I was on top of the world. I had a boyfriend who loved me and a real job. I was doing well in school, and I was even in a television production class that I thought was fun and exciting. I did the morning announcements for the whole school and discovered I liked being in front of the camera.
When senior year came to a close I had to get up and give my senior project speech about being an RN. By that point I had been working at the dentist’s office for a little while and no longer thought nursing was in the cards for me. I got up in front of the panel and starting discussing my research on nursing, and then I just stopped in the middle of my presentation.
“Listen,” I said. “I starting doing this research on nursing, and then I got a job as an assistant at a dentist’s office. Nursing is great, but I don’t want to be a nurse. I go after school to this dental office where I . . .”
Then I just rambled on and on about all the great things I did at that job. I knew it was risky to ignore the rules and not read the paper I’d written on nursing, but I was getting real job experience.
“ . . .So, in conclusion, I think I’ve learned a lot from this experience and I hope to someday be a dental hygienist,” I finished.
After a brief awkward silence, the teachers clapped, and I passed. I was going to graduate. I had missed nearly a year and a half of school, but I made it. It was amazing.
My whole family came to my graduation ceremony. It was at Sea World, in the bird department, which was pretty cool. I wore a dress and little heels (which I still hated) and my hair was long and beautiful. It was a proud day, and my mom snapped a million photos. After all I had been through I had really beat the odds by graduating, and I felt like everyone there was happy for me. When they called my name and I walked onstage in my cap and gown it was the proudest moment of my life. It felt like everyone knew what I had gone through to get that diploma and was standing and cheering for me.
It was a shining moment, but there was one small problem: Without school to go to every day, what the hell was I supposed to do with my life?
CHAPTER 9
Working Hard for the Money
I really started to come into my own as a woman during that last year of high school. I wore makeup to school and began ditching the tomboy look. Being on camera for the television production class made me feel sexy—and so did going to car shows with Zack.
Toward the end of senior year and during the summer after graduation, Zack and I would head to car shows in Southern California to check out new and tricked-out, souped-up cars. We’d go alone, or sometimes with a group of his friends.
Since I was always more comfortable around guys than girls, I never really knew if I was sexy or not—and Zack’s friends treated me like one of the boys. Being on TV at school had helped my self-image and allowed me to see that I was pretty, but I really didn’t know how others saw me—and to be honest, I didn’t really care all that much.
When we would go to car shows there would be girls modeling in front of cars and motorcycles, taking photos in company T-shirts and posing for different photographers. It seemed like a cool thing to do, but I never considered myself model material. Plus, I was there for the motorcycles, not the opportunity to be in pictures.
Then one day one of the motorcycle owners asked me to put on a T-shirt and pose for a few photos by his bike. I didn’t really want to do it, but Zack talked me into it. I think he wanted his girlfriend to be like the other girls there so he could brag to his friends that he was dating a model.
“You are so sexy, baby,” he said. “Just take a couple of photos.”
So I put on the shirt, hopped on the bike, arranged my hair (which was down to my butt), and smiled for the photos. It was invigorating. I felt like a superstar, special and sexy.
I was hooked and Zack had a “that’s my girl” look in his eyes, so I knew we would be going to car shows more often. Every time we returned I made sure I looked more and more sexy—I wore cutoff shorts, tight tops, and makeup—and the sexier I looked the more photographers wanted to shoot me. I even had people asking me for autographs. It was great.
It wasn’t a job, though. It was just a fun way to boost my self-esteem every once in a while. Working a real job was becoming a problem; the dentist’s office was starting to wear on me. I put in a good amount of time there and I was at a point where I couldn’t really move up without more school, but the dentist was pushing me to fill crowns and use some of the sharp instruments that I wasn’t comfortable using. I just wanted to help out and collect my paycheck, and he wanted me to be a dentist. Plus, it was getting boring. I knew it wasn’t going to work out much longer. Adding to my reasons for wanting to quit was the fact that Zack and I wanted to move out of his parents’ house and into an apartment together, and I needed a bigger income to cover my end of the bills.
So, I needed money. I was feeling sexy because of the attention I was getting at the car shows. I was eighteen. I thought, I should be a stripper.
“Zack, I was thinking I could start to strip,” I said confidently.
“No way.”
“Look, it’s really just dancing,” I argued. “You know I can dance.”
When I was in high school I was always dancing on tables and grinding on guys at parties. I would go to this all-ages club called Ice House and dance all night on the stage, hogging the spotlight and winning all sorts of ass-shaking contests. I was one of the only white girls up there, and I got a lot of respect for my ass-shaker. Clearly, I wasn’t shy at all—I loved the attention, in fact.
“This is something I can do,” I told Zack. “And I’ve been asking around, and I know I can make a lot of money for us.”
“The money is good, but still—”
“Look, Zack, I love you,” I said, turning on the charm. “This is all about the money. It’ll be strictly business. I would never cheat on you.”
“There are a lot of bad people in strip clubs.”
“I’m tough,” I assured him. “I can handle it.”
I was tough. I wasn’t going to let a guy do something that I didn’t want him to do, and I was totally dedicated to Zack. There would be no sex in the Champagne room for me.
“What about drugs?” he asked.
“You know I’m smarter than that. I’m done with that shit. I don’t care what the other girls are doing; I’ll never be some trashy, coke-whore stripper.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Did I mention how much money we can make?”
He reluctantly agreed. I think he knew I was going to do it no matter what he said so he had no choice but to go along with my new plan.
I don’t know where my new obsession with money came from, but as soon as I was out of school I developed the instinct to make as much as possible. If that meant stripping, then I could do that. I would do that. The next day I went down to Cheetah’s, the most popular strip club in San Diego.
“Excuse me, sir, I would like to strip,” I said to the owner. I was a nervous wreck, but I turned on the same professionalism that had landed me the job at the dentist’s office. Of course, this time, instead of my mom’s sweater I wore a tight little T-shirt and short cutoffs. I gave him my driver’s license, and then I had to go downtown and get a stripper’s license. (Yes, they have those. Who knew?) I filled out an application and took a picture for the license, and just like that I was a stripper.
Before my first night of work, I knew I had to go out and find something to make me look the part. All I really owned were cutoff shorts and a few old soccer uniforms. While some guys would probably find the uniform hot, I didn’t think that was going to cut it at this club, so I went out and bought some stupid lingerie and big stripper boots. (Okay, I actually liked the boots.)
The night before my debut, I tried on the new outfit and stripped at home for Zack. He was impressed. My ass-shaking was top notch. I could be sexy, and he knew it. He’d always known it. Now I knew it, too.
I was very nervous on my first night. I didn’
t care so much about getting naked—I was comfortable being naked—but I was nervous about how the other girls would treat me, how the customers would treat me, if I was going to be any good at stripping.
Zack dropped me off and kissed me good-bye, and I walked into Cheetah’s.
Walking into the club that first time was scary. It was dark and seemed overwhelmingly big. When my eyes adjusted, I saw a girl on the pole, naked and swinging around like a gymnast. I’m a pretty open person and I don’t judge, but I hadn’t seen the inside of a strip club at night before. I looked around and surveyed the scene. With the music blasting and the lights flashing, it was intense. I felt like a lost, shy little girl on the first day of school. I’m going to do it, I kept telling myself. Don’t back down. I had to just keep thinking about the money.
I went into the dressing room to get changed and there were a bunch of girls already back there getting dolled up, talking about how they were doing that night.
“Hi, I’m Kendra,” I said to the room. “I’m eighteen.”
A couple of girls glanced over, then went right back to what they were doing—applying hair spray, using a curling iron, grabbing anything they could get their hands on to look pretty, smell pretty, and feel pretty enough to make the money.
“Can I sit here?” I said shyly to one girl as I made my way to the bench closest to the front. I didn’t want to be in too deep. She looked kind of annoyed, and I felt like Forrest Gump when he gets on the school bus. Seat’s taken!
Once I was dressed I went out to watch some of the girls in action. You get two songs on the stage—one to tease to and one to strip to. I watched as the girls worked the pole, teased the guys, and made their money. Then it was my turn: “Kendra to the main stage,” blasted the MC’s voice over the speakers.
I used my real name. Why not? What else was I going to use? I didn’t think I looked like a Scarlett or a Maxine. I was Kendra, and that’s what the customers were going to get.
I went onstage to a Limp Bizkit song and the crowd went wild. The owner didn’t like hip-hop and I was into heavy metal that week anyway, so Limp Bizkit worked fine for me.
Doing the tease part seemed silly. I’m not a tease, so I stripped off all my clothes right away. The guys appreciated that. For the first time in my life I felt sexy, strong, confident, and powerful all at the same time. I was naked, free for the world to see, and I felt like the greatest person in the world. Dollar bills were flying everywhere, and I scooped them up as I danced.
When I was done one of the customers called me over. He was a thirtysomething average Joe white guy.
“Are you new here?” the obviously horny man who, rumor had it, was into the fresh meat at the club asked me.
“Yes, I am,” I replied.
“Want to dance for me?”
So I gave him my very first lap dance. Actually, it was barely even a lap dance, since I didn’t touch him at all—I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do or how close I was supposed to get. I didn’t really want to go near him, but I didn’t want to lose the job, either, so I just sort of danced around him and then sat and talked to him for a long time, which he seemed to like. You’d be surprised how many of the guys at strip clubs just want a girl to sit and talk and be flirty with them for a little while.
I danced a few sets, worked my way around the room, and talked to some more customers. By the end of the night the other girls were being really nice to me and had accepted me as one of them. They thought I was so little and cute; I guess it’s hard to feel threatened by such a young, innocent-looking girl.
Before it was time to leave, my new friend, the fan of fresh meat, came over to me and handed me $2,000 in cash. I made more than two grand on my first night! He wanted me to “hang out” with him after my shift was over, but I told him “maybe next week”—a line I’d end up using with a lot of guys. There was no way that was ever happening, but I didn’t want to lose the business.
I got a ride back to Zack’s house as fast as I could. It was 4:30 in the morning when I got there, but I woke him up screaming.
“Look at what I got!” I yelled as I tossed the money onto the bed. “Two. Thousand. Dollars. In one night!”
Do you know how many pizzas I had to forget the cheese on or how many hours of teaching kids how to brush their teeth I needed to clock to make that kind of money? I felt like I had won the lottery, and all I had done was take my clothes off. How easy is that?
The next day Zack and I went and signed a lease on a new apartment. We used my $2,000 as a down payment for the first and last months’ rent and a security deposit, and when it came time to fill out the application, under occupation I proudly wrote “stripper.”
It wasn’t long before I was completely comfortable at Cheetah’s. I’d walk in with a big smile on my face and say hello to everyone. “What’s up, girl?” I’d shout to a stripper friend who was grinding up on some customer. The other girls were like family to me.
After I’d say my hellos, I’d walk over to the DJ booth and check in, and then before I knew it they were playing my song. I started with Limp Bizkit, and my second song was Tim McGraw’s “Something Like That” I loved country music, and that song was perfect:
I had a barbeque stain on my white T-shirt,
She was killing me in that miniskirt.
The crowd would go crazy.
Cheetah’s was the most popular strip club in San Diego. The crowd was usually the same—younger people on the weekends and an older crowd during the week—and they had a lot of regulars, mostly white and Asian guys, and I got to know some of them really well.
The regulars just adored me, and that’s why I made so much money. I know in the back rooms some girls will take it a little further than they are supposed to just to make some extra cash. Luckily, I never felt like I had to do that. I had a good group of guys who loved giving me their money so I made bank without having to cross any lines.
My feelings toward the customers wavered. On one hand, I always looked at the men as stupid; no matter what I was doing or saying to them, I was always thinking, Give me my fucking money, you sucker. I’d smile and say whatever it took to get them to just keep giving me more money. But then sometimes I would talk to them and I’d actually start considering them friends. I tried to be a tough bitch, but I’m also a softy.
One regular once told me that I would be famous someday. I thought, Shut the fuck up! It was like he was a fortune-teller or something, because the next words out of his mouth were, “You’re going to be one of those famous girls at the Playboy Mansion.”
“Are you just saying that because I’m giving you a lap dance right now?” I asked, laughing.
“No honey, for real,” he said. “You’re going to be famous.”
For whatever reason, that stuck in my head.
Famous or not famous, I was the top earner at that strip club. Of course, I had slow nights where I would come home angry. I didn’t want to strip for nothing! I was working my ass off out there, literally, so I wanted to get paid. Regardless of who made what, all the girls got along really well. We were happy for one another when someone was successful. It was a business for all of us; some girls had kids they were putting through school, and some were in school themselves. There were no crackheads in the bunch. By the end of my first night I was comfortable enough to walk into that locker room and sit wherever I wanted to sit and talk to whoever I wanted to talk to, and I didn’t feel like a little girl in there anymore. After all, when you’re stripping you grow up pretty fast.
One of the girls at the club and I got really close. We talked all the time, and eventually we started to get flirty with each other. When you work in a club where all of your coworkers are naked there is a pent-up sexual tension that you can’t release. Sometimes I’d go home to Zack in the middle of the night and release it with him, but other times that wasn’t an option.
This girl and I started talking about our past lesbian experiences, and the conversation got hot. Wi
thout saying it outright, we both knew where this talk was going. When I told her Zack was out of town, she let me know she was ready to party.
“Let me come over,” she said, and after our shifts ended, we both went back to my place.
I had been down the girl-on-girl path before and it hadn’t worked out, but I figured, hey, why not try it again? Once we were back at my place, we sat on the couch and had some drinks. Then she made the first move.
She leaned in and kissed me on the lips, then slowly moved down my neck. It was a little awkward but I was down. Eventually clothes started coming off and we were going at it. It was a fun night, but Zack was not happy about it when I told him what happened. “But it’s a girl. How can you get mad?” I asked, but he and I could just not see eye-to-eye on the issue.
However, he got over it, and eventually we let her and a couple of others come over for threesomes on occasion. Okay, we never really had a threesome, because I never let Zack do anything with the other girls. I was allowed to have fun and do whatever I wanted, and he had to keep his eyes and hands on me. (That’s fair, right?) Trust me, he wasn’t too disappointed; I got a stripper pole for the house and put on private shows for him all the time.
Zack came to the club once in a while, but he wasn’t really allowed to be there. Cheetah’s, like many strip clubs, had a “no boyfriends” policy. At the end of the day, Zack didn’t really care. I needed to work only one or two days a week, and I was coming home with tons of money. He actually quit his job and I started paying for everything. A friend of mine was living with us, too, and I supported her as well. Everyone was counting on me to be the moneymaker, so I kept at it. Every now and then I would have a bad night. Something crazy would happen at the club and I would get discouraged, but there was no turning back.
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