I

Share: walked past the stage and sat down at the bar, the Latest Editors' Picks Most Popular
neon lights illuminating my pink teddy, shadowed
eyes, and crimson lips. I ordered my first drink of the
night and took inventory of the club. There were a
My Lifelong Journey to Find
few listless customers scattered around, hunching Pee-wee Herman
over bar stools, and a dancer circling the pole.

I waved over a colleague, a transplant from

Manchester with hair extensions that kissed her
velvet garter belt. We grumbled about how slow
business was until I spotted a paunchy man at the bar. Daughters of the Bomb: A Story
He was short, with a tuft of gray hair and a slight of Hiroshima, Racism and
Human Rights
smile that crinkled his eyes. He was also more
animated than the others.

“Do you want to try?” I asked her out of a sense of

politeness.
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That Changed My Reporting
“You go,” she said, waving her hand. Career

I started off light, asking about his day and his job.
His smile widened across his face as my eyes met his.
I silently counted to 10 and reminded myself to look
away for a second – best not to terrify him. After three
minutes, I transitioned to more personal questions,
An American Tragedy: The

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 moving steadily through the formula I’d perfected to Colorful Life and Shocking
Death of Ovid Neal III
curate conversation with customers.

He started complaining about his recent breakup, but

it didn’t feel genuine, his eyes twinkling with
eagerness. I switched my gaze to the top of his nose to
put a boundary between us.

I could tell he was interested in spending money, but How One Writer Found His
he’d be hard work. It was time to either close the sale Happily Whatever After
or walk away. He’d take advantage of my time
otherwise.

“Ready for fun?” I whispered in his ear to avoid his

 
eyes.
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I didn’t bother mentioning the private rooms. After
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two years in the industry, I knew which customers
were worth investing in – not this guy. So, I led him  
into the corner, which opened up to the club like the More from this channel
bow of a ship, public and safe, for one quick dance.

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Over Zoom

B efore working in strip clubs, I struggled to read

people’s emotions through cues like facial
expressions, postures, and tone of voice in real time. I
processed events after the fact with tenuous
evaluation, like peeling off layers of old wallpaper. At The Donkey Farmer’s Magical

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 the time, it was not something I had words to explain, Matchmaking Book

so I turned the blame on myself. Whenever I

struggled to understand if someone was angry or
bored, I went home and berated myself for being lazy,
ditzy, and dumb as I obsessively evaluated the night.
I just needed to try harder to be more present, I told
How Stripping in Gay Bars
myself. Brought Me Back to God

One time, I went to a dinner party my sister hosted. A

few of her colleagues and friends sat around her table
while we snacked on hummus and bread, and
someone asked about my recent trip to Europe. I
rambled incessantly, illustrating the nightclubs, the
hostels I stayed in, even how I bled through my
powder-blue dress because I forgot to change my
tampon. My voice was loud, a  pitch you use at a
concert, not inside. I can see their faces now, wide-
eyed and uncomfortable, but at the time they
coalesced into one indistinguishable figure, Dave
Matthews playing in the background taking
precedent. Their distaste didn’t register until my
sister pulled me aside and asked as kindly as possible
to keep to “lighter” topics.

After dinner, we dispersed to the living room and I

attempted to talk to my sister’s colleague, but I forgot
to break eye contact, continuously staring wide-eyed
while she spoke.

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 “You’re certainly a character,” she remarked, exiting
the conversation. I didn’t realize until later that I’d
made her uncomfortable.

I didn’t know what slow processing was then, but I

was aware I felt embarrassed a lot, and lonely. Facial
expressions, body language, and eye contact are the
bones of communication and it’s quite difficult to
build and maintain relationships without the ability
to read them.

So, I meticulously designed a persona who nodded at

the right time, rehearsed lines, smiled when
appropriate, monitored personal space, spoke quietly.
Before going out, I crafted notecards, scribbling how
long to talk about acceptable topics and which to stay
clear of altogether, like my period, in small talk. The
persona was a mask that helped me appear to interact
in the moment, but in reality I crept by, three paces
behind everyone else.

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 I had just celebrated my 24th birthday in Australia
when I started dancing. I settled temporarily in a
bustling beach town at the edge of Melbourne and
needed money to pay off my student debt. I
considered a bar job, but decided to try stripping
simply because it meant fewer hours.

When I walked into a club to ask for a job, to my

surprise, I realized it was just a bar with the usual
roles reversed: women approaching men. I was
intrigued, but confused – how did they convince
customers to spend money off-stage?

The manager looked at my petite frame and nervous

smile, pointed her manicured hand to the dressing
room and listed the rules: “Go get ready in there. You
get one free drink. Don’t be late for stage. No sex. No
drugs on the floor.” Simple enough, but nothing on
how to monetize my time. I handed over my $40
house fee and walked into the sea of hairspray and
naked bodies.

Hundreds of customers came and went during the 10-

hour shift, sitting on plush couches and crowding
around the bar. I approached 10 guys, mirroring my

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 colleagues’ coy smiles, suggestive body language and
light conversation starters, but I couldn’t tease out
who wanted to spend. All but one dismissed me.

I sat at the bar to observe, sipping my free

champagne. One dancer particularly stood out with
her naturally frizzy curls and tattered black bra. She
wasn’t the most glamorous, but every guy she spent
more than a few minutes with agreed to get a lap
dance, like she had sprinkled them with fairy dust. A
few times, she walked away from customers within
seconds, once even waving her hand in a man’s face
to dismiss him.

From the bar, I saw her sitting alone on one of the

upholstered couches that lined the back of the club.
She was taking a moment’s respite after a dance to
count her money before securing it around her wrist
with an elastic band. I took a deep breath and
approached her, brushing aside the fringe curtain
separating the lap dance room from the bar. It was
getting late, two hours before closing, and I was
exhausted and frustrated. So far I’d brought in just
$50, meaning a $10 profit after the house fee. I
thought about packing up and never coming back,
but I needed this to work out. My student loan
wouldn’t magically go away.

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 She took one look at me and asked, “Your first time?”

“Yes. I’m struggling,” I said shyly.

She stared at me with a bored expression, so I got

right to it.

“How do you know who wants to spend money?”

She turned around and outlined her lips with a beige

pencil in the smudged mirror, advising in her
Bulgarian accent: “I don’t always know, but here are a
few things I’ve learned after five years in the
industry: Don’t spend more than 10 minutes with
them if they haven’t spent money. Five minutes if it’s
busy. You’re not a free therapist. Make them pay big
bucks if they want to dump their shit on you. Walk
away from customers who want to get to know the
‘real you’ right away. They’re usually creeps.”

Before she left the lap dance area, she turned around
and said, “And quit this nice girl bullshit. You sound
like a child. Don’t try so hard to be someone you’re
not, just be a hyped-up version of yourself.”

As she sauntered off, she looked back once more, “I’m

Claire by the way.”

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 Her words wounded me, but I was impressed. She
saw right through my mask. The rambling girl at my
sister’s house was a distant memory, but, strangely,
Claire must have seen who I was before I tried so
hard to appear normal.

After we spoke, I didn’t reincarnate my older self, but

I did carve another persona, Piper. I learned to
showcase different parts of my persona based on the
customer. It seemed practicing social skills paid off – I
became a deft conversationalist, sometimes earning
my night’s wage just from talking. I moved beyond
the foundation I hid behind, laughing, smiling, and
chatting more brazenly than before, enjoying eye
contact with customers I trusted, dismissing ones I
didn’t. Performing felt strangely comfortable, even
though the job was foreign and challenging.

That conversation lasted minutes, but the advice

made for a successful career. Slowly, Claire’s rules
taught me how to read customers for signs of interest
by attaching meaning to their words and actions,
something most people learn unconsciously, but that
I’d always struggled with.

The club gave me a controlled space to decipher the

crinkle around people’s eyes for eagerness or raised
eyebrow for arrogance, as if I was reading a script

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 from a teleprompter. And when I was unsure, I had
her original rules to catch me. Are they asking for my
real name? Are they relaying problems in their life
without buying a dance first? On the floor of the club,
I spent hours practicing each weekend, and for the
first time in my life, I learned how to cut through
layers of language in real time, just like Claire, until it
became effortless.

E ventually I moved back home to New York and

started stripping full time. After two years of
practicing by trial and error in the world’s most social
job, the tricks I learned in the club seeped into my
social life outside of work, and it got easier to notice
social cues and use the same formula I used with
customers to make small talk with anyone.

Most people I met outside of work told me I was a

great listener, unaware of how much time I spent in
my room practicing the correct reactions. I didn’t
want anyone to know how much I struggled, so I let
very few people get close to me – better than anyone
finding out that I couldn’t really socialize, that I was a
fake.

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 Nearly two years after I started dancing, my friend
Sarah invited me to her birthday party. My least
favorite social situation: a dinner party with unknown
people. True, I was better at picking up more obvious
cues like eagerness and anger, but group settings
were strenuous – too many subtleties to keep track of.
But I hadn’t seen my friend in a while and I missed
her. I packed up my lace teddy and Red Bull into a
discreet bag and headed over to the restaurant before
work.

The hour and a half crawled by. There were six of us

around a small table. I can’t remember the other
people’s faces or even what anyone spoke about. I
prayed no one would ask me personal questions.

“Sarah tells me you just got home from Amsterdam,”

my friend’s brother said politely, turning in my
direction. His words mixed in with the background
conversation and it sounded like another language. I
broke out in sweat.

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 “I am sorry, what?” I asked.

He repeated himself. A second later the words

clicked. I smiled and looked at his nose instead of his
eyes while chewing over my words and length of
speech, trying to offer the version of my trip they
wanted to hear.

Sarah got up to go to the bathroom. I quickly walked

over to her and asked: “Were people bored when I
spoke?”

“Not at all. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing. But I have to go. I’m sorry, I have

work.”

She looked confused as I hurried out the door. I didn’t

really have to go to the club. I’d made enough that
week to warrant a night off with my friends, but work
felt easier than this social performance. I let out a sigh
of relief as the taxi plowed across the Williamsburg
Bridge.

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 I walked under the familiar lights to the dressing
room. I squirted a dollop of foundation on my hand
and painted the dark circles under my eyes. For a
brief second, I wondered, Is something wrong? Surely
work shouldn’t be more comfortable than a night out?
But then I swallowed those thoughts and walked onto
the floor to escape from myself.

I sat down at the bar and ordered a Hennessy on the

rocks. The birthday was successfully buried, and I
was buzzing from the bliss of escape.

I spotted a man at the bar – alone, tall, bald with a

kind smile and a glass of whiskey in his hand. I ran
through the formula and we connected right away.

“Hennessy is a strong choice,” he commented.

“It’s an underrated drink.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Can I get you another
one?”

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 Ten minutes passed. I suggested the private room and
he agreed. The private rooms were where I connected
with customers, sometimes in a way that was more
intimate than my relationships outside the club.

There I massaged their shoulders, let them touch me,

expressed vulnerability. I bantered for hours –
something I was never able to do before. With fewer
stimuli around, it was easier to focus and converse
back and forth in a way that felt less strenuous than at
the restaurant hours before.

“You have a strange rhythm about you,” he

remarked, smiling as I cradled him. Customers who
spent money like water didn’t care if I was odd; they
wanted an experience. My weirdness was worth their
paycheck.

After two hours, I excused myself for a moment to go

to a bathroom where I got a message from Sarah: Miss
you. Wish you didn’t have work. It’s not the same
without you.

Below the message was a picture of the dinner crew,

laughing with their arms wrapped around each other.
I felt such a pang of loneliness and regret that I broke
down in the doorless toilet stall, my eyeliner
smearing like watercolor on canvas.

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 Why am I only alive at work? Why can I give so much
of myself to my customers and so little to my friends?
Maybe I was just being stupid because I was drunk,
but I wanted to be an active participant in my life
instead of walking around confused all the time,
experiencing my days after they’ve happened,
passive from the sidelines. I wanted connection.

Work was a temporary balm, but the interactions

there were fleeting, not enough to sustain my longing
for people. The force of my rotting loneliness hit like a
tidal wave as the reality of how much I struggled to
navigate social settings outside settled in.

I allowed myself just one sob before I fixed my face

and performed for the last half hour. When I got
home, I couldn’t get out of bed for days, my sheets
disheveled with self-loathing.

Desperate for answers, I started scrolling through an

online forum for women with ADHD, wondering if I
might have an attention disorder, looking for an
explanation. I started asking for advice, addressing
some of my other issues first like getting lost in
obsessive thought.

Within minutes, responses flooded that my symptoms

resembled ASD.

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 “What is ASD?” I asked.

“Autism Spectrum Disorder.”

I scoffed, but after I read articles on how autism

manifests in women, there wasn’t room for doubt –
the evidence was clearly outlined in the bullet points
on my laptop.

Central to autism is a difficulty experiencing life in

real time. Many autistic people can’t filter out
information, which makes it difficult to zone in and
focus. All those years, I couldn’t read people’s cues
because I struggled to cancel out the world around
me. At my sister’s house, the background music, the
forks scraping on plates, the blue walls, all swam in
front of people’s facial expressions.

But in the private rooms at the club, there were no

outside stimuli. The rules were clear, the distractions
minimal, so I could focus and interact.

Women in the ADHD forum invited me to the group

for autistic women and there I saw myself a hundred
times over. Scrolling through were women like me:
sex workers, performers, artists, writers, all struggling
to make sense of our invisible differences in our own
socially awkward, wacky, and beautiful way.

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 I gradually pulled the blame away from myself and
labeled the things about me that were naturally
different, not defective. I stopped punishing myself
when I got overwhelmed in conversations, stopped
beating myself up when bright lights blanched out
facial expressions and background noise canceled out
people’s words. I took a deep breath and resisted
pretending to listen and asked: “Can you say that
again?” without apology. I forgave myself when I
slipped outside of social norms and said something
weird.

No more being sorry for things I can’t help. People

would love me or not – frankly I was okay with the
risk.

A few months later, I stood outside the club with

a cigarette in my hand, looking over the busy
highway at the deserted factories.

“Piper, you leaving?” my bouncer nudged in his

Queens accent.

“Yes. I made enough tonight. I’m going out,” I said,

smiling back at him.

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 He waited outside with me until Sarah pulled up in a
rideshare.

“This is where you work?” she asked incredulously,

her mouth ajar in the window of the car.

I laughed. She knew I was a stripper but had never

been to the club. From the outside, it looked grim:
tattered brown building on the edge of town. But it
was home to me.

“I never said stripping was glamorous.”

I kept the window open as the club disappeared,

letting the cold air whip my face, feeling a mixture of
relief and excitement. Forums for autistic women
advised pulling off masks that many develop to pass
as non-autistic. The effects of camouflaging are toxic,
they warned. I wasn’t sure I could go back to who I
was. The rambling autistic girl at my sister’s house
was dead, buried under years of performance.

“Did you have a good night?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah. I’m ready for a night off though.”

Who could I have been if I didn’t try so hard to pass?

I’ll never know, but stripping provided a portal to
who I might be without fear of rejection – a rare

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 glimpse of the affectionate, brash, and funky edges of
personality. But I still had so much to learn. There was
vast, dormant space to grow into beyond my work
persona.

The twinkling lights opened the doors to Manhattan,

my body still moving from the music of the club. The
possibilities of the night unrolled in front of me and I
intended to savor them.

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