The Life of A Jewish Stripper, A Memoir

You’re probably wondering right now what is so interesting about a Jewish stripper or any stripper for that matter and how and why one becomes a stripper or why you should even care. The short answer is I became a stripper because it’s what I thought some guy wanted. The real answer is much more complex.

I have a great respect for strippers and sex workers of any type and not just because I was one. It may seem like an easy job, just get naked and get your money, it’s not. I and they put up with a lot of shit and most of them are great women who as the cliché goes have a heart of gold.

The truth is yes some of these women have sex for money with customers, it is is a fact. But it wasn’t my job to judge them. I’m sure they had their reasons, and though society may call them whores, in my opinion they are no worse than some businessmen or politicians who could be considered whores.

Some women I worked with were putting themselves through school, others were single mothers just trying to get by. Some were doing both, raising kids and working toward a degree. But many others like myself got into it for other reasons. I have worked with women who were not from broken homes. Some of their parents had been together more than thirty years and their families were “normal”.

I do not think of myself as a victim and hope I don’t come off as a narcissist. Though some things happened in my life when I was a child which may have made me a victim of circumstances.

I am also a cliché, a Russian stripper, this is nothing new, is it? But a Jewish Russian stripper? Well, you don’t come across that every day now do you. Though in the Baltimore area I worked in a club where I ran into quite a few Jewish strippers in my time. And some of them were having sex for money. What they did inside or outside the club was their business as far as I was concerned.

Me, I think I fell through the cracks. I hated school once I came to America from Russia. Not having a strong father figure greatly influenced my life. I suppose my story is typical. I’m from a broken home, raised by a single mother. I never really knew my father. I only knew him from what my mother and grandmother told me, and my mother was emotionally unavailable.

The things they said about my father in front of me should have never been said. That was a mistake on my mother’s part, and she knows it and I forgive her now. But for a long time, it seeped into my subconscious. Whatever my father was, was also part of me and I won’t lie, it fucked me up pretty bad. For a long time, I thought if my father is a piece of shit, I too must be one.

I guess I fell into the trap of what seemed to be “easy cash” like many others.

Let me just say if you’re looking for a warm, fuzzy read this book is not for you. If curse words, anger and sexual situations offend you, I don’t suggest reading it.

There is no happy ending here for the moment, I’ve ended up alone with no kids, no friends except mostly Facebook friends most of whom I rarely see or talk to. My Facebook friends are mostly people I worked with at some point. I guess I’m a loner by choice. I became an introvert I suppose, perhaps because I’m not very good at putting up with people’s bullshit or they with mine. I seem to be a magnet for toxic, broken men who are womanizers or narcissists.

So, I won’t be telling you if you’re on a dark road you need to wake up.

I will just tell you my story. There is loneliness and fear and many, many regrets. I only bare my soul to you because I believe you can’t know where you’re going unless you understand where you’ve been and perhaps, I do have a message for women.

What is my message for women? It is quite simple. Always follow your first instinct. If something makes you uncomfortable it is a red flag that something is wrong. You gut reaction will always be the correct one.

Most people think of strippers as whores or gold diggers, I am neither in my opinion. You may ask how did a “nice little Jewish girl” became a stripper? I, after all, like all Americans had every opportunity to go to school and get an education and use the education to become more than a stripper or get a life for that matter. And yet I chose to waste five years of my life on being a stripper. I suppose it wasn’t really all a waste. I learned a lot about men and how they act completely different when they’re away from their wives or girlfriends once they step inside a strip club and I learned a lot about human nature in general.

To be honest I miss it every day of my life. I miss the money, the attention, the feeling of power over men and the comradery with the other women. It is not as a glamorous a job as it may seem. I thought it was something I would never want to do with the rest of my life, I think as I neared thirty I feared I would get trapped in it. Perhaps I am romancing the past, because when I was in it at the end all I wanted was to get out. I only wish I had saved as much money as I could instead of wasting it on my ex-husband’s drug habit.

Thinking back to when I was a stripper actually depresses me sometimes. I miss it terribly still to this day. I know I seem conflicted here. Did I love it, or did I hate it? I suppose both at times.

It isn’t just the instant gratification of cash. It isn’t just being young, irresponsible and drinking and drugging. It’s feeling sexy and comfortable in your own skin. It’s the way the men look at you, the fantasy you provide. It’s the gratification of seeing yourself in someone else’s eyes. It’s putting on the heels that make you feel tall, especially if you’re 5’4 like me. It’s putting on the outfits and the make-up. It’s like playing dress up and in my opinion, you’re almost like an actress getting ready for her part. It’s being able to do things on the pole which make you feel like you can fly and you’re weightless though you’re hanging on with every ounce of energy you have.

Or perhaps it is a need for a man’s approval that drives many women to make this choice in life. Perhaps it’s the attention I didn’t get from daddy which I longed for all my life. Perhaps it has nothing to do with power over men and just the opposite. Maybe because our society is patriarchal, and many young women’s need for male approval. After all, I wanted to become what I thought a man wanted which had driven me to take off my clothes in front of people for money, and perhaps it is our repressed society that shamed me into thinking it was wrong. Perhaps many people are uncomfortable with a naked body, be it beautiful or not.

My ex-husband was addicted to pornography. He was always playing pornos and showing me magazines like Penthouse and Hustler and pointing out what he found pleasing in a woman. He taught me to look at women through a man’s eyes, or through his eyes. Though I suspect he did those things to prove he isn’t gay or bi-sexual. He imitated gay men so well and he seemed fascinated with transgender individuals. He would even show me pictures of men who had the sex change done and he was fascinated with their new genitals and how a man was transformed into a woman. I even once worked with a man who had become a woman and if no one told me I would have never guessed.

I am an angry person, I admit it without hesitation, I am pissed off at a lot of people, and is probably why I don’t have many friends. I don’t let go of anger easily. Or maybe I am just pissed off at the world because I often feel cursed from birth. Quite often I am angry at my grandparents who sheltered my mother from the real world and in turn she sheltered me. I’m also often pissed off at my so- called friends who abandoned me. Tolerance and forgiveness are lessons I’m still learning.

Perhaps I’m trying to learn not to repeat all my mistakes and not dwell on them, or may be someone can learn from them, otherwise this book is only for me and my selfish reasons to blast all my anger and try to drive it out of my soul.

It may seem like I’m blaming my mother for everything that went wrong in my life, and many times I did want to lay all the blame on her, and I am still learning to forgive her for. But, as Carrie Fisher said once, “My mother made a blueprint and I followed it to the letter.” What other role model did I have? I know my mother loves me more than life itself. I know she would do anything if she could take back some things or change them and I know she would do anything for me, now.

But a lot of this anger comes from the voice of a child not an adult. Maybe I am just an ungrateful daughter, I don’t know.

My mother will hate seeing some of the things I’ve written here, and I hope she will forgive me for writing it all down, but I feel it is time for plain, old, honest truth. Maybe I am tired of sweeping it all under the cliché rug.

I know she was a young, single mom who did her best with what she was given by her parents. My mother says my grandmother was a very tough woman who often told her she had “kuriniye mozgi” or to translate from Russian it basically means chicken shit for brains. What a great thing to tell your daughter! So, my grandmother was not the warmest person who showed a lot of affection. My grandmother was a very tough woman, she and her sisters lived through a war, and being Jews, it was a miracle they survived.

After my great grandparents (my maternal grandparents) were killed by the Nazis, my grandmother and her sisters were sent to Siberia and is why they survived the war, the Germans didn’t make it to Siberia.

My grandmother had beautiful, long black hair and deep, almond, almost black eyes and the same olive, Mediterranean skin as my mother and I have. She was a short woman, only 5’2 but she seemed so strong and commanding. But I suppose she was emotionally unavailable. Most people who lived through a war didn’t want to speak of the atrocities they witnessed, in fact they didn’t talk much about anything emotional.

And here the ripple effect of generations comes into play. The effect which parents can only give their children what they were given by their parents.

If ever this book gets published some people will be very pissed off at me because they will recognize themselves and see themselves as I see them from my perspective. Often it’s from a perspective is of a child or a teenager, or someone who has felt abandoned by so many people in my life.

And if I abandoned anyone, I am sorry. If I have done hurtful things to other people, I am truly sorry. And some things will be painful to read and believe me they were even more painful to live through and to write about.

My depression, bi-polar and a side of schizophrenia has pretty much caused me to isolate myself from any human contact or sometimes it just feels like everyone hates me and I’m just a miserable woman who’s got nothing to show for her life. It seems the only job I ever did well was dancing/stripping.

I have no college degree, no family of my own, not even someone to fuck me occasionally because my man picker was broken the moment I was conceived and it’s not even worth at this point to have a one-night stand because they’re rarely worth it.

I started writing this right before and during the Corona virus or COVID19 pandemic of 2020 hit with no end in sight, so human contact became even more difficult.

I haven’t met my soul mate or just someone who is willing to put up with all my bullshit and I with theirs. I don’t hate men. I pretty much hate the whole world most of the time, or it’s in my head that the world hates me. Or to put it more honestly sometimes I think if there is a God he hates me.

Stripping was glamorous for about five minutes and in the end I did it because I wanted to become what I thought some asshole wanted me to be. I later married that asshole, but we’ll get to all my assholes later.

For me it’s just cathartic to put my life on paper as I try to figure out where things went wrong or where I go with the rest of my life because no matter what I do I seem to fuck it up. The truth is I think I’m cursed with stupidity, and it is no one’s fault where my life is now. I made my choices and cannot blame anyone, and I knew those choices were the wrong ones. However, all generation’s choices trickle down to the next and their sins do influence your own choices. I’ve made so many bad decisions in life whether drunk, sober, off or on drugs. I don’t want to play the victim, however, sometimes I feel as though there’s a “Kick me” sign on my back or forehead.

I was not an angry person at the beginning of my life, but life made me this way. What do I have to say that is so important? Will this book change your life? Will I give you advice you can use in your own life? I am not a guru so I’m not going to give you advice or tell you how to live your life. I am an opinionated person and not everyone’s cup of tea.

I’m not any smarter than the average person, nor do I have the key to life. I’m exactly average. I started writing this book three days before I turned fifty and I feel I am still a fuck up because everything I touch seems to turn to shit and it seems I didn’t have a chance of being anything but a fuck up from the time I was in the womb. I seemed to be a problem which needed to be solved even before I was born.

Do I blame my parents, or do I blame myself for my choices? I only knowI have learned to follow my first instinct as it is usually the correct one and not following it is when I usually fuck up. I didn’t know I’m bi-polar until I was around thirty. I didn’t know I suffer from depression, bi-polar, and a mild case of schizophrenia until I started therapy and medications.

All I ever really wanted was to have a big family, to be a wife and a mother, perhaps because it’s what little Jewish girls were supposed to aspire to back in the 1970’s in communist Russia where I was born.

I will try here to keep my life in chronological order as much as I can remember from the beginning of my life until now. Please forgive me if I jump around from past to present and back again. Sometimes one memory brings up another memory.

I’m not thrilled about reliving the past, but I feel as though I need to examine my life in order to understand it and move forward and leave the past where it belongs, in the rear view.