Dance to Despair: Memoirs of an Exotic Dancer

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Dedicated to the memory of Janis Joplin, whose music accompanied me throughout my career.

Thank you to Michael and Laura Joplin.

My personal thanks to Dawn Botkins for allowing me to gain further insight into the tragic life of Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute and convicted serial killer.

“Release me oh Lord from evil men,

protect me from men of violence.”

Aileen Carol Wuornos

Death Row, Broward Correctional Institution

Pembrook Pine, Florida 1996

How do you explain where you have spent the last twenty-three years of your life, if you weren’t married, gainfully employed, or engrossed in some type of a career?

Filling in a twenty-three year gap on a job application can be quite a challenge, even to the best of fiction writers. The bottom line is that if you were to be honest about your past, you would be virtually unemployable. Even an ex-con stands a better chance of attaining employment than an ex-stripper. Because of this, you can’t be honest with anyone. Subsequently, your whole life becomes one big lie that you must continue for the rest of your life. Society has proven that it can be quite forgiving of just about anything. Yet, if you would openly confess in a job interview that you had once been a stripper, not even five master degrees would get you in the door of a reputable company. It’s very difficult to account to a biased society under these circumstances, but what’s even more difficult than having to account for it to other people is having to account for it to yourself.

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