winning streak

I didn't run away from home, nor did our friend John come back to the club and murder me, as promised. I haven't felt like blogging, and I finally realize it's because I don't want to jinx a good thing. I've been having such ridiculously great times -- er, make that totally adequate -- um, let's just say things have been OK, very OK, and I'm afraid if I do or say anything, it'll ruin it.

This month is the one-year anniversary of me getting fired from the yoga studio for reasons to this day unknown ("not a good match for us"), crying for two days, and returning to the sordid life of iniquity I lovingly call the titty business. I didn't plan to do it for long. I'd never been more than an average dancer for a week here and a week there in shady, two-bit dive bars, anyway. I wasn't drawn to it for the glamor (ha!) or the riches (double ha!) but for the speedy and easeful hiring process. Throw a thong, a bikini top, and a pair of shoes into your back-pack, hit up every club in town on a Tuesday afternoon until somebody gives you a job, and by the end of the day you've got a fistful of twenty dollar bills. Or ten dollar bills. Fives. Ones. Hell, money is money.

As it happened, I went to the two sleeziest joints in town and got turned down. Then I went to a relatively nice place and was hired before I'd walked all the way in the door. Gambler's luck, I guess. Also by chance, it was Texas-OU football day and in the middle of the afternoon the club was full of drunk Hispanic guys up from the Rio Grande valley to make a day of it in the big city. I made $400 that day, which to me then constituted riches beyond my wildest imagining. That's when I understood that you could make real money prancing around in your underpants. As it turned out, that was an unusually good dayshift at that particular ass factory. Still, the pickings were pretty good.

At the time, I wanted to go to Washington, D.C. the next month to see that Dalai Llama with my friend and consort, Barbara. All of a sudden, the money was easy. So I went. Then I went to Vegas, cause I felt like it. Then I went to New York City to visit my friend Emily and welcome my old high school roomie Pam home from foreign wars. Then I went to Florida to see my Grammer cause she's the one who put me through yoga school in the first place and I don't get to see her much and I love her. Finally, I settled down and started saving some money. I never knew how much money I'd make in a day. It always felt like luck, but my number came up often enough. My bank account got so fat and I got so cocky, I told my brilliant and beloved college-dropout boyfriend that I'd send him back to school on my dollar and he took me up on it.

So then all of a sudden, it couldn't be luck anymore. Because luck is not going to support two adults and three cats and a college tuition and two aging automobiles that have to go to the mechanic a lot. All this hit me when we got back from the trip in August. And so I spent most of that month -- when I wasn't at the club -- in bed, shivering.

And then suddenly, everything got good and I started making money. I don't know how, or why, except that I really, really, really wanted to. All of a sudden I'm an ass-shaking, high-heeled money-making machine. I think I finally figured this game out. I think things finally clicked. Or else it's all just a hot streak, and then I'm fucked indeed.