Cocaine, Music, and an Idea: Part 5

What is it about the sun that makes us deny the shadow? We revel in the dark until we find a light, and then we escape it as though it were an epidemic of catastrophic sorts. Lost under a veil of life and death, light and dark, we will always fight for the light of life, that is always our initial base, our lead.

This new mid set that came from cocaine became the place where I was always above the little red line in my mind between empty and full. On cocaine I was allowed to come up with solutions that got me out of my immediate experience rapidly, like time travel or parallel universes. This time in my life was like grainy contrasts, lines and space, black and white.

When I was in the middle land between adulthood and childhood I numbed my terror enough to have what seemed like a good time. All the dread, the pain, and the trauma that tugged at my physical and emotional body was no longer calling my attention away from exploring the many simple and complex pleasures of life. It set me free, temporarily, and also jailed me to expectations of 'good' feelings I could never attain from my reality base at the time.

The worst thing I ever saw was my mother and father's relationship and divorce. Over the span of ten years my parents were regularly jailed and institutionalized for their tumultuous passion. My father was arrested for domestic violence once when my mother and he were on a particularly intense cocaine bender and we didn't see him for what felt like the longest month (if fuzzy memory serves) of our lives. My mother was in rehab and then a halfway house for some amount of time I can no longer recall. Another time my mother tried to kill my father only to find that there were no bullets in the gun whose trigger she pulled, the one whose barrel aimed at his heart. (I imagine the heart when my father tells the story at least.) When they finally divorced my mother stole several hundred thousand dollars from my father's employer's payroll company and sent him to bankruptcy only after stealing his thousands of dollars worth of records, recording equipment, and electronic music-making equipment. She dumped it all off a cliff before taking his money and his kids.

I never wanted to love a man that way. I never wanted to be driven mad with passion. I never wanted to be that ugly and mindless. With women I was able to maintain some level of distance because in those relationships there was enough emotional stock put into our working out for the social well being of my partner. We weren't relating from a spiritual level at all, but rather from an egoic level. Largely, in the lesbian world especially, beautiful women are trophies, things to be won, bought, traded, sold and stolen. Gay women are often insecure that they can't get hot women like men can. They deny this, but its just mostly true. It just is! For a lesbian to attract a beautiful symbol of sexuality it is extremely positive and something that she will likely wish to maintain for all the external world to see for as long as possible (in certain social circles, please note!). Hot chicks say something about lesbians, they are sort of externalized versions of sexual prowess, and I was this also. It felt, admittedly, wonderful in some ways to feel so wanted, so coveted, so protected. I thought this was love, grabbing, gripping, groping.

When Edie and I broke up, she became my sound-board of questions about the stripping industry, because I thought she secretly wanted to see me in that place where I was out of reach. I wanted to grow out of needing a manager or parent to always look after me. I felt being lost in the world of obscure and unintelligible sexual passion would make me utterly and maddeningly desirable. It would make me grow beyond neediness, out of proprietary attitudes toward a mate. Out there I didn't have to be so close, so human, so full of fear, pain, joy and happiness... so full. It was much easier for me to be some dominating sexual force than a human woman with a lot of problems. Edie told me about the most expensive strip clubs, which were her favorite, and which were the best for me to get my start.

In the meantime, my 18th birthday was approaching and my father gifted me with two thousand dollars toward my own car. One of my friends at the Middle College program was selling a faded blue '83 Monte Carlo with leaky T-Tops and a bad radiator for eighteen-hundred dollars. I bought it and was on my way to a new place in life!

I no longer needed to depend on others for my personal freedom and solitude. My excitement was almost too much to contain with the idea that I could be placed where no one knew me. I had access to new worlds where I could start over, away from all the places where I had been treated as a powerless thing to be had, taken, dealt with and thrown away.

I began to drive on long day trips all over the bay area; thorough the San Mateo mountains, along Highway 1 on the narrow cliffs, through all the little micro-climates and hidden villages of San Francisco, and through downtown -all in my beat up stereo-less Monte Carlo. For musical stimulation I kept with my my battery-operated boom box and my gigantic c.d. book. I smoked cigarettes and listened to hours of music. I would drive past numerous strip clubs Edie had told me about and take stock of the various audition days.

Edie's guidance sent me first to Mitchell Brother's O'Farrel Street Theater, where the dancers all drove BMW's and earned thousands of dollars each day. Although I knew many people, I didn't really have any friends at the time. There were people I spoke with often, but In was very secretive about what I was doing and what my plans were. With no one to trust, I went on my first auditions in the world I did not understand one bit all alone.

Music was my closest friend, in fact. I would spend hours with my favorite songs in my headphones on long bus rides before my car, and after I acquired the MC I did the same with my portable stereo. I drowned in The Deftones, Portishead, Morcheeba, Sade, Marilyn Manson, The Smashing Pumpkins, D.J. Shadow, Bjork, P.J. Harvey, Radiohead, and so many many others. While I listened my creative process would flourish and I would envision what sort of stripper I would be. Who was this character and what was she like? I became familiar with this new role 'd be taking on, and I was filled with the thrill of being an actress and nailing the message organically.

From the ages of ten to twelve I wanted to be an actress. I studied monologue after monologue, read scripts, and the dictionary (scouring for new, ever more expressive words) for additions to my passion. I starred in plays, acted in a few commercials, sang in a few organizations and took runway modeling jobs regularly. It all ended abruptly when I was molested at age twelve. Having my freedom back in my hands, I felt reconnected to this passion, but in a broken way.

I was prepared to play this role well. I studied the way strippers danced, the ways they wore their make up and hair, and what they wore and where it came from. I learned what these women knew about what men found attractive, and it was startlingly different from what I thought was attractive about women. I thought women were so fucking hot when they were beautiful and strong looking, whip smart and complete. These women were more interested, it seemed, in being soft, bouncy, giggly, and simple. "Blah", I thought, I can't wait to do something new, say something new, be something new for this audience!"

Cocaine fed a simmering madness to be a great stripper, one that proved she could be independent, sex positive, in charge of her own sensuality and unashamed of the animal inside us all. I felt that even though I was in this situation because of poverty and lack of knowing what else to do, I would make the most of the opportunity to give the finger to convention and old ways. If I was going to be a stripper, I was going to do it well, I was going to come with something to say, and I was going to enjoy the fuck out of it, at any and all costs.

I finally narrowed my choices down to a few places I'd look to start working as my eighteenth birthday approached ever rapidly. My top three were, based on how much money it seemed was being made, Edie's advice, and the advice of numerous others, Mitchell Brother's, New Century, and Centerfold's.

Come back soon to read about the auditions...

Take good care and thanks for reading

SH