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"Blaaarrrgghh!" I exclaimed as I leapt into the air and performed the Furious Dance of the Potentially Unjust Parking Ticket in a public lot on Vermont Street.

Why do "expired stickers" of some sort cost $55?!

I was furious. It's a sticker! I wanted to spend that money on something besides a freaking sticker. Or save it. Or send it to my school. Or give it to my parents.

UGH.

My memory of the subsequent events is somewhat vague, but I believe that someone (I forget whom) then told me that for this kind of ticket, I had to go to the Treasurer's building. They started to explain more, but I think I was so irritated I must have changed the subject.

So I get to the Treasurer's building (after parking very carefully) and stand in line, steaming, to shell out the $55. I complained bitterly to the defenseless man behind the counter.

"You got it because you haven't paid your property taxes," he patiently explained.

"But I already own my car," I said, thinking out loud and feeling embarrassingly under-informed. "I paid the taxes on it when I bought it. I feel like I'm being asked to pay for it all over again."

"I know, but all these roads and stop signs have to get maintained somehow," he explained, so patiently, for what was likely the zillionth time in his career.

"Oh," I said. Duh. I thanked him for being so nice to me about it. This was, after all, my first car. Urbanites don't need them.

"You owe $230," he said.

I was about to throw up my hands and do the OMG-WTF-BBQ Dance, when he added: "And don't worry about the ticket. When you pay this amount, you just take the receipt over to the parking ticket people and it's taken care of."

OK.

I asked a few more questions, which he patiently answered.

$230 in property taxes, huh. My inner snowflake felt wronged.

I pulled out my cell phone, climbed up on the cross, and dialed I-800-But-Dad.

"Yeah, your car is kind of new," my father said to me as I lamented the Horrible Injustice of Excessive Taxation on Things That Already Belong to Me. "That's why it's so high."

Well, if I had to pay $230 for something that was already mine, what about the work I'd been doing?

"What about actual taxes? Like when I have to pay for all this money I've earned?" I hated sounding like an idiot, but I'd rather feel stupid asking a question now than feel even dumber when I get fined for not knowing the answer, later.

He sighed as he answered his precious little snowflake's additional questions about living in the real world. I was, after all, quite far from the castle my parents had so carefully built around me.

"Work with The Family Accountant, and everything will fall into place," he finally said.

Ah, The Family Accountant. The man who's been doing my taxes since I was four.

"I've been saving all my receipts," I announced with pride, waiting for my gold star.

"That's great!" he said with tired enthusiasm.

We hung up.

I had recently come out to The Family Accountant as an exotic dancer. As a child, I was a frequent visitor to his house when my parents and he needed to meet after business hours. Leotard and tights under my skirt, blouse, and blazer from school, I would moan and groan about how hungry I was until my parents cut their visit short and gave in to my need to eat (six times more food than they ever did) "right nowwwwww-uhhhhh."

"I can count on one hand the number of people I know who genuinely love their job," he said after I gushed breathlessly about my love of the spotlight, however needlessly stigmatized it was.

"Keep your receipts and keep track of mileage, gas, and all those details until we chat again," I confirmed that I would. We hung up.

A few months later, my mother asked me not to call him anymore.

"We can't pay for The Family Accountant anymore," she said.

What!

Even in our post-business-meltdown poverty (that stopped shy of bankruptcy, thank heavens), it hadn't occurred to me that this guy would disappear, too.

"He costs $50,000 a year," she said to me.

Holy bananas. Really?

Could I pleeeaaaase go to him for help?!

"It's $300 every time we talk to him," my dad was saying now.

How the heck am I going to figure everything out without a professional's assistance? I have income from more than one source, including some "investment vehicles" that I don't know every little detail about. How am I going to work this out without knowing everything?!

I would have to fill out forms. Really detailed forms. Probably a lot of them, I thought.

I started to panic.

I'd have to read and understand all the directions without a professional's help, and if I got something wrong, the IRS would probably fine me, or put me in jail, or otherwise interfere with the precious happiness I'd found in life.

I was too embarrassed to hit up a friend for help.

I submitted an anonymous question to the KU Small Business Development Center. Did I have to incorporate, or something?

"No," they said, in sum.

But if I'm an individual, there's still so many exceptions, and special circumstances, and I'd have so many questions. So much room for error.

I pictured myself in an orange jumpsuit. Could I even blog from jail? Probably not. People want you to suffer for your sins, and the Internet is so fun.

No BBC and likely no more Twitter, unless I knew people in jail. I don't know anyone in jail!

No more Lawrence Journal-World. No more Fark!

Eeeeee.

Do they even use sterilized speculums for cavity searches on new inmates?! Because non-disposable ones would be gross!

Ahhhhhhhh!

Dangerously close to the April 15th deadline, I called my parents about this issue.

"Panic-panic-panic!" I howled into my crappy Samsung.

"The whole family is getting an extension, so don't worry about it for now," he said. I wondered what invisible entity had all my information and was taking care of this dilemma. I wondered if anything said "exotic dancer" on it.

"We'll call you," he said.

Eep.

Safe? I think?

For now, anyway.

Time to do some hard core self-education! I promised myself I would know the necessary information and all the applicable laws cold--at least in laymen's terms--by the time I had to get everything in.

I got down to work.

To Be Continued...

I had seen it happen before.

A girl would saunter in to the dressing room early, wearing flip-flops and sweats. She'd barely be through the door when a bouncer would stick his head in and call her over.

"C'mere for a second," he would say.

Then, not subtly enough, he would silently show her a yellow pad of paper.

A black marker usually spells out the dreaded words, typically in all capital letters.

"[So-and-so] no longer dances here."

It's a message from Jeff, the owner of the Outhouse, and as I understand it, he rarely leaves a written explanation to go along with notes like those.

When the dancer sees the note with her name on it, a look of surprise and injury usually spreads across her face. Some just turn and leave, headed to another club to find work that night. Others cry and need a hug. Others yell about it and make their exit in spectacular fashion.

It hurts to see a girlfriend lose her job, especially when you know you can't do anything about it but try to help her feel better, get her phone number, and wish her the best.

Even if I could save someone I thought should have been allowed to stay, it is Jeff's business, and he's entitled to run it how he sees fit.

Of course, I never thought I would be shown any message on that yellow tablet.

Call it elitism or any other of a number of things, but I felt invincible to getting fired--ever. In following all the rules, genuinely liking everyone, and loving the job, I earned a reputation for cheerfulness and rule-following without really trying.

But last Monday, at 7:00 p.m., one of the nicest bouncers followed me into the dressing room with the dreaded yellow tablet in his hands.

He looked at me with sad eyes, shaking his head.

"I'm really sorry," he said as he showed me the note.

"Anna no longer dances here," it said.

"What?" I said, not believing what I was looking at.

"I'm really sorry," he said.

"Do you know why?" I sputtered. The feeling of surprise was still establishing itself.

"I have no idea," he said. "You'll have to text Jeff. I'm really sorry." I knew there was nothing he could do, so I didn't press him.

The feeling of surprise gave way to a sudden realization that I had to leave the club I loved so much.

"Um," my voice wavered awkwardly as I prepared to make the announcement to the five or so other girls. "It looks like I've been fired."

"What?" someone said.

"What did you do?!"

"I don't know," I said, feeling the tears well up. "I wasn't here over the weekend. I don't know what I did."

I felt hot all over. What had I done? It had to be something.

I would never do something to get myself fired on purpose. I racked my brain.

A girl pulled me aside.

"You never do anything [to break the rules here]," she said. "Are you sure that nothing happened? Did you say something bad about Jeff on the Internet?" she asked quietly. People know about my blog, but only one or two girls have actually read it and told me about it.

"No, I didn't," I said, pausing for a second to make sure that was true. "I haven't posted anything in weeks."

I had nothing to say about Jeff. I'd had five or six conversations with him, really. And posting about some of the things he's talked to us about as a staff just would have been bad form.

"He hasn't even given me anything bad to say," I said. Well, in the context of working at a strip club, but even then, I hadn't posted anything. "And I really haven't done anything wrong that I can think of. I would tell you right now."

I would have.

We were standing in the same place in the club where I'd first admitted to Jeff that I was the one with the blog, and he'd been OK with it. The only time I ever said things about drugs or prostitution, I ran into him at the club and told him about it in person.

"Text him and ask him what you need to do to come back," she said. "Maybe you'll just need to pay a fine or something."

"Is there a fine on the books for me?" I suddenly thought to ask the bouncer.

"Um," he checked the books. "No, there's nothing. I'm really sorry. I wish I knew anything at all."

Jeff does, rather magnanimously, I think, allow some girls to come back after paying a fine for whatever they did. Depending on the severity of the crime committed (and his opinion of you), I've understood fines to be anywhere from $100 to $200, and as high as $500 or $1,000.

I honestly, and truly, had no idea why I was being let go.

"Where else can I go?" I asked the group. "Is any other place even close to the money here?" Girls either shrugged or shook their heads.

On the inside, I freaked out. I haven't managed my money well recently, and even taxes are going to be hard for me to swing.

"Please tell me if you hear anything," I said to the girl. She nodded and hugged me.

"Bye everyone," I said.

I walked to my car and typed out a text to Jeff, a few tears falling in my lap. I couldn't believe this.

"When I came in to work tonight, Cookie showed me a note that said 'Anna no longer dances here.' What do I need to do to come back?"

Jeff rarely responds to texts right away, so I called my boyfriend.

"I have no idea why I was fired," I sniffed into my crappy Samsung. "I don't know what to do. I don't want to work anywhere else." I sat there and looked out over the field in front of me as he tried to make me feel better.

He failed. We hung up.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to go anywhere I'd have to explain that I'd been fired, but I had to figure out some way to pay my bills; no choice there.

Suddenly, I remembered the Oracle. (This is not her real dancer name).

She would know what to do, I thought.

Blessed with an exceptionally stunning face and beautiful body, I am lucky to count the Oracle as a friend. She doesn't like a lot of people, and with an acid tongue like hers, you figure that out pretty fast.

Girls are afraid of her, and her customers are obsessed with her. She seems to know everything about stripping, clubs, and navigating the sometimes tricky situations therein.

I needed to talk to her, but it had been a while.

I called her club. "Does [the Oracle] still work here?" I asked.

She does, a man said.

I hung up and punched my destination into my GPS.

An hour later, I found her.

The club was beautiful and big. I looked around. Three stages? Wow.

Where was she?

Then, I saw her.

Forgetting my troubles for a second, I smiled. She was just like I remembered her.

She lay on her stomach, looking very bored, stretched out across the lap of a grinning female customer. Resting her head in her hand, the Oracle managed, still, to have her nose in the air. Looking at her long black hair and her regal pose, I thought of Cleopatra, and smiled.

She waved me over.

"How are you!" I said, hugging her and ignoring her customer, who seemed over the moon just to get to spend time with her.

"Are you busy?" I asked.

I would hate to see this girl mad. She's at least half a foot taller than I am and much stronger.

"No," she said, ignoring her customer in typical Oracle fashion. I laughed silently, again marveling at this incredibly beautiful girl's ability to eschew any practice remotely similar to 'customer service' and still rake in an absurd amount of money.

I told her what happened.

I wanted her to tell me some kind of secret code, some kind of secret password---anything that would get me my job back.

Of course, there isn't one.

She shrugged.

"Sometimes he fires people for no reason," she said. "He's just unpredictable like that."

"You should just move on from there," she advised, shaking her head. "Maybe they'll hire you here," she offered, admitting that money hadn't been good lately.

Well, money is bad everywhere right now, I told her, even at the Outhouse. Money hasn't been consistently good since the end of December, actually. So annoying. [Hearing that money is always bad in January, I decided that next year, I'll simply spend the whole month abroad and forget about trying to make money when there isn't any.]

I went to the management and asked if they would hire me.

They did.

Whew! Now, nose to the grindstone.

If you go to any strip club/bar/store on a regular basis, you develop a kind of relationship with the people who work there.

After several months, it might feel more like a friendship, and you can get pretty close.

But if a customer and friend suddenly completely freaks you out and disrespects you by breaking a rule, as a certain man did to me back in December, it's a real betrayal, and it hurts.

This is what happened between me and a man we'll call 'Jake.'

It was June 2009, and a customer at my then-bar, the Paradise Saloon in North Lawrence, wanted my phone number.

"No," I said to the man whose name I'd already forgot. "If I give you my phone number, I'll get in trouble."

Dammit! What was his name?

I smiled and tried to force the conversation back to the business at hand.

"Are you sure you don't want a lap dance?" I asked sweetly, giving him my best raised-eyebrow and flirty smile.

"No thanks," he said. "You're great. I just don't like lap dances." He stood up halfway and reached for his wallet.

"Here," he said. "I just want you to sit here and be a cute young thing in my lap."

He handed me a fifty. I accepted it and tucked it into the purse I used to take shopping at boutiques and malls in Boston. Sigh.

"OK," I said, plopping into his lap. "Thank you, sweetheart!"

I put my arms around him and we chatted for quite some time. He turned out to be really nice and very respectful, like the majority of my customers seemed to be at Paradise Saloon.

After our whole conversation, I still couldn't remember the poor guy's name.

"Since I can't have your number," the man said. "How about I'll give you mine?"

"Let me ask the manager if that's OK," I said, feeling dorky.

The manager had already told me the rules about phone numbers a hundred times, but a moderately severe learning disability makes it extremely hard for me to remember verbal instructions.

For this reason, I've always taken copious notes. On everything. A notebook or a laptop was always in my hands. Even if I was out. My entire life is probably available in hard copy in boxes at my parents' house.

I can't walk around with a notepad at a strip club, so I suffer accordingly.

"Can you tell me again if we're allowed to take customers' phone numbers?" I asked the manager, cringing at my idiocy. It's embarrassing and it's obnoxious to everyone around me. I expected him to yell at me.

"Just don't make a big show of it," he said, folding his arms. "It's not something we encourage because of the risk of prostitution."

"OK. Thanks," I said, glad he didn't yell. I trotted back to my customer. I smiled as I made my way to his seat.

Dammit! What the hell is his name?

I kicked myself for forgetting it. I am great at sales, but I feel my disability holds me back.

Jake! Jake was his name.

"Hi Jake," I said smiling and sitting in his lap. "It turns out that I can take your phone number."

He wrote his number on a napkin and made a few jokes suggesting that I might not call.

"I'll call," I promised.

"I hate strip clubs, but you're a cool girl," he said to me.

"I'll call you next time I'm in," I said, smiling. I liked him.

Over the next several months, I called him every so often, and he would come. He always gave me $50, bought me my favorite drink, and had something interesting to say. He never broke a single rule.

His easy-going nature and disinterest in flirting with me quickly earned my trust, and I looked forward to seeing him.

We grew close, trading a lot of personal stories. I even told him about my learning disability, which is a source of extreme embarrassment and self-consciousness for me.

We began to chat on the phone occasionally even when I wasn't at work. He knew about my day-life and my night job.

I told him my real name.

When I moved from the Paradise Saloon to the Outhouse (where dancers are not allowed to exchange contact information with customers) in October, he was unenthusiastic about visiting me.

"It's crazy in there," he said. "It's loud." He hated it for the reasons I love it.

"I guess I have to come by at some point," he eventually said in a phone conversation. "I'm getting you an Android for Christmas."

"Jake, I don't want an Android," I lied. "I don't want anything. I have everything. In triplicate." It's true.

He visited me anyway.

For once, he did want a dance.

I gave him one, as I told you in this entry, he put his mouth on my boob.

"What the hell!" I'd said. "I thought you said you'd follow the rules!"

He didn't apologize.

I saw red, but said nothing further about what he did. I was too pissed.

I finished the dance, took his $300, and stiffly bid him good bye.

In an unusual move, I did not even confront him the next day. I stopped answering his calls. I was livid.

Two weeks later, around Christmas or so, I was calm enough to tell him why I was ignoring him.

"I am too angry to see you because you broke a rule," I typed in a text message. "I need space. I'll contact you another time."

"You are disgusted by me!" he responded. "Forget it, [Anna]."

My heart raced as I looked at his message on the screen. He wasn't taking responsibility for what he did. He had never acted like this. I didn't know what to do with this behavior, so I just stood there and got mad.

I didn't want to see those sentences there. I didn't want to see his name in my phone. I didn't want to see him ever again.

Red-faced, I deleted his text message, punching the keypad hard.

"Ugh!" I thought. I wanted to scream. "You are smart enough to know which one of us is in the right!"

He called a few times. I didn't pick up. He finally left me a voice mail, which I erased.

I didn't hear from him for several weeks.

"It's hard to find good friends, [Anna]," he texted me out of the blue in January. I didn't respond.

He sent another text a few days later. "I'm really sorry and I want to patch things up," he typed (roughly).

"I want to forgive you, but I'm still mad," I texted back. "I need space. I'll get in touch with you next month."

I didn't. I kind of wanted to, but thinking about what happened still made me so mad.

He sent another text message toward the end of February.

"When you look back in life, I want you to remember me as a good guy," he wrote.

I kind of wanted to forgive him, but I didn't respond. [At least, I don't think I did. Not sure].

March came, and I still felt betrayed.

He sent me another message, much like his last.

"I want you to look back and say 'that was a good guy,'" he wrote.

I gave in.

"I am not ready for things to go back to normal, but I want you to know that I forgive you," I said to his voice mail, hesitating to continue. "Talk to you later."

We haven't talked yet. I still don't know if or how we'll ever re-connect.

Moral of the story:

Don't be a jerk. It ruins everything.