Published in Fast Forward: The Mix Tape
My Donny and Marie Osmond Barbie dolls came with matching purple outfits—Donny had purple socks that slipped into white shoes, and both Donny and Marie had holes drilled through their left hands for their matching microphones that I promptly lost. Their brunette heads were fastened onto typical Barbie bodies, Marie’s 38—22—26, feet permanently arched for high-heels, Donny’s nondescript bulge.
There was only one game I played with Donny and Marie Osmond Barbie, who were no longer brother and sister. It went like this: Donny wakes one morning ready for another exciting day in plastic world. After a refreshing plastic breakfast, he decides to go to the mall. In the atrium of the mall an event is happening, a large, raised platform with a line of beautiful women, including Marie. It’s a Wife Auction—the fast-talking announcer is rattling off his prizes to the highest bidder.
Now Donny really isn’t in the market for a wife on this beautiful Saturday in plastic world, but he’s never seen anyone as beautiful as Marie in his whole life. As one woman after another is bid on and married away to the mall-visiting man of her dreams, Donny can’t stop looking at his Marie. He approaches the stage, starry-eyed. He bids. He wins.
Marie is shy, demure behind that perpetual toothy smile. Like any bride wife who has just been sold from a platform in the middle of a shopping mall, she is nervous. She approaches the edge of the stage as if she is entering civilization for the first time. She shyly accepts Donny’s hand and steps from the platform, scared like a little bird. The few onlookers applaud the new married couple.
Donny, now manly and confident, leads his new wife away from the auctioning block, away from the platform and the mall to his shoebox Ferrari. A short drive across the carpet later the newlyweds arrive home. Marie is again overwhelmed, as she’s apparently never seen a house before, and Donny shows her the two plastic fold-up walls ending at the bedroom, which, ironically, is the only room in this cheap, non-Barbie brand plastic house. In the fold-out plastic bed they kiss, him the sweet but firm aggressor, her compliant, and then finally they are naked, her plastic legs swiveled out, his nondescript bulge pushing between.
The plot never went any further. By then the game had reached its shaky conclusion, the sky was darkening and my mother was calling me to dinner.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Fast Forward: The Mix Tape! June 12, 2010!
You've been waiting...it's finally here!
Saturday, June 12th, 7-10“Size Matters” Flash Reading Series and Release Party for Fast Forward: The Mix Tape!!
Bardo’s Coffeeshop
238 South Broadway
Denver, CO 80209
(303) 629-8331
www.bardocoffee.com
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The Current State of Occupation
Published in BASE: Building Alliances for Social Engagement
I abandoned my innocence
in a hotel room in East Jerusalem,
with thin walls and narrow beds that
creaked hushed confessions:
War and Politics and Passion and Urgency
and Love
melting in a crucible
where there was no injustice
for those with dark skin,
and there was always one more day
I didn’t have with you.
During the invasion,
I took a last look at my old life
from behind bullet-shattered windows.
In Aida Refugee Camp,
Palestinian faces creased with worry,
we waited for the drones.
“From childhood, everyone knows
what follows:”
ringing phones,
blood types listed on yellow legal paper,
an oatmeal sky,
a bomb-littered street,
a sniper tower,
phone numbers permanently inked
up and down
my arms
When the tanks finally rolled
down the streets,
it was almost a relief.
In Bethlehem, you came to me
like a wise man to a star,
bearing something more than
the bread I sought amidst the rubble.
Tank tracks driven through my resolve to resist
I allowed myself to be
Occupied.
In a land of injustice
you became the just.
In a land of destruction
I became the creator.
We sang celebrations over the explosions
Take these broken wings and learn to fly.
When the smoke cleared
from the silhouettes of ancient church steeples
I saw only a changed world,
never mind the return plane ticket.
We sampled hotel rooms in
Bethlehem, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem,
escaping into the old, walled city
where we could drink Arabic coffee and
pretend to be tourists.
On our last evening
we climbed the Mount of the Olives
where Jesus ate his last supper
and silently watched the sun set
over the Middle East.
Take of this body and remember me.
Now that moment is a photograph
of a man and a woman with strange smiles.
Over static phone lines stretched thin,
my mind is still kissing you goodbye
from the taxi on Ben Yehuda.
And, like a stray bullet
arching through a holy night,
I am burning up in my own fire.
I abandoned my innocence
in a hotel room in East Jerusalem,
with thin walls and narrow beds that
creaked hushed confessions:
War and Politics and Passion and Urgency
and Love
melting in a crucible
where there was no injustice
for those with dark skin,
and there was always one more day
I didn’t have with you.
During the invasion,
I took a last look at my old life
from behind bullet-shattered windows.
In Aida Refugee Camp,
Palestinian faces creased with worry,
we waited for the drones.
“From childhood, everyone knows
what follows:”
ringing phones,
blood types listed on yellow legal paper,
an oatmeal sky,
a bomb-littered street,
a sniper tower,
phone numbers permanently inked
up and down
my arms
When the tanks finally rolled
down the streets,
it was almost a relief.
In Bethlehem, you came to me
like a wise man to a star,
bearing something more than
the bread I sought amidst the rubble.
Tank tracks driven through my resolve to resist
I allowed myself to be
Occupied.
In a land of injustice
you became the just.
In a land of destruction
I became the creator.
We sang celebrations over the explosions
Take these broken wings and learn to fly.
When the smoke cleared
from the silhouettes of ancient church steeples
I saw only a changed world,
never mind the return plane ticket.
We sampled hotel rooms in
Bethlehem, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem,
escaping into the old, walled city
where we could drink Arabic coffee and
pretend to be tourists.
On our last evening
we climbed the Mount of the Olives
where Jesus ate his last supper
and silently watched the sun set
over the Middle East.
Take of this body and remember me.
Now that moment is a photograph
of a man and a woman with strange smiles.
Over static phone lines stretched thin,
my mind is still kissing you goodbye
from the taxi on Ben Yehuda.
And, like a stray bullet
arching through a holy night,
I am burning up in my own fire.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Upcoming New York/Denver Appearances
DENVER
Saturday, June 12th, 7-9
“Size Matters” Flash Reading Series and Release Party for Fast Forward: The Mix Tape
Bardo’s Coffeeshop
238 South Broadway
Denver, CO 80209
(303) 629-8331
www.bardocoffee.com
Thursday, June 17th, 7:30
The Gypsy House Reading Series
Gypsy House Cafe
1279 Marion St
Denver, CO 80218-2296
(303) 830-1112
NEW YORK
Saturday, June 19th, 2-4 pm
Panel: A Discussion of Guerrilla Publishing with Susan Tepper, Nancy Stohlman, Ruth Zamoyta O’Toole, Sonia Rivera-Valdes and Jacqueline Donado. This event is part of the Uptown Arts Stroll under the auspices of the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance.
New York Public Library, Fort Washington Branch
2:00-4:00 pm
535 West 179th Street
New York, NY 10033
http://www.facebook.com/FortWashingtonLibrary
tel: 212-927-3533
(Note New Venue)
Saturday, June 19th, 8:00-11:00 P.M.
A Reading and Release Party to Celebrate Fast Forward (Volume 3): The Mix Tape.
The Path Cafe
131 Christopher Street
New York, NY 10014
(212) 243-1311
www.pathcafe.com
Saturday, April 10, 2010
The Barcelona Review: Searching for Suzi
Read the original here.
Searching for Suzi,
a flash novel, by Nancy Stohlman
Monkey Puzzle Press,
Boulder, Colorado, 2009
What happens to a young girl whose mother encourages her to enter beauty pageants as she herself had done, and whose father’s advises her at age 14: “If you want to keep a man, learn to swallow”? Whose parents were swingers until her mum found Jesus. Whose dad continued the open sex with the neighbor lady until she moved away and he took flight himself, leaving his daughter a note saying she hadn’t been much of a daughter. She becomes a stripper, that’s what, at age 16. And works the trade for the next four years.
This is “Natalie,” which was her stage name and is the only name we know her by. She now has a Masters degree, is in her mid-thirties, married, the respectable wife of a research scientist, mother of two children, and living a comfortable life in St. Louis. She has reoccurring dreams about strip clubs, however, and one particularly vivid dream about a stripper named Suzi Cooper—her first female lover—throws her out of her life of domestic conventionality and on the road in a quest to find Suzi. Not that she and Suzi had been that close; in fact, Suzi was rather trashy and stole from her, and the lovemaking had been more like fooling around. It’d been a passing thing 14 years ago. But for reasons that are not easy to articulate, the quest is on.
We follow Natalie back to Omaha where she grew up, and to a series of clubs—the Sugar Lounge, the Red Umbrella, Dick’s Yum Yum Club, the Love Shack—where she picks up on the old smells, “that mixture of cigarettes and perfume, designer fragrances with slogans like ‘If you like Giorgio, you’ll love EXCITE’”; while she quite comfortably handles herself at the bar, knowledgeable in strip-club protocol, not blinking an eye at the outrageously overpriced drinks, even game for buying a drink for one of the strippers when approached. Because they’re just doing their job. She knows.
She views the stage from the other side now, judging the dancers— “young and stiff,” she sees one; “mesmerizing,” she thinks of another, who flashes a glittery beaver. Some “Stripper Tips” are thrown in along the way as well as “Dance Moves,” and the reader gets a real feel for the seedy atmosphere where men pay to look, and for the chaos of the backstage dressing room, "the counter covered with abandoned curling irons crusted with brown hairspray, eyeshadow and blush ground into the Formica." Our narrator throws out mixed feelings about the scene: on the one hand, she can view it with some disdain (“another hour of your life wasted, thrown like pocket change to the sidewalk”), but she also knows the power it can give a woman (“Never, in any other aspect of your life, have you felt so uninhibited.”). It’s what you make it, this world of stripping.
The narrative switches from first to second to third person, from present to past and in between, but there is an immediacy to it all that keeps one turning the pages, 87 in all. We could call it a novella, or as the author prefers, a flash novel, but by whatever name this is a great romp into the world of stripping. Page by page our plucky narrator reveals more of herself until the perfect ending lays it all bare. J.A.
Searching for Suzi,
a flash novel, by Nancy Stohlman
Monkey Puzzle Press,
Boulder, Colorado, 2009
What happens to a young girl whose mother encourages her to enter beauty pageants as she herself had done, and whose father’s advises her at age 14: “If you want to keep a man, learn to swallow”? Whose parents were swingers until her mum found Jesus. Whose dad continued the open sex with the neighbor lady until she moved away and he took flight himself, leaving his daughter a note saying she hadn’t been much of a daughter. She becomes a stripper, that’s what, at age 16. And works the trade for the next four years.
This is “Natalie,” which was her stage name and is the only name we know her by. She now has a Masters degree, is in her mid-thirties, married, the respectable wife of a research scientist, mother of two children, and living a comfortable life in St. Louis. She has reoccurring dreams about strip clubs, however, and one particularly vivid dream about a stripper named Suzi Cooper—her first female lover—throws her out of her life of domestic conventionality and on the road in a quest to find Suzi. Not that she and Suzi had been that close; in fact, Suzi was rather trashy and stole from her, and the lovemaking had been more like fooling around. It’d been a passing thing 14 years ago. But for reasons that are not easy to articulate, the quest is on.
We follow Natalie back to Omaha where she grew up, and to a series of clubs—the Sugar Lounge, the Red Umbrella, Dick’s Yum Yum Club, the Love Shack—where she picks up on the old smells, “that mixture of cigarettes and perfume, designer fragrances with slogans like ‘If you like Giorgio, you’ll love EXCITE’”; while she quite comfortably handles herself at the bar, knowledgeable in strip-club protocol, not blinking an eye at the outrageously overpriced drinks, even game for buying a drink for one of the strippers when approached. Because they’re just doing their job. She knows.
She views the stage from the other side now, judging the dancers— “young and stiff,” she sees one; “mesmerizing,” she thinks of another, who flashes a glittery beaver. Some “Stripper Tips” are thrown in along the way as well as “Dance Moves,” and the reader gets a real feel for the seedy atmosphere where men pay to look, and for the chaos of the backstage dressing room, "the counter covered with abandoned curling irons crusted with brown hairspray, eyeshadow and blush ground into the Formica." Our narrator throws out mixed feelings about the scene: on the one hand, she can view it with some disdain (“another hour of your life wasted, thrown like pocket change to the sidewalk”), but she also knows the power it can give a woman (“Never, in any other aspect of your life, have you felt so uninhibited.”). It’s what you make it, this world of stripping.
The narrative switches from first to second to third person, from present to past and in between, but there is an immediacy to it all that keeps one turning the pages, 87 in all. We could call it a novella, or as the author prefers, a flash novel, but by whatever name this is a great romp into the world of stripping. Page by page our plucky narrator reveals more of herself until the perfect ending lays it all bare. J.A.
Friday, April 02, 2010
Literary Salon and cocktails at Dazzle Jazz Club, April 8
When: April 8, 2010
Time: 10:00 PM-1:00 AM
Where: Dazzle Supper Club
930 Lincoln Street, Denver
303-839-5100
www.dazzlejazz.com
Readers include:
Benjamin Dancer
Bryan Jansing
Kona Morris
Rob Geisen
Jonathon Montgomery
Nancy Stohlman
Matt Reeck
Travis Cebula
Gordon Massman
Andrew Zornoza
Shane Jimenez
Scott Alexander Jones
Andrew Schelling
The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) comes to town next week, bringing with it a variety of writers, from international bestsellers like keynote speaker Michael Chabon to amateur poets working on their first collections. Six local presses, Fast Forward Press, Tarpaulin Sky, Fact-Simile, Monkey Puzzle Press, Zero Ducats, and Bombay Gin, are using the opportunity to put together a reading of unique and eloquent readers at the Denver jazz club, Dazzle, on Thursday, April 8th.
Fast Forward Press, a small independent press based in Denver, is dedicated to publishing flash fiction and will release its third collection in June. Fact-Simile Editions is a small independent publisher of mostly handmade books and book-objects, using recycled and reclaimed materials to create distinctive artifacts of literature. Boulder-based Monkey Puzzle Press is an independent trade publisher focusing on books from both emerging and established writers including a biannual literary arts journal. Bombay Gin is the literary journal of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and Tarpaulin Sky, founded in 2002 as an online literary journal, focuses on cross-genre / trans-genre / hybrid forms as well as innovative poetry and prose.
Time: 10:00 PM-1:00 AM
Where: Dazzle Supper Club
930 Lincoln Street, Denver
303-839-5100
www.dazzlejazz.com
Readers include:
Benjamin Dancer
Bryan Jansing
Kona Morris
Rob Geisen
Jonathon Montgomery
Nancy Stohlman
Matt Reeck
Travis Cebula
Gordon Massman
Andrew Zornoza
Shane Jimenez
Scott Alexander Jones
Andrew Schelling
The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) comes to town next week, bringing with it a variety of writers, from international bestsellers like keynote speaker Michael Chabon to amateur poets working on their first collections. Six local presses, Fast Forward Press, Tarpaulin Sky, Fact-Simile, Monkey Puzzle Press, Zero Ducats, and Bombay Gin, are using the opportunity to put together a reading of unique and eloquent readers at the Denver jazz club, Dazzle, on Thursday, April 8th.
Fast Forward Press, a small independent press based in Denver, is dedicated to publishing flash fiction and will release its third collection in June. Fact-Simile Editions is a small independent publisher of mostly handmade books and book-objects, using recycled and reclaimed materials to create distinctive artifacts of literature. Boulder-based Monkey Puzzle Press is an independent trade publisher focusing on books from both emerging and established writers including a biannual literary arts journal. Bombay Gin is the literary journal of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and Tarpaulin Sky, founded in 2002 as an online literary journal, focuses on cross-genre / trans-genre / hybrid forms as well as innovative poetry and prose.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Chicago Pics, New York Dates announced
Thanks again for all the Chicago love and support. Here are some photos:
At Quimby's, March 4, 2010
The ever wonderful Rebecca George with an on-the-fly introduction:
UPCOMING EVENTS!
DENVER
April 8, 2010
Dazzle Supper Club
10:30 pm-1:00 am
930 Lincoln Street
Denver, CO 80203-2712
(303) 839-5100
www.dazzlejazz.com
NEW YORK
June 19, 2010
New York Public Library, Fort Washington Branch
2:00 pm
535 West 179th Street
New York, NY 10033
http://www.facebook.com/FortWashingtonLibrary
tel: 212-927-3533
At Quimby's, March 4, 2010
The ever wonderful Rebecca George with an on-the-fly introduction:
UPCOMING EVENTS!
DENVER
April 8, 2010
Dazzle Supper Club
10:30 pm-1:00 am
930 Lincoln Street
Denver, CO 80203-2712
(303) 839-5100
www.dazzlejazz.com
NEW YORK
June 19, 2010
New York Public Library, Fort Washington Branch
2:00 pm
535 West 179th Street
New York, NY 10033
http://www.facebook.com/FortWashingtonLibrary
tel: 212-927-3533
Friday, February 26, 2010
Occupation
Published in BASE: Building Alliances for Social Engagement
The occupation of the occupiers is to occupy the occupied. Depending on who is doing the occupying, this is called “security.”
The occupation occupies the space once occupied by the occupied at the onset of the occupation. While the occupiers are occupied with the occupation of keeping the occupied under occupation, the occupation of the occupied is to resist occupation. This resistance is usually called terrorism.
The occupied territories are simultaneously occupied by both the occupied (called militants) and the occupiers (called settlers and/or liberators). Eventually the occupiers will fully occupy the land that once held the villages of the occupied before the occupation. This is often referred to as progress.
The occupations of the occupied under occupation are now unoccupied.
But the occupation does not occupy the minds of those not occupied or occupying. In fact, they don’t want to be occupied by thoughts of the occupied or the occupation.
Occupation, after all, is such a harsh word.
The occupation of the occupiers is to occupy the occupied. Depending on who is doing the occupying, this is called “security.”
The occupation occupies the space once occupied by the occupied at the onset of the occupation. While the occupiers are occupied with the occupation of keeping the occupied under occupation, the occupation of the occupied is to resist occupation. This resistance is usually called terrorism.
The occupied territories are simultaneously occupied by both the occupied (called militants) and the occupiers (called settlers and/or liberators). Eventually the occupiers will fully occupy the land that once held the villages of the occupied before the occupation. This is often referred to as progress.
The occupations of the occupied under occupation are now unoccupied.
But the occupation does not occupy the minds of those not occupied or occupying. In fact, they don’t want to be occupied by thoughts of the occupied or the occupation.
Occupation, after all, is such a harsh word.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Suzi Says Thanks!
Hello Lovlies!
First: Thank you SO MUCH! I can’t thank you all enough for all the support you’ve been giving me as I’ve been learning how to promote a book (a whole different experience than writing one, let me tell you!) I feel very lucky…
Five-Star Review from the Midwest Book Review:
“The exploitation has to be turned around on itself at some point. "Searching for Suzi" tells the story of Natalie, an ex-stripper who reflects on her life as she returns to Omaha Nebraska where she grew up. Discussing the obsession with appearance and the concept of sexy that ranges from the glamour and stripping industry down to childhood beauty pageants, "Searching for Suzi" is a fascinating and very highly recommended read.”
Woohoo! So if you’ve been meaning to read it but haven’t, yet, I’d be forever grateful…and if you’ve already read it, tell a friend…
$11.95 - Available at Monkey Puzzle Books: Click Here
Or Amazon: Click Here
Also Searching for Suzi has its own Facebook page now, so become a fan!
And Check out my new website courtesy of Noah Saterstrom and Artist Website Services:
www.nancystohlman.net
Upcoming Events!
I need a manager! No really, I do. The pay is, well…awful, but you will get all the experience and glory of working with Nate and I and launching a book into bestseller-dom. You don’t have to live in Denver, either. Please let me know if you or anyone you know is interested.
Suzi on the Road: Check out these awesome videos shot by Andrew Baran:
Video #1
Video #2
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Denver
April 8, 2010
Dazzle Supper Club
10:30 pm-1:00 am
930 Lincoln Street
Denver, CO 80203-2712
(303) 839-5100
www.dazzlejazz.com
Chicago
March 4, 2010
Quimby’s Bookstore
7pm: Reading and Booksigning
1854 West North Avenue
Chicago, IL 60622
(733) 342-0910
www.quimbys.com
March 5, 2010
Women and Children First Bookstore
Time 7:30: Reading and Booksigning
5233 North Clark Street
Chicago, IL 60640-2111
(773)-769-9299
Thank you all again so much for everything…and happy reading!
~Nancy
First: Thank you SO MUCH! I can’t thank you all enough for all the support you’ve been giving me as I’ve been learning how to promote a book (a whole different experience than writing one, let me tell you!) I feel very lucky…
Five-Star Review from the Midwest Book Review:
“The exploitation has to be turned around on itself at some point. "Searching for Suzi" tells the story of Natalie, an ex-stripper who reflects on her life as she returns to Omaha Nebraska where she grew up. Discussing the obsession with appearance and the concept of sexy that ranges from the glamour and stripping industry down to childhood beauty pageants, "Searching for Suzi" is a fascinating and very highly recommended read.”
Woohoo! So if you’ve been meaning to read it but haven’t, yet, I’d be forever grateful…and if you’ve already read it, tell a friend…
$11.95 - Available at Monkey Puzzle Books: Click Here
Or Amazon: Click Here
Also Searching for Suzi has its own Facebook page now, so become a fan!
And Check out my new website courtesy of Noah Saterstrom and Artist Website Services:
www.nancystohlman.net
Upcoming Events!
I need a manager! No really, I do. The pay is, well…awful, but you will get all the experience and glory of working with Nate and I and launching a book into bestseller-dom. You don’t have to live in Denver, either. Please let me know if you or anyone you know is interested.
Suzi on the Road: Check out these awesome videos shot by Andrew Baran:
Video #1
Video #2
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Denver
April 8, 2010
Dazzle Supper Club
10:30 pm-1:00 am
930 Lincoln Street
Denver, CO 80203-2712
(303) 839-5100
www.dazzlejazz.com
Chicago
March 4, 2010
Quimby’s Bookstore
7pm: Reading and Booksigning
1854 West North Avenue
Chicago, IL 60622
(733) 342-0910
www.quimbys.com
March 5, 2010
Women and Children First Bookstore
Time 7:30: Reading and Booksigning
5233 North Clark Street
Chicago, IL 60640-2111
(773)-769-9299
Thank you all again so much for everything…and happy reading!
~Nancy
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Five Star Review from Midwest Book Review
Published on Amazon.com
A fascinating and very highly recommended read, February 9, 2010
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
The exploitation has to be turned around on itself at some point. "Searching for Suzi" tells the story of Natalie, an ex-stripper who reflects on her life as she returns to Omaha Nebraska where she grew up. Discussing the obsession with appearance and the concept of sexy that ranges from the glamour and stripping industry down to childhood beauty pageants, "Searching for Suzi" is a fascinating and very highly recommended read.
A fascinating and very highly recommended read, February 9, 2010
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
The exploitation has to be turned around on itself at some point. "Searching for Suzi" tells the story of Natalie, an ex-stripper who reflects on her life as she returns to Omaha Nebraska where she grew up. Discussing the obsession with appearance and the concept of sexy that ranges from the glamour and stripping industry down to childhood beauty pageants, "Searching for Suzi" is a fascinating and very highly recommended read.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Dark Stripping Secrets Revealed--A Review of Searching for Suzi
By Dan Donan
Published in the Griffon News
I love strippers. The whole concept is wonderful. When I think about the low lights and the bumping bass and constant motion of a strip club I smile. Maybe it is just because I am a guy but the idea of a dozen or so women in various states of undress writhing and grinding in wanting ways for just my arousal is one of the top five things I can picture for any days plans. I really love strippers. But outside of dating a few in my early twenties, I never really stopped to think about the mental landscape they must live in. Then I read Searching for Suzi by Nancy Stohlman.
This book is a fast firing flash fiction about womanhood, sexuality, exploitation, emotional evolution and the world of stripping. It is the tale of Natalie, a thirty something mother who retraces the steps of teenaged beauty pageantry and stripping to search for the first woman she slept with. The trail takes the reader on a ride through time that reveals a life of emotional abuse, squalor and eroticism.
It makes the reader think about the lives of strippers and the esteem issues inflicted on women in a world that tells them that they have to be beautiful. It asks serious questions about the effects our sexuality has on our lives.
Without becoming porn, this book looks truthfully at the world of strippers and gets quite saucy. The shifting point of view keeps the reader feeling like they are flowing in and out of the consciences of the narrator. It forces you to wonder how you would feel if you were 17 and your high school principal just walked into the strip club you work at. It keeps a dark subject light in the right places by reviewing stripper tips, like stripper tip #6: underarm deodorant glows under black light or stripper tip #11: smoking pot in the bathroom only makes the night drag on forever.
Sure there are plenty of dirty words to keep your attention and at least two sex scenes that will make you look around to make sure you are alone while you read it, but better than that is the underlying understanding of the story. It is a story about the scars sexuality can leave on us, and how those scars shape us into the sexy little beasts we become. It is also about the connections that you make in life and how things change over time. It is a story about real life and I am glad I read it.
Published in the Griffon News
I love strippers. The whole concept is wonderful. When I think about the low lights and the bumping bass and constant motion of a strip club I smile. Maybe it is just because I am a guy but the idea of a dozen or so women in various states of undress writhing and grinding in wanting ways for just my arousal is one of the top five things I can picture for any days plans. I really love strippers. But outside of dating a few in my early twenties, I never really stopped to think about the mental landscape they must live in. Then I read Searching for Suzi by Nancy Stohlman.
This book is a fast firing flash fiction about womanhood, sexuality, exploitation, emotional evolution and the world of stripping. It is the tale of Natalie, a thirty something mother who retraces the steps of teenaged beauty pageantry and stripping to search for the first woman she slept with. The trail takes the reader on a ride through time that reveals a life of emotional abuse, squalor and eroticism.
It makes the reader think about the lives of strippers and the esteem issues inflicted on women in a world that tells them that they have to be beautiful. It asks serious questions about the effects our sexuality has on our lives.
Without becoming porn, this book looks truthfully at the world of strippers and gets quite saucy. The shifting point of view keeps the reader feeling like they are flowing in and out of the consciences of the narrator. It forces you to wonder how you would feel if you were 17 and your high school principal just walked into the strip club you work at. It keeps a dark subject light in the right places by reviewing stripper tips, like stripper tip #6: underarm deodorant glows under black light or stripper tip #11: smoking pot in the bathroom only makes the night drag on forever.
Sure there are plenty of dirty words to keep your attention and at least two sex scenes that will make you look around to make sure you are alone while you read it, but better than that is the underlying understanding of the story. It is a story about the scars sexuality can leave on us, and how those scars shape us into the sexy little beasts we become. It is also about the connections that you make in life and how things change over time. It is a story about real life and I am glad I read it.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
2010 Reading List
Okay, back by popular demand!
5 classics:
Ulysses—James Joyce
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas—Gertrude Stein
Breakfast at Tiffanys—Truman Capote
Frankenstein—Mary Shelley
David Copperfield—Charles Dickens
1 reread
The Lover—Marguerite Duras
2 books about writing:
Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing—Helene Cixous
Henry Miller on Writing—Henry Miller
5 contemporary writers
Cool For You—Eileen Myles
Staggering Work of a Heartbreaking Genius—Dave Eggers
The Road—Cormac McCarthy
The Fanmaker’s Inquisition—Rikki Ducornet
Jealousy—Alain Robbe-Grillet
1-2 books poetry
The Poems of John Keats—John Keats
The Ballad of Reading Gaol and other Poems—Oscar Wilde
1-2 collections of short stories
Flash Fiction—Ed. James Thomas
The Twilight of the Bums—Raymond Federman
1 unread book by a favorite author:
Pale Fire—Vladamir Nabokov
1 nonfiction books in a new discipline/field:
The Interpretation of Dreams—Sigmund Freud
1 children’s book:
Gulliver’s Travels—Jonathan Swift
1 book in translation:
If On a Winter’s Night A Traveler—Italo Calvino
1 biography:
Walking Back: The Life and Work of Flannery O’Conner—Brad Gooch
1 memoir:
Chasing Che—Patrick Symmes
5 classics:
Ulysses—James Joyce
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas—Gertrude Stein
Breakfast at Tiffanys—Truman Capote
Frankenstein—Mary Shelley
David Copperfield—Charles Dickens
1 reread
The Lover—Marguerite Duras
2 books about writing:
Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing—Helene Cixous
Henry Miller on Writing—Henry Miller
5 contemporary writers
Cool For You—Eileen Myles
Staggering Work of a Heartbreaking Genius—Dave Eggers
The Road—Cormac McCarthy
The Fanmaker’s Inquisition—Rikki Ducornet
Jealousy—Alain Robbe-Grillet
1-2 books poetry
The Poems of John Keats—John Keats
The Ballad of Reading Gaol and other Poems—Oscar Wilde
1-2 collections of short stories
Flash Fiction—Ed. James Thomas
The Twilight of the Bums—Raymond Federman
1 unread book by a favorite author:
Pale Fire—Vladamir Nabokov
1 nonfiction books in a new discipline/field:
The Interpretation of Dreams—Sigmund Freud
1 children’s book:
Gulliver’s Travels—Jonathan Swift
1 book in translation:
If On a Winter’s Night A Traveler—Italo Calvino
1 biography:
Walking Back: The Life and Work of Flannery O’Conner—Brad Gooch
1 memoir:
Chasing Che—Patrick Symmes
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Chicago/Denver Dates, Omaha Videos
NANCY IN OMAHA JAN 13-14, 2010
With Andrew Baran, who shot the cover of Searching for Suzi. Check out Andrew's new online photography magazine, Scarlet Magazine.
See Video from Bookworm Here
See Pizza Shoppe Collective Video Here
UPCOMING PROMOTIONAL DATES:
Denver:
February 22, 2010
The Writers Studio: A Conversation with Novelists William Hayworth Henderson and Nancy Stohlman
4:00 PM
Arapahoe Community College
5900 South Santa Fe Drive
4th floor M 4750
Littleton, Colorado 80120-1801
303.797.4222
Chicago:
March 4, 2010
Quimby’s Bookstore
7pm: Reading and Booksigning
1854 West North Avenue
Chicago, IL 60622
(733) 342-0910
www.quimbys.com
March 5, 2010
Women and Children First Bookstore
Time 7:30: Reading and Booksigning
5233 North Clark Stree
Chicago, IL 60640-2111
(773)-769-9299
With Andrew Baran, who shot the cover of Searching for Suzi. Check out Andrew's new online photography magazine, Scarlet Magazine.
See Video from Bookworm Here
See Pizza Shoppe Collective Video Here
UPCOMING PROMOTIONAL DATES:
Denver:
February 22, 2010
The Writers Studio: A Conversation with Novelists William Hayworth Henderson and Nancy Stohlman
4:00 PM
Arapahoe Community College
5900 South Santa Fe Drive
4th floor M 4750
Littleton, Colorado 80120-1801
303.797.4222
Chicago:
March 4, 2010
Quimby’s Bookstore
7pm: Reading and Booksigning
1854 West North Avenue
Chicago, IL 60622
(733) 342-0910
www.quimbys.com
March 5, 2010
Women and Children First Bookstore
Time 7:30: Reading and Booksigning
5233 North Clark Stree
Chicago, IL 60640-2111
(773)-769-9299
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Those Kinds of Girls
Forthcoming in Anthology of the Awkward: The Virgins
“You can sit down right there, young lady,” my dad says, holding up a pile of papers. “When we were going through your room we found this.” He reads:
The full moon was shining over a calm lake. Jesse and I were laying on the beach, the cool waters touching our toes. He reaches for my…
My dad stops reading and squints at me. “Do you recognize this?”
I swallow. Of course. I worked on that story for a week straight, stuck it under my bed during the day with my diary and all the notes I’ve collected from school and everything else personal. They had always been looking for an excuse to snoop. And now they had it: Three hours earlier I had told a friend at school that I had tried to kill myself. It was a pathetic attempt, really, a bottle of aspirin that only made my stomach hurt, a few lines of poetry lifted from a Def Leppard song: “Lady Luck never smiles, so lend your heart to me awhile…” But I knew my secret was out when my name was called over the intercom during 7th period. I reported to the office, was given a slip and told to go home.
I walked, knowing whatever waited for me couldn’t be good. Maybe they’d be sad, crying that they had almost lost their precious daughter. After a night spent vomiting aspirin I had totally lost my taste for death, anyway, but I was sure they would lecture me. Ground me, probably. Make me talk to a priest.
When I got home all the shades were drawn in the living room and my parents were waiting for me, holding photocopied sheets of paper:
I feel warm as he unbuttons my blouse and slips off his shirt. He slips his hand under my bra and touches my breast, then my stomach, then slides his fingers down my panties. He takes his white t-shirt off and his chest is smooth and warm. “You’re so beautiful,” he says. “I can’t believe how lucky I am.”
My father stops reading, coughs awkwardly and shuffles the papers. Dear god, did he really have to read it outloud?
“This is very, uh, descriptive writing,” he finally says, looking away.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
“You know what happens to girls like you, don’t you? You get a bad reputation. No decent guy will want to go out with you.”
“But I made it up.”
My dad shuffles the paperwork again and settles on another passage: Jesse passes me the bottle of vodka and takes a swig, then I take a swig. When he kisses me his lips taste like vodka. “So you’re drinking now, too?”
“But it’s just a story I wrote,” I say, weaker.
Our bodies move with the waves of the lake and I’m not a virgin anymore. My dad glares at me and pushes his glasses up his nose. “Do you know what they call girls like you? They call them sluts.”
There was no point in telling my father that there was no Jesse, that I was a virgin, that putting dangerous words on paper was the only sexual catharsis I’d had. There was no point in telling him that I hated drinking, could barely choke the stuff down. That the only naked male bodies I’d seen were from the porn I found stashed behind our regular VCR movies in unmarked boxes or in the magazines in his nightstand drawer.
I knew there was no point in trying to explain to my parents how my dreams of freedom surged even greater than my hormones, painted my restricted world with swooshes of reds and golds and purples, joyriding, flying, how I imagined a day when I would not be grounded to the house in an endless military drill, a day when there would be no screaming, no fighting, no hiding in the shadows listening to the crying, a day when the woman my father was having an affair with would stop calling, coming over and pretending like she was still just our next-door neighbor, a day when my mom wouldn’t be preoccupied with her own grief long enough to pay attention to me.
“I’m ashamed of you,” my father decreed, folding my 10-page story and tucking it into a manila folder. “I never thought my daughter would end up to be one of those kinds of girls. And we’re going to lock the liquor cabinet from now on.”
“You can sit down right there, young lady,” my dad says, holding up a pile of papers. “When we were going through your room we found this.” He reads:
The full moon was shining over a calm lake. Jesse and I were laying on the beach, the cool waters touching our toes. He reaches for my…
My dad stops reading and squints at me. “Do you recognize this?”
I swallow. Of course. I worked on that story for a week straight, stuck it under my bed during the day with my diary and all the notes I’ve collected from school and everything else personal. They had always been looking for an excuse to snoop. And now they had it: Three hours earlier I had told a friend at school that I had tried to kill myself. It was a pathetic attempt, really, a bottle of aspirin that only made my stomach hurt, a few lines of poetry lifted from a Def Leppard song: “Lady Luck never smiles, so lend your heart to me awhile…” But I knew my secret was out when my name was called over the intercom during 7th period. I reported to the office, was given a slip and told to go home.
I walked, knowing whatever waited for me couldn’t be good. Maybe they’d be sad, crying that they had almost lost their precious daughter. After a night spent vomiting aspirin I had totally lost my taste for death, anyway, but I was sure they would lecture me. Ground me, probably. Make me talk to a priest.
When I got home all the shades were drawn in the living room and my parents were waiting for me, holding photocopied sheets of paper:
I feel warm as he unbuttons my blouse and slips off his shirt. He slips his hand under my bra and touches my breast, then my stomach, then slides his fingers down my panties. He takes his white t-shirt off and his chest is smooth and warm. “You’re so beautiful,” he says. “I can’t believe how lucky I am.”
My father stops reading, coughs awkwardly and shuffles the papers. Dear god, did he really have to read it outloud?
“This is very, uh, descriptive writing,” he finally says, looking away.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
“You know what happens to girls like you, don’t you? You get a bad reputation. No decent guy will want to go out with you.”
“But I made it up.”
My dad shuffles the paperwork again and settles on another passage: Jesse passes me the bottle of vodka and takes a swig, then I take a swig. When he kisses me his lips taste like vodka. “So you’re drinking now, too?”
“But it’s just a story I wrote,” I say, weaker.
Our bodies move with the waves of the lake and I’m not a virgin anymore. My dad glares at me and pushes his glasses up his nose. “Do you know what they call girls like you? They call them sluts.”
There was no point in telling my father that there was no Jesse, that I was a virgin, that putting dangerous words on paper was the only sexual catharsis I’d had. There was no point in telling him that I hated drinking, could barely choke the stuff down. That the only naked male bodies I’d seen were from the porn I found stashed behind our regular VCR movies in unmarked boxes or in the magazines in his nightstand drawer.
I knew there was no point in trying to explain to my parents how my dreams of freedom surged even greater than my hormones, painted my restricted world with swooshes of reds and golds and purples, joyriding, flying, how I imagined a day when I would not be grounded to the house in an endless military drill, a day when there would be no screaming, no fighting, no hiding in the shadows listening to the crying, a day when the woman my father was having an affair with would stop calling, coming over and pretending like she was still just our next-door neighbor, a day when my mom wouldn’t be preoccupied with her own grief long enough to pay attention to me.
“I’m ashamed of you,” my father decreed, folding my 10-page story and tucking it into a manila folder. “I never thought my daughter would end up to be one of those kinds of girls. And we’re going to lock the liquor cabinet from now on.”
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Poem to Porn
Published in Illiterate Magazine, Hate to Love and Love to Hate Issue
A thigh, spread
hairless,
an ass, pushing
pushing
pushing
silent moans
volume turned down
baby asleep in the other room
don’t need the volume anyway...
I’m 12 years old
in my father’s nightstand drawer
flipping pages
listening for the car
I’m 13 years old
rubbing against the arm of the couch
volume turned down
girl unzips leather pants,
takes on five men,
girl dives into girl,
faked enthusiasm,
girl, tied up
sandwiched between two old men
I’m 14 years old
I’m 15 years old
I’m 16 years old
porn on the big screen:
woman dressed as nun
woman jogging naked
woman rubbing shaving cream on other woman’s breasts
I’m 16 years old
trying to deflect wandering hands holding dollar bills
hoping my high school principal won’t recognize me
I’m 17 years old
in the adult bookstore
watching a woman
give head to a dildo
I’m 18 years old and have never had an orgasm
I’m 19 years old and have never had an orgasm
I’m 23 years old and don’t know why I can’t have an orgasm
I’m 27 years old and only cum if I picture a spread thigh,
a faceless cock
a woman
tied up and sandwiched between two old men,
a woman
unzipping leather pants and taking on five men
I’m 30 years old and only cum if I picture something other than
love.
I’m 33 years old and wonder why I don’t like sex.
We sit in the dark as you confess
and I can only nod--
I understand, after all.
I’ve been competing against it my whole life
educated myself on it
fashioned myself in its glitzy, airbrushed image,
oh, to erase every crotch shot
money shot
conjured moan
fake orgasm
become that young girl
without the contents of the nightstand drawer.
I’m 36 years old and porn has stolen my sexuality.
Now there’s
You,
the one I want to be different
and Me,
haunted.
You,
the one I want to be different
and Me,
unlearning.
A thigh, spread
hairless,
an ass, pushing
pushing
pushing
silent moans
volume turned down
baby asleep in the other room
don’t need the volume anyway...
I’m 12 years old
in my father’s nightstand drawer
flipping pages
listening for the car
I’m 13 years old
rubbing against the arm of the couch
volume turned down
girl unzips leather pants,
takes on five men,
girl dives into girl,
faked enthusiasm,
girl, tied up
sandwiched between two old men
I’m 14 years old
I’m 15 years old
I’m 16 years old
porn on the big screen:
woman dressed as nun
woman jogging naked
woman rubbing shaving cream on other woman’s breasts
I’m 16 years old
trying to deflect wandering hands holding dollar bills
hoping my high school principal won’t recognize me
I’m 17 years old
in the adult bookstore
watching a woman
give head to a dildo
I’m 18 years old and have never had an orgasm
I’m 19 years old and have never had an orgasm
I’m 23 years old and don’t know why I can’t have an orgasm
I’m 27 years old and only cum if I picture a spread thigh,
a faceless cock
a woman
tied up and sandwiched between two old men,
a woman
unzipping leather pants and taking on five men
I’m 30 years old and only cum if I picture something other than
love.
I’m 33 years old and wonder why I don’t like sex.
We sit in the dark as you confess
and I can only nod--
I understand, after all.
I’ve been competing against it my whole life
educated myself on it
fashioned myself in its glitzy, airbrushed image,
oh, to erase every crotch shot
money shot
conjured moan
fake orgasm
become that young girl
without the contents of the nightstand drawer.
I’m 36 years old and porn has stolen my sexuality.
Now there’s
You,
the one I want to be different
and Me,
haunted.
You,
the one I want to be different
and Me,
unlearning.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Searching for Suzi Book Launch December 2
Searching for Suzi Release Party
Wednesday, December 2, 2009, 6 pm
Mercury Cafe
2199 California St
Denver, CO 80205-2821
(303) 294-9258
Musical Guest: Nick Busheff
Monkey Puzzle Press is proud to announce the publication of our new novel - Searching for Suzi by Nancy Stohlman!
For a free preview, click here: Searching for Suzi
From Monkey Puzzle Press:
What happens when an ex-stripper in her mid-thirties, married with children, awakens one day questioning what brought her to a current life of complicated domesticity? Compelled to return to Omaha after seventeen years, the narrator we only know as Natalie begins a quest into her past, an adventure that takes the reader from childhood beauty pageants to the sex and glamour industries. Natalie’s search becomes an intrepid journey through her own sexuality, a woman not only claiming herself but also accepting her contradictions. With inquisitive perception and agile use of perspective, Searching for Suzi is an investigation into the tragic shadows of a past preferred to be forgotten.
Here’s what people are saying about Searching for Suzi:
“Sexy, gutsy, raw and mature. A literary strip tease, Nancy Stohlman lures us through the layers of her dark world with the promise of exposing the ultimate sparkle…and ends up revealing something profound.”
Raymond Federman
Author of Double or Nothing
“Searching for Suzi offers syntax of desire itself – the complex, difficult, and beautiful ways we rupture into and beyond our own ghost-versions inside the mystery of hello and good-bye. Nancy Stohlman has written a spare, searing, and stunning book. It will wake you in the way that only necessary art can do.”
Selah Saterstrom
Author of The Meat and Spirit Plan
“In cheap pulp fiction, a stripper is either the helpless victim of sexual exploitation or the gutsy woman who makes the system work for her. Searching for Suzi is not pulp fiction. Nancy Stohlman smartly complicates the stereotypes with this story of a woman looking back on her life from a scrutinizing distance, separating the romantic images from the real and transforming the latter, through the art of storytelling, into something intimate and compelling.”
Danielle Dutton
Author of Attempts at a Life
$11.95 - Available for Pre-Order at Monkey Puzzle Books! Click Here
Or follow this link to Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Searching-Suzi-Nancy-Stohlman/dp/0980165067/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256824871&sr=1-4
Wednesday, December 2, 2009, 6 pm
Mercury Cafe
2199 California St
Denver, CO 80205-2821
(303) 294-9258
Musical Guest: Nick Busheff
Monkey Puzzle Press is proud to announce the publication of our new novel - Searching for Suzi by Nancy Stohlman!
For a free preview, click here: Searching for Suzi
From Monkey Puzzle Press:
What happens when an ex-stripper in her mid-thirties, married with children, awakens one day questioning what brought her to a current life of complicated domesticity? Compelled to return to Omaha after seventeen years, the narrator we only know as Natalie begins a quest into her past, an adventure that takes the reader from childhood beauty pageants to the sex and glamour industries. Natalie’s search becomes an intrepid journey through her own sexuality, a woman not only claiming herself but also accepting her contradictions. With inquisitive perception and agile use of perspective, Searching for Suzi is an investigation into the tragic shadows of a past preferred to be forgotten.
Here’s what people are saying about Searching for Suzi:
“Sexy, gutsy, raw and mature. A literary strip tease, Nancy Stohlman lures us through the layers of her dark world with the promise of exposing the ultimate sparkle…and ends up revealing something profound.”
Raymond Federman
Author of Double or Nothing
“Searching for Suzi offers syntax of desire itself – the complex, difficult, and beautiful ways we rupture into and beyond our own ghost-versions inside the mystery of hello and good-bye. Nancy Stohlman has written a spare, searing, and stunning book. It will wake you in the way that only necessary art can do.”
Selah Saterstrom
Author of The Meat and Spirit Plan
“In cheap pulp fiction, a stripper is either the helpless victim of sexual exploitation or the gutsy woman who makes the system work for her. Searching for Suzi is not pulp fiction. Nancy Stohlman smartly complicates the stereotypes with this story of a woman looking back on her life from a scrutinizing distance, separating the romantic images from the real and transforming the latter, through the art of storytelling, into something intimate and compelling.”
Danielle Dutton
Author of Attempts at a Life
$11.95 - Available for Pre-Order at Monkey Puzzle Books! Click Here
Or follow this link to Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Searching-Suzi-Nancy-Stohlman/dp/0980165067/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256824871&sr=1-4
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Excerpt from Searching for Suzi
Release date November 15, 2009
Forthcoming in Monkey Puzzle Magazine, Fall Edition
Watch the YouTube Video Here
Fourteen years after you’ve quit dancing, when you find yourself in the middle of a conversation about strippers at a wedding reception, or a book club, or any of the many places that these conversations begin, stay silent. Soon someone will admit they have a friend of a friend who is a stripper and then the inevitable elbow jabbing from the others, “Sure, your friend is a stripper,” someone will say. To which they will all laugh knowingly, the superior, non-stripper race.
You love being in the middle of these conversations. They never believe you, sweet, normal you, was an ex-stripper. So stay silent awhile before dropping the bomb.
“Well my friend told me that she makes a thousand dollars a night.”
“Yeah, I heard that, too.”
“I knew a girl in college who put herself through medical school as a stripper,” (this usually comes from a man). “She worked at night and went to medical school during the day.”
“I hear it’s dangerous. Stalkers and psychos trying to follow you home every night.”
“Oh, it is,” another assures. “My friend told me they are required to take taxis.”
Consensual nods and mock worry. Poor little strippers.
But the mystical, elusive stripper is in their midst and they don’t even know it. They sip chai lattes, unaware. Timing is everything. It has to be done in such a way to elicit maximum humiliation—not too early that everyone hasn’t revealed their fleshy pink judgmental insides, but not too late that the topic is beginning to wane.
“One of my friends went to The Romper Room and the dancer bent over and a crab jumped into his eye.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“He must be lying.”
“No, it’s true. He even had to go to the doctor.”
The best place to drop the bomb is in a group of women. When it’s mixed company you run the risk of impressing the men too much (they’ll mentally undress you, place you against an imaginary brass pole to see if the story stands), which will turn the women against you.
“You know, I would do it,” one of the women confesses.
“You would?”
“Sure,” she says, “if I was getting a thousand dollars a night.”
“Well you know, they offer pole dancing classes now at such-and-such yoga studio.”
“We should all go.” Giggles. Painted fingernails.
The moment to drop the bomb might be passing. If they collectively agree to go to pole dancing classes, then your announcement will only come off as bragging. Or worse—they’ll invite you to come along.
“I was a stripper for four years,” you say. The women face you, realizing for the first time that indeed you haven’t chimed in on this conversation. “Really?” one of them manages amidst much throat clearing and backpedaling through the conversation in everyone’s minds: Did I call them sluts? Whores? Damn. Should have kept my mouth shut.
This is the golden moment, of course, so let it last. Shrug. “I didn’t have to take out any loans for undergrad.”
An inaudible sigh—yes, you were one of those, the student strippers, the “good” ones, studying your textbooks in the dressing room. Thank god, you can hear them thinking. Don’t tell them about Suzi or the bachelor parties. “I was sixteen.”
Protests crease their foreheads: Impossible.
A club would get shut down for that.
The owner would go to jail.
That’s what laws are for.
They’ll want to call you full of shit but they won’t dare. “How did you manage that?” one finally asks.
“I said I was twenty. They never checked my ID. As long as I didn’t drink they didn’t care.”
The women don’t like this answer. They fidget. If it’s that easy then nobody is safe. “This was in the nineties though. The laws might be stricter now.”
Relieved, they all nod—of course the laws are stricter now. Whew. What a heathen time that must have been, when sixteen year-old girls could walk into strip clubs and get jobs and no one was the wiser.
You know the truth, though—why would the laws have gotten stricter? It’s not like there’s an orange alert crackdown on underage strippers. But at this point they’re very uncomfortable so you find a way to let them off the hook, throw in your “official” two cents about the sex industry and then gracefully suggest a new topic of conversation. You have several options. You can go the “Funny, the laws are different in every state” route, or you can go the “Want to hear the weirdest thing that ever happened to me as a stripper” route.
There is a third route, though. You could tell them that, at age sixteen, you felt like you had one-upped society—presented with limitations, told your greatest asset was your looks, you found a way to give yourself financial autonomy and a higher education. That you pat yourself on the back for your clever outsmarting of the society that placed the limitations on you to begin with. Fuck them for their pity. Every stripper you ever met was there on her own accord. There were no pimps waiting in the parking lots. You were more protected dancing on stage than in the real world. At least you chose to be there. At least you got to say yes.
Forthcoming in Monkey Puzzle Magazine, Fall Edition
Watch the YouTube Video Here
Fourteen years after you’ve quit dancing, when you find yourself in the middle of a conversation about strippers at a wedding reception, or a book club, or any of the many places that these conversations begin, stay silent. Soon someone will admit they have a friend of a friend who is a stripper and then the inevitable elbow jabbing from the others, “Sure, your friend is a stripper,” someone will say. To which they will all laugh knowingly, the superior, non-stripper race.
You love being in the middle of these conversations. They never believe you, sweet, normal you, was an ex-stripper. So stay silent awhile before dropping the bomb.
“Well my friend told me that she makes a thousand dollars a night.”
“Yeah, I heard that, too.”
“I knew a girl in college who put herself through medical school as a stripper,” (this usually comes from a man). “She worked at night and went to medical school during the day.”
“I hear it’s dangerous. Stalkers and psychos trying to follow you home every night.”
“Oh, it is,” another assures. “My friend told me they are required to take taxis.”
Consensual nods and mock worry. Poor little strippers.
But the mystical, elusive stripper is in their midst and they don’t even know it. They sip chai lattes, unaware. Timing is everything. It has to be done in such a way to elicit maximum humiliation—not too early that everyone hasn’t revealed their fleshy pink judgmental insides, but not too late that the topic is beginning to wane.
“One of my friends went to The Romper Room and the dancer bent over and a crab jumped into his eye.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“He must be lying.”
“No, it’s true. He even had to go to the doctor.”
The best place to drop the bomb is in a group of women. When it’s mixed company you run the risk of impressing the men too much (they’ll mentally undress you, place you against an imaginary brass pole to see if the story stands), which will turn the women against you.
“You know, I would do it,” one of the women confesses.
“You would?”
“Sure,” she says, “if I was getting a thousand dollars a night.”
“Well you know, they offer pole dancing classes now at such-and-such yoga studio.”
“We should all go.” Giggles. Painted fingernails.
The moment to drop the bomb might be passing. If they collectively agree to go to pole dancing classes, then your announcement will only come off as bragging. Or worse—they’ll invite you to come along.
“I was a stripper for four years,” you say. The women face you, realizing for the first time that indeed you haven’t chimed in on this conversation. “Really?” one of them manages amidst much throat clearing and backpedaling through the conversation in everyone’s minds: Did I call them sluts? Whores? Damn. Should have kept my mouth shut.
This is the golden moment, of course, so let it last. Shrug. “I didn’t have to take out any loans for undergrad.”
An inaudible sigh—yes, you were one of those, the student strippers, the “good” ones, studying your textbooks in the dressing room. Thank god, you can hear them thinking. Don’t tell them about Suzi or the bachelor parties. “I was sixteen.”
Protests crease their foreheads: Impossible.
A club would get shut down for that.
The owner would go to jail.
That’s what laws are for.
They’ll want to call you full of shit but they won’t dare. “How did you manage that?” one finally asks.
“I said I was twenty. They never checked my ID. As long as I didn’t drink they didn’t care.”
The women don’t like this answer. They fidget. If it’s that easy then nobody is safe. “This was in the nineties though. The laws might be stricter now.”
Relieved, they all nod—of course the laws are stricter now. Whew. What a heathen time that must have been, when sixteen year-old girls could walk into strip clubs and get jobs and no one was the wiser.
You know the truth, though—why would the laws have gotten stricter? It’s not like there’s an orange alert crackdown on underage strippers. But at this point they’re very uncomfortable so you find a way to let them off the hook, throw in your “official” two cents about the sex industry and then gracefully suggest a new topic of conversation. You have several options. You can go the “Funny, the laws are different in every state” route, or you can go the “Want to hear the weirdest thing that ever happened to me as a stripper” route.
There is a third route, though. You could tell them that, at age sixteen, you felt like you had one-upped society—presented with limitations, told your greatest asset was your looks, you found a way to give yourself financial autonomy and a higher education. That you pat yourself on the back for your clever outsmarting of the society that placed the limitations on you to begin with. Fuck them for their pity. Every stripper you ever met was there on her own accord. There were no pimps waiting in the parking lots. You were more protected dancing on stage than in the real world. At least you chose to be there. At least you got to say yes.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Swallow
An excerpt from SEARCHING FOR SUZI
Release date November 15, 2009
When I was fourteen my father gave me the accumulation of his life’s wisdom: if you want to keep a man, learn to swallow.
This was several years after they had started having “slumber parties” with our next-door neighbors where they all wore matching pajamas. Some weekends we’d alternate and all sleep at the neighbor’s house, me alone in the guest bedroom and the four of them in the king-sized master bed, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice style.
The slumber parties were only the latest in a string of similar events. Like the way my father dressed my mother up in wooden heels and no bra and paraded her around the mall, following ten paces behind. Or our series of pretty college babysitters. Or the bachelors and newlywed couples that always seemed to come to dinner.
My mother was a pageant girl herself, always beautifully posed in those old black-and-white group shots of all the contestants in their 60’s coifs and A-line satin gowns. But my mother never won a pageant. Even in the photographs her eyes are shy, embarrassed by all the attention. The other girls cheated, she claimed. It was all a popularity contest. She would blame the hairdresser, the too-tight shoes, the fact she had been crying all night with nerves.
My father loved to tell stories about my mother’s loser, outcast boyfriends; he taunted her about her morning breath, stinky feet, beak nose, giraffe neck, her one slightly discolored tooth from an old root canal. As I approached puberty, I got it too: my budding breasts were mosquito bites, ironing boards. When guests were over he hung up my training bra with a note that said “feed me.”
Right about the time I discovered my father’s vast porn collection, my mother discovered Jesus and the slumber parties stopped. So my father’s affair began. Every evening for five years he ate dinner, showered, shaved, put on clean clothes and went “next door.” If we needed him in the evenings we’d have to call next door. If I wanted to spend quality time with him it had to be while he was shaving.
“She” became a loaded word. Fights were intense and unpredictable. I stopped bringing friends home. My mother destroyed gifts, gave away any clothing reminiscent of “her” or their slumber parties; I was endlessly grounded, chained to the house.
Then one night I was home alone. Fed up, I had a bottle of aspirin and a Capri Sun. I dumped out the pile of little white discs and counted: fifty-two.
I heard twenty aspirin would kill you, so I took twenty. Then I took the rest, very fast. I lay on the carpet and waited for the Angel of Death to come and carry me away, but after an hour I was still waiting. Poison was singing about every rose having its thorn. The death part must take a while, I decided, so I did what any fifteen-year-old would do: I snuck out.
I hurried to a party that I wasn’t allowed to attend—I was grounded, after all. But I was going to die soon, so what did it matter? I don’t remember the details of the party, and once there, the aspirin dissolving in my stomach seemed as surreal as the Cheetos or the vodka-grape soda mixture in my plastic cup. After an hour or so, I began to dread the severe punishment that was surely awaiting me at home when I was discovered missing.
I stumbled home, past the huge dark lumps of suburban houses and the sounds of sputtering sprinklers, and my mind vacillated between the excuse I would use to explain why I had gone to a forbidden party and the excuse I would use to explain why I was going to die. I was woozy. I imagined myself falling dramatically through my front door, on the verge of death, and my father taking me in his arms and weeping, No!
My father sat in his bathrobe in front of the TV, the couch already made up with blankets and pillows from previous weeks.
“Where have you been?” he said without looking at me. “You’re grounded for another month.”
Dying now seemed like a very bad idea. I ran upstairs to the bathroom and tried to puke. I watched the room spin, pleading, I made a mistake. I don’t want to die any more. I begged and bargained until sleep finally won and the next morning I woke up alive.
My parents found out about the whole ordeal three weeks later when the only friend I’d confided in told our high school principal, Father Frank Dimitri, “for my own protection.” I should have kept my mouth shut. My parents were waiting for me after school with torches lit, lynching rope ready. My father held photocopied sheets of my diary; my mother slowly explained how they would never be able to leave me alone in the house because I might clean out the medicine cabinet like some common druggie. That same day they packed my bag and drove me to Lutheran Hospital, checked me into the teen psychiatric ward, told the nurses that I was to have no visitors, and left me to watch the holiday lights go up, and then come down, outside my seventh-story window.
My parents split six months after I was released from the hospital—they couldn’t stand up to the scrutiny that followed a daughter’s suicide attempt. The precarious marriage was finally put out of its misery and my father moved out, leaving only a note on my bed saying I hadn’t been much of a daughter.
Even now I still think about his strange, almost prophetic advice: If you want to keep a man, learn to swallow. I’ve swallowed so much, Dad, I want to say. More than you ever told me I would have to.
Release date November 15, 2009
When I was fourteen my father gave me the accumulation of his life’s wisdom: if you want to keep a man, learn to swallow.
This was several years after they had started having “slumber parties” with our next-door neighbors where they all wore matching pajamas. Some weekends we’d alternate and all sleep at the neighbor’s house, me alone in the guest bedroom and the four of them in the king-sized master bed, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice style.
The slumber parties were only the latest in a string of similar events. Like the way my father dressed my mother up in wooden heels and no bra and paraded her around the mall, following ten paces behind. Or our series of pretty college babysitters. Or the bachelors and newlywed couples that always seemed to come to dinner.
My mother was a pageant girl herself, always beautifully posed in those old black-and-white group shots of all the contestants in their 60’s coifs and A-line satin gowns. But my mother never won a pageant. Even in the photographs her eyes are shy, embarrassed by all the attention. The other girls cheated, she claimed. It was all a popularity contest. She would blame the hairdresser, the too-tight shoes, the fact she had been crying all night with nerves.
My father loved to tell stories about my mother’s loser, outcast boyfriends; he taunted her about her morning breath, stinky feet, beak nose, giraffe neck, her one slightly discolored tooth from an old root canal. As I approached puberty, I got it too: my budding breasts were mosquito bites, ironing boards. When guests were over he hung up my training bra with a note that said “feed me.”
Right about the time I discovered my father’s vast porn collection, my mother discovered Jesus and the slumber parties stopped. So my father’s affair began. Every evening for five years he ate dinner, showered, shaved, put on clean clothes and went “next door.” If we needed him in the evenings we’d have to call next door. If I wanted to spend quality time with him it had to be while he was shaving.
“She” became a loaded word. Fights were intense and unpredictable. I stopped bringing friends home. My mother destroyed gifts, gave away any clothing reminiscent of “her” or their slumber parties; I was endlessly grounded, chained to the house.
Then one night I was home alone. Fed up, I had a bottle of aspirin and a Capri Sun. I dumped out the pile of little white discs and counted: fifty-two.
I heard twenty aspirin would kill you, so I took twenty. Then I took the rest, very fast. I lay on the carpet and waited for the Angel of Death to come and carry me away, but after an hour I was still waiting. Poison was singing about every rose having its thorn. The death part must take a while, I decided, so I did what any fifteen-year-old would do: I snuck out.
I hurried to a party that I wasn’t allowed to attend—I was grounded, after all. But I was going to die soon, so what did it matter? I don’t remember the details of the party, and once there, the aspirin dissolving in my stomach seemed as surreal as the Cheetos or the vodka-grape soda mixture in my plastic cup. After an hour or so, I began to dread the severe punishment that was surely awaiting me at home when I was discovered missing.
I stumbled home, past the huge dark lumps of suburban houses and the sounds of sputtering sprinklers, and my mind vacillated between the excuse I would use to explain why I had gone to a forbidden party and the excuse I would use to explain why I was going to die. I was woozy. I imagined myself falling dramatically through my front door, on the verge of death, and my father taking me in his arms and weeping, No!
My father sat in his bathrobe in front of the TV, the couch already made up with blankets and pillows from previous weeks.
“Where have you been?” he said without looking at me. “You’re grounded for another month.”
Dying now seemed like a very bad idea. I ran upstairs to the bathroom and tried to puke. I watched the room spin, pleading, I made a mistake. I don’t want to die any more. I begged and bargained until sleep finally won and the next morning I woke up alive.
My parents found out about the whole ordeal three weeks later when the only friend I’d confided in told our high school principal, Father Frank Dimitri, “for my own protection.” I should have kept my mouth shut. My parents were waiting for me after school with torches lit, lynching rope ready. My father held photocopied sheets of my diary; my mother slowly explained how they would never be able to leave me alone in the house because I might clean out the medicine cabinet like some common druggie. That same day they packed my bag and drove me to Lutheran Hospital, checked me into the teen psychiatric ward, told the nurses that I was to have no visitors, and left me to watch the holiday lights go up, and then come down, outside my seventh-story window.
My parents split six months after I was released from the hospital—they couldn’t stand up to the scrutiny that followed a daughter’s suicide attempt. The precarious marriage was finally put out of its misery and my father moved out, leaving only a note on my bed saying I hadn’t been much of a daughter.
Even now I still think about his strange, almost prophetic advice: If you want to keep a man, learn to swallow. I’ve swallowed so much, Dad, I want to say. More than you ever told me I would have to.
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