I Do Really Hate Getting Caught

I do really hate getting caught, especially when what I was doing wasn’t actually wrong or Illegal. But, as it stands, last night I got caught getting my tips from the club last week ready to go to the bank so I could pay some bills today or tomorrow. I will explain the money part of that in a bit because I know someone is going to ask about it. So, yesterday evening all the kids were gone, dinner was on the grill, and I remembered I needed to go to the bank. Now, I don’t keep secrets about money from my wife, she knows I make a decent amount in tips bartending. She knows I also get a paycheck, she knows I’m a 10-99 employee as well which means we save 20% of my earnings to pay Uncle Sam in January. What she has yet to figure out is why a bartender in a full nude strip club is paid what I get paid. But, the money is the reason I am there. I can’t help it I am able to negotiate what my time and services are worth. A while back, when I started back, I agreed to work Wednesday and Thursday nights, roughly 30 hours between the two days, for $1200.00 since I knew I would be paying my own taxes.

Plus, as bartender I keep ALL of my tips, but I also get 5% of the tips to the waitresses, and 1% of the tips from the dancers. Doesn’t sound like much does it? The stack of money on the table represents my tips plus the additional tip outs from the dancers and waitresses. The bundles are $100.00 if you are counting. Since I report and pay taxes on this as well, it all stays well documented. Which, is what I was doing last night when my wife came strolling into the dining room, home early from work. She had a surprised look on her face, like I just showed her a sasquatch body laying on the table after varmint hunting. Needless to say, she wasn’t ever aware that at anytime during the week there is a similar amount of money tucked away in the safe. Then the conversation got ugly. Supposedly I am hiding it from her because she has been unaware. I tried to explain it all goes to our joint checking account, minus what goes to a separate joint savings account for taxes. Still not believing me I had to get my tablet so we could explore the last few months of Wells Fargo deposits. A new bit of information came to light that I was unaware of, she doesn’t pay attention to the account balances. How the hell not? Well, seems that since I have always been the monthly bill payer that I would let her know if there is a problem so she never worried about it.

Yet, I am the one being told I’m hiding money from her. I still can’t wrap my head around it because it seems like a bizarre way of thinking. Then, this morning it hits me, its because I am the man and she is the woman, therefore I am automatically wrong. But, I have a frugal wife, she is not a spend-o-holic, she believes, as I do, that we will want to take trips, pay for college, and still one day retire. So, I have no complaints in that department. No other department either really, perhaps the jumping to conclusions part, but we argue and communicate very well with each other. In the end, we spent a few hours in the hot tub drinking margaritas and not talking about work, money, or our worries. We just sat there butt-ass naked enjoying each other’s company under the partly cloudy sky listening to the hum of the margarita machine churning out the next batch. All and all, after dinner, the hot tub, and the excellent margaritas, we went to bed with smiles on our faces. She mentioned this morning that I’m still an asshole but she still loves me.

Another Life, Another Time

I generally get a handful of texts and e-mails every week from people I worked with at Club X. Usually just to let me known whats been happening and what will be happening. I suppose it is done to “keep me in the loop” even though I have been out of that loop for quite some time now. I generally do not reply to 99% because there usually isn’t anything for me to say. Now, I have two people, one stripper and one waitress, that I do keep up with and talk to regularly because we all became decent friends over the years I worked there. What makes them special you might ask? I will make a long story short, because it actually took me a few months to figure out what was going on. In the beginning I thought there was just the waitress who also was a stripper on her off nights. She would talk to me like normal regardless of what shoes she was wearing that night. Then, out of the blue, after a couple of months, she was on the dance floor stripping and at the same exact time she was waitressing. I thought I had lost my damn mind at first and then they both came over to the bar I was working and sat down, the both smiled while they just sat there looking at me. Yes, now I know, they are twin sisters. There had always been the two of them and few, if anybody, knew about it. Most people in the club thought the same thing I did. Anyway, a friendship grew and developed and now they keep in contact with me quite a bit.

This morning I get an e-mail from them asking me if I miss being a bartender there. They also known I was laid off and wanted to known why I just don’t come back. Do I miss being a bartender there? Not really. I do miss the money but I have said this all before now. I’m sure I could go back to bartending and it would be a decent paycheck, but I walked away when I did for some very specific reasons, first and foremost it was because I was done working nights and second is the hours I worked. It was a freaking part time job yet I worked 50-60 hours a week while having a day job doing 40 hours a week. You do the math, I was tired, more like exhausted, no walked around like a freaking zombie most days. So, I gave up bartending at the strip club, with that I have up about $100k a year, so yes, it has been missed. However, after doing that for 5 years, I socked away a nice start to a retirement, which, so far, we haven’t had to dip into, as of yet. I think it would take something very drastic to get me to go back permanently. Not that time is not now. I liked it after I quite, I see my family now and we have relationships now, something we could not have when I was working nights. I won’t bore y’all with the issues that job caused with my wife. I will say that it wasn’t for the reasons y’all might be thinking, it was simpler, it was because I was never home to spend time with her, ever, and it had a tremendous impact on our marriage. I will leave it there.

I do miss the people, I do miss bartending, and yes, I even miss being surrounded by hundreds of totally nude woman every day. The scenery was always nice. But, back in the real world is where I belong. Perhaps if I was single it would be different. One never knows. As always, the sisters like to include pictures of themselves at work, and to date the one shown here today has been the only one I have been able to share. I wonder, daily, where my life is going, and with often reminders of the past I see that wherever it is that I am supposed to be going is probably I’m the direction I am already headed. I am happier now that I have been in so many years. That’s what we should be, right, happy in our life? Personally, I think that is the answer.

Saving Lives…..