Nightside Jonny

Musical Memories

2012-01-19T18:38:00.003-06:00

Dropping back in for reasons I can't completely state. My life has changed in just about every way since starting this blog, and mostly for the worse. And one of the things I do now as a matter of routine that I never used to do is shop at dollar stores for staple items.

I used to visit dollar stores occasionally back when I was with Mrs. Jonny, but mostly to hide money. Buy the super-cheap thing, but claim you bought the more expensive thing and pocket the difference. Took a while to build up, but I was able to put together substantial infrequent party funds that way. Now I shop there because I can't afford anything else.

But I'm there tonight, and hear this song on the sound system. And as music does, it evoked a very specific memory. The song was Terence Trent D'Arby's "Wishing Well," and like so many songs from the 80's nad 90's, I immediately thought of strippers. Unlike most of those songs, however, this song made me think of a very particular stripper.

I wish I could remember her name. I've seen literally hundreds of strippers since then, and her stage name has vanished from my memory. There was a small town near where I lived at the time, a rural community that had literally been engulfed by urban sprawl. It had one main street that consisted of a factory, a gas station, and four strip clubs. The one where she worked was the newest, biggest and nicest. At the time it was built, it was pretty much the most upscale club in the entire metro area. They had some fine women there, including a set of amazing twins, but the hottest girl there I'll call Vera.

She was built something like the late porn star Savannah--slim and stacked with awesome tits that may not have been entirely natural, but were lovely nevertheless, and long, slim legs. Like Savannah, she had blonde hair that she wore in bangs falling down to her eyes, mainly because she had a mole on her forehead that she was self-conscious about. She looked absolutely modern, and even elegant in her way, but when she spoke, she had a soft voice with the slightest hint of country twang. She had wispy blonde pubic hair that was the closest thing to a bare pussy I had ever seen, which I found absolutely hypnotic. She wore these skintight minidresses, one green and one orange (IIRC) that glowed under the blacklights on stage.

And I mainly remember her dancing to two songs: "Wishing Well," and "Catch Me I'm Falling" by Pretty Poison. I don't really love either song, but whenever I hear them, I think of her, gyrating on stage and pressing those magnificent tits together. I miss being able to go out occasionally and see her or someone like her.

If You Can't Post At Least Once a Year, You Should Close the Blog

2012-01-01T00:16:00.003-06:00

I'm smoking a cigar, drinking champagne and looking to the future.

So another year. What's changed? Well, I've started blogging 7 days a week as DJ. Not getting a lot of traffic, nor much money from book sales, but at least it's a ton of work.

By my reckoning, the divorce should be potentially final, but Mrs. Jonny hasn't actually made her court appearance yet (AFAIK), so I'm still legally married, although I have a certificate that says I'm qualified to be divorced. Seriously, if anyone tells you, "There ought to be a law," tell them to shove it up their ass. We have plenty already.

I'm still mostly broke, stuck in a crappy job I don't dare leave, because the last two times I tried, it was months before I could get another one. Women? None. I watch camgirls on My Free Cams quite a bit, which is fascinating, because you can tell by their placement on the page how popular they are, and it's fascinating to see the gorgeous sexy women who haven't managed to find any kind of following, while less interesting (to me) women have managed to score popularity by finding a niche in the much-more-complicated-than-you-would-believe ecology of on-line porn.

BTW, Ukrainian women are gorgeous. And an interesting thing is happening with some of the Korean women changing their screen names to "Asian" rather than "Korean." I wonder if it has anything to do with the death of Kim Jong Il. Weird.

This year? I resolve to find success. I've been held back by a lack of confidence and a lack of product--building a brand without money is more work than you would think--but I think this year I can crack it. My dues are paid; my time is coming.

Sexless months=37

Scattershot post, I know, but it's New Year's Eve. You can't expect coherence, seriously.

The Dangerous Place

2011-10-06T13:31:00.003-06:00

Yes, another infrequent update. DJ is now blogging seven days a week, so I rarely have energy left over to post here. But life develops.

Architect Girl didn't work out, which is fine. I asked her out to an event or two which we didn't make it to. Then she wrote me back that she'd been to a "fun" event featuring a poet, which I had decided not to suggest we attend because it seemed like the most excruciatingly awful night I could imagine. At that point, I decided no matter how lonely I am and how cute she is, there's a gap in taste that is just not worth the time.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Jonny and I had our first court date. My waiver is filed, and our temporary order is in place, and now I just have to go to a parenting class, because you know, we might not have figured out how to keep from permanently traumatizing Jonny Jr. in the three-and-a-half years we've been living apart.

And in the meantime, I've also managed to settle the biggest debt I incurred during the whole Strip Club fiasco, so in another couple of years, I may get that mess cleaned up as well, which will be a huge load off my mind.

But what prompts me to write is the dangerous place I'm in. One thing that happened when Mrs. Jonny and I got married was that I moved to her home town. My friends were mostly left behind, and in their place, I got her friends. Which was fine until we split up, at which time I seemed to have no friends. A few acquaintances at work and a few writer acquaintances were all I had.

But a few months after I moved out, I got invited to start a role-playing group with some of those writer acquaintances. And no, even though this has largely been a sex blog (back when I was having sex), we're not talking about sexual role-playing. We're talking twenty-sided dice, D&D-style stuff.

Which is not to say the games don't have adult content. Every game has had characters hooking up. But given that some of us are writers and the others avid readers, and all of us are long out of adolescence, there's a lot of character interaction as well. The games are a lot of fun, and it has developed that my gaming group has become my only social group as well. We get together on holidays; we get together for movies. We all get along wonderfully. It's great.

Two problems:

Problem the First: they're all married homebodies. It's three couples and me, and we don't go out to clubs or anything. We meet at their homes, and they don't like clubbing, any of them, so I'm not meeting anybody new. And if I did happen to meet someone new, she would have a hard time fitting in with this group. She would need to be smart, literate and funny, with a high tolerance for weirdness, because we're all sci-fi/fantasy nerds and the conversations sometimes go to obscure places. Ms. Inconspicuous could do it, because she is awesome, but she doesn't live here and is way out of my league.

Problem the Second: because I'm not meeting anybody new, I am becoming more and more attracted to one of the wives. Last night, she showed up for a movie night wearing these sexy thigh-high fishnets that had come off her Halloween costume last year. I could not stop staring. And lately my character has been flirting with hers quite a lot.

And it's not as if I think anything is going to happen, because she seems to only have eyes for her husband. But it's not as if it's impossible, either, because Lois was way out of my league and Lana spent months telling me how much she loved her husband and how nothing could ever happen between us, and I ended up getting horizontal with both of them (though not at the same time, which, God, can something be both awesome and apocalyptic at the same time?).

And I know this sounds like the height of hypocrisy, me fretting about being attracted to another man's wife when this entire blog used to be devoted to that very thing. But this is a good friend's wife, which is a completely different and more dangerous animal.

But as I begin to think about finding romance again after along dry spell, being exposed to no other options, I fear things will get weird. Awkward.

I really wish things could have worked out with Architect Girl.

Yes, No, Yes, No, Maybe

2011-09-08T15:59:00.004-06:00

Mrs. Jonny finally filed the papers, so stuff is in motion now, I guess. Final act.

And remember back in February when I met a woman for coffee from OKCupid? Well, we ended up seeing each other a few times and having some really good conversations. And though it never really felt sexual or romantic, every now and then, there might be a little flirty flash of something that made me wonder. But then she went away for a couple of months to volunteer at a summer camp, and when she came back, I asked her if she wanted to go for a drink, a real drink. She responded enthusiastically, and I thought, "Hey, alcohol, maybe she's in the mood to lose her inhibitions."

Alas, the first thing she told me when I sat down was that she'd been seeing someone else, and since the thing between us didn't really seem to be going anywhere, she figured I would be okay with just doing the friend thing. Which frankly, I am, except that we're going on three years since I've had sex with anything except my own hand, and I really feel like cheating on it.

So then I got invited to a book launch party by a writer friend of mine and thought maybe it wouldn't be bad to try to find a date. So back to OKCupid, and I got in touch with a woman who looked interesting and basically said, "Maybe I'm rushing things, but I have this event to attend, and I don't want to go alone, so would you like to go?" She had mentioned she was really into books, so I thought maybe it would be a good fit.

She said yes, and we worked out a time and place to meet for coffee before the event. And then, the night before, she emails me and cancels. No explanation, and no "But I'd love to get together some other time," so I'm not going back to that well.

So I go to the party alone, and while I'm there, I get to talking to this Japanese girl. She's kind of plain, not really pretty, but not bad-looking either. She seems really interested in books and stuff, but three fourths of what I'm saying seems to go over her head, and I'm not sure if because she didn't grow up in America and so doesn't have the acculturation, or if she was just tweaking, because she couldn't seem to concentrate and her pupils looked kind of dilated.

Then again, they say your pupils dilate when yo're looking at something you really want, and we all know what she was looking at. Me. Am I right? No? Maybe?

She seemed kind of stupid, is what I'm saying, but she's an architect with a pretty big firm, so I figure she's got to have something going on upstairs, and maybe I just caught her on a bad night. She gave me her card, and I emailed her today to ask if she wanted to go out sometime. I would call, but I hate talking on the phone.

I don't know if it will work out, but I'll give it a shot. If nothing else, it will give me a reason to start working out again and to clean my house.

Frozen By the Damnable Heat

2011-08-03T20:52:00.002-06:00

And by frozen, I mean unwilling to move. The JonnyCave is not air conditioned, so when I get home from work, I just sit in front of a fan in my underwear, thinking I should be writing, but rarely getting my mind in gear to do so. I had started a diet and exercise regime with the intention of dropping about 15 pounds and getting back down to the svelte, sexy Jonny who was banging Lois.

But then the heat slammed down, and the humidity engulfs you like a heavy blanket (and the weight may well not be just a metaphor--I imagine the water vapor trapped in the air inside my house would add up to several hundred pounds if you condensed it all out). And since DJ is on an enforced schedule of several blog posts a week, in hopes of building a following and maybe eventually getting a little beer money, when I do find the energy to write, it's DJ stuff I work on.

So NJ is still in hiding, although little by little, I'm chipping my way out from under the mounds of debt and depression that have engulfed me since the strip club deal blew up in my face.

Sometimes They Come Back

2011-07-13T21:54:00.002-06:00

So yeah, it's been a long time since I've written anything here. In fact, Blogger shut the blog down for a while, but I got it turned back on.

And the reason I haven't posted is that I'm in a weird holding pattern. Mrs. Jonny said she wanted to file divorce papers, so I got her the information she asked for, and have since heard nothing. I was hanging out with one chick from OKCupid for a while, but she's busy until the end of July, so nothing's happening there. I had a death in the family, so I've been kind of distracted, and then there's been a lot of DJ stuff.

But today, two things happened. Number one, the hot little Filipina who usec to work at the store showed up again, which was nice (although she's married and I don't feel like trying to seduce another married woman, so I had to let her go without even a hint), and then who should come up and say 'hi' but Miley.

We didn't talk a lot, because she had her daughter with her, and because I'm not her boss anymore and not paying her, so I'm not worth her time, I guess, but she told me the place is under new ownership and management and has even been repainted.

I'm debating whether to go out there and see if they have my CD's.

Independence Day

2011-07-04T22:48:00.002-06:00

Yeah, I'm still alive. I gave my wife all the information to file the divorce, and we even signed quit claim deeds, but I haven't seen the papers yet. I don't know where we are in the process, and I'm afraid to ask.

Other than that, life is feeling both very positive and almost completely hopeless. Which is a step up from a year or two ago, when it felt only hopeless. I'm in a better place emotionally than I am in any material sense, but I still find myself irrationally wanting to reconcile at random times. Mrs. Jonny and Jonny Jr. went on a trip recently and posted pics on Facebook, and it felt weird, as if I should be in them, too. Why wasn't I with them?

But, of course, I left.

It feels as if I'm putting myself back together, but when I look carefully, I'm still broken.

Battery Finally Dies in Antigrav Shoe

2011-04-18T02:55:00.002-06:00

Another shoe finally dropped. Mrs. Jonny has finally indicated taht she's ready to file for divorce.

I shouldn't be surprised. I recently posted a very angry rant on DJ's blog that was virtually guaranteed ( and in some sense intended) to piss off and insult her. It was necessary for reasons I can't go into here, but it shouldn't surprise me that in the aftermath of that, that she has finally decided to make our separation official.

It does, though, somehow. Maybe only because she has been content to wait for me to do everything else: I had to initiate the conversation about splitting up (even though I didn't want to), I had to take the initiative to move out (even though I didn't really want to--I have been lonely and regretful ever since except for when I went to bed, which was what prompted me to move out--imagine going to bed every night with a lovely woman right next to you, knowing that she will reject every advance you attempt to make--unbearable after a couple of years).

Basically, she has been afraid to make any choice at all that involves action. I have had to act out her choices for her.

But she has apparently finally decided to act on her own. She wants to file for divorce. I got the message right before I went to work, and spent the entire shift in this weird fugue state, pissed off at everything but having to maintain my equilibrium, because I can't lose this job. I owe too much money.

Fuck.

Ashlee Simpson Has an Amicable Slit

2011-03-09T12:06:00.003-06:00

Funny typo from Popeater. I don't know how long the link will stay good, so here's a screencap. Click it for a larger version if it's too hard to read.

Cleaning Up

2011-02-23T15:43:00.002-06:00

I've gone back and cleaned up some stuff from previous posts that really didn't need to be there. I know it's like a cardinal sin of the Internet, deleting stuff, but this is a first step toward unmasking, I guess. I'm kind of trapped in a purgatory between unmasking all the way and going in another direction entirely, which would cause me to shut this blog down for good. It all comes down to money, which I'm desperate for right now. If I can make money as NJ, I'll need to try to go for it. I've been trying for months now as DJ, and it hasn't been working. I need to figure something out quickly before I lose my house.

Funny Stuff

2011-02-22T23:06:00.003-06:00

So a big Hat Tip to Kaori for linking this movie from the male stripper site Dancing Bear. I'm kind of iffy on Dancing Bear generally; some of the women are hot, but the bear suit gimmick leaves me cold. But this movie is hilarious. Why?

Observe (if something looks off in the screen caps, it's because I've enhanced some of the faces to make the expressions clearer-you can click on any one to make it bigger for a better look).

Okay, there's a hot, furious blow job going on to the right there. But right in the middle of the screen are two hot blondes sitting side by side. The one in blue-green (aqua? turquoise?) is having a great time, enjoying the show and apparently talking to someone next to the cameraman as well. Her friend in the brown in the other hand...

She can't even watch. She keeps her head deliberately turned to the side, but occasionally glances back at the action...

Only to have to look away again. And by this time, it looks like the camera guy has figured out just how freaked out this girl is, because as he moves, he keeps deliberately putting her back in the frame. And by the time he has moved in close, apparently it's time for the big money shot, because the guy pulls out of the girl's mouth and starts jerking himself like crazy.

And suddenly, the blonde can't look away. It's like watching someone pass a car accident or something, because she doesn't look like she wants to see this, but she's no longer able to turn her head.

And what makes it even funnier at that point is that the dude can't finish, so the camera pulls back again, and the girl giving the blow job is like, "Uhh, what should I do now?"

Sometimes the T-Rex Wants to Eat You, Sometimes It Just Wants a Hug

2011-02-11T22:57:00.002-06:00

So remember when I said I'd been feeling these microtremors that made me think something good might be coming my way? Well, I got served papers from one of my creditors, then my city got hit with our worst blizzard in ages. I lost an entire week of work because the city was entirely unprepared for the level of snow, and because my car has sucky tires.

But today... Oh God, how to describe a day like today?

I went to work. One of my co-workers is this little Filipina, married (but that hasn't stopped me in the past, has it?), not super-pretty in the face but with a really nice little body. And we've been getting friendlier lately. Like today, she was talking to me all during break, which was nice. I don't want to say it's at the flirting level yet, but we're definitely hitting it off.

And see, it's kind of weird that that happened today, because today was finally the day I was supposed to meet the woman from OKCupid (and frankly, this blows AFF all to hell--remember the score after one month of AFF was about 30 girls contacted, with maybe three replies from actual women and no meets - score with OKCupid is 15 girls contacted with 6 replies and 1 meet - much better). We had been set up to meet last week, but the snow killed that plan, too. And see, I'm spending all day kind of thinking about this in the back of my mind, because I have no idea what to expect. I don't find her pictures all that attractive, but she doesn't seem crazy, which is good, and I'm not really in it to get laid this time anyway.

And then, literally 15 minutes before I get off work, I run into Lois. I mean, the Lois I went through such hell over, and whom I haven't seen since the liquor store brush-off 4 years ago. And it was incredibly awkward talking to her, because so much time has gone by, and it's really hard to remember the reality of how many times my dick was in her mouth when she's all conservatively dressed and smiling politely at me like she barely knows me. Because ten years have gone by, and she does only barely know me anymore. But man, she still looks really good.

So then on the drive home, she's all I can think about, and the woman I'm supposed to be meeting is kind of shoved to the back of my mind. But I change clothes and head out to see her, and she's one of those people who looks better than her pictures. we ended up having a really nice conversation for about three hours. Some awkward pauses, but not as many as you'd think. So I consider it a win.

But here's the thing that weirds me out, the kind of synchronicity that happens to me a lot: that on the day, the very day, that I have the first thing even approaching a date in the almost three years since I moved out of my wife's house, I run into a woman I once had a very passionate affair with and have not seen in over four years. Life can be incredibly strange.

The Third Kind

2011-01-31T23:31:00.002-06:00

Haven't talked about OKCupid much lately, but figured I would update. They sent me an email a while ago that I had been rated "good-looking," which meant that they would giving me better-looking matches.Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of choices overall in my area, so I'm basically getting the same matches I was.

Also, somebody wrote me to ask if I want to meet for coffee. I'm not that interested in her sexually, based on her pics, but I feel as if I'm entering into an interesting phase. I don't have much evidence for it so far. I'm still in all kinds of financial holes, and my big DJ project has still not started to pay off.

But small good things are happening, like tiny ripples in the coffee cup in Jurassic Park signalling the approach of the T-Rex, so I'm hoping that if I keep my eyes open and take advantage of the good things coming my way, no matter how small (like an invitation to coffee), that bigger good things will follow. So I said, "Sure."

We'll see what happens.

What's Developing

2011-01-24T22:02:00.002-06:00

Well, the Four Loko experiment was indeed very different. Without caffeine, it just tastes nasty with the same kick you'd get from a beer. Afterward, I went out to a couple of clubs and had a not fantastic time. But at least I got out of the house.

Still formulating plans on the Secret Project. There's a lot to consider. Number one, I want to keep it associated with the NJ name, but I don't necessarily want to keep it on Blogger, because I want to make money with it, which I could accomplish better with a dedicated website with Wordpress or something. But if I keep the NJ association, I'll have to get rid of some old posts. Should probably do that anyway, but I'm working at so many other things just now.

I need to get some graphics together as well. I can put together most of what I need. I just need to make the time. I'd also like to get some photos on the site, which means I need to round up some models. My plans aren't as ambitious graphically as they were before, but I'd still like to have some eye candy in there. But that would require some startup money that I just don't have. Maybe I could put together some kind of Kickstarter proposal...

I've been slowly writing chapters and developing the overall storyline. In another couple of months, I could have a preview up to garner buzz and maybe drive the Kickstart. That's a thought...

Blitzed

2011-01-21T20:33:00.002-06:00

One of the things I did during my long absence was to try a Four Loko when all the hype was flying about banning drinks that combined alcohol and caffeine. I wanted to see what it was like. Not only did it knock me on my ass, but it also made me smell weird. All that caffeine made this odd coffee smell come out of my pores.

The drink almost immediately disappeared from my local liquor store, but I noticed tonight that it is back. Looking at the can, I now see no mention of caffeine, so I'm guessing it's reformulated. So I'm trying it again to see if the experience will be any different.

It still tastes weird.

More About OKCupid

2011-01-19T12:49:00.002-06:00

So I set up an account, but basically said that I wasn't interested in a relationship, just looking at how the site worked. And it's set up almost like a game, where you are given specific tasks to complete to advance your progress bar: contact someone new, upload a picture, answer x questions.

So that soon, I was in full dating site mode. Even though my profile said I wasn't so much interested in a relationship, I was checking out all these women.

But I noticed myself doing something strange. I've noticed that I've been choosing which questions to answer based on which women I want to attract. There are hundreds of questions out there, and at first, I was only answering a couple here and there, avoiding the overtly sexual ones as well as the really political ones. But over a couple of days, as I kept being tentatively matched with more and more sexually adventurous people, I started answering more of the sexual questions. But at the same time, by not answering the political questions, I'm finding that the matching system is putting me with a lot of people on the opposite end of the political spectrum. I am a man of contrasts, apparently, a rare and unique individual who sometimes wishes he were less so.

Some Fascinating Data

2011-01-12T01:29:00.003-06:00

Well, fascinating to me, anyway. There's a dating site called OkCupid which I've never visited. But I surfed over to their blog tonight, called OkTrends, which discusses the behaviors of on--line daters that emerge from data-mining.

I ended up reading through almost their entire archive. I'm not a hardcore math nerd, but I do like analysis and graphs, and seeing the differences in trends between men and women really interests me. It's also cool to see my observations from my own experience borne out in actual numbers. For instance, the Desperation Loop that I sort of wrote about here.

And the writer, Christian Rudder, presents the math in an extremely engaging and funny way. I am still in no way ready to contemplate any kind of relationship given the current disaster my life has become, but I'm almost tempted to toss a profile onto OkCupid anyway, just because I like the blog so much. How silly is that?

Another Year Rises

2011-01-02T12:50:00.002-06:00

After two years of misery, I'm actually starting this year feeling pretty positive. It's crazy considering the many Swords of Damocles hanging over my head. Or maybe it's one sword with a bunch of blades, like that one in The Sword and the Sorcerer.

But I've got a little forward momentum on DJ's side, I've got work that's bringing in some eating money, and I've got the project here that I'm moving forward slowly on. I can't announce a start date, though it might not be until the second half of the year. I want to start it soon, but I still haven't worked out how I want it to work yet, nor how much risk to take with it. And in the meantime, better to have a lot of material ready to go, in case I run into bumps in the road that slow me down later. That's a lesson that DJ learned the hard way.

Still no idea of what I'm going to do with my personal life. I've had no sex life in over two years, and I have no prospects for one now, but I'm starting to feel positive about it. Of course, I think I felt pretty positive about things last year at about this time, as well, and halfway through, the year went right into the dumper. But still...

I might even start writing the kind of more eloquent, philosophical posts I was doing regularly back when. I have no idea how, because so much of my mental energy is now going to DJ things, but reading back through the archives, I missed being the guy who could say things like that. I want to get at least a piece of him back.

Turning the Tide

2010-12-30T00:07:00.003-06:00

After I first moved, I took care of things around the house pretty well. But by the time I got around to quitting my job and doing the strip club deal, the winter was so cold and I was so busy that I let everything pile up, thinking I would do a big spring cleaning when it warmed up.

Spring came and it didn't happen. And then it was summer, and really hot, and I was unemployed so not running the air conditioner or anything. And I certainly didn't want to be doing any extra activities then, especially anything that would get me even hotter, like yardwork or even house cleaning. I figured when fall came and it cooled off a little.

Now it's almost two years later and the house is strewn with stuff. It's not one of those nightmare houses you see on TV with fungus growing and rotting food and shit. But the mail gets strewn here and there, because half the time I'm too depressed to read it. And the empty sacks from the grocery store pile up, as do the empty two-liter soda bottles, because I'm too lazy to collect them and take them out to the trash (I've got so many now that it would probably take two large garbage bags just for them, meaning I would have two bags full of basically air--I could cut the bottles apart and consolidate them as I've done before, but that's a lot of work, and we're back to where we started).

Which is one reason I don't think about approaching women any more. Because I can't in good conscience date a woman until I'm confident enough to bring her into my house. And sometimes I wonder if one reason I have such reluctance to clean the house is that it would take away one excuse for staying in the shell I've been in for so long. That's probably just a rationalization, but there's enough truth in it that it hurts if I think about it too long.

But something's got to change, soon. I can feel myself emerging bit by bit. Which means pretty soon I'm going to have to take control of this house and yard situation and become an adult about it again.

Christmas of Doom

2010-12-26T01:07:00.003-06:00

So after I opened up the blog again, I spent a few days reading through the archives. I hadn't realized just how many posts I had done. It took a lot longer to go through them than I expected. I was surprised at how good the writing was on several posts, and also surprised at how much the quality went downhill during the strip club era, when I was super-stressed and not getting any sleep.

I was reading everything through because I'm considering taking a step that would potentially cross the streams, and I wanted to see just how bad that would be.

Pretty bad, looks like. The first few years aren't so bad, I don't guess. I mean, I reveal a lot of embarrassing secrets, but they're my embarrassing secrets. But when I get into the section where my marriage seriously went on the rocks, I reveal a lot of embarrassing secrets about Mrs. Jonny as well, and I've got to figure out how to handle that.

Basically, I'm thinking about firing up the Secret Project again, in order to make some extra cash on the side to try to start paying back my many debts. I want to tie it to the Nightside Jonny name because it's been around for several years, gained a small following for a while, and even got linked by one of the big-dog sites. But I don't want my wife to be hurt by it.

So I've got to do a little more research and preparation to figure out what kind of walls to put up, and also figure out how I'll handle it if a determined person pulls them down. A while back, someone in San Francisco read through all the archives, then spent hours searching the blog on different geographical terms, apparently trying to figure out where I live. I don't think he succeeded, but it was an unpleasant surprise seeing all that activity on the stats.

Meanwhile, Christmas. I've said before, I don't much like Christmas, but this year wasn't too bad. I spent part of Christmas Eve at a local strip club (one that I very rarely visit, but then again, I very rarely visit any of them anymore). I wasn't able to stay long, because I didn't have much money and I got in not too long before closing, but I got a really good lap dance from one of the plainer dancers. She was older than most of the others, her teeth weren't great, her tits were a little small, and she had some odd scarring on her back. But she had a pleasant personality, and her body was petite and tight, just my size. And she knew that she wasn't as good-looking, so she tried harder. It was like Go Ugly Early, the Stripper Edition.

So Christmas Eve was pretty nice, all things considered, and Christmas Day I spent mostly with family. When I got home tonight after dinner with my father, stepmother, sister and brother-in-law, I ended up visiting My Free Cams, which I'm coming to enjoy. Like any free site, you get better perks if you have money to spend, and the best action is done in private. I don't have the money to spare right now, but some of the girls give really good public shows and it keeps me mostly satisfied at home, rather than feeling desperate to go out, which is good.

I'm still really deep in a financial hole, though, so I really shouldn't have gone out at all. Thing is, I'm so deep in the hole that the forty-something dollars I spent at the strip club wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket. And that's the real problem. The debt has grown so big, and I have so little hope of paying it off, that I've almost given up on the discipline I will need to actually climb out of the hole. I'm starting to feel a little like Tyler Durden or something, thinking I need to fall farther and hit bottom before seriously trying to climb back up. And that's dangerous territory.

I'm Back, At Least For a While

2010-12-22T15:41:00.003-06:00

Some things were happening in DJ's life that necessitated closing down access to the blog for a while, but now something new may be in the works, so I'm opening the doors to let the place air out for a while.

Not working at the same job as in the last post. It was literally the worst job for the worst company I have ever held, which is saying something. So I left, and once again spent the summer unemployed. This job search was worse than last year's, which was horrible, so it's really saying something. And there has been, of course, no sex, nor even the prospect.

Which is weird, because I hang out with friends who talk and blog about sex all the time. And this winter is especially hard (in a manner of speaking) because I'm really loving the fashions this winter. I'm working temp in retail during the Christmas season, and I'm seeing so many women in clinging sweater dresses with tights and boots. It's seriously distracting.

Had one of those dreams last night where you think you're going to have sex, but never quite get around to it. Story of my life the past few years. But at one point, we're making out, and she asks, "So, ya'bout it, Jonny?" And it takes me a minute, because she's a lot younger than me, and there are a lot of things going on in the dream, but I finally decide, yes, I am all about it. And I tell her so, at which point she asks me to do one seriously unsexy favor for her before we fuck, and I wake up.

And thinking about the dream today, I find myself wondering, is "Are you about it?" really slang for proposing sex, or did my dreaming mind just make that up?

Yippee! F**k!

2010-02-27T00:47:00.003-06:00

Training on my new job continues apace. I got my paycheck today, and decided to celebrate the new job by going out to the same club I went to last time.

It was a good night. I didn't spend much. I got one lap dance from a very pretty girl. I met a really interesting guy who quit the corporate lifestyle to become a professional skydiver. I only bought one beer. The evening was going really well.

Then on the way home, I got pulled over.

It didn't go nearly as badly as it could have. I didn't have my current insurance form with me. My tag was expired. I was speeding through a construction zone.

But the cop cut me a break, because they have an e-insurance verification which confirmed I do have current insurance. There was no construction crew out at midnight, so he didn't cite me for as much as he could have. And for some reason, he ignored my tag. I didn't ask questions, just took the ticket and left.

So yeah, it sucks, but not as much as it could have. I just have to buckle down at work.

It's just that the timing is funny. Just as it seems I'm finally emerging from the depths, I hit one more speed bump. I guess I shouldn't have expected the trip back up to be smooth.

On the Horse Again, Sort Of

2010-01-17T01:16:00.004-06:00

So I was unemployed for a long time, and then I've been working part-time for a while, and I'm supposed to start a full-time job in another week. And I got some Christmas money from my mom, so I used half of it on bills, but with the other half, I decided to go out tonight.

I showered and shaved and even put on a tie (something I decided to start doing more lately) and went out to a club I only rarely visited in recent years, only because I figured they'd be more tie-friendly. I went there once about seven months ago for about an hour in the afternoon, back during the strip club mistake, because I was researching stages to try to figure out how to fix Master Po's fuck-up.

And while I'm there, I see one of my old regulars at the other club, a guy who drove a tow truck. We let him in free, because he would help out with security and shit, and also because he would give us free service calls if we needed them. I ended up needing that once, right before everything went to shit, so I guess it was a good thing. I didn't say more than "hi" and "bye" to him, because I didn't want to talk about the other thing.

And there were some really nice-looking girls at this club. One in particular had dark hair and an almost Asian face, really pretty. She was all tattooed up, which doesn't do much for me, but her face and body were killer. And at one point, while I was sitting with another girl, she walked by and gave me the eye, which surprised me, because I have such low self-esteem that I figure girls like that won't notice me. But I was wearing a tie, so maybe she figured I had money or something. Later, when I went to tip her, she said, "I was eye-fucking you earlier," which is such an awesome phrase, I'll have to save it and use it.

But the thing is, the girl I was sitting with at the time was Tina Latina. I didn't think I would ever see her again; it's been ten years since the first time I saw her, which is a fucking lifetime in stripper years. She was just as weird and paranoid as the last time, but still hot. And she'd had a boob job, which we know I have no problems with. She said she had to give me her number, but I didn't have my phone with me. So she put my number in her phone and said she'd call me and take me out to eat later in the week, which she won't, but it was nice seeing her anyway.

And of course, here's the total weirdness: when she talked about taking me out to eat, she said she had this great restaurant in mind. And it was the restaurant founded by fucking Gato.

So on the one hand, I hope she calls, and I almost hope she takes me to the place, because all I hear from several sources is what a great place it is. And Gato's no longer involved in it, so it shouldn't be a problem. But it's just weird how everything seems to tie together.

Besides, she won't call. As I was leaving, I told her goodbye, and she said, "Call me." I told her she hadn't given me her number, but by that time, she wasn't listening.

But hey, at least I got out of the house for one night.

Five

2009-12-31T18:02:00.002-06:00

Hard to believe I've been at this (off and on) for five years. My life has changed completely over the course of those years, and not for the better (though not all for the worse, for which I'm thankful).

So two weeks from Monday, I'll be starting a new job, beginning to clean up my debt mess and generally trying to pick up the pieces of a life that 2009 stomped to pieces. I'm hoping that this time next year, things will be better on all fronts.

Good News, But Sad As Well

2009-12-01T17:17:00.003-06:00

Come Saturday, it looks like I'll have a bed. I've been sleeping on a futon for the past year and a half (with the pad actually on the floor for the past eight months or so), so an actual bed will be a welcome thing.

It's our bed, Mrs. Jonny's and mine. A friend of hers was getting rid of a bed she and her husband had, newer than ours, I guess, and offered to give it to her, no charge, as long as she comes to haul it away. So Mrs. Jonny offered me our old bed.

I don't know what I'll do after not sleeping in a bed in so long. And given my wonky sleep schedules lately, anything I can do to improve the rest I get while in bed will be a good thing.

But in a way, it just feels like one more piece of baggage from our relationship that she's getting rid of, and I'm not. She'll be sleeping in a new bed and I'll be sleeping on a mattress with our old cum stains on it, though the most recent one is almost five years old.

In other news, I'm interviewing on Friday for a second job. If things work out, I may finally be able to start climbing out of the financial hole I'm in.

Retired

2009-11-21T18:38:00.002-06:00

I retired the party bag tonight. It has been sitting in a closet untouched since I moved into this house, and tonight I went through it and discovered a couple pairs of never-worn socks and some other various towels, washcloths, etc. And since I don't need a party bag anymore, since I live alone, I went ahead a pulled that stuff out for daily use. I could really use some new socks.

The blog may soon follow ("soon," you say, "it seemed as if it was already retired" - yeah, I know).

Another Year Older and Deeper In Debt

2009-11-06T14:38:00.002-06:00

I've finally gotten some work, but it's temporary and low-wage. Won't cover my bills, but will help me struggle through Christmas at least. I've reached that point where I am horny in a purely intellectual sense, because it has been so long since I've fucked a woman (over a year), and I have no money to either pay for one, nor date one. And Mrs. Jonny is thriving without me. I have felt pretty useless for the last few months, I have to say.

Anniversary

2009-10-06T12:50:00.003-06:00

Yes, I've been gone for a long time. I've had nothing to write here, and have thought about shutting the blog down completely. I've heard nothing from the lawyer, no resolution to the strip club problem. I'm still unemployed. My parents are helping me out still, but they can't afford to do it any longer. I'm waiting for an answer on a job interview I had week before last, but there were 26 applicants for the job, so I'm not holding my breath. Today I finished the first draft of a novel I started on September First. Maybe in a couple of years, I'll get a little money out of it. But I'm not holding my breath for that either.

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the day Mrs. Jonny and I had The Talk. Two years since I found out my marriage was doomed. In the two years since, my life has spiraled steadily down. I'm living by myself in a tiny old house that's falling apart. I have no job, no insurance. I'm falling behind on all my payments. I haven't had sex in a year.

And Mrs. Jonny, meanwhile, seems happier than ever. Successful at work, no debts, plenty of money in the bank.

Weird thing is, we're still married. She still hasn't taken that last step.

I wonder if she ever will.

I Am Joe's Complete Lack of Surprise

2009-09-04T09:42:00.001-06:00

From the Daily Mail:

Are men or women more likely to cheat? While men have always had a worse reputation for being unfaithful, recent studies show that women are catching up fast - but we are a lot more likely to lie about it, and a lot less likely to get caught.

Simply put, it seems that women are better at having affairs than men.

Read the rest here.

Post-Meeting

2009-08-21T17:15:00.003-06:00

Well, the meeting didn't go over as well as I had hoped. As I suspected back when all this shit first came down two months ago, the fact that I fell behind on payments to Master Po will probably bite me in the ass. On the positive side, landlord's daughter was talking out of her ass when she tried to justify why they could continue to operate the club without me. On the negative side, if she had been right, I would have had a perfect out from this mess.

As it is, he sent a letter to Master Po's lawyer asking for a refund of the money I paid. He thinks we've got a strong enough case to work out some kind of settlement probably, but he said our case is not strong enough to take to court. Which says to me that there will be no settlement. They won't pay unless they're forced to.

Progress, Maybe

2009-08-17T15:29:00.001-06:00

Two months after the fact, I may have a lawyer. I told him very superficially the situation, and he says I may have a case. He has to review some statutes and I'll meet with him Wednesday morning. If he can get some of my money back, that will take a ton of pressure off my unemployed ass.

I'm Still Alive

2009-08-06T17:29:00.002-06:00

Sorry for the long absence. I just haven't had anything to say. I'm in much the same position now as when I was first escorted out of my club almost two months ago: unemployed, just on the cusp of broke (my parents have come through with just enough money to keep my head above water, bill-wise). I've had no more real contact with anyone from the club, and I am still too broke to contemplate hiring an attorney. By the time I have one, they will have already done everything they can to shield themselves from any action I bring against them, I'm sure.

The only thing of real note that I have done is to join Facebook (finally) under DJ's name. Lois is now a Facebook friend. She doesn't really post anything on there about herself, so I don't know what's going on with her other than that she's in a relationship with some dude who rides a motorcycle. I haven't really tried to talk to her on there at all, though. Hell, I only friended her to see if she would accept or if she would ignore. She accepted. That was good enough.

Just Desserts

2009-07-12T20:26:00.002-06:00

Drank a little and texted Alexis last night. She told me she was working at a different club, so I went to see her. She told me she no longer works at the old place. Apparently Jim is going through with his plan to shut down the strip club and turn it into a dance club. He and his wife, the bartender, have been begging her to come back to work, but she says, "Fuck that. We go back in and make them money, then they shut down and kick us out? No way." She also intimated that business had not improved since I left.

The Ultimate Motivation

2009-07-10T17:09:00.005-06:00

So it's been three weeks now and I still haven't gotten a lawyer to try to untangle my legal standing vis a vis the club. On the other hand, I may have found a job; I'll find out next week. It pays about half what I need it to pay, but it pays something, which is infinity more than I'm making now. I'll run into some very hard choices in the next couple of weeks, though.

One of the ironies of my brief stint owning a strip club: I didn't get laid even once. Everybody else in that club was getting laid. I'm pretty sure that some folks even fucked in the club while I was there, though I tried to stop that as much as I could. If I want to spend the money, though, I could fuck one of the dancers who worked for me briefly; I'd heard she worked at a massage parlor during the day, and I've found her pics on a local massage site. Not that I want to, but it's an option. For closure, or some such shit.

Ran across this bit of Navajo legend on-line a while back:

First Man was chief of all people in the fourth world, except the pueblo
people who lived there before the Navaho came. He was a great hunter. His
wife was very fat and her favorite food was greasy meat. One time, after
thoroughly enjoying a hearty meal of fat venison, she wiped her hands on her dress and gave thanks to her vagina. When First Man asked why she did this, she replied that she was only acknowledging the motive for everything that men do.

Really spells it out, huh? Which is not to say that men cannot feel love and friendship and concern and all that other shit for women. They can and do. Mrs. Jonny once complained to me that all she was to me was tits and pussy. So I spelled out in probably too great detail all the ways in which she was more than that.

But pussy is way the hell up there on the list, number one with a bullet. We take all the other in lieu of pussy, and we sometimes turn down the pussy if it is Too Much Trouble, but we'll also risk everything for a taste. Risk rejection and humiliation, risk disease, risk financial ruin, risk the loss of reputation and family and everything dear to us, even risk death.

The power of the pussy.

Baby Steps

2009-07-01T12:51:00.003-06:00

I didn't realize just how bad the depression was, apparently. I finally left a message for a lawyer on Thursday, but never heard back, so I'm still in limbo on that. All last week, I would get up, do some time-wasting around the house, finally decide to go out and accomplish something, take a shower and dress and then mild panic would hit at the thought of leaving the house.

I did make myself leave the house a couple of times, but I usually got no further than the bank or the nearest convenience store, then I would run right back home. I would finally make myself eat a meal at some point in the late afternoon, but no more than one a day. Spent the weekend holed up in my house. Finally admitted to Mrs. Jonny just how badly I was doing, without going into too many details, and she helped a little, in the ways she could.

By Sunday, I actually ate two meals. My eating is almost back to normal now (or would be, if my income were also back to normal). I finally got the courage up to leave the house and put in a job application yesterday; downloaded the form off their website and took five or six days to fill out the application. Every question hit me in the face with past failures--marital status, educational history, work history, references. But I think I'm past it and okay now. Going to apply somewhere else today.

Still need a lawyer. I may or may not still own the club (or the company that owns the club_, and that needs to be sorted out. I should probably start out by getting in touch with Master Po, but I hate his guts too much to talk to him right now. I need someone else on my side to help me work this out.

Emerging

2009-06-23T15:21:00.001-06:00

Sleep, I finally got some.

I got maybe an hour of sleep Friday night/Saturday morning, maybe two hours apiece the next two nights. A combination of restlessness and oppressive heat in which I am loath to turn on the air conditioner because I have no job and bill's toupee.

This morning, I finally gave up and went to bed at 3:30 a.m. Ran the air conditioner for a little while, enough to cool the bedroom and maybe dehumidify it a little. Tossed and turned until around 6 a.m. and finally fell asleep. Dreamed miserable dreams about divorce and losing my club. Woke up at 1:30. Tried calling legal aid, but it was a nightmare. Guess I'll just bite the bullet and pick a lawyer from the phone book. Should work out about as well as every other stupid mistake I've made in this process.

Food is also finally happening, a little. Like I said before, I ate nothing on Friday night and Saturday but a few burned biscuits and some chips. No appetite at all. Sunday, I got a little hungry, but had no food in the house and was too depressed to leave. At least until it was time to take Jonny Jr. to the movie and to dinner afterward. Yesterday, I had a Quik-Trip hot dog.

Today I finally dragged myself out to the grocery store and picked up some food. I'm eating right now. It's still only one meal a day, but it's better than nothing.

So tomorrow I finally talk to a lawyer and after that, job hunt. I may go for temp work/day labor at first, just to get enough immediate cash to make it through the end of the month.

Still in Shock

2009-06-22T14:01:00.003-06:00

Friday afternoon, I was Action Man. I was going to leap into action on Monday morning and bring the evildoers to justice. By the time I wrote the previous post, though, I was depressed and seeing no options. Saturday and Sunday were mostly a blur of mixed grief and relief. I did a few mechanical things that needed doing: I deposited some money so I could pay my sales taxes for May and my June loan payment on the place that is no longer mine.

And on Sunday, Jonny Jr. took me out to see Pixar's "Up," and then we had supper afterward. It was the first real meal I had eaten since Friday afternoon. Friday night, I put a little 5-pack of biscuits in to bake; burned 'em, but I ate a couple anyway, and a couple more the next day, plus a handful of chips. It was all I could stomach.

The movie was good, but it made me sad. The early part contains a montage of a picture-perfect couple getting married and growing old together (or only in the movies perfect, I guess--she's talkative and outgoing, he rarely says a word to strangers--in real life, that didn't work out so well for Mrs. Jonny and me). After we ate, I took Jonny Jr. home and sat on Mrs. Jonny's couch (formerly our couch) and cried on her shoulder figuratively, as I told her I had really screwed up and made a mess of things, but couldn't tell her the specifics.

And then I cried on her shoulder literally when she brought me a Kleenex. That was even more depressing, so I left. Went home and spent a little while looking over contracts and paperwork, and several hours playing mindless computer games.

I got up this morning after two hours of sleep, which was about the same as I'd gotten Friday and Saturday nights. I had planned to go to a no-or-low-cost legal advice place, but instead went to the bank and deposited some coins I'd been building up for a few months, then turned around and went back home. Fatigue, depression and hunger have left me with no energy. I can't even think straight. And every time I think about going out the door, I feel a vague panic that keeps me inside.

I have to do something and I have to do it soon. I'm broke with huge debts and no job, and my business is gone. I have to do something.

But not today.

Not today.

Big Shoe Drops on My Head

2009-06-19T19:35:00.003-06:00

Well, when I said it had the makings of a disaster, I didn't know the half of it. At 5 p.m., I'm told someone is there to see me. I walk out into the club and there's the landlord's daughter, son-in-law, and Jim. They have a letter stating that I am to leave the premises immediately, because I am not on the lease. Jim is taking over operations as Master Po's representative.

I'm stunned. I gather my stuff, including all the money in the registers, which is mine, and leave. Then I call the county sheriff, to find out if they can continue to operate the club, even though all the licenses are in the name of LLC which I purchased. Turns out, I have to get a court order to shut them down, and of course, since it's after 5 on a Friday, I can't do that until Monday morning.

Won't matter anyway. Master Po played me. The contract I signed, transferring all assets of the LLC to me, may actually be worthless. I have to visit a lawyer Monday morning to see what my options are, but I anticipate being told I have few to none. I took too much on trust, didn't do my homework, and got taken by some slick thieves. He'll probably get to walk away with tens of thousands of my dollars and the club, and I'll have nothing but the paltry few hundred in change that I walked out with.

And the hell of it is, they know they have nothing to fear. I'm a straight-arrow, law-abiding citizen (mostly). I'm not violent. I won't attack Jim. I won't burn down the club. I won't do any of the hundred evil things I could do for revenge, because I'm not that kind of guy.

Guess I should have gone for the donut shop after all.

Disastrous Week

2009-06-19T12:21:00.004-06:00

So Friday night was the usual tension, plus slow business. And either Saturday or Sunday, I find a note on the door from the landlord, asking Master Po (the previous owner) to call him.

So I call to ask what's up. And the guy is asking if I'm the guy running things for Master Po while he's gone, and when is he coming back and all this other shit, because he's wondering why my signature is on the check for the rent. Back in March, when I kept asking about meeting with the old man who owns the property to transfer the lease to me, I was told he's a grumpy old man and prefers to do business with Master Po. So Master Po's name is still on the lease, and I've been making rent payments for the past three months. And now, all of a sudden, it becomes an issue.

Then Jim quits on me on a Saturday night. Things go smoothly enough, though, thanks to my other staff, including the new door guy who manages to avert a fight that's brewing. Sunday is also relatively mellow, mainly because there's barely any business.

Tuesday, I start out worried, because I don't know if my main bartender and DJ will be coming back later in the week (they're Jim's wife and brother). I open and run the DJ booth for a while, waiting for my Tuesday DJ to show up so I can take Jonny, Jr. to dinner. Finally one of the dancers says, "Just go. We don't need an announcer and we can pick our own music."

So I go and return quickly. There's even a little business when I get back, but still no DJ. So I DJ for a bit, then the DJ finally arrives and things pick up. By the end of the night, we've had the best Tuesday business in over a month, and I'm encouraged that things will pick up from there on out.

But then as we're closing up, I see violent movement out of the corner of my eye. It's Kirsten and Alexis, fistfighting in front of the dressing room, in full view of the few customers we have left. I jump in, pull Kirsten off of Alexis with some belated help from a couple of other dancers. We get Kirsten out of the club with her bag and half-naked Alexis back into the dressing room. Then I get the customers out, but two don't leave the parking lot, because they're apparently friends of my bartender and riding with her.

So as we're escorting two of the dancers out to their truck, one of those two dudes comes up saying he supposedly left a bottle in her truck. I leave my security guy to deal with it while I go back in to try to get Alexis out of the club and get the cleanup going.

Next thing I know, my security guy is dragging the other dancer back into the club, because she got in a fight with the asshole in the parking lot. So I get the bartender and her asshole friends out, get Alexis out, get the other dancer out, and finally get the club closed and go home, where I have to deal with three hours of phone calls from Alexis wondering why she's fired (answer: I've had two fistfights between dancers in the club in view of customers, and she's been in both of them--even if she didn't throw the first punch either time, she's obviously not blameless).

Wednesday, Jim's wife does show up to bartend. *Phew*. But I have to deal with more landlord weirdness, because they want me to provide paperwork showing that I've acquired the LLC which operates the club, and they want me to sign some piece of paper that says they're "accepting" the (third) rent check I've written them. And Kirsten comes to clean out her locker, but leaves without problems. And in anticipation of a big weekend following the big Tuesday, I make a relatively large beer order.

Wednesday nights, we haven't had a regular DJ, because we had determined that Jim could DJ and we could shave a little payroll that night. So I take over the DJ booth. It's a little rocky; I've never DJ'ed before, except for a song or two, but we have playlists already made up, and I've done a lot of performing in my life, so I'm not scared of the microphone.

By then end of the night, I'm having fun with it. We don't have much business, though, and that's worrisome, especially given the bills I have due and how much money I spent on beer. After discussing things with the on-hiatus house mom and the other dancer who was an eyewitness to the whole fight, I decide to change Alexis's firing to a one-week suspension.

Last night, Thursday, I pay big bucks for my beer delivery. Alexis shows up to clear out her locker, and several of the dancers come to me and ask me to let Alexis come back sooner. She does bring in business, and with her gone, our girl counts have dropped dangerously low. But I'm reluctant to change my mind, because I've gotten a reputation as a pushover, and I'm using Alexis as an example that I'm not.

But I hadn't expected so many dancers to take her side, even Miley. So in the end, I say okay. She'll supposedly be back tonight.

Then the bartender tells me that my weekend security guy, the guy who seemed to have the right combination of qualities I'm looking for in a security guy and helped me avoid a problem Saturday, is now in jail and needs replacing. Jesus wept.

Business is a disaster. Thursdays had turned into one of our biggest days, almost as big as Fridays, sometimes bigger than Saturdays. But last night was more like a Sunday, with a three- or four-hour stretch where there was only one customer in the place. Finally, as 12:30, we get a little trickle of business in.

Then the dancer who had the fight in the parking lot Tuesday had another tussle in the parking lot (while trying to sneak out early), unfortunately just as the cops were passing by, which destroyed the final vestiges of any party atmosphere we had finally built. So she's fired, which is no great loss, but still, disaster. I closed a half-hour early.

I don't know what's going to happen tonight, but I'm not optimistic. Business has been down, the dancers are all demoralized, I've got a regular customer on security who's tough, but his attitude is a question mark. Things could still turn out great, but it has all the makings of a disaster.

The Speed Bump

2009-06-16T12:37:00.003-06:00

So Jim would normally be due back on Wednesday. I haven't talked to him since Saturday night, since he told me Saturday that he'd "managed" another cell phone into the dumpster.

I'm not entirely sure that I want him back, to tell the truth. Part of me just wants to save the payroll during this slow time; I can do 95-99% of what Jim does, after all.

But as is the case with so many things, it's that last few percent that really make the difference. Jim does have value as a buffer for me. When cops come into the club, Jim deals with them. He knows several of them now, especially since he was arrested by a couple of them. They've got some kind of rapport going.

And Jim's experience does come in handy in a crisis. The one major accomplishment he was most proud of when giving his little lecture to me the other day was that there have been no fights between customers "in the club" since the first month of his return. Of course, we've had a brawl or two in the parking lot, and a huge girlfight one Saturday night, but no "guy fights," as he put it.

I'm an analytical person. I tend not to respond immediately. I take in a situation, mull it over, consider a few alternatives, then decide what I want to do. That doesn't work in a crisis. I've been able to step into several developing situations in the club and tamp them down early before they spiraled out of control, but I need someone good in a crisis. I have a couple of security guys, but one of them is probably not going to work out. The other one seems pretty good; he's done some fighting, but he's also got a calm demeanor. He already helped me keep one situation from turning bad Saturday.

So I can probably grow into the crisis management problem with a good security staff in place. The other problem, the real speed bump I'm hitting now, is this: I spend time with Jonny Jr. on Tuesday evenings while her mother works. So every Tuesday, I'm gone from around 6 p.m. to around 9 p.m. I used to have Jim come in for those three hours, or else I would have Assistant Manager handle things. But now Assistant Manager is gone to a neighboring state, House Mom/Tuesday Bartender is off waiting out the final month of her pregnancy, and Jim is who knows where?

I have a new bartender, a new security guy and a DJ to run the club. None of them has keys to the office or the combination to the safe, and I wouldn't trust them with those things at this point anyway. They don't know the quirks in the keg lines or the plumbing or the sound and lighting system. I barely trust them enough to leave them at the club unsupervised. At this point, until I know which way the Jim thing is going to break, I can only do what I must and hope for the best.

BTW: Apropos of nothing, Saturday night provided a good illustration of the crazy shit that goes on in clubs. Someone came to my doorman and reported that the mirror in the men's bathroom was in the garbage. So I went in to check it out, and sure enough, there it was, sitting on top of the garbage can (it was slightly too large to fit inside). Not a crisis; it hadn't been bolted to the wall or anything, simply hung on a hook.

So I went and picked it up to rehang it, and noticed something green and shiny in the trash. It was the half-full bag of soap from the soap dispenser. So I hung the mirror, opened the dispenser, and sure enough, it was empty. I fished the bag out of the trash--it wasn't punctured or anything, still looked good--and replaced it in the dispenser. I then took the opportunity to wash my hands.

As I stepped away from the sink, I noticed that the floor in front of the sink was wet, and there were soap bubbles. So I opened the cabinet beneath the sink and saw that the plastic pipe fittings for the sink had been unscrewed and pulled apart, so that every time the water ran in the sink, it would go straight onto the floor.

I put the sink back together, grabbed the mop bucket and cleaned up as best I could. Then I asked my bartender and waitress if they had noticed any customers who seemed especially dissatisfied with the service they had received. No.

So I guess it was just a drunken prank, because nothing was broken permanently. It was all fixable. But still, seriously, WTF?

Shifting Ground

2009-06-15T12:11:00.004-06:00

So Friday night was an occasion for lots more drama. As per usual, Alexis and her roommate (another dancer) begged to go next door for a drink, and as usual, I got tired of their whining and let them go after they promised to be back in 20 minutes. I thought they were getting a ride from the guy who brings them into work, but after they left, I noticed he was still in the club. They had apparently walked.

So I went over to give them a ride back. And like kids who keep coming up with excuses not to go to bed, they stalled me for 30 minutes, until I got fed up and left them there. Jim then told them, via the bartender, that if they didn't come back right away, they were fired. They came back, but it caused endless amounts of drama, and I had to coax a crying Alexis out of the dressing room a half-hour later.

But by the end of the night, things seemed to be back on an even keel. We closed the club, and were cleaning up. While I was counting the money, I heard Jim go off on a screaming tirade about how the country is going to hell. He has serious temper problems. I have learned to tolerate it, but we had a new employee that night, and it was embarrassing.

Then a few minutes later, as Miley was drunkenly complaining about something or other, , Jim went off again, on her, then ran screaming to the other end of the building, where he then threw another sreaming fit at Alexis.

So the next day as we were opening, I mentioned how he had gone off the deep end the night before. He then went on a 20-minute lecture to me about how I am too kind-hearted and easy on the girls, that abuse is the only thing they understand and respond to, and that when he gets "aggressive," it is a management technique that he employs after having nearly 30 years experience in the business. He did this in front of a few people in the club (although no customers yet), telling me that I have no practical experience in the business, only theories and philosophies that will lead my club to ruin down the road.

I let him get this stuff off his chest, and then I went back to the office to get more stuff done before opening. While I was in there, I heard him saying the exact same stuff to the DJ who had just walked in, berating me again as an idiot with no real world experience. So I walked out and told him, "You can stop now."

At which point he muttered something about me having all the answers, set his keys on the bar, and left. I thought he might be going next door to get a drink and cool off, but no. He was gone for the balance of the evening. I managed the floor that night. Things went pretty smoothly.

In a way, it was a good thing, him walking out. Because I've kind of been coasting, letting him run a lot of stuff, leaving his policies in place, not taking as much of a hand in things as I probably should have. When he left, I had to seriously think about what a non-Jim club would look like, and it got me assessing the club with fresh eyes and thinking in more concrete terms about what needs to happen to the club with or without him.

The dilemma I have: I don't have a lease in place. The old owner had the lease, which is very cheap (but also a shitty location). But when the old owner spoke to the landlord about transferring the lease to me, the landlord balked. He's a nutty old man, and doesn't trust people he doesn't know. He basically said he didn't want to deal with me, but would keep the old owner's name on the lease and let me run the place as long as I had Jim's experience as a backstop.

If Jim stays gone (or if I don't let him come back), I don't know what happens to my lease.

On the other hand, if he comes back, it means pretty much more of the same. He was there to open the club with the original partnership a year-and-a-half ago, then he left. The club went downhill while he was gone, so he came back in September to try to turn it around.

Now it's June and the club is badly deteriorated, business is averaging about half what it was the month before Jim came back, and in the less than four months since I came on board, the entire staff has turned over with the exception of Jim and his family. Jim has gone through about ten cell phones in that time, as well, because he keeps using the advanced management technique of throwing them against the wall after a heated call.

He likes to talk about all the big clubs he used to work for, and how the techniques he used there don't seem to work in our state. Our state is just fucked up, according to Jim.

But other clubs in our state are managing to make money. So it's looking more and more like I need to either move to a state where Jim knows how to make money (won't happen) or dump Jim and find someone who knows how to make money in this state. Problem is, if I can find someone like that, I probably can't afford him.

Damn.

Baathists and Buddhists

2009-06-12T17:27:00.005-06:00

Business is still in the gutter, although I choose to see positive signs in the last couple of days. And the utter loneliness and futility I felt last week has abated somewhat.

Part of the problem has just been a general level of increased stress on the part of everyone from the lack of business. I've had several dancers tell me, "I love working at this club, but if I can't make money here, I'll have to try someplace else. But I don't want to go. I like it here."

Now given, for several of my dancers, the proper translation of "I like it here and don't want to leave" is "I've been kicked out of every other club in town." They're dead-enders, several of them, like Rumsfeld's description of the Baathist holdouts that were still fighting on in Iraq shortly after the end of major combat operations in 2003. They have nowhere else to go.

But that doesn't make hte lack of business any easier for them. I understand their stress, because I'm feeling it myself. I try not to take it personally. Luckily, that stress has eased in the last couple of days as a few customers have started opening their wallets again. Now if we could just get the crowds back in the door, we could have something.

I let Kirsten come back. She said her doctor was putting her on a different medication that she could take during her pregnancy. I was very reluctant to do it, and Jim advised against it (not commenter Jim, but General Manager Jim). But I didn't accept her back immediately--I made her wait a couple of days and call me back before I decided--and that plus some other things that happened, plus maybe the new medication, seems to have changed her attitude. She hasn't stirred up the same level of drama she used to. There's been some, but not the kind that used to make me wince every time she walked in the door.

Alexis, Miley and Gypsy weren't happy to see her back, but there haven't been any problems on that end. Alexis even told me that Kirsten has gone out of her way to get back on good terms with the other girls. I don't expect it to continue indefinitely, but I'm grateful for every day it does.

Alexis and I are getting along. She accused me of chickening out every time we make a plan, but in the last few days, as she has canceled or forgotten plans she agreed to, I think she has realized that she often just forgets our arrangements.

Commenter Jim suggests I raise my standards. "Why would you want to date a stripper from a low-end club?" he asks. And it's a valid point. Although I told Alexis that I was not too good for her, I understand why she asked the question: there is a clear difference in class between us, just in the way we approach our lives.

I guess my answer would be two-fold: number one, just as I decided that any club good enough for me to patronize as a customer should be good enough for me to own, any girl good enough for me to hire should be good enough to date. In both cases, my decisions are driven by the paucity of choices available to me and my own limited resources.

Number two, years of marriage to Mrs. Jonny led me to believe that raised standards lead to raised expectations, which lead to heightened disappointment. So I thought that lowering my standards drastically might keep me from being disppointed. Didn't work that way, of course. Live and learn.

And of course, given what I do for a living now, raising my standards would just lead me to hold out for a woman who would never in a million years date a guy who does what I do. It's the Groucho Marx approach to dating: I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.

But maybe that's my own insecurity talking. I'm very aware that I have nothing to offer anyone in a relationship now: neither time nor money nor even basic trust.

Which means the true answer to my problem is to go all Zen and shit. As the Buddha said, to alleviate the pain I feel from unfulfilled desire, I shouldn't lower my standards to fulfill the desire. I should just learn to live without desire.

Easier said than done. And of course, living without desire means living without the joy you can achieve on the very rare occasions when our desires are momentarily fulfilled.

Right now, I just want to get my bills paid. I was desperate for a while to get laid, but that desperation has subsided for a while. And looking back at the calendar, I think part of the stress I was feeling was from the fact that we're approaching the one-year mark since I moved into my own house. That's a big deal, I think.

Oh well, got to go. Lots of big Friday night stuff to do.

Breakdown

2009-06-06T14:33:00.002-06:00

I got home at 3:30 this morning, pulled into my driveway, then sat in my car and started crying.

After a week of down business with bills piling up (Thursday and Friday both ran about half of what they usually do); after a week of trying to figure out why Alexis, who seemed ready to hook up a week ago, now seems to have no interest and sometimes seems to actively avoid me; after a Friday night where I only had two dancers show up before 9 o'clock and where the crowd never really showed up; after driving Miley's drunk ass home, listening to her ramble about how business sucks so much and she's worried about the club going under; after a long lonely drive home, desperately wanting to feel someone's arms around me and their warm naked skin pressed against mine, and realizing that there was currently no one in the world who would do that for me (at least not without being paid money I didn't have) and no prospects other than crazy drunk Alexis whom I can't figure out, the stress just finally got to me and I burst into tears.

Tears over my lost wife. Tears over my lack of money. Tears over my apparent worthlessness to every woman alive.

I stumbled into my house, turned on the lights, put my phone on the charger, grabbed myself a snack, still crying.

And then, of course, I realized how ridiculous I looked, stumbling from room to room weeping as I did the most mundane of tasks. So I stopped.

Tonight has to be better. I can get by if the night is bad; I had a little money put back for an insurance down payment that has been delayed (the insurance company made me fill out a new insurance application due to the change in ownership) that will cover the rent. But then I won't have money for insurance when (if) the application goes through.

In the meantime, I'm a couple thousand behind on some other bills.

I had a guy in the bar the other night who's a part owner of a big club in town. He asked if I had any partners, or was seeking any. I said no, anticipating that a good weekend would get me back on an even keel

Now I'm wondering if I should have said yes.

At least my eyes are dry now.

Dysfunction Junction

2009-06-04T11:14:00.002-06:00

All kinds of weird shit bubbling up from several quarters this past week.

Sunday night, I discovered that Alexis and I have something very tragic in common. We actually had a very tentative date set for Monday, but on Sunday night, we seemed to be connecting over this shared grief, so I asked if she wanted to come over after work. She said, "Let's wait till Monday."

Monday, she was horribly sick and hung over. She wasn't that bad when she left the club, so she must have drunk heavily after getting home. I ended up being on my own yet again, and was so disappointed that I drank fairly heavily myself Monday night. Ended up drunk-dialing Lois. I'm an idiot.

Meanwhile, Kirsten has been on a downhill slide as well in the weeks since she discovered she was pregnant. Saturday, she brought in a puppy. Left it in the dressing room all evening. The continuous noise and smoke couldn't have been pleasant for the pup. I would have told her to take the puppy home, but she has no car. I should have told her to have someone else come take it, but I tried for the thousandth time to be nice and understanding, while listening to the endless complaints from everyone else about the dog (not that anyone had anything against the dog itself, just Kirsten bringing the dog to the club).

Sunday night, she left early. I heard a rumor that she was going to her previous club to dance, but by that time, I had ceased caring what she does outside my club. My view was if she could make more money at another club, by all means, let her go there. And stay there, if she wanted.

Tuesday night, she left early yet again. Later, Miley ended up breaking a two-year clean streak by snorting some meth, which she bought from either a friend of hers or a friend of my new bartender. Shortly afterward, she had a breakdown, crying and confessing to Jim about the whole thing, then calling to confess to her husband and asking me to take her home. She apologized the entire way.

Jim was very upset about meth coming into the club and told the sheriffs on their routine visit that he suspected the bartender's friends were involved in it. Running the tags on vehicles in the parking lot yielded an outstanding warrant on my new bartender, so she was arrested and taken out, along with a couple of her friends.

And last night, Gypsy came back from her suspension and got into some kind of dispute with Kirsten over shoes and outfits. Kirsten claimed Gypsy had stolen some shoes from her, while Gypsy claimed Kirsten had stolen some of her outfits and resold them to other dancers (who were wearing them last night, in fact). This came within 20 minutes of Kirsten getting into a fistfight at the bar next door and saying that the girl she had beaten up would be coming by my club later for payback, followed almost immediately by Kirsten pulling a nasty prank on one of my other dancers that caused her to have a screaming freakout in the middle of the club.

And this is the incredible part: after all that drama, I didn't fire her. I wanted to wait until I had cooled down to work out what needed to be done. But as that was happening, she went to the DJ booth to set up her music for her next set, and Jim (who was working as the DJ last night) told her not to even talk to him. He did not want to deal with her at all, and anything she had to say should be relayed through me.

So Kirsten blew up, saying she quit "this motherfucking hell-hole," screaming obscenities across the length of my club as she stomped to the dressing room to get dressed. She left a few minutes later. Problem solved.

And here's the thing: I'm not mad. I'm relieved she's gone, but I'm not mad at her. I'm sad for her. Because as she's been going through her recent problems, she's been taken in by a local biker club who helped her get back from her abduction in a neighboring state. One guy and his wife gave her a place to stay and helped her get back on her feet a little bit; Kirsten claimed at one point that this guy and his wife were like a mother and father to her. Another guy in the club was her supposed boyfriend/fiancee (one of three).

And after her freakout and departure, both guys (who were in the club and witnessed the whole thing) came to me and Jim and asked us not to judge them by her, because this was the last straw for them, too. She has caused constant problems and drama for them, both inside and outside the club. The guy whom she called "Dad" told me, "She's not one of us, and we don't want to be associated with her anymore."

Her erstwhile fiancee told me the main problem she's having now is that she's very bipolar and unable to take her medication for it, due to her pregnancy. So he understands that the freakout was not entirely her fault. That said, though, he said, "I'm done with her. She's on her own."

So in a very short time, she's burned her bridges with a lot of people who were helping her, cared about her, and for whom she seemed to care very deeply. I find that incredibly sad.

So I'm not mad at her, really. I feel sorry for her. I would still be willing to be a friend, to maybe take her to lunch and listen to her talk about her problems.

But I won't give her money, and I certainly won't give her her job back.

So yeah, otherwise a normal week.

Limping

2009-05-31T13:55:00.002-06:00

We're limping through to the end of the month. As I said before, I don't have any solid numbers from Master Po as to how things went last year, so I don't know what to expect. I know he said that summer was his peak time, and I know that the one number I saw for August was pretty strong. But May, which started so strong, really tanked right before Memorial Day, and this past week, while better, was still weak.

Still, there were no fights, and amazingly, the cops, who had been all over us in the week leading up to the two incidents last weekend, have not been by at all since. And even with weak business, it looks as if I'll be able to pay my mortgage and my past due utility bills, so I'm reasonably satisfied on that front. Still haven't gotten laid, but Miley's trying to hook me up with her mother-in-law. Don't think I'm ready to go there, but give me another few months and I might be. Meanwhile, Alexis and I are still circling.

Jim is desperately pushing the idea of a reality series about the club. We have no money and no production team, but he's sure all the elements are there for a great show: backstage drama, a wild assortment of crazy customers (including Kirsten and her three, count 'em three, fiances), a newbie owner teamed with a very experienced manager who has fallen from the heights of managing multi-million dollar clubs to managing a tiny struggling club in a semi-rural area, and of course, lots of boobies.

One thing that will both help and hurt the club in the near-future is, I'm losing my assistant manager. He's moving to a neighboring state to find work and training in some bigger clubs. Jim has gotten in touch with some former colleagues and gotten the kid a job, but ever since the move was finalized, A.M.'s performance has dropped off considerably--he got drunk on duty last Saturday, which was a big contributing factor in the mess we ended up with--and now Jim's wondering whether he should have put his reputation on the line for him. We both hope it's just short-timer's fever getting to him.

With A.M.'s departure and the loss of my second bartender/house mom (she's both very pregnant and recently lost her father, so she has stopped coming in), that means the only people still connected to the club from when I bought it are Jim the manager, my main bartender (Jim's wife), and my two D.J.'s (Jim's brother and another guy, who I let go but brought back). Everybody else is new, including all the dancers.

Miss Direction

2009-05-25T23:40:00.003-06:00

So Jim and I had no idea which way this weekend was going to break. Last year, the numbers for Memorial Day weekend were awful, but the club was being run by Master Po (Previous Owner), who had no idea how to run a strip club.

So Friday night, we did okay, with one big hiccup. We had an old-school dancer, a local legend who had supposedly sold a huge drink one night (worth half a year's salary at my old job), and Alexis, who doesn't do huge consistent business, but is solid number two in the club on monthly average.

So Old School spent the early part of the evening trying to hustle me, telling me, "I need real man, and I can tell you're a real man." And then Alexis came in and the trouble started.

I left to pick up quarters from my house, and by the time I got back, Old School had assaulted Alexis and been thrown out and called the cops, and the cops had investigated and left. But in the meantime, Jim had told Alexis that he kinda wanted her to leave as well, and she got upset. So she skipped Saturday night. Jim didn't care until I showed him the numbers so far for May and he realized that Alexis has actually made decent money for the club.

In the meantime, Jim rehired a dancer who had been fired long before I bought the club. He had purged the club of bad apple dancers long before I came on board, but the one he'd thought about keepng, he went ahead and rehired on Saturday.

It was a disaster.

There were accusations of stealing, then a huge fight--Miley got punched and cut under the eye, as well as injuries to Jim and the Ass't manager-- which led to the cops being called for two nights in a row. Now understand that Jim has been arrested twice, with the charges being dropped, in connection with the club. So he's trying to build a case for harassment in general, so he can sue the sheriff and win a big judgment. Three false arrests in a row, as well as a pattern of uninstigated visits, are instrumental in obtaining that judgment

And we were well on the way to that. They had visited us five times out of the last six nights, with no provocation except us being the kind of club we are.

But now, with us having the cops respond to more-or-less legitimate emergency calls two nights in a row, it's harder to build a harassment lawsuit.

So anyway, although I thought I was done with Kirsten, she is such an attention whore that she's still flirting with me, showing off her tongue piercing (how did she know that would get me going?) while ignoring me when she's not at the club. Meanwhile, there's another dancer I'm attracted to, plus Alexis (whom I gave a ride home to last night).

And before I took her home, Alexis's roommate said, "You need a good threesome," to which I responded, "Hell, I'm still working on a twosome." She was freaked that I had gone without sex for 7 months; girls have no idea what life is like for guys, apparently (or at least for me).

Anyway, I took Alexis and roommate home last night, and she asked me to drop by today (because they would not have a phone to call), but when I did, they weren't home. So I'm alone yet again.

But it's okay. I'm used to it.

In other news, this video intrigues me. It's from Brazzers.com, and it's ostensibly a college party where sex spontaneously breaks out during a party. Of course, they've hired this girl to fuck on camera. But about exactly halfway through the clip, they focus in on another girl, who's watching the action unfold. She flips her skirt up about three inches, (while the girls next to her hide their faces completely) then says, "Nothing more than that," as the camera turns back to the hardcore action on the couch.

And there's something totally entrancing about the way she can watch two people fucking right in front of her, while still remaining shy about her own body, that hits me in all the right places.

Holiday Blues

2009-05-22T10:42:00.004-06:00

They tell me summer was their peak business season last year. So as May has progressed, I've been looking for our improving business to keep improving. About a week ago, though, things turned really grim. Business since Friday has gone down considerably.

I expected a slump as we neared the end of the month. But I also expected a boost on Friday the 15th, since it was a payday and everything. Didn't happen.

Now we've got Memorial Day weekend coming up. Jim asked the previous owner what last year looked like on that weekend, and he said it was awful. Then again, there'd been bad weather, so maybe we'll do better.

Hope so, anyway. Because otherwise, I'll be coming up short on several bills, getting further behind when I had high hopes I'd finally get caught up this month.

Last night, business wasn't too bad. But though it was supposed to be my night off, I ended up going in because I'd stupidly brought some stuff back home that they needed to run the place (like one dollar bills, duh), and once I was there, I didn't feel like driving back and forth.

So I got a beer and sat to watch the show, more like a customer than an owner. Except that none of the girls came buy to hustle me for drinks. No, except for one new girl who acts like she's got a new puppy every time somebody tips her, the only time any of the girls came by to tell me something, it was a complaint. That girl ruined my sale. The doorman's pissing me off. My shoes suck. The stage sucks. I keep throwing up (Kirsten, who is now confirmed pregnant with a due date and everything, and can't stop telling absolutely everyone about it).

I know it's my job, and it's what I signed up for when I bought the place, but it kind of wore on me as the night went on. For respite, I spent some time talking to the new girl, who's not just enthusiastic, but positively gorgeous. Seriously, she's like 20 years old, blond, twinkly blue eyes, dimples, fit and slim with natural C- or D- cup breasts (I'm a lousy judge of that kind of thing). And her enthusiasm is infectious.

And even that ended up turning sour, because Alexis started giving me shit about how I was playing favorites with the new girl or something. We haven't even gone out and she's acting jealous and possessive.

Okey-Doke

2009-05-17T14:52:00.002-06:00

So Kirsten mentioned to me that she was going with her sister and some friends to a local nightclub a while back, and that she wanted me to come along. The way it was phrased was very ambiguous; it could be a date and it could not. But you look like a fool just coming out and asking "Is this a date or what?"

So I didn't ask. It turned out that the night in question was what has turned into my unofficial night off anyway (Thursdays I have a full crew, but it isn't yet the weekend, so Jim said he could spare me that night), so I said yes. Looked forward to it for days. I had a prior commitment with Jonny Jr., but it would be over early enough that I could still meet her at the club afterward.

So Thursday came, and I took Jonny Jr. out to eat. Afterward, I tried calling Kirsten, but her cell phone had been shut off (she'd mentioned that she didn't have the money to pay the bill). If she were working at the strip club, I could try calling there, but she'd been planning this night out for two weeks or more, so she obviously wasn't there. So I decided to just head out to the other club.

She wasn't there. I had no way of reaching her, and the place was a 20 minute drive from my house. I didn't feel like wasting the time and gas to go home and come back later, so I waited for an hour-and-a-half or so. It wasn't entirely pleasant; the club was a country-and-western place, and I'm not a country-and-western guy. Not that it was torture or anything, just boring. I could have been home, watching the season finale of The Office.

I was starting to think I'd been stood up again when she finally comes in, without her sister but with this douchebag customer from my club (the same one I allowed to give Miley a ride the week before when she begged me to let her leave). He wears leather and rides a motorcycle, and Kirsten loves that shit. Plus there's another dancer who works at my club and her boyfriend.

The other dancer asked Kirsten what business was like tonight, and Kirsten said it was pretty dead. Then she asked if this guy was her new boyfriend or something, and Kirsten said no way. But it was pretty fucking obvious that she wasn't there to be with me either, and since being with her was the only reason I enduring the CW, I waited an appropriately polite interval, then left. Headed back to my own side of town to help them close down the club for the night.

I had barely gotten out of my car when Jim met me outside the building, complaining about Kirsten. Apparently, she had shown up that night as if to work a full shift, but at some point, she begged Jim to let her sneak over to the bar next door for a quick drink, back in 15 minutes. She left and never came back. And later, Jim heard other dancers talking about how she'd told them she was going to Red Lobster and then to the CW club.

"She okey-doked us bad," he said. He was ready to fire her and ban the customer (who'd left at the same time) from the club. And then he told me about another customer who'd fallen in love with her and was convinced they were going to be an item. There have been several, including one who actually proposed (after knowing her less than a month), and I've never told Jim that I was dangling from that same string (although I never got hooked as deeply as the others).

Turns out, it was unnecessary. She didn't show up for work Friday or Saturday either (she came in for about ten minutes Friday and said she might be in the next day, but no. Now I'm hearing that she's working at another club. And the other dancer who went with her Thursday has also quit.

Frankly, the other dancer is the bigger loss, because she has some loyal regulars who come in asking for her quite a lot. They usually settle for Alexis (who has a very similar build, but not the same personality), but they don't spend nearly as much.

But I'll miss Kirsten. I knew she was probably playing me, and even if she wasn't, we were nowhere near compatible enough for a real relationship. But I was still lonely enough, and she was sexy enough, to make me want to believe, to talk myself into thinking there was some chance in hell, at least enough to give me a shot at the title, if you know what I mean. Enough that it hurt when she okey-doked me.

But that's okay. I'm putting my energy into the club. The previous owner was superstitious about keeping accurate records; didn't trust the government enough to leave a paper trail or something. Me, I'm making spreadsheets. I told Jim the longer I go without sex, the more detailed the spreadsheets will get.

They're getting pretty detailed.

Roseanne Roseannadanna

2009-05-13T10:13:00.004-06:00

Last time I mentioned,

I spent a goodly portion of the evening hiding from one of my ex-employees from my previous job, who had come into my club for who knows what reason.

Well, I found out the reason. He's apparently one of Kirsten's regulars from a previous club. He came back last night, and I refused to hide, though I avoided talking to him at all.

The evening was a long one, with problems arising from several dancers, including Miley and Alexis. But toward the end of the night, my bartender started complaining about Kirsten. The bartender had gone out of her way to set Kirsten up with a high-rolling customer, who paid for a big drink as well as $100 in lap dances, in order to help Kirsten pay off a couple of bills that had come due.

Kirsten cut the dances short, claiming the guy had gotten too handsy with her. The bartender (who was a dancer until a few months ago) said the guy had been a regular for years and didn't do that shit. She claimed that the real reason Kirsten cut the dances short was that her boyfriend was in the club watching her like a hawk.

Shortly after my discussion with the bartender, Kirsten called me over and asked me why I looked so angry. "Is it something I did?" she asked. I said it was a long night, and several of them had gotten on my nerves. "But did I do something?" she asked. I said we'd discuss it later.

The "boyfriend" the bartender was referring to was a guy who comes in pretty regularly. He was the guy who kept me informed about Kirsten's whereabouts after she went missing, and was apparently instrumental in bringing her back. Whether he's her boyfriend or not doesn't really matter to me (except insofar as she says she's interested in me, and has asked me out on several occasions). I mean, boyfriends in the club is a bad idea, but we've made lots of exceptions to that rule. The thing about Kirsten is, it's yet another example of Kirsten as Roseanne Roseannadanna.

For those who don't know or don't remember, Roseanne Roseannadanna was a Gilda Radner character from the early seasons of Saturday Night Live. Her catchphrase was, "It's always somethin'."

And that's the way it is with Kirsten. Disasters just happen to her. It's rarely the same thing twice, and there always seems to be an explanation, but it's always somethin'. Just since she's been back, she's had to leave early because of pain from broken ribs (a souvenir of her abduction by psycho ex-boyfriend), a bad reaction to her prescription painkillers, and heart palpitations from drinking too many energy drinks. At the same time, she's having arguments with family members, having car breakdowns, losing her apartment and having to find another one, and now suspects she's pregnant.

None of these things is unique. Pretty much every one has happened to other dancers in the club in the couple of months I've been there. But she's the only one who's had it all happen.

And that's really why I was mad. I'm getting tired of Kirsten-drama. I'd like one night to go by without hearing about another Kirsten problem. It's always somethin'.

Things Fall Apart

2009-05-10T10:52:00.003-06:00

Crazy, weird week at the club. It started out on Monday with me discovering a lot of stuff in the dressing room that could get us in serious trouble if the police decided one day to walk into there and look around (which they have apparently done before, under previous management). I got very angry over that.

So on Tuesday, I decided to send some wake-up calls, to some of the dancers and to the House Mom, who was not only looking the other way while the girls did this shit, but also seemed to be participating. So I changed the way things were done for one night, just to show that I could. I had Miley instead of the house mom collect the fees from the dancers, and I booted a dancer who has made negligible money for the club in the past two months out of her spot in the dressing room in favor of a dancer who was making quite a lot that night. Everything seemed to work out okay by the end of the night; the dancers stayed calm, everyone made lots of money, House Mom got the message.

The next night, everything went wrong. Tons of girls, no business. Miley came to me in tears saying we had two customers in whom she knew really well, who were trying to get her to do drugs with them after two years clean; she begged me to let her leave so she could get away from them. Girls were bored and complaining about the lack of money. Gypsy Rose ended up smuggling another bottle into the dressing room, and I made the decision with Jim to let her go at the end of the night.

Toward the end of the night, Alexis said, "Can I tell you something without you getting mad? I think you're doing Miley." I laughed, but she insisted it was true; after all, I give her rides home from work all the time (she pays me $10 per ride) and I was giving her the House Mom's job, which by the way, if I did, all the girls were mad and going to quit on me.

I told her she was wrong. I wasn't doing Miley and wasn't giving her the House Mom job. That had just been a one-time thing. I wanted her to drop it, because I was supposed to give her a ride home after work and wanted to talk about whether we might still want to get together after our previous unpleasantness (which I haven't described here, but suffice to say, she made me angry enough to do something that hurt her feelings).

Two minutes (give or take) after that, Miley comes back into the club, drunk, talking about how she'd gone back to her old club and made a bunch of money at amateur night, then turned them down when they offered her old job back. I said, half in jest, "I'm not driving you home," and she got suddenly depressed. "You're mad at me. You hate me."

Next thing I know, she's yelling at the the bartender and Jim about how hard she works for the club and what an asshole I am, and she quits and is never coming back. I was totally confused; where the fuck did that come from? And as soon as she's gone, then I have to take drunk-ass Gypsy outside, pour her into her mother's car and tell her mother not to bring her back for a while, because she needs to work some things out.

And then comes the drive with Alexis, who refuses to let go of the twin subjects of an impending stripper walkout and my fucking Miley. I ended up losing my temper pretty badly, telling my side of the story rather loudly with emphatic gestures against the dashboard while driving rather fast through fog. Alexis started crying, saying I was scaring her and would I please stop yelling and slow down, because she didn't want to die.

I calmed down and eventually apologized for making her cry. She said, "You didn't make me cry. I'm tough; nobody can make me cry." Then she started going back over what had happened and started crying again. It was a long fucking drive, let me tell you.

The next day, Thursday, neither Miley nor Alexis showed up for work. Business was pretty good, though. The dancers who did show up made good money. Jim, though, having heard rumors that House Mom (still upset over my wake-up call) was orchestrating a possible walkout or work slowdown, flipped out on her and one of the other dancers, which needed to be smoothed over.

Friday night, we were prepared for big business, because all the trends seemed to be pointing that way. I made an extra-large beer order in preparation, and we had a big girl package in place (inluding Miley and Alexis, who both returned). The business just didn't show up, though. The club sat almost empty through 8, 9, 10 p.m. At 11, we were doing a bare trickle of business. Sometime around midnight, though, a switch got flipped and the bar ended up with a decent night, selling as much between 11:30 and 2 a.m. as it had between 4 p.m. and 11. None of the dancers seemed to make much, though.

Saturday was just the opposite of Friday. Steady business all evening, but none of it significant in terms of bar sales. The bar ended up making a negligible amount, but several of the dancers made good money. I spent a goodly portion of the evening hiding from one of my ex-employees from my previous job, who had come into my club for who knows what reason. He ended up buying a drink for Kirsten and staying until close. Kirsten meanwhile, who still flirts with me, apparently was given a ring from one of my regulars. I had asked her out for lunch today before I heard about all this, but she never told me whether she wanted to go or not. I'm guessing the answer's no, but with her, who knows?

Girl Counts and an Unexpected Return

2009-05-04T10:41:00.004-06:00

I mentioned last time that I only had one dancer who is still with the club since I opened. She decided not to show up Friday night, because she's upset with all the dancers. Not any dancer in particular; it's just that we have more dancers than before, and she thinks it's cutting into her money.

It is hard to make these girls realize stripping is not a zero-sum game. A zero-sum game is one where anything gained by one person must be lost by another. If you and I are playing poker and I win $5, that means you lost $5.

But a strip club is not like that. In March, we were struggling some nights to hang on to 4-6 girls, and business sucked. In April, we averaged closer to 8-10 and business increased significantly.

Because more girls=better show for customers, which means they stay longer and spend more than if there were fewer girls. And they're more likely to come back and recommend the place to friends. Which means more money for everybody, or most everybody.

So Friday night, I was without one of my stalwarts, but I had plenty of girls and we had our biggest Friday by far since I've been there. Her loss.

Saturday afternoon, I got a call from Kirsten. She said she had been abducted by her psycho ex-boyfriend, who had taken her out of state, but she was now back. She wanted to know if she could come back to work that night. I said okay.

It was a disastrous night. No business, Miley threatened to quit over another dancer who poached her VIP customer (Miley is our number one moneymaker by a wide margin, so we dumped the other girl--no great loss), and Kirsten and Alexis got into a spat right at the end of the night.

So now I'm expected to take sides or something. And the thing is, I like them both, but they're both high-drama, high maintenance girls. And as far as I can tell from all the information I've gathered, they're both in the wrong. I don't want to go into details, because, boring, but Alexis did something that Kirsten overreacted to, and Alexis misunderstood why she was upset and now it's a big thing. Jim and House Mom are pissed at Kirsten, Kirsten's pissed at everybody, and I am just grateful for a day off so I can get away from all that shit for one day.

Constant Change

2009-04-26T15:44:00.004-06:00

One thing that keeps me on my toes in this business is the constant change, the constant reaction that's required. I've been there eight weeks now, basically two months. In that time, I've lost every dancer who was working there my first night, save one.

I have as many or more dancers now as I did then. They're just different dancers. And in the eight weeks between then and now, there have been several girls who churned in and churned right back out, probably never to return. Perhaps as many as 10, perhaps more.

Kirsten, for instance (who I just recently realized uses the same stage name as Pearl), came in and worked about two weeks. Last Saturday, she asked me out to lunch the next day, but stood me up. She came in later that day, worked her shift, asked me out again for Monday and mentioned how much she liked working there and would be working six days a week.

Couldn't reach her Monday. She hasn't shown up to work since. One of the customers, who knows her outside the club, said she had gone into hiding from her psycho ex-boyfriend. It is entirely possible that I'll never see her again.

This month has been much better than last, but this week as we headed into the end of the month has been a little brutal. I've gained some ground, but I'll still have to delay some bills going into next month.

Reruns

2009-04-19T11:24:00.004-06:00

Not a lot of time to write (owning a club is a tremendous time suck, I'm discovering), but I just wanted to mention that these dancers make me tired. Big drama weekend--lots of angst, pretty good money.

A new dancer came in to apply on Wednesday. Her huge number of facial piercings put me off some, but she had a tight body and a professional vibe. Very business-like and straightforward, seemed to know what she was talking about, asked all the right questions. I told her to start the next day.

She wasn't there five minutes the next day when Miley came running to me, saying, "I can't believe you hired that bitch! I hate her!" I didn't know what issues they had, but I told Miley to give it a chance. An hour later, they were giggling together at the bar, saying they'd made up. The new girl wasn't much of a hustler, but she was phenomenal on stage. She'd obviously had formal dance training, and she was one of the best on the pole I've seen in over twenty years of going to clubs. She seemed to be one of the new breed of strippers hearkening back to the old theatrical days of burlesque and Gypsy Rose Lee. So I was thrilled to have another good pro on the roster.

Friday night, everything was looking good. She was training my former best pole girl on some new tricks, and everyone seemed to like her. And then at about 8:30, I noticed that something seemed to be going on in the dressing room. All the dancers were going in and not coming out, and then one girl came out and grabbed the female bartender and took her in. My club had completely ground to a halt, and now I was hearing raised voices.

Turns out Gypsy had smuggled a bottle of vodka into my dressing room and gotten totally wasted and was now melting down, accusing the other dancers of having stolen stuff from her. And when it turned out that the "stolen property" that had her completely disrupting my club's business was the bottle of vodka she wasn't supposed to have in the first, Jim threw a screaming tantrum at her. We finally got everyone calmed down and her mother came out and picked her up early. We told her she could have one more chance, but no more vodka in the dressing room.

But Saturday night, same thing. She ended up in even worse shape, apparently from vodka and pills. The vodka came from another dancer, with whom Jim apparently had an agreement that she could quietly bring liquor as long as she kept it secret. I told Jim that that agreement was over. No more liquor of any kind in the dressing room, and if I find some, she's fired.

Jim has gone back and forth over firing girls. It has been very hard to replace girls at times out there, because of our remote location, and the fact that the clubs in town bring in bigger money. But that means the girls that do come to us are usually girls that can't work at the bigger-money clubs in town. Alexis, for instance--her bad teeth keep her out of the top-end clubs, and she's apparently been fired from the lower-end clubs for fighting. And she does tend to get belligerent when she drinks. And it's becoming obvious why Gypsy, so bright and personable and talented on stage, isn't working at the big money clubs. She can't function for more than one night in a row.

It's sad.

And in other news, another dancer (Kirsten) has come forward to tell me how attracted to me she is, and suddenly, it feels like Lois and Lana all over again. And in other ways, it really feels like S & K all over again.

The Slut Puppy

2009-04-12T10:05:00.004-06:00

So my "new waitress" hit on me Thursday night last week. Friday night, she worked until a little after one, then her boyfriend came in and she came running to me, saying her teenage son had gone missing and she had to leave. Didn't even collect her shift pay.

Haven't seen her since.

In the meantime, we've hired some interesting new girls. One is an old friend of the house mom, who has danced at clubs in the city for a long time, but quit the club she was working at because she said they'd done her wrong. She likes to brag about what incredible money she was pulling in for the club over there, but it hasn't translated to my club yet. I'll call her Miley, because she looks like Miley Cyrus's chubby older sister.

Last night, she had a guy drive in from another state to see her. He supposedly drives in, spends a couple of grand on her at the club, and gives her another pile of money just as a "sugar daddy" thing. On the plus side, he did actually show up (unlike some of the other promised "high rollers" that dancers have told me are supposed to come in to see them on a given night). But he didn't spend nearly what they said he typically does (the low self-esteem part of me wants to ascribe that to me running a sucky club, but she said he liked the place).

As much of a blowhard as she can be, though, I like her. The bar down the way has karaoke on Thursday and Friday nights, and she went with me a couple of nights ago. I got up and sang a song, and she ran up and tipped me, slipping the one down the collar of my shirt. She called me a "slut puppy," which she says is a guy who is just adored by a large number of women, "like a cute puppy."

Which she said is a compliment. But of course, being the guy all the girls want to be friends with and nobody wants to sleep with is not necessarily a blessing.

Like this other dancer we hired last week. I'll call her Kirsten, because she looks like Kirsten Dunst's gigantic sister. Seriously, she's 5'11" in her bare feet. When she wears stripper shoes, my eyes are almost on a level with her tits. Jim the general manager (G-M, get it?) was just salivating over her the first night she worked, babbling at her about he wanted to do everything he can to make her happy. And the assistant manager, who is about her same height and age, paid her a lot of attention, too. I didn't as much, because I had other things to do.

So now she's constantly trying to be outrageous to get my attention (not just my attention, admittedly--she's a bit of an attention whore, jumping up on stage during other girls' sets and stuff). Toward the end of last night, she was doing this little butt wiggle and trying to get me to look at it. But I had other things to do, so I didn't pay much attention and headed off toward the bar.

Next thing I know, she comes running after me, grabs the back of my head and pulls my head in between those magnificent tits of hers, rubbing them all over my face. Then I told Miley she was right; maybe I am a slut puppy.

Then there's a third dancer we hired, Alexis. I mentioned her in passing a while back, when I was talking about the girls who came in looking for a job and I turned them down for talking down the place in front of a customer (I actually ended up hiring the quiet one a day or two later, when she called back saying she didn't really know what the other girl was saying and would we please just give her a chance?). When I briefly mentioned Alexis before, all I said was, "nice body, horrible teeth."

Well, it turns out, she's got a really friendly personality, at least when she's sober. And she likes cigars. And she likes me. She pulled me into the dressing room a few nights ago, because she wanted to take a picture with me to put on her MySpace page. And while we did that, she started coming on to me hard, saying she knew she shouldn't because I'm the owner and all, but she just thinks I'm really sexy and good-looking and she wants me.

And the thing is, she still says that even after I've told her how little the club makes.

So I'll admit, after she kissed me, I kissed her back. We all know I'm not above that sort of thing.

She gave me her phone number and asked me to call her the next day. Then later, I gave her a ride home and we talked and kissed some more and made plans to hook up after work the next night. It didn't happen, though. She ended up making plans to party with another dancer, a long-time friend. Said she figured I wasn't interested since I hadn't called. We're still talking, but there's been nothing like that first night again.

Which is just as well. She asked me once if I'm "too good" for her. I said "no." But I have to admit, she lives a very unstable life, and I'm afraid of getting pulled into that. I have to be very disciplined and focused if I'm going to turn this club around, so I can't let myself be pulled into someone else's crazy right now.

Just When You've Given Up

2009-04-03T12:13:00.003-06:00

So we got to the first of a new month, and business has picked up quite nicely this week. Which is good, because I had settled into a gloom that was pretty unrelenting, but was at the same time relieving.

It went something like this: My wife wants nothing to do with me (on a sexual/intimate level, anyway). And I rarely meet women who are attracted to me in that way. And given the amount of debt that I have sunk into acquiring a new business and the amount of time I am spending working at that business, I have neither the money nor the time to engage in any kind of social life and meet a woman, anyway. The only women I talk to now on a regular basis are strippers, and it's not likely that any of them would be interested in a relationship with me or vice-versa.

So I had kind of resigned myself to being completely celibate and business-centered, at least for the foreseeable future.

And then last night, I had a customer who has been in with her boyfriend a couple of times. They are apparently friends of GM (General Manager) and the bartender (who are married). Last night, she was there alone, and at some point came to me, a little toasted, and shook my hand and said, "I'm your new waitress."

We've been wanting a waitress on Friday and Saturday nights to help the bartender, and more importantly, help the dancers make money. When the dancers make money, I make money.

SO I have no problem trying out someone new as a waitress. But here's the thing: I'm pretty sure she was hitting on me. She didn't come right out and say anything, but she asked if I was married, and she would come around and hug on me and tickle my arm. And then at the end of the night, she came and shook my hand and said she'd be back, but she didn't let go. She held my hand and looked in my eyes, and talked about how I pretended to be all business, but really I wasn't, and then she asked where people were going and what was happening after we closed, like I should know about an after-party or something.

Hell, for all I know, the dancers do have after-parties. But not me. I count what money there is, then I go home and do random stuff for a couple of hours, then sleep till noon or so, spend another hour or two in random pursuits (unless I have a business errand to run) then I hit the bank on the way to opening the club. I have very little leisure time anymore.

Anyway, I think she was hitting on me, which, I'm not interested, yet it's nice to know that, after I'd all but given up, it can still happen.

Pucker Factor, "Obama Dumb," and the Big Brawl

2009-03-28T14:55:00.007-06:00

So Thursday night was weird, because we kept having almost-fights all night. I had one guy getting pretty belligerent with other customers during happy hour, but his buddy kept him under control and they left as soon as the drink prices went up.

Then later, an old man who's given us trouble before came in. I was watching the door when he came over with one of the dancers to get some money out of the ATM. He yelled at me to turn my head and not look at him while he got money, which I did. Then he tried to get up on stage during the girl's set. She got him back down, but I went over and stood nearby, just in case. He noticed me standing there, even though I wasn't looking directly at him, and started yelling that I had my eye on him (which was true). Then he came over and started yelling at me, "Do you seriously think I would hurt that girl?"

I told him I just needed him to stay off the stage. He apologized belligerently, and the dancer kept him handled after that.

And just as we got him out, four more guys came in and started being very rowdy. Rowdy and fun is okay, but for some reason, they decided they had it in for another of the customers and almost started a fight. Every employee in the club watched these guys intensely about an hour, while my manager and I debated ways to get them out of the club without starting a brawl. And then they just left.

Everybody breathed a sigh of relief, but just after they left, another big rowdy group came in and everyone tensed up again. Luckily, these guys and their girlfriends were more interested in line dancing than fighting, so the night ended on a good note after several hours of pucker.

Friday night looked like it might be a disaster, because we had some rumors of nasty weather coming. The weather didn't turn out too badly though.

But at about 10:30, I had a girl come in to try out for a job (nice body, horrible teeth), and five minutes later, two more followed her. The older one of the two was quite good-looking, decently built. The other was slim with bad skin, but still decent-looking.

Now here's the thing about my club. It's in a fairly remote location, so we don't get a lot of traffic from the city proper. And therefore, we also don't get the same numbers of girls applying that clubs in the city do. We have very low girl counts most nights, so when a new girl comes in, even if she looks disastrous, we'll give her a shot on stage. Some girls can fool you; they might not look great on first glance, but once they're on stage and moving to the music, a sensuality emerges that you didn't expect.

My point is, we're not picky with girls. We're very close to desperate for good hustlers. And these new girls looked like they could be, especially the older one, who was very talkative. My house mom showed them around the club, then they sat at the bar for a quick beer and the older one struck up a conversation with one of the male customers sitting next to her. The man was enthralled, and I idly thought how nice it would be to put that talent to use for both our profit.

Then the bartender asked me to watch the bar while she took a break, and as I stood there, I overheard what the potential new girl was telling the guy. She was telling him how she hadn't danced in several years, because she'd quit to run her own salon. That business had gone under, though, so she was looking to get back into stripping to make money to open another one.

And since she hadn't danced in several years, and her friend had never danced at all, they were going to start out at the "lowest hole in the fucking wall" (by which she meant my club, obviously) then work their way up. And then she went on and on about how smart she was, and how ambitious, and how she was meant for better things.

She wasn't as smart as she thought she was, obviously. In fact, she was pretty dumb. It was Obama Dumb, though--an articulate, well-spoken stupidity that covers blunders (like giving a visiting head of state a set of DVD's that he can't even watch because they're encoded for the wrong region) with smooth double-talk and sex appeal--which means maybe she is destined for better things. Somewhere, there's some fool who'll believe her line of self-deluded bullshit and give her what she wants.

That fool won't be me, though. Desperate as we are for pretty girls, I had my manager tell her we couldn't use her, and she and her friend left.

The rest of the night was slow, but we managed to pick up enough at the end to salvage a pretty good night overall.

And then two o'clock came, and as the crowd was filing out, two groups of drunk assholes decided to get belligerent with each other. It was one of those weird stand-offs where you think there's about to be a fight, then it looks like things are smoothing over and everybody says, "We're cool," and then one drunken fucking moron blacks out for a second or something and forgets that he's cool, and starts mouthing off again.

Things got very hairy in there for a while, but we managed to get them all outside. I mentioned that I had been very close to calling the cops, but the manager said, "No, no, you never, ever call the cops in this business. They will come in here and tear this place to shreds."

That's when we heard the shouting and banging in the parking lot, and shattering glass. The manager called the sheriff himself, then.

By the time the cops arrived, the guys who'd won the quick fight had jumped in their Jeep and driven away, leaving a couple of banged-up drunks and a shattered window in the vehicle of one of our good regulars.

The manager and I (I guess I need to give him a name at some point) have been seriously discussing abandoning the strip club format and turning it into a straight dance club. There isn't one on that side of town, and getting rid of the titties would mean we could get a regular liquor license, which has really held us back from a lot of earnings potential. Plus, we wouldn't be so desperate for girls that we would feel obligated to accept whatever dregs came in our door. And I could finally tell Mrs. Jonny (STBeX) what I do for a living.

On the other hand, the fights would probably still happen regardless.

This is my life now.

Rednecks, Crushes, and Cubans

2009-03-21T13:46:00.003-06:00

Last night was very strange. As a Friday night, the club should have been packed. However, we never really got rolling the way we should have. But a few interesting things happened.

We have a new dancer, who is just okay-looking, but very friendly and flirty. She started on Tuesday and immediately became my top-earning girl, so between the flirtiness and the money, she got on my good side really fast. I went up to tip her on stage last night (which I don't do often, but occasionally when it's slow), and another dancer immediately started laughing at me for having a crush on the new girl. She said I was "so cute and sweet and innocent" that it made her blush.

Situated where we are, outside the city limits on the way to the lake, we get a more rural crowd than the clubs in the city. Last night, we got these two guys in their ball caps and T-shirts, who stood around making asshat remarks about how the girls weren't good-looking enough. Then my two hottest girls came in and started talking to the asshats, and next thing you know, they buying buckets of beer and handing out Cuban cigars. I still didn't like the guys, but I smoked the cigar, you bet. Enjoyed it, too.

Even though I've never watched The Sopranos, I felt a little bit like Tony Soprano, walking around my club, watching the girls work the small crowd, smoking my Cuban cigar. It was a nice moment. The not so nice moment was adding up the receipts at closing and finding out what a bum Friday it was. We need a really good Saturday to make it up tonight. However, those hottest girls who made the asshats happy quit last night (probably not permanently--Ive been here a month and had several girls quit and unquit already), so they won't be any help.

Down the Drain

2009-03-12T12:25:00.002-06:00

What is the sound of thousands and thousands of dollars being flushed down the drain?

It is the sound of my general manager's voice in the front parking lot, shouting at a drunk customer, "You get out of this club, motherfucker, or I will fuck you in the ass!"

I am trying to stay positive, but from where I stand right now, I am doomed.

The Strangeness Begins

2009-03-09T12:46:00.003-06:00

Well, it's been two weeks since I've started working at the club, and it's fun but terrifying.

I've got a small crew of friendly girls, but they're flaky. They have loser boyfriend problems. Every night, it seems, one of 'em gets a call from her boyfriend or else gets in some sort of fight with another girl, and next thing I know, I've got a girl in civvies headed out the door and a gap in my show. I get a low but decent customer count, but I lose those customers pretty quickly if there are no women to hold their attention.

I'm also getting to know the regular customers. Some are cool, some are obnoxious, but we can't alienate them, because their business makes the difference between profit and loss.

Saturday night was especially strange. One of the dancers brought in a friend (we think it's a relative of her boyfriend) to audition. She had a decent body, but wasn't especially pretty--bad teeth--but we were going to be tight on the girl count, so we decided to give her a try.

In the first couple of hours, we only had a few customers, mainly a group of four bikers in leathers.

The new dancer was called to the stage, but the house mom came out and said she had been locked in the bathroom for a long time. Eventually she came out in a torn fishnet bodystocking and took a couple of clumsy turns around the pole. After she was done, one of the bikers jumped up there and did his own turn around the pole.

Another biker wandered up to the door to talk to me and the general manager. The manager said he had something he wanted to discuss (I suspect some kind of promotional idea), and asked if he could talk to the biker outside where it was quieter. They walked out together. Almost immediately, one of the other bikers got up from the table and hustled outside, while a third came over to ask me what was going on. I assured him that there wasn't anything wrong; I speculated that the manager had gone out to look at their bikes. A couple minutes later, everybody came back in and everything was fine on that end.

In the meantime, the girl who had brought in the new dancer was in the VIP room, crying. She does this a lot, apparently. Her boyfriend is a total loser who knocked her up and insists she keep dancing so he can have money for the casino. And as she was crying alone in the dark, another dancer got in a fight with my general manager (and it's so strange to say the words, "my general manager," and not mean "my boss") over the new girl and quit.

So by around nine o'clock, I was down two experienced dancers, some others had not shown up yet, and all I had was two other dancers and the disastrous new girl, with a couple more on the way, maybe. On the plus side, I didn't have many customers to witness all the drama (and it's a sad moment when you realize lack of business is your only positive).

Two more dancers, friends of the house mom, showed up to audition,. They were experienced and good-looking, so this was a good development. Unfortunately, there were still barely any customers, so their first impression of the club was a bad one.

As we were showing the two new girls around, the manager told me we had to dump the new girl fast. There were rumors of drugs in the bathroom and fighting with the other girls. She was currently on stage, still trying to figure out how to spin on the pole. As soon as her set was done, the assistant manager hustled her into the dressing room to get her dressed and out of the club. Loser boyfriend would not be happy, but the GM decided that he would be banned from the club as well.

There was an ugly scene which nearly resulted in a fight in the parking lot, but we got everybody separated and got the loser with his girlfriend and his clumsy relative off the property without violence. The other dancer who quit had a long tearful discussion with the GM and unquit.

By this time, it was 10 o'clock, and we still barely any business. I was starting to panic, but around eleven, people started showing up. Weird thing was, they were mostly couples. Apparently, Saturday night was Date Night at the strip club.

By 11:30 or so, things seemed to be back on track, although the late start was going to hurt our numbers for the night. We had gotten a couple of other girls in, and the two new girls were doing well, getting lots of tips on stage and selling lap dances. It was getting hot in the club, but not quite hot enough to turn on the air conditioning, so we opened the back door. And then a couple of drunks wandered in, so I sent the assistant manager to get their cover charge and then I barred the back door.

One of the drunks wandered around dazed, asking people, "Want to get high?" like Towelie. Some suspected he was an undercover cop trolling for drug arrests or something.

Then the dancer who quit then unquit had a fight with her boyfriend and requit. She stormed out through the back door, which I had to rebar behind her. Around 1:30, a big group of people rolled in the front door (more couples), overwhelming the assistant manager. Everyone paid and got in, but he misrang something, then tried to void, which messed things up more.

Just a half-hour to go...

About ten minutes before closing, the county sheriffs wandered in. I let the manager handle the discussion, which involved assuring the cops that we would not stay open after hours; the club used to stay open till 4 a.m., but the county shut that down on my first weekend.

Two o'clock finally came, and we shut the club down and got the customers out. As we began our cleanup, the staff realized that they had never taken any meal breaks. There had been plenty of down time before 11:00, but that had been largely filled up with drama. So there was a quick clean-up followed by a meal break, which included much remark about what a weird night it had been and speculation about a full moon. Thanks to the time change, it was after 4 a.m. when we finally left.

The girl who quit, then unquit, then requit, came back the next night to re-unquit.

This is my life now. Holy crap.

Karma the Cocktease, Pt. 2

2009-03-01T11:02:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the delay in posting. I'm having trouble adapting to my new schedule, and there's so much to learn, it's hard to sit down for any length of time and think straight.

To recap: I decided to leave my job after eight years, and was so desperate to get out that I gave notice before having another job lined up. And I started exploring the idea of owning my own business.

On my second-to-last day on the job, I checked the Business For Sale listings on craigslist, and saw an Adult Club listed for sale. No price, no details, but a hint in the text of the ad made me wonder if it was the club I had previously thought about buying. It didn't matter, really; there was no way I could afford it, especially since they said they were only interested in a straight cash purchase, not an owner financing deal.

But I figured there was no harm in inquiring at least. So I emailed back and asked if it was indeed the club I was thinking of. I also said I was interested, although the price they were asking was probably way out of my ballpark, and named a price range I thought I could swing.

The answer came back: "You're in the ballpark."

The timing was incredible. And even though it prompted some soul-searching, I decided to keep exploring the avenue. On the one hand, it's not really looked on as a classy business, is it? My family certainly would not approve. But on the other hand, if I don't mind frequenting such a business, why should I mind owning one?

And as coincidence would have it, just as I was starting to think about buying this club, I saw an article on-line saying that the stripper business was not tanking with the rest of the economy. I don't really believe in fate or omens, but this seemed as close to fate as it could be. Or Karma, if you will.

But Karma was an incredible cocktease, building up my hopes and then yanking them almost completely away, only to give a last-minute reprieve.

I went out and looked the place over and talked numbers. Crunching the numbers, how much I would have to borrow vs. how much the place was making, it looked doable. Woo Hoo!

But then I found out that SBA won't loan to strip clubs, because they're "prurient" businesses. Oh No!

So I inquired through a loan broker, thinking they'll just turn me down. But no, with my credit, I could probably get unsecured personal loans to cover the cost. Woo Hoo!

But the broker only got me half of what I needed. Oh No!

So I told the seller that I'd only been approved for half the money and had to back out, unless he wanted to reconsider an owner-financing deal (considering the state of the economy, I figured it was worth a shot). He said okay! Woo Hoo!

So we signed a deal two weeks ago, and since then, there have been a hundred little Woo Hoo!/Oh No! moments, too many to list. Bottom line, although the final paperwork isn't yet signed, I have my own decent little business and I think I like that. And I have several ideas that I think will improve the club's visibility in the market and bring in more business. Woo Hoo!

But on the other hand, I jumped too fast at the deal. I didn't look into all the corners, and now I find that there are a lot of problems around the edges, problems that will take money to fix. And in my first week of training to take over the club, income hasn't been anywhere near the level I expected. Oh No!

So in the short term, I'm really going to be scraping to keep the place going and get my loan payments met. I may have to sell off some property on eBay or something to make the cash I need to get through my first month. I hope it doesn't come to that.

But if I can make it through the first six months, I think I can build the place back up into a club I can be proud of. And maybe even tell my family about.

Karma the Cocktease

2009-02-25T11:00:00.000-06:00

Okay, delays in various aspects are holding this up from being a completely done deal, but it's close enough that I think I can go ahead and talk about it. Or at least the start of it.

I occasionally play the lottery. And sometimes when I play the lottery, I daydream about what I would do with the money if I won. And in times past, one of my fantasies about what I would do with the money if I became a sudden millionaire was to buy my own strip club.

And not just any strip club. In my daydreams, I imagined buying a particular club in my city, not too big to be comfortable, but with a decent reputation as such clubs go.

So when I began thinking seriously about leaving my job, I began to think seriously about what I wanted to do next. And "run a bar" was on the list of ideas. But starting a bar from scratch was too intimidating, and all of the bars for sale were asking way too much.

But the idea of owning my own business was attractive. So I began investigating other options. But nothing was really coming together for me.

And then things turned suddenly really sour at work, and I gave my notice. I would be leaving at the end of January. Even though I had no other job set up, and no really viable options, I decided I had to leave. I would simply leap into the void.

For three weeks before my final day, I talked to people with businesses for sale: a bookstore, a donut shop, a copy shop. I liked aspects of all of them, but the numbers didn't add up for me, and my enthusiasm was low.

And this is when Karma started her fan dance.

Counting Down

2009-02-17T21:37:00.002-06:00

Today I wrote a check (or for our Canadian friends, a cheque) with more zeroes on it than I think I have written in my life. It causes an odd pain in one's chest to write that many zeroes and realize the size of the risk you're taking. Looked at one way, those zeroes spell "risk." Looked at another way, they spell "opportunity." Either way, they also spell "goodbye" to any chance of going back to my old life with STuBEx.

I haven't yet decided how I'm going to to tell her what's going on, or when to tell her, or even if I'll tell her. I mean, she'll have to know eventually; there'll have to be financial disclosures in a divorce proceeding, and sooner or later, she's going to want to take that step.

I also haven't decided how to tell you, but I know when: after the deal is done completely. That should be Monday or Tuesday of next week.

The Streams Are THIS Close

2009-02-13T11:12:00.002-06:00

Looks like this is happening. Part of me is excited. Part of me is terrified that I'm being foolish or moving too quickly. Desperation does not often lead to wise decisions. Congress is proving that right now.

Karma

2009-02-06T22:29:00.000-06:00

I'm not ready to tell the full story yet, but let me just say this.

To some, karma's a bitch. To me, she's an incredible cocktease.

Don't Look at the Trap

2009-02-05T10:47:00.003-06:00

So I'm in talks right now, and I'm close to making a deal, and it still doesn't seem real. I haven't told anybody I know. I had been talking to people incessantly on other possibilities, gathering advice and information. But now, PFFT! Nothing.

It's incredibly foolish, and yet incredibly exhilarating. If this works out, it will be...

I don't know how to describe it. When STBEx and I first met, I had ambitions. They were foolish and ill-formed, but whenever she would talk about me getting a good stable job with a good stable company, I would say, "But that's not what I want."

See, when she was growing up, her mother and her grandfather both held the same jobs all her life. Her grandfather worked as an accountant for one company for his entire career; her mother worked for the same company for something like 35 years.

But my family didn't do that. My father owned his own business. My stepmother owned hers, as well. My brother went into business for himself a couple of times; those businesses failed, and he had to go to work for others, but it always seemed as if he was just waiting for the day when he could be his own boss again. My stepfather also started a business with a partner, which ended badly, but they were riding high for a few years.

The point is, her family growing up were employees. Mine were entrepreneurs.

And the last several years, as I've "grown up" and settled down, I've tried to take her approach, because frankly, it seemed to work out better. Her family of long-term employees have been more successful and better off than my family. But every job I've had with a substantial company has turned out badly.

So the idea that I could actually do this, be my own boss, with the potential for a serious increase in income, is very appealing. And out of all the businesses I've looked at (and I've looked at several), this is one of only two that has really excited me. And of those two, this is the only one I can maybe afford.

I still haven't gotten final approval on the funding, but I'm very close. And I still haven't made the final decision to pull the trigger, but I'm very close to that, too.

But at some point, if I move forward, all of this will be real, and I'll have to tell the people around me what's going on. And I don't look forward to that.

Crossing the Streams

2009-01-30T17:12:00.004-06:00

In "Ghostbusters," Egon warned against crossing the energy streams from the proton packs. "It would be bad," he said.

I've spent years keeping NJ from crossing streams with DJ, and for the most part, I've succeeded. Where I've failed, sometimes things worked out okay. The last time I did it, things didn't turn out so well.

I walked out of my job for the last time today. And just as my job is ending, I have a new opportunity. Thing is, it would mean crossing the streams.

It's easy enough to hide occasional clubbing or a massage appointment here and there from the people in your life who would not approve. Harder when it becomes your job. Don't know how I feel about it. It would cause some hard feelings in my family, and it would certainly put the final nail in the coffin of my marriage, although that deal was pretty much sealed by STuBEx (Soon To Be Ex) the last time I raised the subject of reconciliation. If it's a lost cause, might as well double down and make it a sure thing, huh?

It's really Jonny Jr. that I worry about. I wonder how long I could keep it hidden and what the reaction would be when the truth came out? That's the biggest dilemma I'm facing.

Well, that and raising the money. I would need to raise several thousand dollars in cash to take the shot. Number one, I'm not sure how I'll get it all (sure can't ask the parents for it, can I?), and number two, that money could just as easily be turned to DJ's purposes. I've fantasized before about doing what I've got the chance to do now, but I don't know if I'm really ready to turn that into a reality.

But I'm going to at least look into it, because the coincidence of the opportunity arising right at this time is too great. I have to check it out. I don't know if I'm ready to go into the rabbit hole just yet, but I'm at least going to drop a rock down and listen for it to hit bottom.

Still Alive

2009-01-11T20:20:00.002-06:00

Lyn asked if I was okay. I am and am not. Job stress is getting so bad that I nearly got into a fistfight at work, so I'm turning in my resignation tomorrow. And no, I don't have another job lined up. I've been looking into buying a business, but so far, nothing has come of it.

In the meantime, I've been extremely busy doing DJ things and hardly going out at all. I've tried a couple of times to arrange an outcall visit, but I live in an out-of-the-way place and have not been successful so far. Which is good, cause I'm going to need that cash pretty soon.

There have been a few things here and there that I felt like posting on here, but really, with nothing going on in my own life, it just seemed like I'd be repeating the same stuff. I've debated shutting down the blog entirely, but for now, I'm leaving it up. I probably won't update often, but that may change when my life changes at the end of the month.

Depression

2008-11-17T23:21:00.003-06:00

I haven't posted in a while. It's been a bad week. I made a brief angry post on DJ's blog, which prompted a couple of replies, and when I tried to explain in further depth, years of suppressed anger came boiling out. Bad enough that the posts were nominally political, but the anger came from all corners at once, I think--not just anger at the political situation, but also at my relationship with Mrs. Jonny, anger at my awful job (and the crapped out economy that won't let me leave it right now), anger at the false friends who listened to Mrs. Jonny bitch about me behind my back and encouraged her to dump me without ever once asking me for my side, anger at myself for retreating into a shell the past few years and watching my life spiral into a hole without doing anything to stop it.

And some people can get away with angry, vindictive outbursts. One friend of mine has gained an on-line following because of them, even got a job because she came to someone's attention initially because of a particularly vicious rant.

But I'm not one of those people. So what's left for now is assessing the wreckage and seeing what friends I have left. I have a couple, who disagree with me on virtually everything I said and yet still remain friends, which I guess means they're true friends. But others I've lost for good, and probably burned some professional bridges as well.

So my life right now is in very small pieces, but I'll pick myself up and move on. I just need to retreat into my cave and hibernate for a while.

End of an Era

2008-11-06T21:38:00.003-06:00

The Forbidden Zone is no more.

It was the last new strip club to be built in town. A dancer acquaintance says that there will never be another, because the city has changed its zoning requirements to make opening a new one impossible. It cannot be built within a certain distance of a school or church facility, you see, so all a church has to do is buy or lease something within the proposed radius to kill the deal. The Forbidden Zone managed to slip through the cracks because it was bounded on one side by a highway, on two others by a large intersection, and on the fourth by a large restaurant that had operated in the same location for decades. Such a location would be very hard to come by again, and that's assuming the city fathers haven't revised the zoning laws to close such a loophole.

Now the club is gone, bulldozed into the ground and the ground salted to kill all the cooties, in preparation for a major highway expansion. I'll never again fuck Candace in that VIP.

Maybe I'll run into her in another club in five years or so.

Birthday Fail

2008-11-05T19:23:00.004-06:00

It wasn't a bad birthday, overall. Spent most of Saturday bumming around the house. Did some shopping. Went out to an excellent dinner with Mrs. Jonny and Jonny Jr. Mrs. Jonny had to search long and hard to find a birthday present that would send no romantic signals whatsoever. Her solution? Burger King gift cards. Mission accomplished.

After supper, I headed down to The Runway to see Pearl, deeply conflicted in heart and mind. On the one hand, I wanted to save as much cash this month as possible. On the other, I was horny and looking for some special treatment. Most clubs I've been to give a special dance to birthday celebrants (although perhaps it has to be set up and lubricated by cash donations; I don't know, since it has never ever happened to me).

So there I am, cigar in hand, drinking beer, turning down company in hopes of seeing Pearl. But of course, she never shows up. Queenie does, but seems generally uninterested in having me buy her a drink, which is just as well, since she's wearing these odd Pepto-Bismol colored pasties. So I basically sit there by myself, watching the Texas/Texas Tech game (I don't like either team, but that was an incredible finish). And midway through my second cigar, I realize I'm not having any fun, so I put out the cigar and go home.

Once here, I get on Craigslist and decide to do something crazy with the unspent cash reserve that now seems to be burning a hole in my pocket. I call up a Craigslist cutie and ask her over. She says she'll be available at one a.m., so please call back then. I fire up my unfinished cigar half, drink a little Jack Black and pick up around the house while waiting for the magic hour.

At 1 a.m., I call her back. No answer. 1:15, 1:30, same result. No answer. I go to bed and pass out.

Next day, my house reeks of smoke. But I still have all my cash.

Happy Birthday to me.

Hellmouth

2008-10-31T23:11:00.002-06:00

Happy Halloween.

Yes, I know I'm posting late. It's no longer Halloween, but my birthday instead, so happy birthday to me.

Halloween was always my favorite holiday simply because it was the day before my birthday. So I've always felt a special affinity for monsters and such.

So here are links to a horror pictorial featuring Alira Astro, who has a demon face tattooed on her crotch (yes, her pussy is literally a Hellmouth), with movies here.

Enjoy.

And if you're a babe with nude pics to share with the birthday boy, send 'em here.

Random Creepy Porn

2008-10-27T22:12:00.005-06:00

So there's nothing on the personal front to report. I'm pretty much dead broke (actually, I'm not, because I got some cash from delivering the secret project, but I'm on a quest to live a month on just my salary), so I'm spending my vacation sitting around the house websurfing, because it costs no cash out of pocket.

So the other day I followed a link to some really twisted porn, so twisted I'm not going to link it here. And of course, the funny thing is, no matter how depraved the subject, there's an online community built around it that thinks it's perfectly normal and cool.

So of course I watched some of it, and got turned on. I was a little disturbed at how turned on I was, considering I also get disturbed at something as innocuous (porn-wise) as this.

It's a series of pictures featuring Lightspeed girl Tawnee Stone. Most of Tawnee Stone's pictorials have been simple wholesome cheescake or nudes, featuring her stripping out of tennis outfits or workout clothes. There are videos of her doing things like high kicks while topless, or bouncing on a trampoline or something. And although I think she's really hot, she turns me off in the videos because she seems to be so clearly bored out of her mind by the silly shit she's being asked to do, but hey, it's money, right?

But she has also done a couple of hardcore sets, and in this one, we see Tawnee dressed as a cheerleader playing a video game. As the set continues, a man enters and helps her off with her clothes, fondling her tits and going down on her, until she then gives him a blow job. Fairly standard.

But here's the disturbing bit. In the picture at right, you can plainly see that she's staring straight ahead, and her hands are posed as if she's still holding the game controller. So the scenario must be that this guy has put wholesome, innocent, helpless Tawnee in some kind of trance and is molesting her while she's unable to resist. Of course, this being Porn World, she's actually into it as soon as she comes to her senses, but there's still enough of a whiff of molestation here that it kind of creeps me out. But not enough that I don't look at the pictures, since I know that Tawnee is not actually being molested, just being paid a lot of money to pretend to be.

Wish I could make money that easily. Just saying...

Another Big Bowl of Sex Flakes

2008-10-21T21:02:00.005-06:00

So Friday night, I sat up waiting for Pearl, who never showed, but promised she'd call the next day.

Saturday, I tried to keep busy and not get too excited. I bought some groceries and some cheap gin and vermouth. Went home and kept myself entertained most of the afternoon and evening. A little after 9:30, I couldn't stand it anymore and gave her a call. She called me back around 11:30 and said "Sorry about last night, but let's get together now. Let me take a shower and then I'll be right over."

I said okay, hung up and took a shower myself. I shaved, put on my robe and fixed a martini, getting myself in the mood by watching videos on YouPorn (this one intrigues me--the production values suck, and the girl isn't that hot, and the sex is tepid, yet unlike most of the videos I've watched, I've gone back to this one more than once). Two hours and three martinis later, it was apparent she wasn't coming again. I went to bed feeling pissed and useless. Something's wrong when you can't even pay a woman to have sex with you.

Felt a little hung over Sunday morning, but relieved also. I hadn't gotten laid, but that also meant I hadn't spent any of my reserve. And I resolved not to call her again. I didn't know what I would say if she called me, but I didn't really figure she would.

She called just as I was heading out the door to see Jonny Jr. Apologized for not coming over, but she said she'd been crying so much, she wouldn't have been able to see the road. I was still pissed, but I'm a sucker for tears, so when she asked me to call her after I was done with Jr, I did.

She finally came over at around 6 p.m. that evening. We were both nervous, so we sat on the couch and made small talk. I fixed her a martini and got myself a bourbon. She kept glancing at the clock, saying she couldn't stay too late because she hadn't been to work in a few days, and she needed to work that night for sure. I asked her if I'd been calling her too much and admitted that I'd probably been thinking of her as a bit of a rebound figure. She said it was just natural; people get lonely, after all.

A little after 6:30, she sat up straight and pulled off her shirt with no segue at all. I helped her off with her bra, and we made out briefly on the couch before moving to the bedroom.

She went down on me for a while, then I returned the favor. It didn't take her nearly as long to come this time, since she wasn't nearly as drunk. I slipped on a condom and we tried a couple of different positions. She was making all the right noises, but she seemed distracted, and I finally asked her, "Do you just want me to go ahead and finish?"

She half-laughed and said, "I'm sorry, I just don't want to be late for work."

So I did what I needed to do, then disposed of the condom and fetched her money while she was in the bathroom cleaning up. Then she got dressed and left for work.

I'm sure I won't hear from her again until she needs rent for next month. I don't know what I'll do then.

Eighteen Is Enough

2008-10-20T05:40:00.002-06:00

It's my eighteenth wedding anniversary today.

I asked Mrs. Jonny if she wanted to do something to mark the occasion. I told her I understand if she didn't actually feel like celebrating, but I was asking anyway. She suggested a family outing with Jonny Jr.

I turned her down. Our anniversary is our anniversary, and nobody else's. She's been turning just-the-two-of-us outings into group outings for years to avoid being alone with me. Not any more. So our anniversary is being completely blown off this year, and we'll have the group outing on my birthday in a couple of weeks.

I wonder if she'll finally get up the courage to file for divorce in the next year. I've decided that I'm tired of being the grown-up and taking the steps she wants for her. If she wants a divorce, she'll have to be the one to file herself.

Sex Flakes

2008-10-18T09:12:00.002-06:00

Life happens. I get that.

One of the secret projects I was working on was a writing commission. I wrote the stuff up for delivery three weeks ago, but there were scheduling problems, so we set delivery for two weeks ago. Then two weeks ago, I get an email that starts with something like, "I know you're going to think I'm a total flake, but..." Life happened and the secret project is still not delivered. I get that. I don't think she's a total flake, as it happens, but it seems like this is happening with everybody.

Back in August, I emailed a friend of HotRed's, someone whose pictures I'd seen but never met, asking if she'd like to get together. That was during Vacation Month, when I spent myself into oblivion on gasoline and strippers and was still feeling flush. But weeks went by and she didn't answer, so I forgot about the whole idea.

A couple of days ago, I get an email from her. "I don't think I ever answered this. Sorry, I got busy."

Which is what always happens with Pearl. I've called her a few times. She only ever returns my calls when she's about to go to work, to inquire if I want to come by, with the unspoken assumption that I will spend money on her, of course. And the first words out of her mouth are always the same: "Sorry I didn't return your call sooner. I've just had a lot of stuff going on."

I get that. Life happens. We've all got a lot of stuff going on.

I've been thinking I made a terrible mistake, moving out. I had a cash reserve when I first moved, pretty substantial for me, but by the end of last month, I'd spent my way through almost all of it. This month, I've been determined not to touch it, to live on what I make. Calculating my bills, I have about $85 to last me through the rest of the month, gas and food.

So of course, Pearl calls me a couple of nights ago. "Hey, I'm going to work. Can you come by?"

"No, sorry. I have to work in the morning."

"Well, do you want me to call you later maybe?"

I'll be asleep by the time she gets off work, but I wouldn't mind being woken up to talk for a while with a pretty woman. "Sure, if you want to."

"Do you think you could help me out? I need a thousand dollars for rent. I know you don't have a lot of money right now, but if maybe you had (a sum that is more than what I have to live on for the rest of the month, but less than my reserve), I thought maybe..." So apparently "call you later" is code for "come by and fuck you later."

Math in my head. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Don't, don't, don't. Lonely, horny, lonely. "Yeah, I think I could do that, but not tonight. Maybe tomorrow or Saturday."

I was useless and distracted at work yesterday, my brain buzzing with sexual static. Thoughts of Pearl and what I was going to do with her, sexual scenarios taking place in virtually every room of my house.

Then one of my employees calls in a half-hour before his shift to say he can't make it in to work. Pisses me off. Life happens, I get that, and he's apparently got a lot of stuff going on in his personal life, but he's been ditching work a lot lately, and if he doesn't come in, I've got to stay and do his work for him. His personal issues mean an extra 4 hours of work for me, again, and I'm getting tired of it.

Then the other guy on the shift comes in, close friend of the first guy, and before I tell him that it'll be us tonight, I overhear him telling the morning shift, "I guess he's going to be late. He's been locked in his room all day playing PS3."

I very rarely shout at work. I'm not a temper-losing type guy. But I lost it then. PS3 Boy is going to get written up when he comes in next week and will probably lose his job soon after. But there I was, working into the evening, more desperate than ever to get some relief, some release, with Pearl. Friday nights are slow, so once we got caught up, I decided to leave a couple of hours early, which means I only worked 10 hours instead of 12.

Left a voicemail for Pearl as soon as I got home. "Not sure what you were thinking of doing, but tonight's a good night to do it. Call me back."

She calls me back at 9:30. "Yeah, let's get together. I'll jump in the shower, and then I'll call you once I'm on the road to get directions."

Now I'm excited. I still can't really afford it--I mean, I have the cash, but I may need it to eat on by the end of the month--but I don't care. I'm lonely and frustrated and I want some pretty female company and I want my dick sucked and I want to eat pussy and I want to hold soft skin under warm covers. I spend a half-hour picking up the house. I shave and wash up various areas on my body. One thing I've spent my money on unwisely in the first half of the month is building up a bar, so I have plenty of liquor, but I don't know if she'll really like any of it, so I run down to the convenience store to grab some beer, expecting the phone on my hip to buzz at any minute.

Three hours later, I'm sitting on my couch, reading a book that I can't concentrate on (doesn't help that it's a pretty mediocre book). No Pearl, no call. Story of my life. I say, "fuck it" and go to bed.

The phone rings at 1:11 a.m. "Sorry I woke you," says Pearl. "My car battery died. I finally got somebody to jump it. I guess it's too late now, huh? Can I call you tomorrow?"

"Okay."

Life happens. I get that.

But I'm getting tired of it.

Moved On

2008-10-12T09:41:00.002-06:00

Sorry I haven't been around. I've been busy on a couple of secret projects. But yesterday, I spent some time at a local event with Mrs. Jonny and Jonny Jr. And at one point, I noticed Mrs. Jonny talking to a pretty female cop. Turns out, the cop is good friends with another female cop that Mrs. Jonny works closely with. So after the conversation ends, I mention that someone else in our group had remarked on how pretty the cop was. And Mrs. Jonny says something like, "If he thinks she's pretty, he should see her friend that I work with. She's gorgeous."

So I say, "Maybe you could introduce me sometime."

And with no hesitation, no jealousy, no reaction at all really, she says, "No, she's dating one of our Neanderthal deputies. I don't know why, but you know how it is."

So two things:

Number one, it's funny to hear the eternal lament of the beta male--"Why's she dating that asshole when she could do so much better?"--coming out of the mouth of my wife.And number two, she really seemed as if she would have done it if the lady weren't already dating, which is just another indication of how far she's moved on. We're still not even divorced and she's willing to set me up with another woman, it seems.

Blowing a Dildo

2008-10-04T12:34:00.004-06:00

I may have mentioned this before, but after a few years, you sometimes forget what you've talked about.

I was in this strip club many years ago, and they had porn playing on the in-house TV's (a couple of places I visited in the 80's experimented with that idea, before they figured out that customers watching porn on a TV above the bar meant that they weren't watching or tipping the girls on stage). And it's a girl/girl scene with two really hot girls, which, you know, awesome, but one thing really bugged me.

One of the girls was wearing a strap-on dildo, and the other girl was giving it a blow job.

It was disturbing to me. I mean, it had all the elements that should have made me happy:

- really hot girl...

- giving a blow job

- another really hot girl

- no ugly, crude guys

But I just couldn't stop asking myself, "What's the point of this?" I could imagine an almost-convincing reason for the one girl to suck the dildo, if she just likes the feel of a cock in her mouth and doesn't like ugly crude guys with Jersey accents mumbling "Yeah, baby, suck that fuckin' dick" every three seconds any more than I do.

But what the hell was in it for the girl wearing the strap-on? I mean, fucking with a strap-on I kind of get; you still get skin-to-skin, body-to-body, basically everywhere except the groinal area. And you're giving your partner sexual pleasure. But just standing there watching a girl lick a piece of plastic attached to you when she should be licking you? Absolutely senseless.

I was reminded of this recently by a link on Kaori's blog (it wasn't the exact thing, but similar enough that I was reminded), and it just brought back all the confusion. Can anyone explain this to me?

A Brief FYI Plus Totally Unrelated Comment

2008-09-29T07:18:00.004-06:00

There has been no robot. I can hardly believe it was all coincidental, but it seems it was.

Part of me still wishes I could preserve (or to be honest, revive) what we had, but with every day that I live alone, I'm making my life more and more incompatible with hers. My humidor is almost full. I bought shot glasses. I have beer in the fridge and liquor in the cabinet.

Shopping in a liquor store is still somewhat of an overwhelming experience. There are just so many brands, and the packaging is so intriguing, yet gives no hint of what you'll truly experience from the product inside (much like women, come to think of it).

The Scotch bottles emphasize age and dignity, sometimes packed in boxes that show rolling hills. The rums come in odd shapes and often play to their island heritage or else try to cash in on Pirates of the Caribbean. The whiskeys split, some emulating the dry data-filled Jack Daniels model, others trying to look as backwoods hillbilly as they can (one even comes in a jar, like it was just filled from a still out back). The vodkas are cool and sophisticated, a row full of art deco bottles that look vaguely like a city from Flash Gordon.

They all burn going down.

The Great Depression

2008-09-25T21:21:00.002-06:00

In the 30's, Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, faced with a devastating economic depression, established an alphabet soup of government programs to try to revive the economy and bring prosperity back. The popular myth is that he succeeded, but prosperity did not truly return until after the end of the war in 1945. In fact, if you believe Amity Shlaes (and I choose to for the purposes of this blog post), FDR's policies actually made the depression worse and longer lasting than it needed to be.

What does this have to do with Jonny, you ask? Well, Anonymous Commenter tells me I'm doing the same thing, wasting my time with "sluts" and "fantasy" which will not make me any happier in the long run. I totaled it up recently and was a little shocked to discover that I'd run up over a thousand dollars on my credit card in the last couple of months at the Runway. And I understand intellectually that I am not making my situation any better, and in fact making it quantitatively worse, by acting out in this way.

But I'm in the same situation as I was during the Summer of Blur. I'm hurt, deeply hurt, and there is a limit to how much I can distract myself from it, especially when I'm alone. I need to talk to someone I can trust, and right now, there's no one I can trust with this. So I'll act out for a while until I find some equilibrium. Call it sexual addiction if you will; I think sexual addiction is another fancy name therapists give to normal feeliings so they can get another income stream.

There's more to say about this, but I'm not going to say it right now. I've got a paying gig I need to work on for a little while before I go to bed and get up at 4-something in the morning.

Exhausted Me I Am

2008-09-24T14:25:00.005-06:00

We're short-staffed at work, which wouldn't be too bad except that for some reason, everyone who's still around has decided that September is to be The Month of Vacations and Unplanned Emergency Absences.

Seriously, out of eight people, three have scheduled vacations of five days or longer and at least four more have had at least one day's worth of "I can't come in today because..." I mean, I get that a lot anyway; I have a department full of flakes and feebs. The girl who just quit was the most reliable one of the bunch.

But it used to be that I was staffed up enough that things were covered without my having to work extra. Now, though, I'm the one who's having to cover all this shit, so I'm starting to take it personally. Keep in mind that these are not just 9-5 jobs. I have people on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so if somebody calls in sick a 9 p.m. on a Saturday night (and it has happened recently), I'm working all night Saturday and into Sunday. I pulled a double-shift yesterday, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., and had a guy call in sick for overnight. I couldn't pull a triple, because I had to be there at 6 to train a new hire, so I had to leave the other guy there alone and hope nothing went wrong, because my boss hates having guys work by themselves. I seriously (if briefly) considered just going home and never coming back in.

When I came in at 6 this morning, my boss was there working with the other guy. Shit.

But I'm not here to complain about my job. My purpose is much more positive than that. I'm here to tell you to go visit "Happyendingz - confessions of an erotic masseuse" and listen to her complain about her job (and by "listen," of course, I mean "read" - it's not a podcast, although I'd love to hear her voice sometime- maybe I should do an audio post one of these days...) Her work problems are a lot funnier than mine.

There's not much erotic about her tales of erotic massages, but it's good writing, really funny and honest. I only wish I lived in southeast PA so I could throw her a little cash business.

You know, I really should update my blogroll...

Shaving

2008-09-21T09:08:00.002-06:00

I got bored last night. I wanted to go out, but after Pearl, my finances are incredibly tight for the rest of the month. So I did something I haven't done in a long time; I logged onto AFF and dipped into the webcam rooms.

It was kind of frustrating. I no longer have a paid membership, so I can only look at one stream at a time. And if that cam is boring and I want to switch, it won't let me look at a new stream unless I leave the room entirely and come back in. And I can only get the cam in the first place if the woman posts a message in the room, because I can't look at profiles with a free membership, and usually if a woman's putting on a good show, her hands are too busy to post. So it took a while to find a good one.

Eventually thought, I saw something interesting. A woman shaved herself on cam, and then masturbated with a toy.

And I wonder, does she do that every Saturday night? Does she let her bush grow all week with the intention of shaving it on camera? Does she sit at her desk at work on Wednesday and surreptitiously feel down there, gauging the stubble and thinking about whether she'll have enough to work with? Does she get wet thinking about it and have to go to the restroom to do a quick bit of business? Do the people she passes smell her excitement, even subliminally, and get excited themselves in response?

I've been shaving, too. For a while I was just trimming, because I didn't know when I might get back with Mrs. Jonny again, and she would freak out if I was bald. For that matter, she would know something was wrong if I was trimmed, but I still tried it, and liked it. When I was with Pearl last week, she didn't mention anything about my condition down there, but then she was bald, too.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. On the one hand, it's a hassle to keep up with it. And I get irritation and ingrown hairs from the razor; I'm always afraid that I'll be with a woman and she'll think the razor bumps are some sort of venereal lesions or something. It itches when it starts to grow back in, and I feel the sweat down there more vividly.

But it feels nicer when I'm playing with myself. My scrotal sac, especially, is soft and sensitive. The lack of hair makes a huge difference in sensation there. And the big benefit I discovered Saturday with Pearl is with condoms.

The act of removing a condom was always a painful one. They fit tight, usually; they have to be rolled on and rolled back off, at least partway. But whenever I would start to roll the condom back up my penis, I would always catch a few hairs in there. Ouch. Now that I'm shaved, removing the condom is totally painless.

So to recap: I watched a woman shave and masturbate via webcam, and a shaved groin makes for ouchless condom removal. Better living through technology.

Exploitation

2008-09-20T20:44:00.006-06:00

I got a rather angry comment about my putridly posting Pearl's pic. And I've got to say, the anonymous commenter is right. It was a bad thing I did. A wrong thing. And I've been struggling to come up with the proper response, because on the one hand, I don't want to justify it or make excuses. I did it and it's bad.

But on the other hand, I haven't taken it down. It will scroll off the page in a few days, and be mostly forgotten. Doesn't make it right, but it's something.

I was struck, though, by this comment: "I've lost some major respect for this blog now." I'm not sure the blog ever deserved respect. It's about a man who cheats on his wife, after all, who has quickie sexual encounters in strip clubs and massage parlors, who is right now afraid to approach normal women because he is so emotionally damaged that he has literally nothing to offer in a relationship, and if he did, he would be afraid to start one because of the hurt she might cause him. There's always further down one could go, of course, but like Jerry Springer, I am madly searching for the bottom.

The only other comment I can make is that, wrong as what I did was, she is not a victim. She's not a child; she's in her 30's. She made her choices same as I did, knowing the possible consequences as I did. I exploited her picture for blog content; she exploited my loneliness for cash (and between the drink and the cash payment for after, I spent about three days' salary on her that night). And if I ever do see her again, you can bet there will be a price tag attached. We used each other.

That being said, when I look at all the entries I wrote about Lois, I never used any of the pics I have of her, even though I have no reason not to except for a lingering respect for our relationship. If I wouldn't do it to Lois, why would I do it to Pearl?

"Because I don't know her well" seems to be the only answer I can come up with. It's easier to act without empathy toward strangers. It would probably be a better world if that were not true, but there you go.

Nail in the Coffin?

2008-09-17T05:25:00.002-06:00

As the political blogs like to say, I question the timing.

In the interest of full disclosure, I once offered to give Mrs. Jonny the web address to this blog, but she turned me down. And I once sent her several entries as text in an email so that she could see what I was saying about us and maybe believe that I was telling the truth, that what I said to her face was not substantially different than what I was saying behind her back. She deleted it unread.

But later, she got curious. I know she did, because she visited DJ's blog a couple of times, and searched on his blog for "nightshade johnny" (she had gotten a glimpse of the name over my shoulder once).

I didn't think she had ever found me, because if she had, she certainly would have acted differently toward me, given all the things I've been writing about. But I think I may have misunderestimated the skill at stonewalling she developed over years of doing Gato behind my back.

Because in yesterday morning's post, I happened to let slip the fact that I had been reading all the things she thought she had been hiding from me by looking in her Sent Mail folder, which she had been neglecting to clean out, and later that night, for the first time in literally five years, lo and behold, the Sent Mail folder was empty. Imagine that.

I see only one local address on Statcounter, though, and I'm pretty sure that's someone else. But if she has been reading the blog, obviously the marriage is doomed beyond all hope. I was willing to give up my secrets a year ago, when I thought we might get back together and wanted to make a clean breast of things if she would do the same. But there's no hope if she has read about Pearl.

Yes, I know. I'm an evil, evil stalker. But the thing is (and this may be a moot justification, since the breach of privacy I committed is probably for some people beyond all hope of forgiveness) I didn't do it to dig up dirt to hurt her with. I mean, normally, if you suspect someone's cheating, you spy on them, dig into their secrets, hire detectives to follow them, for the sole purpose of using that knowledge against them in court.

But I agreed to a no-fault divorce--no trial, no dragging each other through the mud. I have not mentioned Gato to any of her friends, or to any of her or my family. I even stonewalled it when my mom brought up the idea.

I'm just still trying to understand how someone I thought I knew so well could have become such a stranger. I'm trying to figure out the intersection between the person I speak to face-to-face and the person she is when she's talking behind my back. She says things to BitchFromHell that are so different from what she tells me, so much more definitive and declarative, that I wonder if she's telling her the truth while lying to me to keep me happy, or the other way around (cause BitchFromHell is really aggressively convinced that I need to be put down hard, and maybe Mrs. Jonny takes a firmer tone just to keep the Bitch off her back).

And she continues to talk to Gato on the DL, while she has told me multiple times that there's no there there. Talking to her about it, I sometimes felt like the wife in Guide For the Married Man: there's a scene where a wife catches her husband in flagrante delicto, literally naked between the sheets with another woman. And the husband denies everything. The wife says, "Who's that?" and the hubby says, "Who?" and the wife says "That woman right there!" and the guy says, "There's no woman there," and the wife says, "I'm looking right at her!" and the husband says, "I don't see anything." And all the time they're talking, the other woman is calmly getting dressed and then walks out the door, so that the third time the wife says, "But she's right..."

And she's gone. And the wife feels like an idiot and starts to wonder if there ever actually was a woman there. That's what it's like talking to Mrs. Jonny about Gato, and I don't know if it's that she's become that cold-hearted a liar, or if it's just shame so deep she can't admit it even exists.

But what I don't get is why she hasn't changed her password. We're not living together any more. She knows that I'm a weak, weak man. There's no reason to stay paranoid that I'm reading over her shoulder, unless she just wants to give me an innocent illusion to keep me placated until the divorce is final. But if so, why not accept the divorce long ago.

Maybe the timing is coincidental. Maybe she just noticed the folder today. If her password is changed tomorrow, I guess I'll have my answer. Maybe I should pull a Seinfeld from those awful Microsoft commercials. If you're reading this, Mrs. Jonny, give me a little sign. Gimme a little robot. Or just change your password.

After Pearl

2008-09-16T00:34:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure how I feel about what happened with Pearl. I mean, on the one hand, it was a really good time. It didn't feel like the usual time with a prostitute, in that I wasn't really "on the clock." And we got along really well, so that the sex basically felt like real, honest sex. Going down on her was like water for a dying man in a desert. I feel more attractive as a man than I have in ages.

And yet, it was obviously for money. The no-kiss just reinforced that. The term GFE gets batted around a lot. It means Girl Friend Experience, and some people define it simply to means a session where the prostitute kisses you. But I think it's really more than that; it's about a level of relaxation and comfort, an illusion of intimacy that you don't get from a massage parlor girl or a streetwalker, or even from a dancer with a VIP room quickie. This was GFE, with the exception of kissing. She even talked about going on normal dates together.

The trickier feeling concerns Mrs. Jonny. As I mentioned recently, I poured out my feeling to Mrs. Jonny two weeks ago, at which point she compared me to Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber. After that conversation, I emailed her back to tell her what was going on with the job I applied for, and as is usual when I bounce ideas off of her for a career change, she sent me an answer which started...

My prayer for you, as it has always been, is that you find meaning in your life.

A nice sentiment, but it feels pretty condescending. I know she thinks that my life has no meaning without Christ, but there's no one else in the world she would think to talk down to in htis way when they share something like this with her. So I replied with an honest email in which I explained in probably too much detail exactly how this kind of treatment makes me feel, and has made me feel for years. She replied with an email that basically said, "If I make you feel so bad, why do you still want a relationship with me?"

So I answered that, honestly and once again in probably too much detail. I told her I still loved, I outlined her appealing points, which would still for me outweigh her bad points if she were willing to show me any true affection whatsoever, and I told her I thought it would be better for Jonny Jr. if we reconciled rather than play Step-parent Roulette. And I meant every word.

And then Pearl happened. And now it feels like I 've crossed a line. Not that I have any kind of long-term romantic feelings for Pearl, but it just seems like, once you've photographed a freshly-fucked woman on the floor with her legs splayed out and her pounded-red pussy on display, moving back in with your wife and child becomes a less-viable option. Call me crazy.

Not that Mrs. Jonny feels any inclination toward reconciling. She's still talking to Gato on the sly. She keeps emailing him, telling him to call her, but not to answer her email. Because she hasn't figured out yet that her sent emails are being saved in their own folder. She goes through and deletes her inbox and deleted folder pretty regularly, but the sent box goes back years. Word to the wise.

Pearl of Great Price, Pt. 2

2008-09-15T05:30:00.001-06:00

(Reading this over, I realize it's sort of dry and not passionate or erotic. Sorry about that. If you want hot, go read Ms. Inconspicuous--she's got hot to spare)

So I take Pearl to my house. There's a little nervous aimless conversation on the drive, some about her money problems about the divorce, and some just explaining the route, how we're headed to the other side of town but it's all highway and quick. Small talk. We get there soon enough, and I go through the standard disclaimer about the house being a mess since I wasn't expecting company. I offer her something to drink and she asks for a shot and a beer.

So I pour out a couple fingers of Jack Black and pop the top off a beer. She goes into the bathroom and I take the opportunity to get things in order. I light up the Wal-Mart candles and set 'em around my bedroom. I don't have a bed; I've been sleeping on a futon with an uncomfortable metal frame for the last couple of months. I drag the pad off the frame onto the floor, then dig out the box of condoms from the party bag.

I take my turn in the bathroom when she returns. When I come back, she's standing in my living room, wearing nothing but a bra and admiring a framed print I bought on my vacation. I try to put on some music, but my CD player no longer works, apparently. We head into the bedroom and sit on the futon pad on the floor, where she finally takes off her bra and finishes her drink. She thinks the candles are a nice touch; she loves the scent of black cherry. We sit close and I begin to kiss her neck and shoulders.

I move toward her mouth, but she turns away. Strange; she tongued me hard at the club when she was jerking me off, but here in my bedroom, she's having none of it. Then she bends over me and takes me into her mouth. She sucks me for a while, then asks if the whiskey was making it burn (it wasn't).

I tell her to lie down and let me have a turn. I haven't tasted a woman in almost two years, and it's about damn time. I go down on her for a good long time, and though she twitches and moans, she never seems to get there. I ask her if she's getting close, and she says, "Getting there. I had a lot to drink." I know that if a guy's too drunk, he can't get it up, but I hadn't heard that it could mess with a woman's responses as well. I mean, it stands to reason, but I just hadn't thought of it before.

So I go for a while longer, and pretty soon, her thighs tense on either side of my head. She shudders and moans, then reaches down and stops me. She tells me it's the best head she's had in a long time, then says, "I've got to go to the bathroom again. That drink was really big."

When she comes back, she goes down on me. It's not the best head I've had, but that's good, because that means I'll last longer and I want this to last. At some point, she decides it's time to break out the condoms. She unwraps one and slips it on over my cock. As she does so, she says something about how "it's almost too big." I think she's talking about the condom, but apparently she's not. "You're cock is so big, I almost couldn't get it on," she says. God love her.

I lie back and enjoy it as she mounts me. She rides me hard, grinding then bouncing. At some point, she bounces me right out of her, and I take the opportunity to switch us around and get on top. I love the missionary, but the missionary doesn't love me; all too soon, I'm done, and in that moment, I really want to feel her lips on mine, but she's still in a non-kiss mode. I settle for kissing her cheek and her chest.

I get up and tell her to lie still. I'm headed for the bathroom to take off the condom and wet a washrag for her. She asks me if I want to take a picture. In fact, I had brought the camera in with the candles, but I don't think she saw it, so maybe guys just do this with her all the time. When I return with the warm rag, I give it to her to clean up with. Then I ask if she really meant it about the picture. She says why not?

I retrieve the camera. The room is almost completely dark except for a couple of candles, sothe viewfinder screen is completely black. I aim in her general direction and hit the button. The first shot is a bust, just legs and an obviously battered pussy. I adjust, and the second shot is better. "You're not going to put it on the internet or nothing, are you?" (in fact, I am, but with the face and tattoos obscured).

We get dressed and I hand her the cash as we're about to go out the door. She hasn't mentioned it the entire time, and I wonder if she would've forgotten it if I hadn't handed it to her. I take her back to her truck. The drive back is mostly spent in conversation about her impending divorce and mine. It's about 4:15 when we pull up to the service station. She gives me a hug and says we'll have to get together again sometime. Maybe go to a movie or something. I wonder how much she charges for that.

Thoughts tomorrow...

Pearl of Great Price

2008-09-14T08:31:00.004-06:00

So I've been away from the keyboard for a while, working long hours and stressing out over my job. I applied for a job in California that I probably won't get, and if it were offered, I don't know what I'd do. That's been an issue between Mrs. Jonny and me for a while. Now that we've gone our separate ways, it wouldn't be so much of an issue, but there is still Jonny Jr. to think about, not to mention the fact that I'm just starting to settle in to the house I bought.

And I've otherwise been a very good boy. August was a crazy month, one in which I ran my credit card way up between my vacation and trips to see Pearl and Queenie. I hadn't gone out in three weeks, not anywhere expensive anyway. I've actually been trying to save my money up to hire one of HotRed's friends for an hour or so, but she never answered my email. So last night, I decided to go ahead and make a trip out to the Runway again. Shaved, put on a nice shirt, grabbed a cigar and went.

Pearl was sitting at the bar as I walked in, and she ran up to sit with me before another girl who was working the floor, looking for a mark. I bought her a drink, but we couldn't go back to the darkest corner where we'd been before, because it was already occupied. We went off to the side--dark, but in a highly trafficked area, near the men's room. I lit up my cigar (a no-name Corojo supposedly custom-made for a local tobacco shop--not bad) and we started talking.

She told me she had just filed for divorce. When I first started going to strip clubs, I was amazed at how many dancers were single mothers. Lately, it seems they're all married; Queenie's husband is the DJ at the Runway, ironically, and both Batfan and Pearl are divorcing. So anyway, she's telling me her tale of woe about how she needs all this money to get beds for her kids so that she can have partial custody and this and that, and I'm starting to think she's going to hit me up for a bigger drink and ask me to cosign a loan at a furniture store or something (it wouldn't be the first time a dancer asked me for that-Sandra did, once).

But instead, she starts rubbing my cock through my jeans and telling me that now that she's separated, we should get together. We could go to my place, or if I didn't want that, we could get a room somewhere. I asked her when she was thinking of, and she said we could do it that night if I wanted. "You know, you help me out and then I could help you out."

So there it was. I asked how much she was thinking of, knowing I didn't have it, and she said, "just maybe a bill or something." She said she would have asked for more, but I'm cute and she likes me. And I realized, I actually had the money for that. So I said yes.

We talked for an hour or so, then I left about an hour before closing. She was getting pretty wasted (there was a lot of beer in the fishbowl I bought for her), so she said she'd meet me at a nearby gas station so I could drive both of us to my place. Went to the bank to pick up the cash, then visited a nearby Wal-Mart at one in the morning and did some grocery shopping, weaving between the stockers refilling the shelves. Bought some scented candles and breath mints; avoided the frozen food. Then I just drove around wasting time until two a.m. Parked at the gas station and waited. About 2:20, I wasn't sure if she'd show; I've been stood up a great many times in my life, and it has a familiar taste. So I called her, and she said she was just getting in her truck.

She showed up a few minutes later, got in my car, and we headed off.

To be continued...

Totally Fuckable

2008-08-29T17:15:00.002-06:00

Just to wash the awful taste of BitchFromHell out of my mouth, here's a link to a short video of the supremely fuckable Masuimi Max.

Video

I'm not turned on by the tattoos. I like her figure, and I don't mind her enhanced tits (if you've read for a while, you know my views on the subject). Her eyes are very pretty, but her best feature by far, at least to me, is her incredible set of sexy lips. I think we've all heard of DSL (Dick Sucking Lips), but these transcend that. They are downright hypnotic.

Dumb and Dumbass

2008-08-28T17:07:00.004-06:00

So every time I think I want to just move on with my life, I think about how what I really want is to have my wife back--the one who loved me, back in the day. And I know it's basically a fantasy, because the world and Mrs. Jonny have moved on, but to have my previous wife and my current child, that's something I could be happy with.

And yes, I understand that this is just another manifestation of the chumpitude that has kept me going back to see Queenie to buy her overpriced drinks for a couple of kisses and kind words. I'm lonely and hurt and vulnerable, an easy mark. Local ladies, take note--Jonny can be played with ease.

But the reason I keep hanging on to the fantasy is that every time in the last 11 months (has it really been almost a year since I started the conversation that led us here?) that I've brought up that final, irrevocable step--and I've done it several times--her immediate response has been 'no.' When I talk about working together to compromise and perhaps reconcile, her answer is also 'no,' of course, but that immediate reflexive 'no' whenever I've said the word 'divorce,' and the fact that she brought up the idea of staying married after I moved out, led me to think there might be hope.

I made the mistake of pouring this out to her the other night, the idea that her words and actions have confused me and left me hanging on to a possibly vain hope. She just circled back to the argument that she doesn't have those feelings for me any longer and she doesn't think things can work out. She still wants a Christian man to go to church with, which is why she started fucking one, I guess. But when I mentioned the fact that not agreeing to divorce was kind of leaving me hanging and hopeful, she had no response.

To my face, at least.

To BitchFromHell, she compared me to Jim Carrey from "Dumb and Dumber." Because I should understand that "Don't leave yet" means "I don't want you to stay."

Polygamy Article

2008-08-21T19:43:00.002-06:00

So there's this article I saw today that basically says polygamists live longer. And on the one hand, I'm thinking, "Hell no. I got enough grief from one wife."

But on the other hand, maybe it would cut down on the ridiculosity of the soulmate myth, that insistence that one person be all things to one other person.

Queenie

2008-08-21T00:34:00.001-06:00

So I'm sure you've been on pins and needles, wondering, "Jonny, who is this girl who called you up and asked you out, sort of?"

Well, the short story is, her name is... let's call her Queenie, and she's a dancer.

The long story is, it's a long story.

Before my vacation, I wrote about my visit to The Runway, where Pearl gave me some very special treatment. But the reason I was there in the first place that night was that I had been intrigued by a distant glimpse of a particular dancer, short and slim in a tight black dress and with long dark hair (the glimpse actually happened on this night, I believe).

So the night after I got back from Denver, while I was still officially "on vacation," I went back to The Runway specifically to see Pearl. So I'm there for a while and find out that Pearl is not working that night. But I bought a dance from another dancer, named Moon, and while she's dancing for me, I'm seeing another guy in the corner with a different girl, and her head is straight in his lap and I get horny. So even though Moon was older and larger than any other girl there, when she said, "I can make you as happy as Pearl did," I said, "What the hell?" and bought the drink

We went to a dark corner, where she proceeded to make out with me furiously while playing with my cock through my pants. But in a while, instead of getting to the fun part, she started begging for another drink. And I said no and stuck to it.

Because I had seen a new dancer come in: short and slim with long dark hair and a tight blue dress. And when I went up to tip her on stage, I saw that close up, she was gorgeous.

So after Moon left, I bought Queenie an outrageously expensive drink, and got even less action from her. However, something seemed to click between us. We talked for a long time, where I found out she'd been around clubs for a lot longer than I figured; she was older than she looked. She gave me her phone number and asked for mine, so I could call her when I was planning on coming back to the club.

On my way home, I was simultaneously happy and disappointed. Happy to have talked to two really friendly women, disappointed that I had spent literally hundreds of dollars and not received any kind of happy ending for my trouble. But as I was trying to remember Queenie's face, I kept thinking about roses, and suddenly it dawned on me:

I had seen her before. She used to dance at the Toy Chest, years ago (like The Runway, I'm using the same club name to designate the same location, even though the club itself has changed names and owners). And the reason I was thinking of roses was that she used to appear on their website.

Which was why I was poking around in the Wayback Machine Monday night when she called: looking for those old pics of her. I guess it sounds stalkery, but she's really pretty and I want to remember meeting her again. She called me last week to ask me to come back to the club, and although I felt like I was just being used for my money, I decided better that than being alone on Friday night, so I went in. Bought a much cheaper drink and had a good talk. I told her I remembered her pics from the old website, and she said she had an old poster from one of the clubs she worked at with her pic on it and offered to give it to me. I said sure, so she said she'd bring next time we got together.

Which is why I went in on Monday when she asked me, even though it seemed awfully soon. Am I being played? Yeah. But unlike other dancers who've asked me for my number or given me theirs, she actually returns my calls. And frankly, after so many years of being ignored, I'll take being played right now. We can't go any farther than I choose to go, after all.

And who knows? Maybe she actually will go through with the dinner date she promised me. I don't expect anything sexual, because she went to great pains to tell me about her husband (although she also made a point of telling me that she'd cheated on him before, and might again, but that may just have been to keep me on the hook). But even if she doesn't, she's a friendly, pretty face who actually seems to appreciate having me around, and at this point, I'm willing to settle.

Wayback and Magnum

2008-08-20T05:29:00.005-06:00

So I went to a couple of strip bars the other night, and I came back minus quite a few dollars, but plus one odd souvenir. It's a condom, one Trojan Magnum, unused and unopened (that there on the right is the actual article).

I was in our city's only nude strip club (they serve no alcohol, therefore they can go fully nude as opposed to having to stop at pasties and G-strings, not that any of the other clubs really enforce that pasty thing), a notorious dive which I had not visited in years. I was thinking that, since I'd recently had adventures in two of the other clubs that offer extras on-site, I'd try this one as well. I've heard plenty of rumors about the back room in this place, and thought I might actually check it out to see if there was any truth behind the stories.

So I go in and buy an O'Douls, find myself a table, then walk up to Pervert Row to tip the lady, and guess what's on the floor under the seat? So I don't know if this is evidence that's there's a lot going on in back or just evidence of wishful thinking on the part of one of the customers (maybe wishful thinking in a couple of areas, if you get my drift). All I know is, I scooped the thing up on a whim, and now I've got this giant condom I have no use for; standard condoms fit me just fine, thankyouverymuch.

In the end, I didn't do anything. There were way too many girls for way too few customers, and they all seemed simultaneously desperate for a buck and exhausted. I saw a girl I was really intrigued by, but then I saw her naked on stage. Her chest was covered with angry red pimples, and there were other spots on her legs and elsewhere--maybe pimples, maybe flea bites, maybe genital warts for all I knew--that killed whatever mood I was in and sent me home to save my money. I really shouldn't even have gone out that night, given the rate at which I've been spending lately.

So why had I? Well, I had spent the afternoon playing around with the Wayback Machine. This is an archive of old websites, snapshots of them at specific times in the past. I was looking back at the websites of local strip bars. There were three in particular that had fairly robust web presences during a 2-3 years period there (they don't so much now--they've basically figured out that, while a website might attract customers, it's not necessary to spend the time, effort or money to update frequently or offer a lot of content for a club whose product really sells itself). I was having a blast looking at the old layouts and the old girls, where the pictures had been archived (the sites are not often complete), when I got a call from someone inviting me out to the Runway.

So I went, but as I was pulling into the parking lot, I got another call canceling, so I decided to try a different place nearby. As I was pulling into that place, I got a third call, offering to take me to dinner this weekend as compensation for having called me out for nothing. And right after I walked into the second club, the Magnum dive, I got a fourth call, asking if I was still at the Runway because maybe we could get together after all. I swear, she knew when I changed venues. But I told her no, that I would see her this weekend.

So who was she?

That's a whole other story.

Found Object #1

2008-08-18T16:58:00.005-06:00

I'm a bit of a packrat and something of a voyeur. And every now and then, I run into something that hits me in both places simultaneously.

This Polaroid, for instance. I saw it in a garbage can, and so I took it. It's old now--it is scratched and faded, and the backing is gone. There are stained places where the chemical emulsion got smushed around before it was peeled away from the back of the photo.

It looks like a photo taken for her boyfriend, who had moved away at least temporarily (and the location where I found it supports that interpretation). I don't know the girl who's in it, nor the person who took it, nor the person who threw it away. There's no reason in the world for me to keep it. I sometimes feel a little creepy, owning this photo of someone I don't know given to someone else I don't know.

But I can't bring myself to get rid of it. It doesn't turn me on, necessarily, though the girl is cute. But I find it fascinating and a little sad. Who is this girl? What made her pick the kitchen sink as the location for her cheesecake photo? Did she take it with a timer, or did a friend of hers take it for her to mail to her boyfriend? Or did the boyfriend take it himself, to carry with him as a keepsake?

What was she thinking about their relationship, their future, when she posed for this? And why did he then throw it away? The relationship was over, I gather. Was it a long one, or a brief fling? Did he cheat? Did she? Did they just grow apart, or was there a big fight? Where is she now and who is she with, and does she ever remember this picture, wonder what happened to it and the boy she sent it to?

The Lesser Jonny

2008-08-15T13:01:00.007-06:00

Well, since I've already written about tits and pussies, I suppose it was just a matter of time before I completed the trilogy.

As you can tell if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, I'm a guy who gets led around by his cock a lot. Lots of guys do; we're hearing constantly in the news about rich and powerful men who have risked money and power and fame and long-term relationships with incredibly beautiful women to give their little guy a brief moment of excitement with somebody new and dangerous. All to please that ridiculous little scrap of meat between their legs, that squishy squirt gun.

Cause let's face it, it looks pretty goofy, especially when it's soft, when neither you nor it are excited. And we call it silly names, don't we?I could go into a list, but Monty Python already did it for me, in song no less (and if you haven't already seen Monty Python's Meaning of Life, go do so right now).

But even when I was a kid, before I knew all the things it could do, it had a mind of its own. It spent most of its existence shriveled up so small, pulled in so close to my body, it looked almost like an outie belly button. And then some mornings I'd wake up and BAM!, it'd be so stiff it was painful to aim it down at the toilet. And I had no idea why it had gotten that way, or how to make it go back. I just prayed it would so I could get my pants on to go to school.

And then there was that night looking at my mom's Cosmopolitan magazine (back in the days when Cosmo ran photos of hot naked women to illustrate their articles, I'm not sure why--at this point, you just shrug and say, "It was the 70's," and people who lived through them will nod, because they know exactly what you mean), and several of the articles about sex mentioned the penis, so I kind of touched it, wondering what the big deal was. And it felt strangely nice in a way I couldn't describe, so I touched it some more, and as I touched it, it got harder and harder, and I kept exploring, finding areas that felt better than others, and then OH MY FUCKING GOD! this incredible wave of something ran through my entire body, overwhelming and almost frightening in its intensity and strangeness. I didn't know what it was, I only knew I wanted it again.

I have spent the rest of my life chasing after that, trying to get it back. And I don't think I ever have, at least, not at that all-encompassing level. I've heard it said that the high from crack is so intense that you are instantly addicted after only one use; that's what that first orgasm was for me.

And ever since, I have been a slave to that chunk of meat between my legs. In high school, oh my god, in high school, the mere sight of a nice pair of calves or the bare touch of girl's hand on my arm would have that little guy straining at my jeans in no time. He wanted it. He had no clue what he wanted, really, but he wanted it bad.

Nowadays, he's a little harder to arouse. Merely looking at naked women doesn't always do it. Hell, sometimes even a lap dance won't do it, if I don't like the girl. But he's always there, and he's always thinking, always wanting.

I go through my day at work, and I'll see a co-worker in a nice dress, or a pretty girl on a television screen, and suddenly I get this reminder from inside my pants that there's no pussy around me right now, and it sure would be nice if there was. I mean, I can literally feel the tingle of thousands of nerve endings all over my cock at the absence of pussy, like an amputee experiencing a phantom limb.

Then I start thinking about how good it'd feel to be inside a pussy right that moment, and my cock starts getting bigger. Not full-on hard, necessarily, just long and warm, settled along my thigh as I walk up to the front lobby to retrieve something. As I walk, my thigh slides past it, back and forth, and the folds of my underwear cradle it, and it feels delicious, and sometimes, I'll run into one of the really hot women I work with, and half of me is praying they don't look down and notice that bulge running down my thigh (not far down, admittedly, but still), and the other half of me is hoping they do, and god, I think, watching their asses or calves as they walk away from me, I desperately need to get laid, because this is consuming all my attention.

And eventually, if I'm lucky enough or temporarily rich enough to find a willing participant, I do.

And then, that ridiculous scrap of meat that's always riding along with me suddenly becomes not so ridiculous. It spends most of its time nestled in your pants, curled up to sleep like a cute little kitten, but when you wake it up, it grows large and hard, and you stop calling it diminutives like willy or weenie. Instead, it's a rod, a pole, a club, a cock.

He's not a plush toy, not a simple piss-tool; he's the bringer of life, without which no one who exists would exist. The feminist movement created this whole mystique around the concept of the womb--and therefore the woman--as the source of all life, but no amount of New-Agey navel gazing will bring about a child without a hard cock pounding between the legs at some point (please spare me talk of test tubes and needles at this juncture).

He's angry and insistent and he demands satisfaction. And at some point during the act, this little guy, who's been sniffing and whining plaintively after every pussy that walks by, suddenly seizes control. He controls you, as you thrust into her harder and harder, and sometimes you cross a line where he's controlling her, too, thrusting so hard and insistently that she can do nothing but hold on and bounce along for the ride. You'll be done when he says you're done, and nothing short of outright mortal combat will change that.

At times, it's as if his brain has taken over your brain completely and there's nothing else in the world worth noticing except her soft, wet, warm flesh engulfing you and that feeling that's welling up from somewhere, some other dimension, some inner horizon, and you run to it, desperate to catch it, chugging after it like a train, I think I can I think I can I think I can there it is there it is here it comes here it comes oh fuck oh God-----

And then there it is: the gush, the shudder, the apotheosis that's never as good as you remember but always better than anything else you can think of. I used to grit my teeth and ride it out silently. Mrs. Jonny taught me to scream. Since I've had to substitute massage parlors and strip clubs for full sessions in bed, I've had to impose silence again, but it's harder now. Once you've really screamed out your orgasm, you really don't want to go back.

God, I'm horny now. I'm getting a call from an old friend, and I think I'm going to have to take it. He's the boss, you know.

Vacation

2008-08-14T13:52:00.007-06:00

So I was in Denver for a week's vacation, attending an event downtown, and on the first day as we're leaving, we pass this really striking building, black and burgundy with gold highlights, looking real plush and Old World. And I can't help but admire how striking it is and wonder what would be located in a building like this: a really cool boutique or restaurant with trendy lofts in the upper floors?

Then I look at the sign, and of course...

It's a titty bar.

So I get away from my friends one afternoon and drop by with a fine cigar, only wouldn't you know it? NO SMOKING!

But the girl running the front counter is really nice and tells me about another place nearby that still allows smoking and even has their own humidor: The Diamond Cabaret. So I went by and had a good time. Only got one lap dance because the trip was like a money faucet gushing out of me, and it wasn't as nasty a dance as I get back home, because Denver, despite being more liberal in the open, is apparently more restricted in the back and in the dark. But my waitress, Evangeline, was gorgeous, hella' friendly and helpful.

But the next day, just to show my gratitude to the nice counter girl at the first place, I went back to La Boheme for a couple of hours. It was not as good a time, sadly. The day shift girls were very friendly the first time I came around, but I apparently don't tip up to Colorado standards or something, because after the first go-round, they paid less and less attention.

The next night, while I was at a party doing DJ things (that's Dayside Jonny, if you're new, not disc jockey, lord no), I really seemed to hit it off with this girl. The conversation comes so easily, and we are making all kinds of eye contact, and she keeps finding reasons to prolong the conversation, and I'm thinking, "I may have a shot at this girl."

And if you've read this blog for any length of time, you're probably picturing Dudley Moore in Arthur right now (money quote's at the 1:02 mark in the video below).

But no, in fact, it was the other NJ curse. Turns out she's married. Not just married, but a newlywed, only 4 weeks in. Not just a newlywed, but a Christian newlywed, shades of Mrs. Jonny. Can I pick 'em or what?

Actually, I can, I think. Like I said, I think there was chemistry, and as I talked to her, I found out that, newlywed or no, she'd only seen him a few times in the past few years. Theirs was a long-distance relationship. There were openings there, cracks where Jonny could have probed, peeling corners he could have picked at with a fingernail. I've done it before, with Lana, who swore several times that she would absolutely never fuck me, and though it took something like a month, eventually she did. I didn't have a month with this girl, but if I'd wanted, I would have had some time to give it a shot. Thing is, whether I succeeded or failed, it would probably turn out badly either way, and I didn't want to hurt her like that. So I went on my way.

But the trip was good. I came away feeling more capable professionally, and also more capable personally. There have been times in the past few years, when Mrs. Jonny wasn't giving me the time of day and neither was anybody else, that I thought I was done. Whatever had been even marginally attractive about me when I was younger had all been leached out by years of stagnance and depression and barely contained hostility.

But I don't feel that way now. Having gotten out and spent some time with women other than Mrs. Jonny, and also with women who don't charge money to pretend they like you for a while, I find that, while I haven't gotten any solid bites, there are a few women nibbling at the bait. It'll just be a matter of the right time and place before something happens.

In the meantime, I've got work to do.

Grateful

2008-08-13T19:32:00.003-06:00

So I just get back from a week's vacation and get my Internet installed, then I find out I've been tagged. I'm supposed to write 5 things I'm grateful for, which might sound difficult, given all the drama of recent months. But actually, it's not.

1. I'm grateful for Jonny Jr. Having a child is not always easy or pleasant, but it's never been something I've regretted. Being a parent is something I'm proud of, and having a smart, cool kid who likes to read is even better.

2. This may sound strange, but I'm grateful for my wife. Although it may seem self-evident by our break-up that I picked wrong in choosing her, the lack of hostility and general friendly closeness we still have with one another shows that I didn't pick too wrong. The last few years have been hard, but overall, my life is much better for having had her in it.

3. I'm grateful for my parents, who have accepted the separation a lot better than I expected and have been more than generous in their offers of help.

4. I'm grateful for my job, as much as I hate it sometimes, and for my house, as much work as it needs. I've got food enough and shelter for me and mine, and not everyone can say that.

5. Corny as it may sound, I'm grateful to have been born in the U.S.A. I'm proud to be an American. I love our freedom, our vitality and our prosperity. You might not really appreciate how special our country is until you've lived somewhere else for a while, but believe me, we have it good here. Don't let anyone tell you different.

I would tag someone else, but most of the blogs I used to read are no longer active, and without home Internet for over a month, I've just fallen completely out of touch. I'll try to update my blogroll soon, but for now, I'm afraid I won't be able to pass this meme on.

The Runway

2008-08-04T15:22:00.001-06:00

So I went to The Runway recently, wasting time while I waited for another place to open. And although I didn't really do much while I was there, I did see a very intriguing woman in a short black dress with long dark hair, and I was greatly intrigued.

So tonight, I went out with some friends who have never really asked me to hang out with them socially, but since the separation, they've been really sympathetic. We went out to dinner, and then I hung out at their house for a while, because my AC is all screwed up. I went back home, and it was still really hot, plus I was totally freaking horny, so I decided to go hit a couple of strip clubs. I wavered on which one to hit first, but decided to see if the dark-haired beauty at The Runway was working tonight (the name has actually changed since the days of S&H, but I'm too lazy to make up a new name, so I'm still calling it The Runway).

I watch almost all the dancers cycle through, and I'm getting bored. There are a couple of girls with longish dark hair, but none are wearing the black dress, and seen up close, they're not what I was hoping for. So I'm thinking about leaving when a dancer named Pearl comes up. She's cute, a little bit older than the other girls, but still nice-looking. Slim, decent C-cup tits, long light brown hair that's not quite blonde, pretty smile. So I go up to tip her and she ignores me. She doesn't even look at me while she's dancing up there, and I'm starting to get pissed, when she suddenly comes over to accept the tip and pulls her panties WAY down to show me her lips, the only one who'd done that so far. I give her the tip and go back to my seat.

She comes over to ask me if I want some company and promises me a happy ending for less than half of what I paid for my last VIP adventure. When I expressed disbelief at how cheap it was, she was all, "I'm too wasted to give a shit. Come on." I was all set to say "no," especially with my trip coming up, but like the wife who couldn't resist the allure of a sale ("Look how much money I saved!"), I found myself saying "yes."

It was awesome. She was in no hurry whatsoever; I bought the drink an hour before last call, and she said for that amount, I'd have her till closing. We started off just talking, and I told her about the separation. She asked for my number and I gave it to her, along with the URL for my latest published story. Then after about twenty minutes, she pulled out my cock.

But here's the thing: we weren't in the VIP. The Runway doesn't have a VIP. We were in the main room of the club, in a dark corner with an excellent view of the stage. I had read on-line about The Runway's "famous handshake." In fact, on one of my first visits to the club, before I'd read about the handshake (before there was an internet available for home use, actually), I'd seen a dancer with a guy in the corner and suspected she was doing something to him under the table, but never found out for sure.

But based on my previous experiences at other clubs, I expected something quick and furtive. She put her big black purse on the table to help block the view, then toyed with my cock for something like 15 minutes, just playing with it, rubbing her nipples against it, lubing it up. We kept talking as she worked. Another dancer came by and had a quiet conversation with Pearl while I watched the other dancers on stage, and she's still idly playing with my cock. When they announced last call, she got down to business and started really working it.

As she was jerking me off, she leaned in for a kiss, which surprised me. I've kissed dancers in clubs, but it's usually a quick peck, and some dancers (like Candace now, apparently) won't kiss at all. As I kissed Pearl, she opened her mouth for a full-on French kiss. It was a little clumsy, because everyone kisses differently, but even clumsy kissing is good when you haven't done it in a long time. I mean, in the past few years, as I've paid for sex in multiple places, I haven't really been kissed. There are some girls that advertise GFE, or GirlFriend Experience, but I've never been with one. Penney kissed me a little bit, last time I saw her, but only a little bit. So although I've fucked, I haven't really kissed, and I've missed it. So Pearl and I frenched for a couple of minutes and then I came all over her hand.

I went to the bathroom to finish cleaning up, and when I got back, she said she'd had to fight off a couple of other girls who wanted the dark corner spot. Although our deed was done, she was still in no hurry to leave. It wasn't as if she was going to be moving on to another customer, after all; the place was about to close. And she seemed to genuinely like me. She was all over the flattery. Before we got down to business, she told me how much she liked my hair. During, she complimented my cock. After, she told me how good a kisser I was. We kissed a while longer, but closing time was looming, so I told her I had to leave.

She promised to call and read my story. I don't really expect either one; other dancers have asked for my number and never called, after all, and she had about 50 guys' numbers in her phone already, which she freely admitted she'd never called.

But man, it was sweet while it lasted. I haven't been kissed, I mean really kissed, in years, so that alone was almost worth the $125. If she calls it'll just be gravy.

I know, I know, talking about it afterwards, it sounds so pathetic and grubby--lonely middle-aged man paying for quickie hand jobs in a dark corner of a cheap strip dive. But I'm not ready to start a relationship with anybody, and if it's this or nothing, I'll take this.

Sincerely Solicitous

2008-07-30T12:50:00.001-06:00

Sorry for the long gap between posts, but I still don't have internet access at home, so I'm limited to brief posts from work or via wifi from my Palm from whatever bar happens to have wifi. I'm headed to Denver on business next week, so it'll be at least two more weeks before I get home access. If you have any suggestions about cool stuff to do in Denver, please get to me by Monday, Aug. 4, kthx.

Had a function this weekend where I saw a lot of old acquaintances and met some new friends. I mentioned it briefly the other night when I mentioned meeting the 21-year-old, whom I'd thought to see again, but I never did.

But reactions seemed to be rather evenly divided between solicitous inquiries from folks who knew my situation ("How you doing? You okay?") almost immediately followed by mentions of their own divorces, or by flirtations from any number of attractive women who were there. The flirtations never went anywhere, but the mere fact that I'm flirting again with women without having to pay them for it gives me hope for the future.

Mrs. Jonny seems to be thriving without me around--house is redecorated, and she's spending every available minute filling her time with fun activities. Jonny Jr. has told me I'm missed and asked why I left, but has also asked for a cat now that the allergic guy is gone, so seems to be adjusting.

Still Got It?

2008-07-25T22:49:00.000-06:00

Went to a sci-fi convention today. Flirted at a party with a really cute 21-year-old. First thought: I've still got it. Second thought: Damn, I'm old.

Foolish Impetuousness

2008-07-18T00:42:00.001-06:00

About six weeks ago, I was out wandering on a Saturday night and decided to drop by the club where Candace worked. I didn't expect to see her; I just wanted to have some final fun before closing on the house.

It was terrible. Girls descended on me, begging for money, from the moment I sat down. It felt like being accosted by beggars in a Calcutta marketplace. I've noticed lately that my left ear has trouble with loud music; it feels like a blown eardrum or something, especially if I'm close to the speaker. The sound distorts and it's physically uncomfortable. The first girl went after me while I was trying to deal with that. I finally got up and moved tables, which made the pain a little better, plus it had the added benefit of convincing the girl I really didn't want to talk right then. She thought I was moving to a different table just to get away from her.

It was ohnly a couple of minutes later that Alyssa (I'm blogging this from Notepad, so I can't link you to my previous post about her) suddenly sat down beside me. When I've seen Alyssa before, she's always seemed pretty cool. But this time, she was just obnoxious: "Buy me a drink, buy a lap dance, give me a dollar to go away." I was starting to get pissed off, but she finally left.

The a tall blonde with really long hair came over and straddled my lap. I nearly lost it then; I mean, she was really pretty, but by that time, I was in no mood. And I recognized her. It was Candace. She and the waitress fast-talked me for a while, and I finally gave in and went to the VIP with her. She danced for me, and we talked a little, although it was awkward. For some reason, she didn't seem as open and genuine with me as before. At one point, she stared longingly into my eyes and I leaned forward to kiss her. She freaked, saying I was breaking her "number-one rule--no kissing." This from a girl who has kissed me in years past, but I didn't try to argue with her.

She kept getting up and leaving me for long stretches, and pretty soon, the waitress came up and told me our time was about up, which startled me because we hadn't actually had a lot of time _together_, and I hadn't yet gotten what I'd come for. Next thing I knew, she was walking my blue balls to the door. As I was about to leave, she leaned over and whispered a phone number into my ear. "If you call and a guy answers, don't freak. I've got this gay black guy living with me." I left, feeling pissed-off and frustrated. I put her number into my phone, but I wasn't sure whether I wanted to call or not. On the one hand, I didn't want to repeat the feelings of this night. On the other hand, it seemed the only hope of getting closure on what hadn't happened.

I didn't call the next day, and on Monday, my boss asked to see my phone. We were doing and changeover of email servers. He erased everything out of my phone without letting me back it up. The number was gone.

I thought that night would have pissed the stripper mood out of me. Instead, the non-consummation seemed to leave a hole in me. I've been to see Batfan a few times; I've also visited a dive near my new house (which I've written about before) where I got fucked in the VIP several years ago. Visited three times and spent way too much money. Finally paid about twice what I expected for another VIP session just to get this shit out of my system. Not happy with myself, but content for now.

Let Freedom Ring

2008-07-06T02:39:00.002-06:00

When Mrs. Jonny and I were first married, I chose a simple gold wedding band, flat on the inside and outside. Since she was a fan of the Dragonriders of Pern series, and since she knew that I was a fan of fantasy fiction as well, she had the idea that she would have the ring engraved with the image of a dragon around the outside of the ring. However, it turned out nobody locally could do that kind of thing.

Years later, after I'd changed careers, causing my fingers to swell, that ring no longer fit, so I'd stopped wearing it. So during a visit to a local Ren Faire, she bought me a cheap sterling silver ring with the figure of a dragon on it, and that became my new wedding ring. Mrs. Jonny took my original ring and wore it on her thumb.

Several years ago, while Jonny Jr. was going through a phase of grabbing anything within reach and hiding it, the replacement ring disappeared, so I went several years without wearing a ring at all. We kept thinking the ring would turn up again, but it never did.

When our marriage was on its last legs, Mrs. Jonny asked me if I wanted to wear the original ring again. I started wearing it on my pinky; it was too loose, but at least I was showing my commitment in a small way. But one day at work, it fell off. It was too tight to fit on my ring finger, but too loose for my pinky.

Fast forward to now: we have separated, and I'm now living in my new house. And while Mrs. Jonny was rearranging furniture, she moved a table, and lo and behold, what was underneath it? My silver dragon ring.

So tonight, I repeated my ritual from last year in a new place. I sat on the porch, drinking port and smoking a cigar while I watched the fireworks. Only this time, I was wearing my wedding ring. Celebrating my true independence while wearing the symbol of my devotion.

I don't want things to go back to the way they were these last few years. But I do miss my wife. Not the stranger I've lived with recently, but the woman who bought me the ring. Tonight was a celebration of independence, but I wouldn't mind going back and having the old Mrs. Jonny back.

It won't happen, of course. She has demonstrated in so many ways that it won't. But I still dream.