My name is Lilith, err, I mean Sarah. Lilith is my stage name.


You know, Lilith as in the Dark Goddess.


Yeah, I came in here thinking I was being edgy with my dark little name. I thought I was going to corner the goth-y market here, but there's a dancer here called Spider Girl.


Spider Girl makes me look like Barbie. Kind of. I mean, I'm no Margot Robbie. I'm more like a shorter Dakota Johnson if you ordered her on Wish.


Anyhow, this is my second week of working as a topless dancer and sometimes it's as fun and exciting as one would think it might be, and other times, it's a little on the surprising side.


One of the first surprises was the fact that our backstage dressing room isn't so much a dressing room as it is a locker room. And it smells like a locker room too.


In stripper movies, their dressing rooms are all cozy and glamorous but this sort of looks like someone tried to make a prison bathroom a little less dismal.


And it smells like a JV football team hangs out on the regular.


I don't really know who is making it smell so bad. All the girls that I've been in close proximity to have smelled nice. And the bouncers - they smell too nice. Like they drowned in knock-off Obsession.

So it's not any of them.


Sometimes the sweat smell is a nice break from the number two smell in there.


It boggles my mind that someone could actually take a dump between dances. We wear g-strings and there is no bidet in here.


Icky.


I guess if you gotta go, you gotta go.

I don't eat at all on days I work until after my shift, which is just perfect because on the weekends we have a badass breakfast buffet that starts at 2 am. It's actually pretty good.

I always take some Belgian waffles home with me too.


Anyway, I just wish we could get some candles in the locker room or something.


Getting back on topic, I'm not from a broken home or anything. I'm not any stereotype about strippers other than the fact that I am a single mom.

I got into stripping because I wanted to.


Well, I heard the money is good as well.


But I have always wanted to try doing this so here I am.


I'm a little older than most of the other girls, but they don't know how old I actually am. (I tell everyone I'm 27 but I'm really 32.)


Honestly, I just got tired of food service and retail. Those jobs are great if you like being treated like shit and making chump change in the process. Oh, and basically being on call all the time.


Technically, not on call. But if they call and you don't answer, you can kiss a pleasant work environment goodbye.


Since I am 32 now, I figured that it's now or never. I can get in there, dance a few years, and maybe save up for my retirement.


Well, after I get my Mommy Makeover, that is.


I need a new pair of boobs. I breastfed for three solid years.


Honestly, I don't feel too bad about my current set of jugs; there are a lot fewer fake boobs in here than I thought. Mine are still perky for the most part.


One girl, Taz, has a set that looks like volleyballs. She also has lips that can't even close all the way and her entire forehead can't move at all.


But she seems really nice.


Spider Girl has really small boobs but that's part of her image, I think. She's skinny and sort of wiley. And a little scary.


My friend Delphine says no one has ever seen Spider Girl smile. Ever.


Delphine's name isn't really Delphine, it's Marni, but you know, stage name.


She's only 21 but she's been the one mentoring me.


She's also a single mom, but her little girl is just a baby. Mine is 5 years old.


My sister, Wendy just moved in with me a few months ago, and since she doesn't really like to work, she stays home with Penny.


Yep, my baby's name is Penny. Just like from The Big Bang Theory, which is one of my favorite shows.


Nobody else in my family knows I'm a stripper.


My folks think I am cocktailing, which I honestly was for about a week, but the girls up on stage looked like they were having so much fun.


Penny's sperm donor is rarely in the picture, which means that we get nothing from him ever, so it's all on me to earn the big bucks.


And that's a lot harder than people think!


There are fees for everything here! You have to tip out the staff at the end of the night.


And if you leave early, you have to pay an $80 house fee.


If you stay all 8 hours though, that fee gets scratched, so it's best to stay as long as you can.


There's no paycheck like my friends and I used to joke about whenever we drove by a strip joint.


We'd be like, "Oh hey, I need to swing into SinSations and pick up my check," and everyone in the car would laugh.


I don't know why, now. It honestly wasn't all that funny.


But anyhow it's all tips.


They add up quick though!


The real money comes from the private dances, but being up on stage is the fun part.


I wanted to dance to industrial metal but Spider Girl is somehow the only one who is allowed to, so I usually get synth pop which is still pretty good.


Most of the girls are too young to know about old-school synth pop.


My high school dance coach had been a teenager when all of that was first popular so guess what we did all of our warmups to?


I do love me some Eurythmics, though.


Most of the other girls like R&B, and not the retro R&B, but the new stuff. Or country. There's a lot of country too, which I like better than R&B.


They had some Justin Bieber song playing for my very first dance and I almost quit.


I can't dance to him. Maybe his ex-ballerina wife could help him make some more danceable music.


Another good thing about this career is I don't have to work as many hours as I did at my other jobs. I am only here 4 nights a week. Of course that includes most weekends, but I have no life anyway.


I have sworn off dating for the time being and Wendy, Penny, and I like to just keep to ourselves mostly.


Wendy is trying to start an Etsy shop and if that doesn't work, she's going to try phone sex work.


We grew up going to church on Sundays and here we both are doing the sex work thing. Well, I am anyway.

It's not like we dancers have sex with the customers.


I mean if they go home and jerk it after being here, that's their business.


As long as I have that cash in hand - and I don't piss off Spider Girl - I am good to go.


Time to order some more hypoallergenic body glitter...