stripping my way through grad school

no, the title's not a teaser. i really did become a stripper to pay for graduate school. no lie. here's what happened:

i got my undergrad degree in a completely useless field of study, i needed a masters degree to do anything that paid money. i took my gre and applied to some grad schools, i got accepted by the one i was most interested in. i was working as a caseworker in a nursing home when my best friend paul invited me out to california for a week, so of course i went. i told my mother not to tell my father where i was going, because quentin is gay and my dad hates gay people. i told my mom that if she leaked this to my dad, he wouldn't pay for grad school and he'd probably make me eat off of paper plates until i moved out. she promised she wouldn't tell.

she told.

so when i got back from my awesome trip, my mom informed me that my dad had decided that since i had enough money to "go visit queers in l.a." i should have enough to pay for grad school all by myself.

it was march and school started in august, so i had maybe $7,000 saved up (i got paid $6.50/hour). fuck. i hadn't filled out any financial aid forms because my dad had said he would pay for grad school and now i was stuck without enough money to go and fuck if i was going to let myself be stuck working in a nursing home and living in my parents crappy trailer. i wanted to get out, and i was going to get out. i needed enough money to pay for two years of grad school, two years of rent and food and utilities and car insurance and books and fuck and fuck and fuck! what was i going to do?

the next week i started perusing the want ads for some magical job that would solve all my problems. what i found was an open invitation to enter "amateur night" at the local strip club. now, this strip club is world famous but i'm not going to say where it is because i need to stay anonymous. but it's a very well-known club. so, with some prompting from my best friend, i decided to go for it. i had never done anything like this, ever, but i had to get my life going. i figured that if i did well enough, i could work there.

the night of the amateur contest, i informed my mom of my plans. it felt really good to stick that knife in, because if it wasn't for her big mouth i wouldn't have to do this. she got pretty upset and cried and said stuff like, "oh neve, don't do that. you can do better blahblahblah." so i told her i wouldn't do it and then i did it anyway.

so, i won the amateur contest. wow, i couldn't believe it. while i was waiting for my turn to go onstage, some guy asked me what my name was. i wasn't prepared for this, but i was pretty sure that i should give him a fake name because there was no way that the girls who worked there really had names like brooke or jaden or synful. so i said the first name that popped into my head. tasha.  so my stripper name was tasha.

we had to pick two songs, one slow and the next one fast. because i didn't have my adult worker's license, i couldn't go nude. fine with me. it felt unreal, being on that stage. i couldn't believe that i was taking off my clothes for a club full of men. i was fairly innocent and hadn't even lost my virginity until i was 19. now i was 21 and a stripper. wow.

after i won, the "house mother" called me the next week and said they'd really like me to work for them. i freaked out. totally. my best friend said that if she had the body she would totally do it, and she really encouraged me. i wanted to be sure that i would make enough money before i quit my "day job", so i agreed to strip on friday nights and saturday nights to start, and the house mother said sure. little did i know that only the best girls were allowed to work those two nights.

my first night working, i made $650. cash. i quit my day job a month later.*

fuck you dad.

*yes, i'll post lots more stripper stories on this blog. there are just too many to choose from right now. just suffice it to say that i got my masters degree in counseling two years later.