restaurants and inner monologues stir up quite a storm.

(I wanna start by saying how sorry I am for being gone for so long. Summer is almost done and I promise to be back to read all my followers and fans. This came to me the other day and I wanted to post it.)

I'm not sure what it is about Virgo's and I … Several of my best buds are Virgos and I've had several Virgo girlfriends as well. Whatever the reason, I have many birthdays to keep up with in September. One of them is really sad though. I met her in the Bottle Club that I was spinning at and was immediately smitten. Tall, brunette, HUGE blue eyes and a smile that could stop a train.

It didn't take long for me to figure out that she was there with a group of strippers. That's commonplace at bottle club's. Where else can working gals go after work when the bars are all closed? We were always jammed with bar and restaurant types. The dancers came in droves as well. But she was different. Most all the dancers came wearing … well … lets just say “slinky” clothes. Tight, revealing dresses. Tall, spike heels. Plunging necklines and … oh, you get the idea. But she was different. She had on a red sweater and jeans … and a really cool pair of black and white checkered Converse high-tops.

I thought maybe … just maybe she was a waitress or bartender at their club … not a dancer.

But I was wrong. She came to the booth to make a request (after she caught me staring from the booth at her and the gals dancing). She even smiled on one occasion and I winked at her then played aloof and turned to pull my next record. That did the trick and there she was, chatting with me. After a few minutes, I grabbed her hand and helped her up into the DJ booth. She seemed a bit surprised and her face lit up. She stayed in that booth for an hour. Her co-workers came by one at a time and made goofy faces at her that we were “hitting it off”. I learned much about her in that hour …

She was a feature dancer and traveled to New York, Miami, Vegas, San Francisco, Dallas, Tampa, Orlando, Key West, and even Toronto and Vancouver performing in huge strip clubs. She had every costume you could think of … Nurse, Police Woman, Construction Worker, Jungle Girl (*complete with a “vine” rope to swing on), Mermaid, Nun (YES, NUN!), Cheerleader, Space Girl, Vampire and, if the venue had the rigging for it … she had a real swing to go along with her Southern Belle outfit. This included an authentic hoop dress with a 5 foot hoop at the hem, a silk and lace parasol and a huge Kentucky Derby-style “Bonnet”.  After we got together, I got to see all of them, either as she performed … or as she performed for me in private. She was really amazing. These venues thought so too, apparently. They would fly her in, put her up in a hotel AND pay her to perform. Of course, she also got to keep all her tips as well. She made insane money at this.

Normally, I bypassed the dancers that came to party where I worked. Too much trouble. Too much drama or partying that was too overboard, even for me (trust me, that's BAD!). But she was different. She wasn't a wild, party-crazed girl out of control. She was really smart. Very articulate, mild-mannered and seemed to have quite a head on her shoulders. Her story was different too. She danced to put herself through college. She had a degree in business. But when she went into the real world to start her career, she learned she couldn't make near the money as she had been making. So, she made a decision to just stay put and ramp up her income by becoming a feature dancer and earn a name for herself. She did just that and owned her own new car and really nice condo … outright. Very impressive to say the least. Eventually, I was at her condo so much, I practically lived there. Sometimes, I'd be out at the pool hall with my bud's and find $100 bills hidden in my watch pocket or stuck in my buttoned shirt pocket. She LOVED doing this, no matter how many times I'd begged her not to. “Just takin' care of my man” she'd say with a grin.

She never fell into the usual trappings of that world and kept herself distanced from it. I was so blown away by all this I started to fall in love with her. My poem titled "Every Day", (See it on my page, a link won't work now for some reason) was written for/about her. We had a blast together. She was really amazing in every way. Her place was a constant flow of folks from that world and I witnessed some reeeeeally freaky voodoo over the next few years. One thing I saw that troubled me though, was a young “new girl” and her “transformation”. I have to say that it really bothered me. I watched this innocent young girl, go from being quiet and even blushing at the behavior witnessed at one of our party's, to being a complete horn-dog freak … loud and drunk most all the time … and this took less than 6 months!

I told my girlfriend that it really troubled me and her and I spoke about it at length. That's how I learned all about the world of professional stripping. She told me all about the mirrors and how they make you see yourself as a stripper and not only make you fall deeper down the hole as you accept yourself like this, but that it also keeps you there as well. She also described to me, at length about the “men” in these girls lives as well as the staff that worked in these types of places. ***, of any sort, attracts ne'er-do-wells, sociopaths, people with all sorts of issues … and pervs. So that's the only choices some girls take. Mostly because they don't give them grief about being dancers. The problem is all the other grief these types bring and the fact that these types of men only see them as objects to be owned and used.

I never went to those places after going a few times after I turned 18. It just wasn't my thing. I don't see women as objects. Being someone who studied Psychology and Behavioral Science, I had more fun watching and studying the people in the place, than the dancers. I never had a problem meeting women … I didn't need to pay for one to pretend to like me. Yet another reason I avoided those gals at the bottle club.

As time went on though … the “little” bit of partying my gal did eventually began to be a problem. I was horrified to discover one day, that the “line here and line there” of sniffs she had always done had descended to her using needles! She would wear these finger-less lace gloves. They were VERY **** at first … But one day, she joined me in the shower with them on … I noticed this and tried to take them off of her … she fought me … laughing at first, but then as I pressed it, she got angry. I thought she had gotten a tattoo … but that was not the case … I laughingly wrestled one off to see the “tattoo” and found track marks on the back of her hand. The argument that ensued in that bathroom could be heard down by the condo pool.

I spent the next few weeks trying to talk her off of it. But all that did was make her try and hide it more while swearing sobriety. After finding yet another needle rig, hidden in the bathroom trash can … I moved out. She tried to commit suicide and blamed it on ME in her note. Thankfully she failed, but because I was named as the “problem”, I wasn't allowed to see her. Even her family snubbed me without ever knowing the real truth. There was nothing I could do. A few weeks later I went by the condo. Her car wasn't there and there was a for sale sign in the window. I looked in the windows and the place was empty. She had moved away and that was that.

A few months later … I was awakened, at 7 am on a Sunday WITH a hangover, by a young coworker of mine. I answered the door with gritted teeth and told him “This BETTER be GOOD!”

He had a VHS tape in his hand and reeked of *****. I let him in and he told me that he had stolen this tape from a party he was at because he knew that I would want to see it. I looked at the label as I loaded it into my VCR and could tell by the title that it was a **** tape. I rolled my eyes, turned on the TV and plopped on the couch to humor him. The video opened with a big, white Cadillac convertible going down a wide, palm-lined Hollywood/L.A. Street. There was a football- player-sized black man driving and a beautiful girl with dark red lips, over-sized sunglasses and a silk scarf on her head riding along.

I didn't recognize her at all.

But in the next scene, she had removed the glasses and scarf … it was her … she was blowing him … and on both her hands … were finger-less, lace gloves. I jumped up and ejected the tape. He said “Sorry, Dude … I just figured you would want to know … don't hate the messenger.”

I assured him that I wasn't mad. I asked him to just go and even thanked him so that he wouldn't feel I was angry with him. I asked him to never tell anyone and he never did. I went in the kitchen and destroyed the tape with my bare hands, cramming it all into the bin and cutting myself in the process. There was blood all over the counter, fridge and floor. I cleaned up myself and just went for the **** and my water bed. My roomy woke me up several hours later, a bit upset, and asking about the blood. I told him what had happened and he knew it was tearing me up inside.

He said “So sorry to hear that Bro, I know what she meant to you.”

I told him that it was all good and thanked him for his concern. I told him I'd clean up the ****** mess when I got up. When I finally did get out of bed, I saw that he had cleaned up all my blood and he never said a word about that … or her … ever again. Bless his heart.

Day-before-yesterday was her birthday. I got to thinking about her while riding the lawnmower and our conversation about the “biz” came flooding back … I guess that made this poem come to me. I had to stop and come inside to write it, dripping sweat all over the den. Still … I'm glad I did. If just ONE of those girls reads this somewhere, somehow and it makes her open her eyes … then I have accomplished something. Thanks for the read.