Dark Depression Meets Vaginal Discharge

The one-two punch of my agent's casting couch and Stripper Pimp's gamesmanship hurled me into a pit of despair so deep and so dark that nothing could penetrate it.

I still tried to go through the motions of building my acting career – sending out pictures, meeting with managers and agents, auditioning for any and every crap part I could get seen for.

But I felt like a loser. A stupid loser. A stupid loser who had been had. A stupid loser who had been had sexually, and now had nothing to show for it.

I was completely broke, except for what I could beg, borrow or steal from my 88-year-old alcoholic great aunt. And even though I was wholly dependent on her – or perhaps because I was wholly dependent on her – I hated her. I hated the pitter-patter of her tiny little feet; the high-pitched, mournful whine of her voice; her never-ending befuddlement; the way she barged into my room without knocking; her constant (and I do mean constant) interruptions.

I knew I needed to get a job, but I couldn't figure out how to work during the day and audition during the day at the same time. Or how to work at night, and be available for play rehearsals or casting workshops at night. Acting was an expensive, full-time, nonpaying, soul-destroying job, but it was the only job I ever wanted.

I was screamingly lonely. I missed my family, especially my three-year-old niece.

Loser, loser, loser was my mind's constant, taunting refrain.

I tried to combat the voice, but I felt defeated.

I restarted The Artist's Way.

I wrote affirmations. My dreams come from God, and God has the power to accomplish them.

I tried to pray. God, why doesn't anybody love me? Why don't I have a man? When will my life get better? Please, please, please help me.

I bought tarot cards and started teaching myself how to read them. This new hobby was the only bright spot in a pitch-black month.

I binge-ate Hostess fruit pies and ice-cream sandwiches and jelly doughnuts, all the while worried about my "weight problem," defined back then as being a size 8 in a size-2 world.

I had marathon four-hour phone conversations with my best friend in Detroit, resulting in a $286 phone bill.

And I tried to ignore the smelly, yellow discharge that was oozing from between my legs. At first, I called it a yeast infection. I squirted myself full of Monistat and hoped it would go away.

It didn't.

I went to my chiropractor, who gave me some naturopathic stuff that was supposed to help.

It didn't.

The psychic damage caused by sexual exploitation was no longer invisible. It was now a smelly, real thing that dripped down my thighs for weeks (and eventually, months) on end.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 15 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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How Stripper Pimp (Politely) Gave me the Boot

I crossed an invisible line when I slept with my agent. Before I had been a slut. Now I was a whore, which was much, much worse.

It's true that Bear had already given me money for sex and invited me to be his freak. But I didn't see that as whoredom, because he was someone I would have slept with for free. And since I'd always wanted to be one of those girls who could snap her legs open and make some dumb boyfriend pay her rent, Bear seemed like a step up.

I didn't see sleeping with Stripper Pimp, my so-called manager, as whoredom, either. I was genuinely attracted to him. He was my type: old enough to be my dad, reasonably good looking, educated, smart and decidedly antisocial.

But my agent? He was an old white man I wouldn't have slept with in a million years. Yet, I had. In a bald attempt to further my acting career.

So now I was a whore, and an amateur whore at that. Real whores got paid. They negotiated their price up front.

I had no idea what I was going to get from my agent. Did spilling his seed in my face signal an intention to start "sending me out" (getting me auditions for film and TV roles that I couldn't get on my own)? Would I have to keep sleeping with him in order for him to keep sending me out?

Three days into this abyss of self-recrimination, I got a 10:30 pm booty call from Bear. Against my better judgement, I drove to the Snooty Fox motel, where he greeted me butt naked at the door.

"How are you?" I asked.

"I got my d*ck in my hand, how do you think I am?"

That charming answer set me off. Bear didn't get the hot, willing, numb "freak" he thought he could pass out to his friends as a door prize. He got Evil Black Woman. Who gave him a sullen earful while he sat on the bed, stunned, still holding on to the symbol of his manhood.

"Girl, I was gonna help you out, but since you ain't acting right..."

That was the last time I saw him. And no, I did not "become his freak."

But a big question mark still hung over my head regarding Stripper Pimp. We hadn't talked in nearly a week. Would he continue to manage me, or would he dump me, as my best friend had predicted?

That question was finally, abruptly and smoothly answered the next night, over the phone.

"I've decided that I can no longer be your manager," he said calmly. "With all the things going on with the girl group, I can't give you the attention you deserve, and you deserve attention. So, that's what I called to say."

He never once mentioned "dancing" or my failure/refusal to do it. No nostalgia about the fact that we'd slept together twice. We were back to being polite business associates, and he was the Hollywood player who was making the calculated business decision.

Except that now, we both knew he wasn't a Hollywood player. He was a pimp. He was kicking me out because I was a badly behaved ho who wouldn't dance on table tops and willingly share my tips with him.

I'd been riding Stripper Pimp's roller coaster of false hope for nearly two months. And now the ride had unceremoniously stopped.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 14 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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Warm Milk With My Dirty, Old Nobody Agent

As an actress, you know you're in a world of trouble when you discover first-hand that your agent keeps a box of condoms and a sheet in his office. When Dirty, Old Nobody, or D.O.N. for short, invited me to dinner, it did occur to me that maybe he might want to get into my pants.

Especially when I casually mentioned it to Stripper Pimp, who gave me a hard, fixed look and some curt advice: "Make sure you have somewhere to be at 9 o'clock."

That conversation took place just hours before a clown sabotaged my final stripper audition, and I blew up at Stripper Pimp. Now that I was crystal clear that stripping was not an option, I was afraid that Stripper Pimp was going to drop me. I was a nervous wreck.

As for D.O.N., I believed the big, yellow agency book that proclaimed him to be a caring agent who got great comments from casting. I thought he was a big deal.

I'd won his representation fair and square by delivering a powerhouse emotional scene, not just once, but twice. He said he'd give me a shot because I was a "very special actress," even though he openly worried that I wasn't sexy or pretty enough, and that I was a little too timid and shy.

D.O.N. was probably old enough to be my grandfather, and he was pleasant enough on the occasions when I dropped off my proof sheets. So even though I was aware that dinner might mean much more, I didn't give it much thought.

Especially after an innocuous dinner filled with safe pleasantries and chit-chat.

When he drove me back to his office, he asked me if I wanted to come inside for a little bit. Filled with lasagna and good will, I cluelessly complied. He disappeared into the bathroom, came back freshly mouthwashed and reclined on his couch, asking me to join him.

That's when I realized, with a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach, that I was going to be his after-dinner mocha cappuccino after all.

But with the same zombie-like numbness with which I had made an amateur sex tape the week before, I nervously joined him on the couch.

"That's better," he said as he began to rub my back. He asked me to take my dress off. Then my bra. Then he requested a blow job. All very polite, safe, nonthreatening.

But altogether unsettling.

I'd mostly dated older men, but he was just plain old. And I'd never been with a white man before, so let's just say the long, thick shock of corn-silk-textured pubic hair was new to me. I'd never seen so much hair down there.

I blew him. He reciprocated.

Then he went to his desk drawer and got a condom. He tried valiantly to finish what he started, but in those pre-Viagra days, old age won out.

"I've got an idea. Let's get on the floor."

He reached behind me on the couch and came up with a sheet and a pillow. What kind of agent keeps condoms, a sheet and a pillow in his office? The thought floated from some corner of my mostly shut-down mind.

But then again, what did it matter? Who was I saving it for?

He gave me a below-the-navel massage, and I came.

"Stay right there," he commanded. Standing over me, he removed the condom.

Oh my God! Is he about to ... ????

"My milk is about to come down ... arghhhhh!"

Just like that, wetness splashed my face. Some fell into my mouth. The rest I wiped off with a paper towel.

"Are you ok?"

I nodded unconvincingly, got dressed and went home.

I didn't cry. But I wanted to.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 13 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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My Manager's Soothing, Post-Stripping Phone Call

I was pissed. Wiped out. Devastated. Mad. Sore. Furious. Enraged. Heartbroken. Lost.

I'd just been heckled by a clown at a strip club. I'd spent $100 on stripper outfits, and I'd brought home $19 – a net loss of $81. I was done with stripping. Done.

And now I was reeling from the death of my latest make-enough-money-to-keep-acting dream. I wouldn't be making $400 a night. I wouldn't be moving out of my aunt's dreary home any time soon. I was back to square one, $5,081 dollars poorer – because the week before, in anticipation of my new fast-money job, I'd given $5,000 to an abusive psychic.

So I wasn't exactly in the right frame of mind when my manager-turned-Stripper-Pimp called at 2 a.m. to find out if I had successfully applied for the stripper job.

"How are you?" he asked.

"Horrible!" I spat. "Out of seven girls, I couldn't even get fourth place. I made a whole $20."

"Well, the idea wasn't for you to win or place. The girls who enter these things are professionals, so I didn't expect you to. The idea was to get the manager to put you on the schedule." He was always calm, logical, unflappable.

I told him how much I hated the club and that the girls who worked there weren't making any money.

"Well, just because they aren't, doesn't mean you won't. In three weeks, you could be the top girl at the club."

And so the conversation went, until he said, soothingly, "I know how you feel."

I exploded.

"NO, YOU DON'T! You're not the one who has to get up on the stage and do that sh*t!"

And then I began sobbing. Big, boo-hooing, loud, gasping, four-year-old, couldn't-catch-my-breath sobbing.

To which he said, after a moment of stunned silence, "Forget it. If you're going to be miserable about it, don't do it. Life is too short. Misery not included. So, forget dancing. In two days, you won't even remember this."

I instantly felt better about Stripper Pimp. Maybe he really was my friend. Maybe dancing really was just a suggestion.

He cared about me. He didn't want me to be miserable. I could start thinking of him as my manager again, not my pimp.

The next day, I called my best friend in Detroit and gave her the blow-by-blow replay. I ended with, "So, I don't know what's going to happen now."

"I do!" she exclaimed. "You're going to start hearing from that mo-fo less and less – because YOU'RE NOT FOLLOWING THE PROGRAM!"

Until she said it, it hadn't even occurred to me that Stripper Pimp might drop me.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 12 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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Dirty Dancing With Horny the Clown

I didn't know what to expect from my first amateur night at a strip club, but I certainly didn't anticipate a real-life, honest-to-god clown armed with a microphone: "These girls are vestal virgins! They ain't never, ever, ever stripped befo'!"

It was Tuesday night in a club called Starz, and my Stripper Pimp and so-called Hollywood talent manager had laid out a simple plan: I would do Starz's amateur night, then ask the manager for a job application.

I'd already had a busy day:

• I'd found the perfect Park La Brea apartment that my forthcoming stripper income would pay for.
• I'd spent $100 on two stripper outfits, pretty expensive for almost no fabric.
• I'd worn one of the outfits, a black short-shorts & bra ensemble, to a callback for a tacky Japanese film. (I didn't get the part.)
• And since the audition was down the street from my agent, my skanky outfit and I dropped in to say hi. He promptly asked me out to dinner Friday night, and I said yes.
• I'd even shaved off all my pubic hair.

But nothing prepared me for the night ahead.

The club itself smacked of defeat. Two pretty-but-hard-in-the-face black girls were on the schedule. Backstage, they complained bitterly that they were only pulling in $75 a night.

The stage itself was bizarre. The club served alcohol downstairs, so downstairs was topless only. But the rule was, when it came time to take your top off, you had to do so between these two big, metal bars that resembled a shopping cart corral.

And I myself had no clue. The song I wanted to dance to was Fiona Apple's "Shadow Boxer," a dark, depressing dirge. After the D.J. gently suggested something more upbeat, we settled on Prince. Then there was my stage name. I chose "Clarity" because I thought I finally understood my place in Hollywood: I was a piece of meat.

Stripper Pimp had warned me that amateur nights didn't really attract amateurs: They attracted professional dancers hungry for the prize money. He was right. One of the girls, a skinny, flat-chested brunette was a former go-go dancer. Another was a big-busted Anna Nicole Smith type. She was sadly contemplating a return to stripping at the urging of her manager, who was right there to encourage her and wipe away her sad, little tears. Where the hell was my manager? Chilling in his Westwood apartment while a clown MC referred to me as a "good little kittykat"?

The MC had originally shown up in a light-green, three-piece suit and given us our instructions. Then he transformed himself into an obscene clown, complete with a clown suit, red nose and colored Afro wig, and picked up the microphone.

"Yeah, guys, we got fresh coochie for you tonight!"

When it was my turn to go on, he heckled me.

"Next up is Clarity. I can see clearly now!"

There were only a few men in the club. I wiggled my way across the stage, past a white man with a mustache. I arrived at a pole and attempted to grind against it in a manner I hoped was sexy. I made it to the top of the stage, where a black guy about my age shouted encouragingly: "Damn, girl! Slow down! You're moving too fast!" Then I was between the shopping-cart bars, taking off my bra. And then I was backstage with the other girls.

The finale was a dance-off where each girl did an encore, and the men pulled out their wallets. I wiggled my way to a dollar here and a dollar there. At the top of the stage, a middle aged black woman doled out consolation money for the rejects. She shoved some bills into my nearly empty hand.

Go-Go Girl, now all hot and sweaty, won the contest and a fistful of money. Weepy Blond placed second. I didn't come in third. Or even fourth. In a field of seven girls.

I'd made a whopping $19. Most of it from the reject woman.

My stripping career was over. I drew the line at clowns.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 11 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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A New Stripper Plan of Attack

The first person I called after my strip-club audition was my Hollywood talent manager, Stripper Pimp. Things hadn't exactly gone as planned. Yeah, I'd taken it all off and exited the stage without tripping, but I'd also left the club without a job offer.

Stripper Pimp was reassuring. Although I thought I detected a note of disappointment in his voice, he placidly assured me that it was normal for there to be a 7-10 day delay.

It sounded comforting, but I knew a so-so audition when I had one. I didn't blame my nonexistent dance skills. I blamed my poor little boobs. Maybe Stripper Pimp was right. Maybe I should consider plastic surgery.

My best friend from Detroit was reading my mind in between praying fervently that I wouldn't go directly to hell: "I just talked to Future Husband. He told me to tell you that if you get a boob job, there's a strong possibility that you might keloid."

I have to admit, the prospect of scarred boobs was almost enough to make me think. Almost.

Because the number-one topic on my mind was money. Just one week before, I'd done something unthinkable. I'd received a $6,400 settlement check from a recent car accident – enough to move out of my aunt's house and start a new life – and I'd secretly given $5,000 of it to a psychic.

My "psychic friend" had been abusing me, terrorizing me, controlling me and coercing me out of money for six long years. It's part of the reason I was so easily led by a guy like Stripper Pimp. I already had a long, strange history of being easily led. (And all these years later, I still can't fully explain why I was so willing to give all my power away. All I know for sure is that despite being intellectually gifted, I was a walking puddle of perpetual victimhood until about age 30.)

It was ok, I told myself. In a week or two, I'd be making $400 a night stripping. It hadn't occurred to me that I might not be good at it.

A couple days after my audition, after much anxious prodding from me, Stripper Pimp came clean: the club's response probably meant that they already had enough black girls. "They'll let a white girl come in there and learn, but they're not going to do that for you."

He had a new plan: "What do you think about dancing at a black club?"

Stripper Pimp never gave orders. He just calmly asked leading questions in a smooth, even-toned voice.

I thought the idea sounded about as appealing as crawling into a dark, dirty crack in a kitchen baseboard to comingle with cockroaches. The Barbary Coast had burned an image in my mind that I just couldn't shake: loud, rowdy n*ggas crumpling up dollar bills and aiming them at my crotch. I'd visited during the day. I couldn't begin to imagine that place at night.

"It's bad enough I'm gonna do it, but I'm not gonna do it in a place where I'll be disrespected," I protested.

But minutes later, I needed his reassurance: "Do you think I'll make more money in a black club than a white club?"

"Absolutely, or I wouldn't have suggested it." He explained that I would need to work a smaller club for a month or two to learn the ropes, then I could try one of the big white clubs again.

The club he suggested, the First King, was right across the street from the Barbary Coast. A former client of his used to dance there, he said. It was a "nice atmosphere" and she made $300-$400 a night.

I decided to drive by the First King after my Monday-night singing gig and just get a feel for the place. I found three police cars outside and a line of police tape stretching all the way around the building.

Uh ... not exactly a nice atmosphere, unless I wanted to get shot.

I immediately called Stripper Pimp, and he had a new suggestion. I should do an amateur night at a mixed club called Starz.

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 10 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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My First Strip-Club Audition

When I walked into the Century Lounge strip club, one of the guys who worked there told me I was beautiful and that I was going to make a lot of money. That was exactly what I wanted to hear.

This was the club Stripper Pimp, my Hollywood talent manager, wanted me to try first. The lead singer of his girl group was, in his words, "the queen" of this club. She came up to say hi as I waited for my audition. At work, she looked friendly, open, smiling. Outside work, she was cold, unapproachable, unsmiling. But I was genuinely appreciative of her show of support.

This was only the third strip club I'd ever been to.

The first, the Jet Strip, had been oddly comforting. The girls basically looked like different-ethnicity versions of me: they were pretty, their boobs were real and their dance moves didn't look too daunting. Stripper Pimp didn't like the Jet Strip. He grumbled when he found out I'd been there on my own.

I'd just visited the second club, Ron's Barbary Coast, the day before. It was a ghetto nightmare. The same black girls who threatened to kick my ass in elementary school were all grown up. And not only did they look like they could still kick my ass, but they looked like they could do it while sliding upside-down from the unsanitary pole.

The Silicone Lounge – oops, I mean the Century Lounge – was equally intimidating. Most of the girls were white. Most were blond. They had huge, fake boobs. And they could dance. I mean really dance. As in, their moms and dads had obviously paid for ballet, jazz and tap. They floated around the poles, looking gorgeous and takeable.

I wasn't white. I wasn't blond. My barely-B-cups were real. And one more thing: I couldn't dance.

I'd never mastered the cabbage patch, the running man, the tootsie roll or any of the popular black dances from my two-and-a-half decades on planet earth. As far as formal training, I'd had one year of Dance I, only because the Detroit Public Schools required a year of physical education to graduate from high school.

So when it was my time to take the small stage, I simply did the best I could.

I came on in a sheer, short-short, sparkly black dress that Stripper Pimp had bought me, along with six-inch, shiny, patent-leather stilettos. At some point in the song, I lifted the dress over my head and onto the floor. No bra. Maybe no panties. I don't remember for sure.

One of the 10 guys perched by the small stage was a little Mexican man. As he looked at my naked breasts, his eyes glazed over and he murmured something appreciative in Spanish. At least I had one fan.

I left the stage riding a huge adrenaline rush, the same high I got whenever I performed. I was almost cocky: All that angst and crying over this?! That wasn't sh*t.

I made my way to the back, where the club managers were watching my audition. Stripper Pimp had told me that if they liked me, they would hire me on the spot and put me on the schedule. Instead, they told me the schedule was full and that I should call back in two weeks.

Well damn. Was it really possible to fail a strip-club audition?

(Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries Part 9 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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