From: Siren 
Subject: My incredibly surreal trip to Nawlins

Did you miss me?  Did you notice I was gone?  Well in case you did or 
in case you've noticed that since my return I have been especially 
cheerful, I should explain that this is due to the fact that I have 
developed a new appriciation for the CP, after my return from two weeks 
in New Orleans.
On May 22, I set out with my two cohorts, Livia and Diana, the plan 
being that we would spend our time in the midst of music, merriment and 
delicous food as we made our fortunes in the great city of Nawlins.
Well, the food was fantastic, the bars were fun, the city was gorgeous, 
the music outstanding and as for our fortunes, well... things did not 
go exactly as planned.
We arrived at Big Daddies for our *pre-arranged* employment, only to be 
told that there had been a mistake and that there wasn't any room for 
us.  After some groping and lewd suggestions by the creepy manager, 
Rick, I was escorted to their sister club, the Silver Frolics on Burbon 
Street, where my incredibly surreal experience began.
My first impression was that the place was tiny, filthy and spooky, 
with nothing but 70's heavymetal on the jukebox, but I was lured into 
staying by the fact that the next room over was chock full of gorgeous 
*male* strippers.
I crammed myself into the dressingroom/closet and was introduced to 
just how wierd some strippers can be.  I'll be damned, there really are 
drug-addicted, gun toting nymphomaniac dancers out there.
My favorite quote: "Evary tom ah see that man dance ah git so hau-nay."
My favorite dance move: A woman putting a folded dollar bill in the 
back of her g-string and squeezing her butt cheeks together so as to 
make it flap like a butterfly, then taking it out of her crack, 
sniffing it and making a sour face... a real class act, that one.
Well, several hours and $30.00 dollars later, I notice that I am the 
only one not making money.  As I pondered how to answer the question, 
"Why should I pay $20.00 to have you dance for me in the corner, when I 
can see you for free?"  (We had to dance about 10 times per night with 
tips being a rarity), one of the dancers (the haunay one) informed me 
that the hustle goes something like this:
"I can give you a $20.00 dance or I can do a hotel dance for you after 
work, but you have to buy a $100.00 first, or you can give me half of 
the money now and the other half at the hotel."  Either way, no one 
goes to the hotel.  This is not in my repituare, so I opted to work my 
butt off on this lame frat-boy crowd for peanuts.
Meanwhile, in the next room, the nice, big clean room, with the 
dancers' choice of music playing, the male stripper/protitutes were 
making a fortune convincing the female patrons to pay them $100.00 a 
pop for the privilage of giving them an unsafe blowjob.  
The whole place reeked of AIDS as all of the female dancers were 
fucking all of the male dancers, creating an atmosphere of melodrama 
and bitterness among the employees.  The fact that everyone was drunk 
spiced up the action considerably.  We were treated to a new soap opera 
nightly.
Back to the front room.  Our stage was tiny, consisting mostly a big 
motorized lazy susan type thing.  I quickly learned that if one has 
long hair, one shouldn't lie down on this structure as it can get 
sucked into the motor.  
Next to this disk was an iron pole and behind this, a piece of torn red 
fabric stapled to the wall.  It was difficult to spin around the pole 
without kicking either the lazy susan or the wall.  When I did use the 
pole, it left a big black bruise on my inner thigh which to my horror, 
was gone after a shower! (shutter).
We lasted a couple of nights, but ultimately, couldn't take it anymore.
Finally, Diana discovered a beautiful club, the Maiden Voyage, but 
alas, I caught a bad case of poison ivy while looking for salamanders 
in the bayou, passed it along to D. so we couldn't work, due to the 
welts which covered our poor itchy bodies.
Now I'm back at the CP, where everything is so nice and clean, honest 
and upfront and the girls are so... normal.  Happy, happy joy, joy.

Siren