HAVE YOU EVER found yourself in a place where you were staring into the future you knew you were destined to follow, yet you were stuck in the space between scared shitless and super excited to start?

Comfort zones are funny things. For most people, standing in front of a room full of strangers topless would be far from “comfortable”. For me, when I was hiding behind the persona that I had created, I was most comfortable in that arena. One night in particular comes to mind.

Rivers of sweat were running down from my face, traveling between my exposed breasts as I drew in then forced out breath after breath. Squinting from the blast of the stage lights, I peered through the smoke and into the eyes of the faces staring back at me. I grasped the cold, brass pole that had become a source of security for me with my right hand and used it to keep me steady. I needed a moment to collect myself.

The date was December 22, 2008, and it marked the end of a personal era.

Moments earlier, I had finished my last performance as a professional exotic dancer, and I had given it my all. I was physically and emotionally spent. As I heard the applause and saw the twenty-dollar bills flying through the air and landing on the stage—thrown from a crowd that was up on their feet—I knew that my thirteen years of working in gentlemen’s clubs had not been in vain. I looked to my right and saw the man who would become my husband smiling from ear to ear and clapping enthusiastically. He was proud of my swan song, for sure, but he was also thankful that this would be the last time I would take off my clothes in front of strangers for money. He had always supported me fully, no matter the endeavor. I smiled at him from the stage, knowing he had my back in that moment.

As I moved my gaze throughout the bar, seeing each person and thinking of how they had all impacted my life in some way, I knew that the time was finally right for me to hang up my heels and walk away. I had performed on many stages over the years, and those spaces had become the places where I learned so much—not only about myself, but also about the other people I share the planet with. Who would have thought I’d have grown so much as a woman and a person as a result of my years working in go-go bars? The middle school me who was convinced I was going to be the first United Methodist nun because no boys liked me certainly did not see this coming!

I am grateful for this opportunity to share those lessons with you, as well as some of the wild stories that inspired them. I have spent hours with men who were drunk out of their minds, but still managed to be kind. I have made friends with the other girls I’ve worked with and drawn inspiration from their journeys. I have had many shifts where I have fallen on my face (sometimes literally!) and managed to keep pushing forward. But for you to fully appreciate my journey, we need to rewind and see how someone like me wound up half naked in front of strangers on stages in the first place.

I never in a million years dreamed that I would become an exotic dancer. I wasn’t sexy enough, I had no rhythm, and I’m an introvert, for goodness’ sakes! It turns out; you really don’t need to be sexy or have rhythm—or have teeth—to be a successful exotic dancer. I had much to learn.

I grew up in southern New Jersey in the eighties. I was grateful to be born in 1975 because we were the last generation to have a childhood before the internet was in every home and pocket. We played outside, walked or biked everywhere, and spent our teen years sneaking phone calls way into the late-night hours.

My friends and I would sit in one of our bedrooms and listen to the radio for hours, waiting for our favorite songs to come on so we could record them onto a cassette tape. We wound up irritated every time the DJ talked over the very beginning or very end of the song. We passed carefully folded paper notes in class, had the biggest hair, and wore the brightest neon colors in history! Everyone thinks of their own childhood as being the best time to grow up, but we had the Cabbage Patch Kids, the A-Team, and MTV, which played music videos all day long!

Not that I was allowed to watch MTV . . .

Being a preacher’s daughter, I was brought up in a strict religious household. In my younger years, I believed that everyone must have also had parents as strict as mine and lived like us. My friends at school and friends at church came from a variety of backgrounds. Other than feeling confused when a friend’s family didn’t say grace before dinner, nothing stood out to me to let me know that my upbringing was a little different. Eating a meal without first giving thanks to God would have never happened in my house. We said grace before every meal, no exceptions. In the rare times when we would go out to eat, my dad would have us all hold hands and say grace in the restaurant as well.

That was just “life” to me, and I never questioned anything. That was, until I was in my tween years and the “preacher’s daughter” comments started. Before then, I had been called a “PK,” short for “preacher’s kid.” It had a little bit of a negative edge attached to it, but overall, it sounded cute. However, “preacher’s daughter” gave off a completely different vibe. The stereotype had much more of a stigma. It came with images of rebellion and promiscuity—the preacher’s daughter was expected to be “naughty.” I’m not saying that that was the reason I wound up topless in front of strangers, but people do learn to behave according to the expectations you place on them.

I saw that play out with a family for whom I babysat as a teenager. The parents warned me that the three boys— aged five, three, and one—were hell spawn, that they wouldn’t listen and were generally “bad kids.” The first day I watched them, the three-year-old put his one-year-old brother in the dryer, and the five-year-old ran around on the furniture like his ass was on fire before smacking the three-year-old in the nose with a He-Man sword, causing blood to spray out everywhere. For the finale, the three-year-old stuck a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich in the VCR because he had seen someone do that in a TV commercial. They refused to listen to me, so I threatened to tell their parents what they had done. The oldest answered, “Go ahead, they won’t do anything.” I asked if they had ever received any consequences for their actions, and he explained that their parents threatened them a lot but never followed through. From then on, I tried to encourage them to play on their strengths instead of following the belief that they were “bad kids.” It wasn’t perfect by any means, but I like to think that I’d helped them see that they were not hopeless and were capable of doing better. Just as I knew I was so much more than the stereotype of a “preacher’s daughter,” I wanted these boys to know they could be more than the label they had been given.

I love my dad dearly, but during my childhood years, his priorities were always the church and parishioners, and he directed most of his energy into being a good preacher. In the past few years, we’ve had good conversations about how that affected me and my brothers. Knowing that I was always less of a priority to my dad than the church left a lot of deep scars on my psyche.

My mom, on the other hand, worked as a nurse in a hospital before I was born. After she had me and my brothers, she became a stay-at-home mom until I was around seven or eight years old, often doing crafts with us— cutting out fish from construction paper and securing a paper clip to them so we could go “fishing” on the front porch with a magnet that was tied to a string from a dowel rod “fishing pole”—and letting us help her cook. When we got a little older, she began working in the school district as a teacher’s aide. My fondest memories of my mom were of how she would always make a big deal out of the holidays.

During my childhood, we moved a lot. Instead of having memories of a single house, we made memories of the traditions and decorations that were consistent during each holiday in every house where we lived. To this day, my mom decorates every inch of my parents’ house for every occasion, from Halloween and Christmas to Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day, and I love seeing so many of the same decorations from when I was a child still on display every year in their house.

The many happy memories from my childhood include birthday parties, Girl Scouts, youth group, being in school plays, and just hanging out with my friends. Our family took road trips and went camping, first in our van and later in a pop-up camper and then in a thirty-five-foot vacation trailer. My dad used to read the funnies to us, and we spent a lot of time visiting our grandparents, too.

Even though we moved a lot, we lived in one town from when I was eight to when I was sixteen. I had a group of friends in school, as well as friends in the neighborhood who went to a private school. We all got along, so it wasn’t divided into “my school friends” or “my neighborhood friends.” We would spend hours playing outside, mostly games that we had made up.

Some of the houses in our neighborhood had lawns that looked like they could be featured on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Ours wasn’t one of them, but my dad took excellent care of the yard; it wasn’t trashy. My parents didn’t mind that we wound up playing games at my house, wearing a path around the house with our running, because they understood that childhood was fleeting. I think they also liked being able to keep an eye on all of us. If all the neighborhood kids congregated at our house, then they knew what we were up to.

Our favorite made-up game was called “Ninja,” a combination of hide-and-seek and ball tag. The person who was “it” had to first find another player and then hit them with a tennis ball to get them “out” before they made it to “base,” our front steps. While nailing someone with a tennis ball after you find their hiding spot may sound mean, it helped to build a lot of different skills. We learned how to duck and weave, how to run fast, and how to not be a big crybaby if we got hit with a ball. Sooner or later, everyone was going to get hit. It was part of the game, nothing personal.

When I was a Girl Scout, during our after-school meetings, we would have a great time earning our badges, going out and selling cookies, and going to sleepaway camp. The other girls and I became close and spent time together outside of Scouts as well. The one rule was that I was not allowed to go to sleepovers at my friends’ houses on Saturday nights unless their parents agreed to have me up and dressed to be ready for church pickup on Sunday morning. It annoyed me. I guess there were more things that stuck out to me as “different” than just saying grace before meals, after all.

I was a good kid, at least until middle school. I don’t think I necessarily became a “bad kid.” I was just a “normal” one. The difference is when you do normal, stupid things that a lot of teenagers do and your dad is the minister, those normal, stupid things tend to be given more weight. I would hear the following from the parishioners quite frequently:

“You shouldn’t smoke; you’re the preacher’s daughter!”

How about I shouldn’t smoke because it will kill me no matter what my father’s occupation happens to be?

The opposite was true as well. During our church youth group meetings, I would be chosen to say the prayers because my dad was the pastor. I got in trouble with the leader once for asking, “If my dad was a carpenter, would you want me to put an addition on your house?” I didn’t see how my father’s job made me more qualified to lead a prayer than any of the other Christian kids who supposedly were praying daily.

At the age of fourteen, one of the church members cornered me in the back hall of the church. He was an older man I knew from church but not someone I saw outside of church activities. He backed me up against the wall, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “You’re going to wind up pregnant before you’re sixteen, and I want to be there to see your father’s face when you have to tell him.” Then he laughed in my face and walked away.

First, when that conversation took place, I was still a virgin. Second, what in the fuck would possess a grown man to say that to a young woman as he backs her up against the wall? (Or think he has the right to?) Years later, this man’s son came into a club where I was bartending. That night, I had been wearing a mesh top with nothing under it and leather pants. I used to wear leather or pleather when I bartended because if I spilled anything on myself, it was easy to wipe off. I wore mesh tops with nothing under them because . . . more tips! On that particular night, the presence of his son made me feel a little icky in my outfit because I had known this young man since he was a little kid. But, to tell the truth, a little part of me would have loved to have seen Mister High-and-Mighty’s face if his son had told him that he had been out looking for some T&A— and got to see my T!

I certainly wasn’t perfect, and I’m not saying that I never dreamed of becoming a missionary, either—well, not after age ten anyway. Missionaries used to come and speak to us at church, and they would share their tales of living out in the wild and converting the locals to follow Jesus. I was pen pals with a few of those missionaries over the years, and it all seemed very exotic. But truth be told, I was too spoiled by running water to be able to stay in a country without it for too long. Instead, I always chose to send monetary donations to help those with the fortitude to be in those places for any length of time.

Not wanting to be a missionary is one thing, but there are a lot of steps between missionary and exotic dancer, which was the career path I would soon find myself on. Aside from laughing with my friends in middle school gym class in the late 1980s about who was going to take center pole at The Cat House—something we had only heard of by following our favorite hair bands (I’m looking at you, Mötley Crüe)—exotic dancing was not something I’d ever considered as a serious profession. Until I found myself staring down a brass pole six years later when I was twenty years old.

When I look back on my younger years, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up aside from being a mom. From the time I was a little girl, I knew I was meant to have kids someday. I could feel that calling in my very being, and my soul told me that I was meant to have three children. The Universe works in mysterious ways. Today, I have two biological children and a stepson whom I love as much as if he were my biological child. I was right about how many kids I would be meant to have; I just needed to be open to receiving the kids who needed me in their lives.

When I was considering occupations that I wanted to pursue after graduating high school, I never experienced the same kind of pull in my gut. I met with the school’s career counselor, and we evaluated my answers on the standardized “What career would suit you?” test, but “stripper” was not one of the answers I was given. I had considered a future in all kinds of careers, from driving a big rig to practicing law as a prosecuting attorney, but I never pursued them because I didn’t feel passionate about them.

My mom suggested several times (indirectly and very directly) that she thought I should become a social worker. I gave it a lot of thought, but I knew that environment would kill me because of my personality. As an empath, I feel too much and would have wanted to kidnap—I mean adopt— every child in the system.

Back when I was nine years old, my parents had become foster parents with an agency in New Jersey and would continue to do so for over twenty years, continuing the family tradition. My father’s parents were foster parents through that agency, as were my great-grandparents. I saw firsthand the results of abuse and neglect on children before they were given love and proper care by a family. When I heard what those children had endured, all I wanted to do was hold them and never let them go! I can’t speak for all foster parents, and I have heard plenty of horror stories about kids in foster care, but what I know is that the foster parents from the agency associated with my family gave the kids in their care nothing but love and a chance at a better future.

The alternative to being such a bleeding heart would be teaching myself to not feel as much, and I didn’t want to do that, either. Not when it came to children in need. I knew I could help these children in other ways without it being my full-time job as a social worker.

So, it was back to square one. I wasn’t idle. I went to college to study psychology and sociology and worked several jobs, from a cashier at a card store to a gas attendant. But I never felt fulfilled or like I was exactly where I was meant to be. Little did I know that every one of those experiences was a step forward on the path that would lead me to working in go-go bars off and on for thirteen years. Those dark rooms filled with loud music would turn out to be the classrooms for the many life lessons that I still hold dear today.

Gentlemen’s clubs are interesting places filled with a plethora of people. If you’ve never been inside a gentlemen’s club, you’ll need to use your imagination (or maybe a scene from a movie) to form your opinions. I’m sure you’ll have your own assumptions of what the average patron of a go-go bar looks like—what physical features they may have, what kind of job they do (if any), the type of place where they live, how they talk, and how they smell. It’s a common stereotype that the people who go to these clubs are scumbags, deviants, and troubled. Sure, some of them are, but some of the people in your local supermarket, coffee shop, and church are, too. Like a lot of areas in life, assuming makes an ass out of you. Judge not, lest ye be judged!

Like most humans, patrons of go-go bars are regular people who just want attention. They want to feel included.

Or they just want to cop a feel.

Bachelor parties aside (that’s a chapter unto itself), most of the guys I met along the way were just looking for a place to unwind. They wanted to enjoy the view and a drink or two for a couple of hours before returning to their realities. Most of the patrons were male, but there was always a sprinkling of female and gender-fluid customers as well. Having female customers at the bar was more common on the weekends, and most of them came in as half of a couple. They ranged from the shy and curious to the ones who believed they could stick their hand down my pants because they had the same parts as me. That’s a definite no with most dancers, especially if there is no foreplay. Side note: if you are a woman and are going to a club, please don’t assume you can do whatever you want just because you have lady bits, too. Of course, there might be some dancers who will welcome that sort of interaction; I’m not saying I’ve never hooked up with a female customer during a couch dance. I’m just saying you can’t go exploring in other people’s G-strings uninvited. That’s bad manners.

There were plenty of other crazy things that went on in the private rooms of gentlemen’s clubs. Most places followed Chris Rock’s take on what kind of sex happens in the champagne room: none. In some clubs, the customers were not allowed to touch the dancers during private dances at all, while others allowed contact but only if it stayed above the waist. But no matter what the rules were, there would always be customers who attempted to push the boundaries and get more than the rules allowed; and there would be girls who would let them. There was always a girl or two who paid off the bouncer to look the other way while she was back there so she could cross the line. The odds greatly increased when you added alcohol to the equation. I believe that most of the women who wind up working in the adult industry are there because they are seeking attention, primarily from men. I have come a long way, but I would be lying if I said that I don’t still seek approval and attention from the men in my life. Daddy issues is a common theme, and more than a few of the dancers I knew had histories that included some sort of abuse. The bars gave the girls a sense of empowerment while still getting the male approval they were seeking. Myself included.

A guy I dated from the time when I worked in my first bar and whom I am still friends with sometimes tells me the stories that he remembered from back then. “I always found it a bit funny when I would tell people I was seeing a dancer, and they thought how awesome that was. But once I explained to them how it was a job, the magic was gone. I had moved the curtain.”

That’s why while it is wrong to make assumptions about the type of people who frequent gentlemen’s clubs, it is also wrong to make assumptions about the types of women who dance. At the end of the day, it’s just a job. A means to an end. A way to pay the bills. A girl I worked with in 2008 liked to dance to a song called “Dancing for the Groceries” (feel free to Google it if you are not familiar). Kenny Chesney is great, but I would have never danced to a song that blatantly honest. I don’t know about you but going out to the bar and watching a woman dancing to a song that explains the hardships of dancing would not make me moist! If it worked for her, good on her. And if it didn’t work for her, then hey, good on me! That meant more money in my pocket.

I had never been one to try and work the “pity tip” angle. I preferred dancing to songs like “User Friendly” by Marilyn Manson. I wasn’t pretending to be looking for a long-term relationship or anything romantic. I was just pretending to be interested in a short-term sexual one.

It takes all kinds to make the go-go world go ’round. And musical tastes weren’t the only things that varied when it came to the girls dancing in gentlemen’s clubs. I have worked with underage girls with fake IDs who had no business being in a club and women in their sixties who, some would say, also had no business working in a club. I have worked with students, moms, grandmoms, accountants, nurses, and even teachers who weren’t able to make ends meet on their day job salaries. I clearly remember two of the women from my first club because they both worked in disguise. One was an elementary school teacher. She wore fake glasses and a wig, making her look like she was trying for the “sexy teacher” look. Hiding in plain sight, I suppose. The other woman wore a wig and colored contact lenses, used special makeup to fully cover her tattoos, and told me that she drove over two hours from home to work at the club so that no one would know who she was. She could have been CIA; she could have been totally full of shit; I have no idea! I just remember her being kind to me when I first started dancing and was completely clueless; the rest of her life was none of my business.

I’ve worked with single girls, married women, and recently divorced ladies. I have worked with super-skinny girls and super-voluptuous ladies. My coworkers have been gay, straight, bi, pan, and asexual. They’ve ranged from virgins to super sexually active. I used to have fascinating conversations in the dressing room with a girl who had only had oral and anal sex so that she could say she was technically a virgin. The old Catholic loophole. I worked with one girl whose day job was being a dominatrix, and several others who taught Sunday School. Women of every skin tone and every hair color shared the stage with me, and more than one was not born with female genitalia.

I appreciate the friendships that I have made over the years and am grateful for the men, women, and nonbinary persons with whom I have kept in touch.

I would not have been able to write this book without the countless characters who have made my journey more colorful and more fun, and who, when they pop into my mind, bring a smile to my face. We still laugh when we talk about the good old days. When I started out, the bars were much different than they are now. Some of the stories that my friends who still work in the bar scene tell me make me shake my head in disbelief. Are things really that different? Or am I just older now and more easily shocked?

Surely not the latter!

Just as the truth comes out at the end of the night when the DJ turns on the “cellulights,” this book may also reveal some truths that you may not be ready to hear. Especially if you believe that exotic dancers:

1. Are all whores that either want your cock (or if you are a heterosexual lady or

gay man: want your man’s cock)

2. Walk around “in real life” wearing stilettos and lingerie

3. Are all drug addicts

4. Are all stupid

There are many more misconceptions about women who dance, but this list is a good start. If you believe any of them and are steadfast in your beliefs, stop reading now. You are bound to wind up sorely disappointed.

“Cellulights” was my nickname for the house lights. When you are on the stage dancing during regular business hours, the only lights on in the club are black lights, colored stage lights, or strobe lights that conceal your flaws. I guess the non-go-go equivalent to the stage lights would be social media filters. You know what you really look like, then you pick a filter, and your teeth are whiter, the wrinkles disappear, your stretch marks are faded, and the zits are gone. Black lights, strobe lights, and stage lights offer the same effect, just while people are looking at you in real life. But when the night is over and the bright white overhead lights come on, there is no hiding what you truly look like as you stand there in your undies—the cottage-cheese thighs, pimples, stretch marks, and dimples are all out on display. Most girls would scatter like roaches. I didn’t care! I figured if I scared a customer that bad, maybe he would jump in fear and drop his wallet.

My life is multifaceted, and the dancing portion of my past is only one of many pieces that make me, me! While there are a lot of life lessons in the other pieces of my life as well, most people would not be as interested in reading about the wisdoms that struck me out of the blue while scrubbing the toilet or sitting in the school pickup line. I have learned so many things in the time that I worked in gentlemen’s clubs, which have helped me to grow as a person. My sincere hope is that by sharing those lessons in this book, they can help you to learn and grow as well. My goal is to share some smiles, inspire you to make positive changes in your life, and help you to find your own path to confidence and become the best you possible. I also have stories from my go-go years that are just plain funny and shocking, and that are worth it for the entertainment value alone.

I have not always had a positive headspace. I spent the last seven years of my life actively diving into my own personal development, committing to exercising, and focusing on better nutrition. I have come a long way from my years of living on Marlboro Reds, Mountain Dew, and having the only squats I did be the ones over a man’s lap. (Or woman’s lap. I love my ladies, too!) The only thing that is constant in our lives is that things are always changing. Just because you may have gotten into a bad habit or find yourself on a bad path doesn’t mean you can’t change your life’s direction to one that better serves you. I put in work daily to move myself forward and grow as a person. And I am immensely proud when I see the new chapters I have added to my life that have made me a happier and more confident person.

I would not be who I am today if I did not have the go-go chapter of my life. And it all started in 1995 with three little words . . .