gears back to being a Good Student or Parent there is booze, under-the-counter relaxants and more expensive drugs to help them maintain.

They are not crazy from the drugs and booze – they are taking drugs and booze to appear normal.

For those of you out there, dating or married to an Adult Industry Professional, they need your support and approval for the battle they are waging to be good at their job and a loving person to the people they care about. All too often they also need the support of a counseling professional to help them balance their job and themselves too. Shrinks are expensive and time consuming but sometimes very necessary for survival.

Survival is the name of the game that those in the Adult Industry are playing. Far too many of them are fighting to pay the bills the only way they have open to them.

This is not a profession for anyone who does not have a strong constitution and an iron will. Pure unadulterated stubbornness carried me through. I have lost friends and companions along the way who were not so strong.

It has been eight years since I took my clothes off for a living. I still dream of the stage and the screaming, howling audience. The need to get up in front of a cheering audience and be thought of as the ultimate sexual fantasy never really goes away.

I am a retired Exotic Entertainer. I stripped in just about every club in the city for four years. I have never been ashamed of stripping for a living. It was a means to an end. Now I do other things to pay my bills.

For those of you still working it to make a living – You Go Girl! But Keep your Shit Together people!

Remember: What you DO does not even come close to who you ARE.

Tomorrow is coming and someday soon, it will be here.

(C) Morgan Hawke