Hurt Me, Baby, I'll Grow Horns

Looking back on the years I spent dancing in strip clubs when I was in my twenties, it is clearly evident to me now that I was not smart or tough enough to be working around the people that I had to be with every day. A friend of mine recently suggested that being in a different town every week and working in strip clubs left me vulnerable to men who could easily fool me into thinking they were someone they were not.

A criminal who wanted to hide his past could easily pull me under because I would never know better until after I had become involved. In my first year of stripping, I met just such a man. After a year and a half of dragging me across the country and beating me half to death dozens of times, I finally got away from him. But what he did to me was never forgotten.

Married men could pretend to be otherwise and how was I to know? A romp in the bedroom that turned into a year-long affair ripping my heart into pieces began with a man's ability to tell me anything my stupid, little heart desired to hear. By the time the truth came out, I was all in, 100% invested in a relationship that was going no place good.

Narcissists, psychopaths, liars, and manipulators all seemed to be drawn to me. I obviously had an 'easy victim' sign taped to my bare back. One man, who I had almost married confessed to me six months into our relationship that he had planned on raping me before we began talking and he realized that I was so easy he didn't have to attack me.

My meek, little heart wasn't cut out for the life I was living. I was a stripper, but I could never quite grasp the coldness required to treat men, or women, for that matter, carelessly- not at that time, anyway. That came years later after my emotions had been battered and bruised beyond recognition by people who were able to leave their consciences elsewhere when they met me. I was an open invitation to users and abusers until they turned me bitter and dangerous.

Then, being the perfectionist that I am, I became the most perfect nightmare any man would ever meet in his life. It became an art to see how much pain a lover could take before he'd walk away. And, woe is unto him if he tried to walk away. If it took me years I would always give him reasons to come back one more time, until I was the one to decide he could slide back into the gutter where I had found him.

I spent eight years letting men take advantage of me and five years getting even with the entire male species. A nice guy who wasn't married, had a good job, no bad habits, and wanted to be with me? Too bad. You're a few years too late. Let me twist you around my little finger for a few months, then I'll have enough leverage to turn your life into a living hell. Not only did I do it easily. I did it with glee.

So, you want to pick me up and take me out for a nice, normal date? You go ahead and wait for me in front of my place, while I go to my next-door neighbor's apartment and climb out her kitchen window, then shinny down the rain pipe (in high heels) to get away from you. When you find me later that night making out with a random guy at a bar down the street, know that I meant for you to find me there. That's how much I cared. I went to great lengths to hurt, humiliate and otherwise ruin men who wanted to be with me.

Do you want me? Crawl naked over crushed glass and I'll serve you lemonade. Well, I won't serve you, but I will pour it slowly over your lacerated body and giggle.

High school senior, thinking you're a big shot because you're 6'5" and didn't get carded? Think you're going to impress your friends by 'getting' a stripper for the night?

We'll see how you feel about having to start your first year of college out of state after I've worked you over for the Summer. Remember coming back to see me during your first break and I laughed at you and left the club with another guy? I hope you realized I knew you'd come back and had already planned your humiliation.

Then, there were still the jerks who deserved my bad behavior. It was easy to destroy someone in who I was not invested emotionally, and if they were a creep, all the better. I once tracked down an old girlfriend a guy had gone back to once while he was with me. I invited her to the club I was working at, knowing the fellow was coming in later to see me. He walked in and saw the two of us chatting merrily at the bar and I think he lost two inches. I'm not certain though, because I sure never slept with him again and neither did his ex.

After that exquisite afternoon, I slept with his brother, using the entire supply of condoms that he had left at my place. There, we're even. Well, not quite. I had to confess to using his box of condoms. It wouldn't have been right to steal them without telling him exactly how many his brother and I had used.

Do you know the song 'Before he Cheats' by Carrie Underwood? Pfft. Old news. Nothing beats loosening the lug nuts on two tires until they are literally hanging by a thread, then smashing the passenger side window and pulling out all the wires under the dashboard of a guy's baby blue truck while he's parked at a bar where he's nuzzling a new girlfriend. After completing that dirty deed I found a payphone to call his wife and said I was the barmaid calling to ask her to come and pick up her husband whose truck wouldn't start.

That was fun. But, it was even more fun to hide behind the building and watch it all unfold in the parking lot. What's a little frostbite? Have no fear. That man richly deserved his rewards. Sadly, he cared more about his precious truck than his wife finding out about his cheating.

I can't even begin to tell you the horror story I put my husband through when he met me and decided he could handle me. I slept with him once and ignored him for the next three months. Just as I was getting ready to leave the country to get away from him permanently I started thinking if I wasn't nicer to him he'd give up and I would miss him.

Forty years later I'm still torturing him. Some men just like pain.

What can I say?