itch

I'm under the influence of wierd stars, friends. For a while it seemed like the short days had me hobbled at the knee. When you consider that I go to bed most nights at 4 am and wake up around noon or after, that's a severely truncated ration of daylight. The old disorder has been flaring up. December is always a hard month.

My clinician has been liberal about doubling and tripling my medications on demand, though, and so far things have stayed tame. No howling fits of despair; just a dreamy melancholy, voluptuous and self-absorbed like the early, almost pleasant episodes I remember from my teens.

Meanwhile, increased dosage of the old SSRI's has tilted my brain chemistry around so that it is ridiculously easy to get aroused and pretty near impossible to get off, inducing a state of mild, chronic sexual frustration. The resulting fog of sex pheremones has men following me around the grocery store and tripping over themselves at the club to paper my path with money. This weekend I broke my previous (quite respectable) record for most money earned in a single evening, and also set a personal record for most songs consecutively lap-danced --25. This ammount of attention and success when I want nothing so much as to be home in bed all day under blankets has me walking around with my hair standing on end.

Not to mention that popularity never makes you popular. Other dancers tend to like me -- I'm free with my cigarettes and I talk no shit. But there's been a distinct coolness in the dressing room since I started my hot streak. Twice, guys have actually sent the dancer sitting with them to go and find me. From a customer's perspective, this might not seem like such an insult, but trust me, every dancer born hears this as, "You're ugly. Could you please go get the pretty girl?" The gossip starts right away. Any time any dancer does well, there's a little coven in the dressing room, whispering. <You know what I heard she does? She lets them put their...> Then everybody stops as you walk past, and stares. Oh, well. It'll blow over. Not that I give a fuck, really.

But the topper was the sudden reappearance of Joe (on the immediate tail of the the World's Longest Lapdance) come to train his charm and WASP-ish good-looks and large vocabulary on me like a jacklight on a deer. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure I like Joel that much and now he's in my head again, stuck like a catchy song. I went home that night and fucked my boyfriend till dawn. Woke up with scarlet hickies all over my breasts. Something else I haven't had since my teens.

I'm rich. I'm irritated. My shins are bruised. I'm tired. I'm disliked. And I'm still horny.