My Stripper Friend

The more I think about it, the more absurd it seems.

So when I was living in Australia last year I managed to get a job at the club called Club 299. It was a regular alternative type club, alternative music, occasionally had bands (A Wilhelm Scream, Bring Me the Horizon, as well as local bands), on one occasion there were even these kinda performance art strippers, I say performance art because they weren't just regular strippers, they were dressed kinda like geishas and they really only got topless. So I was working behind the bar Fridays and Saturdays, because those were the only days they were open, for some measly amount like oh.. $18 (R125) an hour. The hours were pretty shit though, like 11PM til 5AM which didn't really matter when you're in a city with hardly any friends. All in all it was actually a really cool job though, got to watch rad bands for free, listen to decent music the whole night, hang out with the rad bartender guy, and serve people like me. When it got super busy, time just went faster!

So moving on... The boss of the club was this guy who was, either my age, or a year younger than me. His dad owned a couple of strip clubs and bars around Brisbane so I think he was like, "here son, take this and have some fun". Actually, I just remembered this now, below the club (it was on the second floor) there was a karaoke bar that they owned too, and at one point they wanted to make a hole in the floor connecting the two. No plans, they were just gonna go ahead and do it haha. But yeah, back to my story. So because my boss's dad owned the club and he did all his business through one of his strip clubs. So on the Tuesday of every week, I would catch a bus into the city and go to the strip club, inside the strip club to the office, and I would get paid. Occasionally I would have to wait outside the office and I would stand there all awkwardly trying not to look at any of the customers, or the ladies dancing on the poles.

So the one day I go to get paid and I get outside the entrance to the club and I'm standing there counting my money or something, and the door lady (girl) is like "oh cool, you just got paid, that means I must get paid", and then, I guess it could have been loneliness or something, but I decided to take the bait or whatever and chat with her. Turned out she was from Canada and she wasn't a stripper or something as I had though, but that she actually just worked the door and the bar. We ended up exchanging numbers and stuff (just on a friendly level) and I referred to her as my Stripper Friend from then on. We also become friends on Facebook and turns out she's only a couple months older than me anyway. We only really hung out once, which involved us walking around trying to get wasted, She talked a lot, I just remember her saying every place we walked past was too pretentious and telling me a story about when she took acid and thought her friend was made of cheese.

All in all it was quite a weird experience but at the same time it was really rad.