Tuesday, December 30, 2008

You Wanna Be my Freak?

The day before my strip-club audition, I made an amateur porn tape with a 6'6", 350-pound actor and ex-NFL player who called himself Bear.

We'd met two months earlier, in the office of a Hollywood talent agent who shall be known only as Dirty, Old Nobody – or D.O.N. for short. At the time, Bear was D.O.N.'s biggest client. Bear was currently recurring on a minstrel black sitcom that starred a future Oscar-winning, Ray-Charles-playing actor/comedian/singer. The first episode hadn't aired yet, but would in a matter of weeks.

I was there to audition. I nailed a dramatic scene from the play Oleanna, complete with real tears. D.O.N. thought I was a "terrific actress," but worried that I wasn't sexy enough. Bear put in a good word for me, helping convince D.O.N. that I was worth taking a chance on.

A couple weeks later, Bear laid the rap down hot and heavy, intimating that if I "helped" him sexually, he'd "help" me financially. So I helped him. And I received mutual aid of $43.70 when he dumped the contents of his wallet in my lap.

I met talent manager, Stripper Pimp, that very same day, and our six-week relationship had taught me two things: (1) I could advance my acting career by stripping and (2) Stripper Pimp was incapable of meeting my sexual needs.

So Bear's mid-day booty call was a welcome diversion.

I met Bear at a seedy motel, where he proceeded to set up a camcorder on a makeshift tripod of phone books, all the while muttering about the room being too dark.

I didn't utter a single word of protest.

We started going at it and bam! – the camcorder hit the floor. Bear cursed a bit and shut the camera off. He had bigger plans than a homemade porn tape.

"You wanna be my freak?" he asked in his sexiest voice (which I didn't find sexy at all). Would I do him, other men, other women, groups of men and groups of women?

I said yes like it was nothing.

"Future A-Lister is gonna love that great, big ass of yours," he grinned.

So that was his angle. Bear thought that if he gift-wrapped me and gave me to Future A-Lister, he might get upgraded from a recurring role to a series regular. No word on what I'd get out of the deal, though. Another $43.70? Or just the pleasure of basking in his second-hand glow?

As for stripping?

"Girl, you better make that money while you can."

I tried to practice my first-ever lap dance on him and burst into tears. "Naw, girl, that ain't right. You gotta get closer. No, closer. Closer!"

He concluded that I "wasn't ready" and took me on a mid-afternoon field trip to Ron's Barbary Coast, a strip club that was all hood, up to no good and surprisingly close to my house.

The girls were rough. Half were fat, some were on drugs, and some had visible scars. They could leap to the top of the pole and slide down upside-down and spread-eagled, crotch smearing the metal. They could pump their booties at 100 miles per hour.

To someone who had never quite mastered a cartwheel, it was both vulgar and intimidating.

At the edge of the stage, two guys wadded up dollar bills and aimed them at the girls' crotches, laughing the whole time.

Bear loved the Barbary Coast. It was a place where hos catered to hood rats. He introduced me to a dancer named Red, who he claimed would "have me whistling Dixie" in a future threesome. She brazenly put her hand on my thigh and squeezed.

I didn't even squirm.

I didn't care what happened to me. Tomorrow I would be trading my Yale degree for a life as a hoochie-mama stripper. I was numb on the surface, but beginning to feel blazingly, murderously angry underneath. It was almost like I was dead, but amazingly, my crotch still worked.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 8 of 17: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17)
(Stripper/Casting Couch Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Saturday, December 27, 2008

Almost Ready for Takeoff at the Jet Strip

I'm nothing if not studious. So less than a week after my Hollywood talent manager kindly offered to be my Stripper Pimp, I did what any Yale graduate would do: research.

Stripper Pimp was supposed to escort me to a club, but he stood me up. By this time, breaking agreements and not returning my calls had become the norm. The lavish attention initially bestowed upon me had dwindled to a trickle. But I clung to him anyway.

I drove to what was arguably the most well-known strip club in Los Angeles: the Century Lounge. That place was impossible to miss: its orange "Nude Nude Nudes" marquee assaulted my eyeballs every time I drove to LAX airport. But when I got there, the doorman informed me that they did not allow "unescorted females" on the premises. So I turned tail and drove around until I found a place that did: the Jet Strip.

Into the club I went, dressed down in full nerd regalia: a ratty yellow sweater, faded jeans, flat shoes, glasses and no lipstick. The only thing missing was a sign: "Back off, buddy. I do not work here."

It was nothing like I imagined it would be. I thought strip clubs were loud and boisterous, full of drunken rednecks or college rowdies or ghetto hustlers. But no. The Jet Strip fit Stripper Pimp's glowing description: it was as quiet as "a law library or church" (yes, he really did compare the nudie bar to church).

The rapt men were completely engrossed in the delicious goodies that were spread-eagled before them. On the mainstage, a girl was on her back, high heels pointing to opposite corners of the room.

At the tables, a couple of girls were grinding away, their tits half a centimeter from the guys' noses while the guys rubbed their backs.

Meanwhile, girls in bikinis trolled the room, asking the guys if they wanted to dance. That was the worst part. I couldn't quite picture myself holding a stranger's hand and cooing "Hi, sugar, you want to dance?" in a sweet, soft voice. It was the ultimate in women should be seen, but not heard.

A pretty, wholesome Latina, clad in a beige bikini, came up to me and asked what I was doing. I replied, "Research." She explained that she made $200 to $600 a night, but it hadn't always been that way. She'd been at it for about a year, but made practically no money for her first six months. One night, she'd gone home with only $20.

It was my first inkling that stripping really was a job, not just easy money. There was a certain amount of skill involved. There was a learning curve.

There was also a back room with plastic cups for men to spill their seed in. "They're not allowed to touch you," she explained, and bouncers were there to enforce that rule. But sometimes, she said, the men offered more money in exchange for more services, and even though the girls weren't supposed to oblige, they often did.

Given my track record for not turning down sexual overtures, this didn't sound promising. I'd be half naked – ok, 97 percent naked – in front of horny men, rubbing on myself and getting turned on, and then I was supposed to remember to say no when a guy offered me money for the same sex I'd been giving away for free?

But for $600 a night couldn't I maybe, possibly, get it together?

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 7 of 17: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17)
(Stripper/Casting Couch Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Friday, December 26, 2008

Don't Be a Slut's Best of the Blogosphere - 12/26/08

I have a confession to make: I'm new to the blogosphere. Before I started blogging two months ago, I didn't read blogs and had absolutely no idea what all the fuss was about.

So before I get back to the business at hand – exposing the sordid, candid, funny and not-so-fun details of my past slutty life – I'd like to introduce some of the blog posts that have stuck in my head over the last week or so:

  • Best battle of smart vs. pretty: I Enjoy Being a Girl from Cheri Block Sabraw - Notes from Around the Block. It's a funny story about a junior-high dork vs. the junior-high beauty. Cheri's a great writer and storyteller, which is why her blog has such a huge following.

  • Confirmation of why I started this blog: Found a young college graduate who was wondering aloud if the time had come to start having sex – mostly because guys in the past dumped her when she wouldn't. I say: Girl, keep your panties on, please!

  • Funniest video about premature ejaculation: I found this off-color, adolescent-boy-humor music-video parody on Bello Volo, and it totally cracked me up. Bello Volo covers everything from the writer shaving his head to a blow-by-blow account of trying to find fast food on Xmas to political commentary. Oh, and he also posted a glowing review of Don't Be a Slut.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Don't Be a Slut This Xmas



May you not get entangled in mistletoe, be made foolish by liquor or find yourself unceremoniously unwrapped.

Sex should feel good: emotionally, spiritually, psychologically and physically.

If it doesn't, don't be a slut.

Me in 1999 (at the beginning of my Reformed Slut stage)




Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Divine Intervention, Madonna and a Bellowing Best Friend

"WHY CAN'T YOU RISE ABOVE?!?!"

That was the sound of my best friend from Detroit, who'd known me since the age of nine, screeching into the phone.

I had just told her that I planned to become a stripper, and I parroted back all the good reasons that I'd heard the day before from my new Hollywood talent manager, Stripper Pimp.

She went off! In her view, Stripper Pimp was just using classic "new girl" tricks on me – buying me clothes and having a little affair just so he could leech off me. And on top of that, he was totally bogus. Why wasn't his stupid girl group making it?!

I was more angry at her for pointing out the stupidity of my new life plan than I was at Stripper Pimp for hatching it.

Stripper Pimp had a very strange hold on me. I was fully aware that he was a sleazeball, but I found it amusing. I believed him when he said he "liked me" and that he was looking out for my best interests.

What's more, I wanted to believe him. I desperately wanted to believe that he could be my compass in the bewildering, stifling Sahara that was Los Angeles. I needed Stripper Pimp. I needed a manager.

My best friend's bellowing was actually my third warning.

The first had come in my sleep. The night I slept with Stripper Pimp, weeks before he broached the subject, I dreamt that he wanted me to become a stripper.

Two weeks later, another warning.

I applied for a listing in the Players' Directory, an actor's yearbook that casting directors flipped through. You could only appear if you were a member of the Screen Actor's Guild, or if you had an agent or manager. When I gave the guy at the table Stripper Pimp's name, he asked me a bunch of questions I didn't know how to answer:
  • "Is he a member of the Professional Manager's Association?" Uh ...
  • "Does he subscribe to Breakdown Services?" Uh ... what's Breakdown Services?
That night, God appeared in my dreams as the ultimate sexpot, Madonna. She told me that no one had ever heard of Stripper Pimp, and he wasn't that hot.

But I didn't listen to my first dream, I didn't listen to Madonna, and I didn't listen to my loud, indignant best friend.

I signed the contract.

Stripper Pimp was now entitled to 25 percent of my acting income, and I would be tied to him for three years. It hadn't yet occurred to me that Stripper Pimp's (higher-than-typical) commission might include a cut of all future table-dancing tips.

I found that part out when a fellow actor took me aside at play rehearsal. Actor Guy knew an Asian girl who had left Stripper Pimp's girl group a few months before. "I told her to watch her panties, because he's known for that."

Actor Guy said he attended the Grammy's, where he ran into a former disgraced Miss America who was now a big star. She was signed to the record label run by Stripper Pimp's brother, and she told Actor Guy to warn Asian Girl about Stripper Pimp's "womanizing."

Actor Guy put me in touch with Asian Girl's best friend. She was less loud than my home girl, but equally indignant. She claimed Stripper Pimp was sleeping with the Filipino lead singer ... and the Middle Eastern girl ... and he had pressured Asian Girl to break up with her boyfriend, only to expose himself to her and demand sex.

Then came the really nasty part. She also claimed that Asian Girl paid Stripper Pimp $200 a week from her strip-club earnings. Stripper Pimp refused to give her receipts for anything – not even a $1,500 trip to Chicago to attend the Billboard Music Awards. And now he was refusing to let Asian Girl out of her contract.

The same one I had signed a week earlier.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 6 of 17: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17)
(Stripper/Casting Couch Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Sunday, December 21, 2008

Strip Your Way to Stardom

One day I would thank him. Those were his exact words.

Stripper Pimp never used the word stripper. He preferred the lovely euphemism, "dancer." If I wanted to accelerate my path to Hollywood stardom, "dancing" was my best option.

His arguments sounded plausible:
  1. I'd make over $1,000 a week, "more than a doctor." OK, the doctor part sounded stupid to me even then; surely doctors made more than $52,000 a year. But since I was perpetually down to my last $20, and I absolutely, positively didn't want to work another sucky secretarial temp job, $52,000 sounded like Lotto.

  2. If I wanted to proceed quickly through this business, I needed money. Money for pictures, money for mailings, money for wardrobe, money for demos, money for the gatherings where the important people were. Not to mention, money for moving out of my great aunt's house. Money for a hamburger. Money for a long-overdue oil change.

  3. I'd be a much better performer because of it. He was very reassuring on this point. If I could stand alone on the stage (butt naked) and command the attention of an entire room, it would forever change the way I walked into a casting director's office or sang onstage. Stripping – no, make that "dancing" – would be the ultimate confidence booster.

  4. I'd look better than I ever looked in my life, and men would love me for it. I had recently starved my size 10 frame down to a size 6. But in size 2 Hollywood, I thought I needed to lose 10 more pounds. Dancing was all the exercise I'd ever need, Stripper Pimp purred.
There was only one drawback, really. I'd have to deal with the "psychological" aspect, and as my manager and presumed friend, he'd be there for me.

It all sounded like ... horseshit. But a part of me believed it.

Because ultimately, Stripper Pimp was vocalizing what I deeply and secretly believed about my place in the world as a young women – as this word-for-word excerpt from my diary reveals.
Part of me is relieved. I have been so embarrassed and so ashamed and so secretive about being a nympho and a freak and a slut and an exhibitionist. If I can use that shameful part of me to my advantage, then it will be a tremendous relief!!!!

And the other thing is, women aren't rewarded for being smart and for being good. They're rewarded for being sexy and loose. Maybe it's time I got some rewards. Maybe it's time I started profiting from my pussy. Monetarily and professionally. Because I don't want to work a 9 to 5. I really, really, truly don't. Maybe I'll become a call girl. And get AIDS and die.


So even though the first words out of my mouth were no, Stripper Pimp and I both knew that it was just a matter of time before I said yes.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 5 of 17: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17)
(Stripper/Casting Couch Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Friday, December 19, 2008

What's the it Beyonce keeps singing so much about?

Beyonce is the ultimate It Girl. But what is the "it" she keeps singing about in song after song after song?

Her latest single, "Single Ladies (Put a ring on it)," tells yet another no-good man that if "you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it." A few years ago, she invited us to "look at it as long as you don't grab it."

Why does she keep referring to herself – or is it her booty – as an it? Even the Pussycat Dolls, who go so far as to swing from poles at the American Music Awards, refer to themselves in the first person.

I think it's a black thing – and I don't want to understand it.

For the last fifteen years, greasy rap mo-fos have been bellowing at me to shake it, pop it, back my thing up and show 'em what I'm workin' wit'. R&B singers are now whining about how they want to make love in this club, unless they're classy enough to promise that if I wanna come to the hotel, they'll leave me their room key.

Really? You mean we're not going to do it in the ice-machine alcove?

It's enough to make a self-respecting black woman buy Dixie Chicks albums and set her radio preset to KROQ.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Stripper Pimp's Sexpot Grooming Regimen

I was groomed. In the paint-by-numbers way that pedophiles gain the trust of their victims and pimps win the confidence of runaways. Stripper Pimp groomed me, and at the time, I didn't have a clue.

I was the prototypical, new-to-Hollywood actress – desperate and hungry. I'd never seen his type before, but you can best believe, he'd seen mine hundreds of times. He knew exactly which buttons to push, and at least one of those buttons was below the navel.

The first test: will she come alone to my apartment? The audition, allegedly for a TV show about his all-girl singing group, took place in his apartment (not a casting office).

Our first meeting lasted a full hour. He was so interesting! The son of a Jazz legend. His brother was the president of Mercury Records. He'd worked at Motown, where he'd dated a Supreme and helped launch the Jackson 5. He'd managed a Taste of Honey when Boogie Oogie Oogie became their first big hit. Everything seemed legit.

Almost.

Because somewhere between me warbling off-key into a microphone and heading out the door, he'd managed to work in the question, "How do you feel about nudity?"

"Uh, I guess I'm ok with it as long as it's not porn." Right answer ... for Stripper Pimp.

The very next day, he invited me to lunch and extended an amazing invitation: He had some songs for me to learn, and I could perform as a solo act at the Fireside Lounge in Downey on Monday nights.

Test #2: can I get her in some revealing clothes? He took me to stripper shops on Hollywood Blvd. I ended up with a pair of 6" stilettos, but I couldn't fit any of the dresses I tried on. I was flat-chested, barely a B cup. "How do you feel about plastic surgery?" he asked.

Then came the most important test. Can I get this silly girl to hump me? Eight days after we met, Stripper Pimp called me: "I'm attracted to you. Is this just business, or are you attracted to me, too?"

"Both," I replied. Again, right answer ... for Stripper Pimp.

That night, I experienced the most perfunctory, uninspired, three-minute sex I'd ever had in my life. Normally, I would have been pissed, but for Stripper Pimp, I was surprisingly forgiving.

The most important element of our sexual escapade was this: The lights were on, the blinds were wide open and we did it in front of a mirror. After he finished cumming all over my dress, Stripper Pimp smiled a mischievous little-boy smile, bowed toward the open window and remarked, "If my neighbor was home, he'd have just gotten a show." His neighbor was a famous gangsta rapper from Long Beach.

That night, he handed me a talent management contract with some not-quite-standard provisions in it: a 25% commission on my work in motion pictures, television, dance, blah blah blah, in places of amusement and entertainment, blah blah blah.

The grooming process continued over the next month. There were seemingly legitimate talent-manager things: rehearsals, performances, advice on agents, new dresses. He even came to see me muddle through the lead role in a distressingly bad play.

But then again, Showgirls, a movie about stripping, just happened to be on when I came over. He'd casually mention how he had tried to talk a previous client into porn because he knew "the industry would accept her." He stressed "always look cute" and "never have boyfriends."

And finally, a month into our strange relationship, the grooming process nearly complete, he threw down the gauntlet. If I wanted to make it in the entertainment industry, I needed to become a "dancer."

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 4 of 17: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17)
(Stripper/Casting Couch Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Sunday, December 14, 2008

A Hungry, Horny, Desperate, Pretty Mess

Take smart, frustrated lapsed Catholic girl from the Midwest. Subtract job, friends, family and most importantly of all, food. Add a heavy dose of loneliness and libido. Shake violently, heat to boiling, and you get who I was at age 25, when I first met Stripper Pimp, a "talent manager" whose real talent was convincing girls to dance naked on tables and pay him a commission.

I can't blame Stripper Pimp for turning me into a slut. I was already a slut. I had waited until age 19 to lose my virginity, but man, oh man, and a few more men, I had made up for lost time. My sex tally now included more than a dozen lovers, including three married men.

At this point, the only thing I hated more than men was being a woman.

I felt like my brain was at war with my cunt. And my cunt always won.

Stripper Pimp entered my crazy, sexed up life at a particularly vulnerable time.

New to L.A. and Dealing With Family Trauma
I had been in Los Angeles for four months, and I was eking out a miserable existence in a tiny, blue hell. The walls, the carpet, the sheets on my twin bed were all a lovely shade of powder blue. I lived in Southwest L.A., in a neighborhood that had once been quite nice, with an 88-year-old great-aunt who had once been quite sane.

Now the thin veneer of gentility had more than crusted over. The neighborhood, only a few miles from the epicenter of the 1992 riots, was now crack-infested. And my great-aunt, a woman with a Master's degree from the University of Michigan, had sunk into an Alzheimer’s, alcoholic stupor.

She had no short-term memory. She didn't know what year it was. Sometimes, she didn't know that her loved ones were all dead. Even her mother, who had died 30 years ago, was sometimes resurrected long enough to want to go out to dinner. She didn't even know who I was or why I lived there. The only thing we could both agree on, memory or no memory, was that living together was not such a good idea.

The idea hadn't been mine. It had been my aunt's, my dad's sister. Great Aunt was getting up in age, she was lonely, she drank a bit too much, but her health was fine, she just needed some company. Aunt would pay my way to Los Angeles, and I could stay with Great Aunt rent-free, while I pursued my acting career.

It sounded like a great offer. I could leave Charleston, S.C., where I was starring in Piggly Wiggly commercials, doing community theater and working as a secretary, and try to succeed on a bigger stage.

I could also escape from my mom. She had just had a major manic episode. My older sister had locked her up in the loony bin against her will, and my sister and I had been arguing for days. When I decided to move to L.A., my mom was still incarcerated in the county crazy house.

My absolutely furious sister accused me of "running away from home" and leaving her with the dirty work. My mom – still manic underneath the heavy doses of medication – was equally furious that I was going to live "with the half-white side of your daddy's family that never cared about you anyway."

I arrived in Los Angeles emotionally spent, with no money, no friends and no support system, to a crumbling Great Aunt who needed a live-in nurse, not the live-in companion I thought I had signed up to be.

Desperate for a Break and Looking for a Shortcut
I responded by throwing myself headlong into my acting career. I started auditioning for anything and everything within six days of my arrival.

Four months later, I had no money. Every penny that I got (sometimes from Great Aunt's purse) went to headshots, acting class, stamps for my headshots, gas for my car.

I was going to make it if it killed me. After all, I had something to prove to my mom and my sister, who seemed secretly glad that L.A. was giving me my well-deserved comeuppance. And the sooner I landed that TV show or commercial, the sooner I could move out of the living mausoleum that was Great Aunt's house.

I was barely eating. Being in my aunt's company consisted of answering the same three questions over and over and over and over – please, dear God, don't ask me that again – and over and over and over. So I avoided being home. I had no money to eat out. And I needed to be skinny anyway. So I just didn't eat.

I had been in town just long enough to learn that I wasn't as good as I thought I was, and that being good wasn't even enough. Some of the people in my acting class were pretty damn good. And they were Hollywood nobodies that got a line here and a gig there.

I didn't want to be like them. There had to be a shortcut, and I was going to find it.

Enter Stripper Pimp and the casting couch.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 3 of 17: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17)
(Stripper/Casting Couch Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Thursday, December 11, 2008

Stripper Pimp's Harem of Square, Nerdy Sluts

At grimy truck stops all over America, young hookers are on their knees all night, doing a lot more than praying, but ultimately praying for a way out. For them, being a so-called dancer in a strip club would be an improvement. But those aren't the kind of girls Stripper Pimp recruits.

He specializes in girls who are square. Girls like the one I was when I first met him at age 25. Girls who never imagined they'd end up in a strip club, girls who have intelligence and a work ethic, girls who would be too devastated and ashamed to go back home.

Basically, he was applying a principle that I would learn years later from my acting teacher, a hard-core, grizzled and lovable Method acting guru. My teacher was relentless about breaking down actors' emotional barriers. When new people came to class, he would size them up and give them acting exercises that directly tapped into their most obvious and entrenched blocks.

Sweet, little farm girl from the Midwest? The teacher would give her an acting exercise that forced her to say really mean things in a language that would make her pastor gasp. Big macho touch guy? The teacher would tell him to imagine his mother in a coffin, until Mr. Tough Guy was weeping like a hormonal schoolgirl.

My acting teacher referred to it as the Domino Effect: if he could quickly blast a hole directly into someone's emotional armor, he knew the rest of the walls would fall quickly, and that person would soon be able to tap into a much wider variety of emotions at will.

Stripper Pimp knew the same thing, except he wasn't interested in anyone's artistic growth. If he got a girl from a conservative background and blasted a hole in her sense of self, he knew it would be remarkably easy to get her to do anything.

Good girls gone bad in Stripper Pimp's harem
Back then, the legitimate front for Stripper Pimp's activities was an all-girl singing group that he laughingly referred to as an "HTA act" - hair, tits and ass. In fact, the audition ad I responded to requested "singer/actresses" for a TV show about the group.

The lead singer was Filipino. She was about five feet tall, and her chest was about three feet long. Her voice was so big, it could knock down doors. (In her case, it was a chest-sized singing voice.) But long before she became a strip-club mainstay, she had donned a chipmunk costume as Alvin for an Alvin and the Chipmunks tour. She worked hard, and she was disciplined. When I would visit Stripper Pimp, I'd sometimes hear her belting out scales from her bedroom.

The other girl in the group was Middle Eastern. Born in Iran, she spoke at least two languages and had studied so diligently with a speech therapist that she had no trace of a foreign accent. Before she met Stripper Pimp, she worked in a bank.

As a guilt-ridden lapsed Catholic, I fit right in. Plus, I wasn't working at all. My living situation was unbearable. I was on the outs with my family. And more than anything in the world, I wanted to be a working actress.

That made me the perfect candidate for the type of work Stripper Pimp had in mind.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 2 of 17: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17)
(Stripper/Casting Couch Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Sunday, December 7, 2008

Stripper-Pimp Adventures in Hollywood Hell

He doesn't look like a pimp. He's soft-spoken and educated. He has a Hollywood pedigree. He carries himself with the casual, insolent air of a trust-fund baby.
But he is a pimp. He pimps girls into strip clubs and takes 25% of their wages ... before convincing them it's in their best interests to go down an even darker path.

I know first-hand. Twelve years ago, he nearly succeeded in turning me out. And it didn't take very long.

All it took was an audition notice followed by a little bit of seemingly lavish attention. Eight weeks later, I was an Ivy League girl turned casting-couch whore.
And it didn't end because I came to my senses. It ended because my Stripper Pimp dumped me.

But this isn't a story about an evil pimp villain and an innocent damsel in distress. It's a story of an otherwise smart girl who was rife with despair and therefore ripe for the picking; who was brimming with ambition and susceptible to deception; and who was saved from herself by the grace of God and a dumb negro in a clown suit.

Literally.

A dumb negro dressed like a goddamn clown.

My short, sleazy interlude with Stripper Pimp nearly killed me. It nearly destroyed my dream of being an actress. It led to equally short, equally sleazy encounters with other so-called talent agents and managers. And, ultimately, it's one of the main reasons I decided to write this blog.

Hang with me through the next several posts, and I'll walk you through how I met Stripper Pimp and how he was able to get into my head. I'll give you a primer on how to protect yourself or someone you love from some of the most common casting-couch maneuvers. And if that doesn't entice you, I'll give you a really good laugh when I finally spill the beans about me, a strip club and an infamous clown suit.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 1 of 17: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17)
(Stripper/Casting Couch Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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Friday, November 28, 2008

Johnnie Walker and underaged girls don't mix

When he told me his name was Johnnie Walker, I believed him.

At 16, I didn't have much experience with whiskey bottles.

I also believed him when he said I looked like a model and he'd love to photograph me.

Never mind that I was under 5'7" and over 140 pounds. Never mind that this was Detroit, not Milan. Never mind that we met in a nondescript "party store," not Schwab's Drug Store, the hangout of old-time Hollywood starlets.

But none of that crossed my mind. I was what any non-street-smart high-schooler would be when a man I'd never met said I looked like a model ...

...Flattered!!!!!

His so-called studio was down the street from the library, where I shelved books after school. To his credit, he did own a camera. Maybe even some lights and backdrops.

But he was more interested in me "taking his picture" than he was in taking mine. "Taking somebody's picture" was what my grandparents called it when I sat with my legs gapped open. Girl, stop taking my picture! meant I needed to close my legs because I was being impolite and my underwear was showing.

But Johnnie Walker wanted me to take his picture, and that's exactly what I did, in a dingy Detroit storefront.

He taught me how to masturbate. He taught me how to go down on him.

And, oh yeah, we also took some photos that were much closer to Polaroid than portfolio.

I didn't think of it as molestation, even though he was a smelly, bummy, 45-year-old man that the grown ladies at the library eyed with a definite air of suspicion.

I thought of it as a new, naughty and exciting experience that had nothing to do with my humdrum life as a straight-A student from a dysfunctional home.

I found out that my own body could be a source of pleasure; I took even greater pleasure in imagining how pissed off my dad would be if he ever found out; and I took the greatest pleasure of all in recounting my exploits to my two best friends, who hadn't yet taken their first baby steps on the sexual wild side.

Ironically, my dad is what saved me from being raped, photographed in the nude, pimped or exploited.

One phone conversation with my dad – sight unseen – convinced Johnnie that he'd better watch his step. Johnnie never saw my dad's broad shoulders or his scraggly beard or his ever-present firearms. And as far as I knew, my dad never threatened to shoot Johnnie's balls off.

Just knowing that I had a dad terrified Johnnie. He'd ask questions about my dad and what he was like. He was nervous about my dad seeing the photos he'd taken of me in a bathing suit.

That didn't mean he didn't try to push things further along. He just didn't try very hard.

He had a great idea: we should take pictures of me in a bra and panties, you know like a paper doll that other girls could dress up. "No," I said flatly.

He backed down and backed off – undoubtedly haunted by the specter of my mean, black daddy – a daddy I lived with and could run crying to at any moment.

Johnnie Walker crept out of my life almost as quickly as he slunk in.

He didn't do any lasting damage, but he did leave me with a lasting impression:

  • Kids are easily exploited.
  • Kids can be complicitous in their own sexual exploitation. (In fact, Oprah Winfrey describes child molestation as a process of "seduction" designed to make the kid think s/he was a willing participant.)
  • Doing well in school does not grant a kid immunity from making bad decisions.

I was a smart, naive, rebellious, curious, rule-breaking, unsupervised teenage girl who took a detour off the straight-and-narrow path. Only dumb luck and a crazy daddy saved me from falling crotch-first into the sewer of sexual exploitation.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

The Nicest Boyfriend I Never Had

Long, long before I became a slut – in fact, when I was still a high-school virgin – a really, really nice boy was completely in love with me ... and I was absolutely, positively oblivious to the fact.

J. and I met at the University of Texas - Austin the summer before our senior year of high school. We were both in a "gifted and talented" program for minorities called LEAD.

Here are all the signs the boy loved everything about me, even my dirty drawers:

  • He painted my toenails for me.
  • He talked to me for hours.
  • He bought me the 12" version of George Michael's "Monkey" single.
  • He even flew from Philadelphia to see me after the program was over.

Here are all the reasons it never even occurred to me that J. was interested in me:

  • Except for a different J. in kindergarten, who I used to smooch with in the coat closet, I had never had a boyfriend or been on a real date.
  • Even though I was actually quite cute and sort of knew it when I looked at pictures of myself, I was convinced I was ugly. (In middle schools, the boys rated me and gave me Cs, Ds, Es and a Z – all except for C., who kindly granted me a B+.)
  • I was jumpy around men. Probably due to one of my dad's methods of discipline: "bapping." Out of nowhere, BAP! He'd zing me or my siblings with a backhand slap to the forehead.
  • J. never came right out and said, "I really, really like you. Do you wanna go with me?" (Yes, in the 80s, that's how we referred to dating: it was called "going together.") Years later, we reconnected by phone and he confirmed, "I was so completely in love with you. Why do you think I painted your toenails?"
But the truth is, I never knew J. cared about me, because it never even occurred to me that anyone could be attracted to me. I thought of him as a "friend," not because I wasn't attracted to him, but because it didn't occur to me that I should be attracted to him.

I had a blind spot when it came to nice, sweet, wholesome, smart, wonderful and not-at-all bad-looking boys who happened to be crazy about me. Unfortunately, that blind spot followed me well into my adult life.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Ooooh, God's really gonna hate me now

At the age of 8, I made an eternal pledge to God: if He would save me from the fires of hell, I would be a virgin until I got married.

I didn't really know what a virgin was.

I didn't really know what marriage was, either. My parents were married ... but I didn't think of them as a unit. Maybe because we lived with my mom in Detroit, while my dad worked in Minnesota. Until my dad drove us to Florida to live with his dad. Who drove us to Baton Rouge, LA to live with our dad's sister. Who took care of us until my mom took us to live with her parents in Opelousas, LA. Until she and my dad reconciled and moved us to Downingtown, PA. Until a few months later, when my dad broke his hand hitting my mom and drove us to Monroe, LA to live with his mother. Until several months later, when my dad came and drove us back to Detroit to live with him, without a mom.

Courtesy of my paternal grandmother, I was newly baptized and catechized. I was armed with a rosary and preparing for my First Communion. And being a voracious reader, I was on a quest to read the Bible all the way through.

To my eight-year-old mind, I think the Bible went something like this. Blah blah hellfire. Blah blah damnation. Blah blah God likes men better than women.

The only woman God seemed to like was the Virgin Mary. So maybe if I stayed a virgin, He would like me, too.

I certainly wanted to be on God's good side, seeing as how I was on the wrong side of everything else. Between my Southern accent, my second-hand clothes, my eccentric father (who had already come down to my school and threatened to shoot a couple of elementary-school bullies), my dearly loved and deeply missed mother (who still lived in Pennsylvania and had been in and out of mental hospitals since I was two), my high IQ and my propensity to cry at the drop of a hat, I was a third-grade pariah.

Best to get a head start on the afterlife. So I read the Bible and made my own secret deal with God:

I'll be a good girl. I'll be a virgin until I get married. Just please, God, please let me live with my mommy again and not go to hell when I die.

Breaking my secret chastity vow was actually the worst part of losing my virginity. I didn't just lose my hymen and a little blood that day, I lost the sense that I was a "good girl." I had joined the ranks of the sinners.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Don't Lose Your Virginity on a Roach-Infested Sheet

The first time I did the deed, I was 19. I think I just wanted to get it over with.

(Note to Future Sluts: Wanting to "get it over with" is not a good-enough reason to give it up.)

L. closely resembled Erik Estrada, but that's not why he was my first. He was my first because I was ... well ... a nerd.

Guys simply never asked me out. In retrospect, I can see that there were guys in high school who had crushes on me, and wanted to ask me out, but they didn't have the gumption to make their intentions clear, and I was too clueless to read between the lines.

So when L. swaggered up to me on the train between New York City and New Haven and started flirting, I was flattered. So flattered that I didn't care that he was in rehab and on parole.

Our brief courtship consisted of him coming to Yale, where I was a sophomore, when his drug-treatment program would let him out. We'd make out in my dorm room; we'd walk down the street holding hands; he gave me his wool-lined blue-jean jacket; it was love.

So the fateful day arrived when I took the train to Bridgeport, CT and entered the scary, third-world realm of the Father Panic projects. As we walked to his place, L. proudly pointed out all the undercover-cop cars. He showed me off to his brother, who gave me a "what's a college girl like you doing with a knucklehead like him" look.

And then we were in L.'s twin bed, finally finishing what we'd been attempting to start for weeks. I don't remember tenderness or togetherness, but I do remember how I felt when it was over. Like my virginity was a game, and I'd just lost.

L. was instantly cold and dismissive. Our pillow talk went something like, "You'd better get out before my mom gets home." And there, next to me on the sheet, was a dead roach.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

For Glorified Sluts, Reformed Sluts, Would-Be Sluts & Future Sluts

I used to be a prudish Catholic girl, raised by a promiscuous single father, who had an unhealthy penchant for bringing real, live, true-blue, off-the-street sluts to our home for cheap, quick, dirty sexual escapades. The women were usually high or drunk, but I didn't figure out they were actual streetwalkers until I was 18 or 19, when my foster mom broke it all down for me.

But the point is, despite my very real belief that eternal damnation lay in wait for me if I dared open my legs before marriage, I became a slut. I felt like a slut immediately – but confirmation that I really was a slut came years later, when I read mainstream press that claims the "average" woman has four sexual partners in her lifetime, and the "average" man has seven.

Oops, my bad. I beat the men by a wide margin.

In fact, I'm part of the 9 percent of women (and 13% of black women) who admit to sleeping with more than 15 men.

I admit this now, safely ensconsed behind the anonymity of a screen name, as a "reformed slut" who, in fact, has reached the ripe, old-maid age of 37 with no marriages, no pregnancies – and no sex of any kind for two-and-a-half years. (Now the only thing I copiously make love to is chocolate, and I have the stretch marks to prove it.)

So, why write a blog about being a slut? Or more specifically, not being one?

Because being a slut is glamorized in pop culture. Because being a slut did me no worldly good. Because I'm bitter about it. And because no one ever talks about the mental and emotional fallout that happens when good girls go slutty.

So this is a blog for:
  • Glorified sluts (women who look and dress like sluts in the public eye but are often quite close-legged in private)
  • Active sluts (women who are giving it up a little too easily to all the wrong men)
  • Reformed sluts (women like me who used to be sluts, but they've tried real hard to clean up their acts)
  • Would-be sluts (the true good girls who secretly wish they'd been more like me)
  • And most importantly, the future sluts (the next generation of teenage girls and young women who don't know how painful and un-fun being a slut can be).