Of course, going into the underground has its dangers. You never know if you can come back from it. The commonly known threats of working at a strip club are very real:
- You get paid to get drunk with strangers. Then you go private with them. No need to elaborate any further.
- You can try not to drink and only sell private dances, but it can be a very tough job listening all night to drunk idiots while sober. But the social lubricant makes your work so much easier, until you have a serious problem at hand.
- Not to even mention ‘real’ drugs. If everyone around you always parties, you’ll notice too late that you can’t step out of the carousel anymore. Kind of like living in Berlin.
- And the most underrated part: the money trap. After making paper so easily, any other paycheck will look like a midget to a giant but involve actual work (of course, convincing Larry from Omaha to spend his hard-earned money for watching your titties bounce is work, but you know what I mean).
What people don't know is the good stuff
Like getting better at setting boundaries: If drunk idiots are drooling into your décolleté all the time, you get so much better at saying stop or no.
Or the body positivity: All of a sudden, you see that none of the girls around you are walking for Victoria’s Secret, yet the drooling never stops. Men just don’t care about stretch marks like we do.
Let’s not forget about empowerment: You learn to make patrons drool and to pay you when YOU want them to.
And my very favorite part — You meet super interesting people from all walks of life: You can make artists, lawyers, brokers, farmers, taxi drivers, managers, teachers, and famous people all drool alike.
Lisbon : My first stripper job
During a caravan journey with my ex-boyfriend and a heavy break-up, I made my way to Lisbon alone. It was the perfect time to take a shot at this crazy dream I had for a while: I wanted to know what it’s like to be a stripper.
So at 33 I started my new career with a small caveat: there is an option where you don’t dance on stage. Instead you sit with the men and stick around as long as they are willing to pay for your expensive drinks or a private dance. In return you make them feel admired.
Now, thinking about how much more money I could have made and how much I love the stage, I feel a bit of regret. In the beginning, I was way too paranoid about meeting someone I knew, and I thought it would be more believable that I was a guest if I didn’t dance naked on stage.
* I will use your email address for lots of naughty things, but always stay respectful. I promise!
In the beginning everything was exciting
My first private: The guy adored me so much, that I just wiggled my ass a bit for 80 € and he was still happy.
My first bottle of champagne: What, someone was ready to pay 250€ and all I had to do is ask?!
The first rich guy I treated like a cash machine: It took me a while to understand that the more I demand, the more attractive I am to a rich dude.
Feeling like a badass bitch eventually wore off like a whore’s lip gloss.
I had to sit and talk to people for hours who I’d despise in the outside world. Tough for an introvert like me. I heard myself saying the same stuff over and over again, about myself, about why they should buy my expensive ten minutes.
No matter how much money I made, it always felt like a race to the bottom. All the power and paper didn’t balance out the fact that I had no life outside of the club. I worked when people met friends, and I slept and vegetated around when they worked.
My mind craved normal conversations, my body vitamin D. I somehow always had the blues, except when I was drunk, cause that meant I had well-paying customers.
Six fucking nights a week. I asked the same fucking questions but didn’t give a fuck about the answer. Not giving a fuck can suck the life out of you.
On many nights, the club was empty, but 15–20 girls had to be there nonetheless until 5 am. The older the ladies, the harder it was for them to finish the month with a happy end and all bills paid. I saw dudes checking from girl to girl, asking for circus tricks. When they finally took someone to the private, the rest of us knew she was ready to jump through burning hoops or fire the canon.
The nights were either fantastic or tragic. Stripping is so fucking ambivalent. Either you get paid like crazy or watch others get paid like crazy. A real test of character.
It never was the physical part that turned me off. Privates are easy because I’m the ship's captain and can decide where we’re going. Most men are actually respectful and a bit intimidated. Instead, it was the mental boredom and repetition that made me ditch the pole.
Bye for the first time
After three months, I was ready for a new adventure: a notorious club regular (and millionaire) made my fellow stripper friend and me an offer we couldn’t resist — the opportunity to move in with him. We believed we could outsmart him and enjoy a lavish life without selling our souls to the devil.
Well, I only believed it for a week, then the devil decided that this was not a good deal for him and sorted me out of the playboy mansion. My friend stayed and equipped her whole family with expensive jewelry and other things that buy souls.
This was the exit I needed from the club. I was too embarrassed to return to it after everyone knew we’d broken stripper rule number 1: never ever surrender to men. This was the first time I believed my experience as a stripper was over.
Capetown: ACT 2
For about a year I stayed out of the club, now working as a real estate agent, which felt morally just as questionable. I didn’t do too well in this new shark tank and was super short on money. So I put my last cash down on a flight to Capetown for a one-month workation at an XXL strip club called Maverick.
Imagine a four-story building with velvet and gold decorations all around and 80–100 girls working every night. At home in Lisbon, I booked a studio with mirrors to practice dancing on stage.
In Capetown the system was different: Instead of splitting our earnings with the promoter, we paid a fee to work, but we could keep 100% of what we hustled. As if their secret mission was to discipline a bitch, they had a long list of penalties. For example, if you didn’t start your stage dance on time, you had to pay the equivalent of 20 bucks.
Cameras everywhere, including the privates, made sure there was no hoop jumping on their premises.
But three factors made this whole endeavor miserable from the beginning:
- Due to the drought in 2018, most visitors canceled their trip to Capetown altogether. So imagine 100 girls fighting over a few visitors in this vast club. Perfect fucking setting for a Barbie massacre.
- For some reason, the girls were pretending even more to be saints than in Lisbon. One time, a girl asked me why I always crawl on stage. (Like a slow sexy puma, I may add.) ‘It doesn’t look nice’ she said, as if I had asked. Dear reader, unfortunately, you’ll never see me dance. So let me tell you: being perceived as ‘nice’ is the last thing I want. Instead, the audience should have a boner and goosebumps simultaneously. I fill the object with character.
-This club was actually a whorehouse pretending to be a titty bar. The proper money was made by going home with guests and firing their canon there. At my Lisbon joint, leaving the venue was an absolute no-go, whereas here, you could easily buy us out for the night. Oh fucking hell naw. I’m not a prostitute, I just like to bounce my titties for money. That’s a huuuge difference. And even though I’m super thankful for whores to take over the tough job of satisfying literally every nasty motherfucker, that’s not something I could do. And even if I was a prostitute, during the day, I already looked paranoid like a chicken walking around Capetown because it’s so dangerous. No fucking way I’d go home to some stranger’s house! I’m a fan of the concept of life. It’s kinda nice.
So after one precarious month, I returned home, broke, like an honest lawyer, and kept my life instead.
Berlin: The last act (is it?)
Three is a magic number. After the disastrous Capetown stripper experience, I don’t think any other city could have healed my little heart like Berlin. I was still living in Portugal, starting to pursue a serious career, but at the same time madly missing the rush only a stage can give you.
So I flew to Berlin once a month to get my fix. I had perfected my seduction dance and glaze in South Africa, so I came mainly to perform for the audience and have fun.
In this setting, I felt like the queen of the night. When I danced on stage, I crawled into people’s minds, behind their shame and shyness. I just brushed it to the side like a curtain, like a person who doesn’t have these traits herself. I felt like I owned them for that brief moment when they could not escape my gaze and curves.
The coolest compliment I ever received was from a fellow stripper: ‘When you dance, all of us girls are watching.’ I like to build an aura and hypnotize the audience. This is my beloved black mamba part. It’s also the part I miss so much.
This time, I said no to many privates, even if I just slightly disliked the guy. There is a German saying: Berlin is poor but sexy. So, there was no champagne consumption, and my job as a stripper wasn’t to get drunk but purely to express myself.
Hallelujah!
The relationship with the girls was less freezy, even if not warm. You find many things at the club, but friends are not one of them. And Mia Who entirely became the stage boss bitch I love so much. I bet you would have tipped the hell out of her. They sure did.
Burying my stripper career… again
Generally, being a stripper feels like leading the life of a double agent, and just like Donald Trump, you get used to telling alternative facts to the world. It’s just not ready for the truth that you can be different people in one: an ambitious chick and one that likes to mingle in the underground.
I danced this limbo for about 6 months until I received a work proposal that was too lucrative to turn down; double the pay of my last full-time job.
To work in Berlin.
So, I packed my bags and left the old corset for a new one. And because god has humor, my new office was literally 5 minutes from the Berlin strip club away. It was a bit of a ‘sweating like a pregnant nun situation’, but my cover was never blown.
So, is that really it?
There is something sticky about the club. It’s hard to get completely out. Even now, at 40, this little devil still sits on my shoulder, trying to bedazzle me. And the damn quick money. Nowhere else can I make such a fast buck as a woman (well, a few more things come to mind, but telling your friends about those later will provoke more than just a raised eyebrow.)
So if you consider becoming a stripper, just know that a quick in-and-out is unlikely.
What makes the club fun are the many interesting people you can meet there. I had my most elaborate conversations at the strip club because life is ironic like that.
Realizing that I could easily keep up with white-collar conversations made me take myself out of the dumb girl corner I believed I was destined to be in. It was in the club where I gained the confidence to upgrade my career and reach for the stars. I’ll be forever thankful and defend the club with all my heart.
Six years after my first experience as a stripper, I had the urge to go back to the place where it all started: my Lisbon strip club. I was shocked. Almost everybody was still there.
The girls, the waiters, the security guy. Only the DJ was new. They’ve been saying the same stuff over and over again for the last six years, with an unintentional and probably traumatic pause due to corona.
Did you just imagine me as a 39-year-old stripper? No, silly, I went there as a guest!
My once beautiful crush Anya still has the nicest titties. But her face… if I’d see her beauty doctor, I’d break his nose so he can rebuild it again. I tipped her when she came off stage and was delighted that she recognized me immediately. But we could both tell that I was on the other side now, so she left after a brief chat.
My friend Bruno, who came along, asked me if I had the urge to go back to stripping or if I had any regrets.Today I don’t just feel too old, I also feel too proud. I don’t want to give random people the power to buy my time, body or mind anymore.But fuck yeah, I would do it all over again. Je ne regrette rien.
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