Stripper Politics: Fighting

Let me say that I think fighting is a beautiful thing, a forgotten art. A good fight is better than good sex, comparable in that when done with the right person after the proper amount of tension has built, both fighting and sex fill an ancient need deep inside you, and when done with someone you just met, both bring satisfaction tinged with confusion and guilt… but I digress. My point is that you can’t fight fair these days. On the street (and in the club, mall, etc.) everyone’s got a gun now, and where there aren’t guns there’s politics.

The other night, I wanted nothing more than to punch this chick at work. What happened was, I did two table dances for a bachelor party right before I had to go onstage. My outfit got all twisted as I was putting it back on and I was late so I put the twenty dollars they gave me on the stairs leading up to the stage (which are blocked by a door)and did my stage set. The next girl after me took her time getting onstage and when I was coming down the stairs… no twenty dollars.

I KNOW she took it, because the bathroom attendant who sits right by those stairs said he didn’t see anyone else go through the door, because the girl in question is an alcoholic piece of shit to begin with, and because when I casually asked her if she “happened to see” a twenty dollar bill on the stairs she started acting extra suspect. I KNEW but I couldn’t PROVE so I couldn’t ask management to do anything about it (plus snitching twice in one week would have required me to deduct an unprecedented amount of cool points from myself.) I couldn’t confront her because that would have turned into me swinging on her, and I really was not trying to get fired over twenty dollars. I could have tried to turn the other girls against her but that would have only led to drama which would A.) result in a fight or B.) result in me getting on management’s bad side, the two outcomes I was trying to avoid. It’s not about the money honestly. It’s the feeling of being stolen from, cheated, violated that really takes me out of my right mind. 

In the end I did the right thing and let it go, chalked it to the game and accepted that it was my fault. Money has to either be behind a lock, on your body, or in a place where you can see/ hear/ communicate telepathically with it. I KNOW this but lately I’ve been slipping, and I’m just lucky it was twenty dollars and not more. I had to do this exercise I’ve been using lately whenever anger, anxiety, or any other emotion threatens to get the best of me.

I tell the emotion, “I acknowledge you, I’m not ashamed of you, you can live here, but you can’t control me.”

It’s true that of all the political arenas and all the battlegrounds we face, the most difficult-and most crucial- one to master is the one that lies inside ourselves.