Editors Note: Names of some sources are listed as their style persona. Real names remain confidential to protect their identities.

The secret world of students working at adult clubs

Secrecy and vagueness are common traits of students working in adult clubs, former stripper and student Ursula adamantly states.

Ursula, a former stripper now attending University of Phoenix, says management at all of the clubs where she has worked regularly reminded all of their dancers and staffs to keep everything that goes on in the clubs and their addresses confidential for security reasons. She goes on to say the reason is to keep anyone from finding out the clubs involvement with illegal drugs and prostitution activities.

Stacci and Shayla, both students and dancers, give similar statements. Both are in recovery from drug and alcohol addictions. Both are concerned about fellow students becoming aware they work as strippers Hot Chocolate, a male dancer, has no qualms about marketing himself as a stripper or disclosing where he works. He says he feels it helps promote his services for private parties. It is a different atmosphere at male strip clubs because male clubs are open to the public whereas female clubs feature restrictions based on fees paid on the customers tab.

The dancers commented that there is a double standard between male clubs and female clubs. Reasons include money paid and services provided. It is all about money, Hot Chocolate says. Tips are bigger at female clubs, where drug and prostitution activities are more prevalent than at male adult clubs.

Stacci, a TSU graduate and current student at UH-Downtown, also dances at the Mens Club. She explains that one of the reasons for high security at clubs is because so many male customers are deviant. Dancers have to take care, even wearing disguises going to and from work.  Like many of the dancers, Stacci explains, I also found myself using drugs, which led me into prostitution, a part of my lifestyle for nearly five years. She has been clean and sober for two years, but it is a day-by-day thing as drugs are so prevalent at work and it is so easy to fall back into old habits.

Stacci has been working as a stripper for almost 10 years. Many dancers work in the field for as long as they remain appealing to customers. Dancers can make much more money stripping than with any other kind of work without a college degree, she says. Staccis reason for returning to college is to provide a more secure career for her future.

Shayla, who attends HCC, says she started dancing when she was 20 while attending college in California to impress a boyfriend. It was always a fantasy of hers to work as a dancer, she says, but she admits there are times it is hard to separate the entertainer persona when attending classes.  She dropped out of college when she was 21 and really did not know at the time what she wanted to do with her life.

At that time she believed that the only reason she was attending college was to please her mother. She dropped out just three months short of receiving her associates degree in business management. In hindsight, she says, it was an easy decision because the money was so good for dancing, and I did not believe I needed a college degree.

Shayla goes on to say that she fell victim to heavy drug use and prostitution until she decided she would join a recovery group. During her recovery she made the decision to return to college and only work weekends as a dancer. She says the money is lucrative and she still enjoys dancing. It helps me work towards what I really want to do, she says, which is writing and acting. She plans to graduate and open her own business.

Ursula is the inspiration for the origin of the story. I began dancing in the late 90s to help pay for college tuition, she says, and help support my two daughters. I was trying to get out of a seven-year abusive marriage to a husband who forced me into the world of adult clubs, drugs, wife-swapping and prostitution. She explains that illegal actives prevail in adult clubs and the only way you can discover what is going on is you have to be an employee. Otherwise, everything is very vague as management will not allow outsiders to discover their secrets.

Ursula is very emotional as she describes this part of her life. Starting in 1997 and for nearly 10 years I smoked crack and drank alcohol and did anything I could to get money to keep me high, she says. She knew she was addicted to cocaine, crystal meth and alcohol and could not stop using either.

In 2002 Ursula was arrested for delivering drugs and for forgery. She spent two years in state jail. I found many others [in jail] like myself in need of counseling, she says. I begin studying to help understand what I went through, which ultimately helped beat my addiction to cocaine, meth and alcohol.

Ursula says after she finished the prison sentence she returned to her hometown San Antonio and made the mistake of stripping and hanging around the same people and friends. This led her back into her old habits and in and out of prison for the next five years. After her last stint in 2008, she realized she could not continue down that path if she wanted want to live any kind of productive life and be there for her daughters. I made it a point, she says, to avoid all of my old associates and friends that were using drugs and were into prostitution. With God and the help from a very strong support group in my life now — even it is still a day-by-day process — I will beat my addiction.

Ursula says she has been clean and sober for 27 months and is now looking forward to graduating from college next summer. She comments that many women work as dancers and go to school successfully because they learn their lesson — to stay away from drinking and drugging — the hard way. When I first started dancing I did not mind if other students knew I was working at strips clubs, she says. If I was dancing today, I would try and keep it a secret. I see so many self-righteous people that frown upon stripping that I would have to keep it secret in order to stay in school.

Managements and staffs at The Pent House, Treasures, and The Mens Club –all located in Houston — were very vague and sensitive about sharing any information involving employees. Reporters get more from interviews with established source relationships, allows them to get details they are seeking.

Jessica Simmonds has been working as a full-time stripper in England and the United States for many years. She has an income of over $400,000 a year, working just four nights a week. She is one of the top-earning exotic dancers in the world. She still works, but now also teaches girls how to earn the type of money she has earned.

Jessica also agrees that reporter contacts are important but, for her contacts, are for different reasons than those of reporters.
Secrecy and vagueness are common to students and staff working in female adult clubs. The hiding has more to do with the clubs clandestine illegal actives, than with the protection of their employees. In short, club owners want to stay out of view of law.

Holidays are just around the corner and many workplaces will have holiday office parties during the season. It is a perfect, although somewhat stressful, time to impress right people, demonstrate your communication skills and, with any luck, secure some prospects. In our current economy, the last thing anyone wants is to behave in such a manner as to jeopardize their reputation, any chance for promotion or, worst scenario, lose their jobs because of the office parties’ behavior. There are few, but cardinal, rules everybody needs to follow in order to make it through holiday office parties without any casualties.

1.Go easy on alcohol. Everybody knows that alcohol lowers your inhibitions and makes you do or say things you might regret later on. It is never as crucial as during office parties to control your drinking. A friend of mine once related a story which might just convince you. There was a high-level executive who, after imbibing a bit too many cocktails at the office party decided it was a good idea to resurrect his youth- so he jumped on the stage, where the hired band was performing, and slammed some rock-and-roll tunes-not too bad according to some witnesses. Well, it was all peachy and rosy until he decided that the last finishing touch was not to break the guitar, as custom dictates, but to get out his thing and spray unsuspecting and, until the last moment cheering, audience, including his boss. You can picture yourselves how it ended for this particular lover of rock-and-roll. So, the cardinal rule is not to drink. Everybody knows their threshold, so just step three steps (i.e. drinks) back from there and stop.

2.Although it is a party, respect your company’s dress code. As much as you want to show off your new sexy dress, save it for another occasion. Basically, the rule is to dress a bit more festive than you normally do during the workdays, and you will be safe. The last thing you want to do is to outperform your bosses’ wives or provoke some unwanted behavior and comments from your co-workers. Remember, you are not clubbing, you are still, sadly, networking.

3.Watch your mouth. Well, everybody at the parties likes to talk, talk, and talk some more. Here is your golden opportunity to listen to other people. Before you know it, you can learn some new interesting things about your current company, maybe new openings, and whatever else is interesting to you. However, do not lurk around people like a weirdo eavesdropping at other peoples’ conversations. Come up with few several funny/interesting stories before the party to chip in when necessary. To be on a safe side, stick to neutral subjects (kids, pets, weather, sports, etc.). Although, if you want to impress your clients/ boss come up with something novel related to your industry. But, keep it short and entertaining.

4.Do not skip the party without a good excuse. This just does not work in your favor. Unless you have a good excuse (death in the family, accident, etc.), your absence will label you as a non-team player. Unless you are in some creative field where individuality is encouraged, you’d better adhere to general rules such as- arrive, behave, perform to the level of your capacities, and leave in time without any accident. Just do to, team player!

5.Do not bring your kids/relatives/pets to the party. Well, the economy is bad and we are saving any way we can. However, one of the worst things is to try to party at your companies’ expense by bringing your family to the party to enjoy free food and perks! Just skip this notion. Hire the babysitters for youngster, nurses for the elderly, and sitters for your pets. Just common good sense.

Happy Holidays!

W. Lewis Jr.

In the line at the store, the cashier told the older woman that she should
bring her own grocery bag because  plastic bags weren’t good for the
environment .

The woman apologized to him and explained,
“We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”

The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today.
The former generation did not care enough to save our environment.”

He was right, that generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.
Back then, they returned their  milk bottles,
soda bottles and  beer bottles to the store.

The store sent them back to the plant to be washed
and sterilized and refilled,
so it could use the same bottles over and over.
So they really were recycled.

But they didn’t have the green thing back in that customer’s day.

In her day, they walked up stairs,
because they didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. They walked to the grocery store and
didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time they had to go two blocks.

But she was right. They didn’t have the green thing in her day

Back then, they washed the baby’s diapers
because they didn’t have the throw-away kind. They dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts –
wind and  solar power really did dry the clothes.

They refilled their writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen,
and they replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But they didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus
and kids rode their bikes to school or walked
instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.
They had one electrical outlet in a room,
not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances.
And they didn’t need a computerized gadget
to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space
in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful the old folks
were just because they didn’t have the green thing back then?

Katherine Gordy

THE CUBAN REVOLUTION S 50th anniversary has sparked academic conferences, debates and articles assessing its past and future.(1) How and why has the revolution survived? What does the future hold for Cuba? Or, as it is often put, more crudely, what will happen when Fidel/Raul dies?

My responses to these questions have always been short. The Cuban revolution has survived much as any established system survives, through a combination of coercion and consent.(2) The future holds gradual change, again, much as in any system that has been successfully institutionalized.

The questions assume that without Fidel Castro, or his doppelganger brother, there would be no Cuban revolution. They also assume that nothing ever changes in Cuba until crisis forces it. The language of crisis pervades contemporary treatments of Cuba in the United States. Academic and journalistic analyses often argue that the Cuban state prefers this perpetual state of crisis, since it allows it to wield power.

Cuba, by these accounts, is in crisis because Raul has dismissed vice-president Carlos Lage and foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque. It was in crisis because Fidel Castro was ill, Raul had taken over, the Soviet trading block had disappeared, or the dollar had been legalized. Each crisis was supposed to be the beginning of the end. Each time that Cuba pulled through only bolstered Colin Powell s claim, issued after the 2003 arrest of 75 dissidents, that Cuba was an aberration in the West. (3)

But what makes Cuba unique is not, as Powell suggested, infringements on civil liberties or human rights (including the use of capital punishment, which the United States uses with abandon). What distinguishes Cuba from the United States is that in Cuba, ideology and pragmatism are constantly being held in tension. Ideology isn t a dirty word used to dismiss one s opponents. Pragmatism is always couched in ideological terms, and those ideological terms are rooted in history and in practice. The cycle of dream followed by disappointment is one that Cubans are used to.

Socio-economic equality, unified leadership and inclusive nationalism were fundamental aspirations in 19th century debates on annexation, slavery, independence and the nature of the Cuban Republic. The compromising of Cuban independence, most poignantly illustrated in the passing of the Platt Amendment (1902) following the Spanish-American war, was a shock to those who had long struggled for it.The term shock suggests a dramatically different interpretation of Cuban history. Shock recognizes important moments in Cuban history as times of re-evaluation rather than rejection of the past and an embrace of post-crisis normality. In Cuba as elsewhere, crisis may force dramatic change, but the history of the Cuban revolution is one of constant adjustment. The revolution is ready to outlast not just Fidel Castro, but Raul as well.

From Fidel s to Raul s Cuba Observers tend to see Raul as more pragmatic than Fidel, yet such distinctions between hardliners and reformers within the party are rarely useful. Both Castro brothers combine pragmatism and ideology. They would not have been so successful at staying in power were this not the case. within the party who are seeking reforms are motivated by pragmatic and ideological concerns, as are those opposing them. Raul is considered a hardliner, yet he is more concerned with the institutionalization process than Fidel, who tended to oppose in principle various market-oriented policies adopted in 1990s or treat them as temporary measures in light of exceptional circumstances.

If Raul is a hardliner, he is one who believes that new policies, and especially those that appear to mark a change in course, should be considered carefully and introduced with clear guidelines. Laws that are introduced as stopgap measures, as the experience of the 1990s has shown, are laws that few understand and few take seriously.

Raul s style of leadership involves more power sharing and consultation, both with other top party officials and with those below. He is not the only one running the show, although he is still at liberty to dismiss such important government officials as Carlos Lage and Perez-Roque, who were considered members of the Fidel camp and resistant to the institutionalization process.

Unless increased reliance on the market is accompanied by greater popular participation, some worry Cuba will wind up looking like China or Vietnam, with state-run market economies and little or no popular participation. In 2006, Cuban literary critic Desiderio Navarro voiced concern that neo-Stalinist elements might try to take over the power vacuum left by Fidel Castro.(4)

Critics on the left have also argued that pre-revolutionary class divisions in Cuba, obscured in the early years of the revolution, are re-emerging. Their argument shares a striking similarity with the argument that the radicalization of Cuban Revolution in the beginning of the 1960s was a betrayal of the popular reformist movement of middle-class professionals (July 26th Movement) that brought Castro to power.

Many of this movement s members left the country and this export of dissent has been an important element in the consolidation of the revolution. Many on the Cuban Left also departed. They felt betrayed, and still do, by the revolution s centralization of power and the narrowing of realms in which workers, black Cubans, farmers, and others whose interests the revolution claimed to defend could organize themselves.

These critics ignore the transformative nature of the revolutionary process. The revolution has created its own adherents from different classes in Cuban society through a variety of campaigns aimed either at bringing middle-class professionals into the fold (the literacy campaign, for instance) or improving the lot of the large number of people who did not share Cuba s prosperity in the first half of the 20th century. Middle-class converts became some of the strongest believers.

By the 1990s, Cuba s professionals had a variety of pre-revolutionary class backgrounds. The dollar economy created new class divisions that at times coincided with older divisions (people with pre-revolutionary middle-class backgrounds might be more likely to have family abroad from whom they could receive remittances, while black and mulatto Cubans were less likely to have those networks), and at times didn t (professionals, regardless of class background, were some of the hardest hit, were less likely to work in the dollar economy and are often supporters of the revolution).

Marketization: Who Benefits?

The class that does seem to be in the best position to benefit from the incipient market shock is the military, which is responsible for most of the foreign investment and joint ventures in Cuba.

Starting in the 1990s (long before Raul, a career military man, took over), the military became heavily involved in the market economy when the government cut military spending. It is the military s economic model of firm autonomy and hard budgets that is being introduced into the larger economy in the form of the Sistema Perfeccionamiento Empresarial (the System of Enterprise Improvement).

Raul admires the Chinese model, but is aware that Cubans would not tolerate the levels of inequality associated with this or the Vietnamese model. Such inequality would challenge the legitimacy of the revolutionary leadership, which has always attempted to balance growth with equity, and usually privileged the latter.

There is still reason for concern that increasing marketization of the Cuban economy may not be accompanied by greater political opening, so that those who are not among the new elites will remain marginalized.(5) However, this new elite is in part a creation of the revolution and not a class that was sitting in deep freeze for almost 50 years waiting for the right moment to make their move.

Many of these elites are advocating for more popular participation. For instance, Raul s daughter Mariela Castro Esp n is director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education in Havana and a LGBT activist. While not part of the Central Committee, she has pushed for a participatory socialism in Cuba, arguing that this is the most effective way to preserve the socialist achievements of the revolution in the 21st century.(6) Ironically, this was the position of many academics at the Center for the Study of the Americas, which was disbanded in 1995 and its members repremanded in a speech by Raul Castro. Yet critical intellectuals do not identify as dissidents, in spite of such characterizations from abroad and occasionally by the Cuban leadership, and instead insist upon their particular role in the Cuban revolution as organic intellectuals whose loyalty lies with the principles of Cuban socialism.

The dissident movement in Cuba is disorganized and easily discredited by links, both real and fabricated, with the United States. While dissident groups are not all allied with the United States and do not always support U.S. policy toward Cuba nor free market capitalism, their voices are shut out by the war of words between the U.S. and Cuban government.

New Demands

Challenges come from elsewhere, including from those who grew up with the revolution. They don t remember the days of Batista when Cuba was a country of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, but they do remember the 1980s when the Cuban standard of living was something to envy and when Cuba was an important international player. They expect more, and yet their values are shaped by revolutionary ideology.

Another important venue for critique is in the arts. Hip-hop and nueva trova serve as vehicles to raise issues of race and class in Cuba. Literature provides a view of the rough side of Cuban life.

Students have begun making demands. They want their education to mean something. Last year students at the University of Havana met with the president of the National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, and complained about inequality, the privileging of foreigners, the dual currency, and the low purchasing power of the Cuban peso.

It is true that there is great frustration in Cuba. After surviving the collapse of the Soviet Union and a period of extraordinary hardship in Cuba, things seemed to be getting better in the late 1990s and early 2000s, only to slip back again. Changes, such as last year s legalization of cell phone use and the lifting of laws that restricted Cuban access to tourist hotels, are ones that few Cubans can really take advantage of. Many young people, and particularly professionals, are leaving Cuba.

As a consequence, one of Cuba s major challenges is to make use of its highly educated population and avoid brain drain. One way to do that has been through medical missions, which allow Cuban doctors to work abroad and earn a much higher salary than they otherwise would at home.

In some cases, exchanges work in favor of Cuba s larger economy. For example, Venezuela sells oil to Cuba at discounted prices while Cuba sends doctors to Venezuela.

Other issues include: the construction of new housing, as a chronic housing shortage forces generations to live together; the re-evaluation of the Cuban peso to boost its purchasing power and diminish the gap between wage earners and those with access to remittances or the tourist industry; and pursuing ecotourism as a way to capture hard currency without the negative social and environmental effects associated with tourism in the Caribbean and in Cuba.

Finally, another major concern has been with increasing production, particularly in the agricultural sector. The country spends roughly $2 billion annually on food imports. One quarter of that is paid for in cash to U.S. agribusiness. Two-thirds of food production in Cuba comes from private farmers who control only a small fraction of the farmland.

The government has handed over fallow, but arable, land to small farmers and made other increases in material incentives in order to improve production.

Cuba has not always been able to balance growth with equity, but perhaps its greatest legacy is that it has always tried and never allowed itself to lose sight of the latter. Its other legacy may that the politicization of all spheres of Cuban life can feel burdensome to Cubans, but can also spill out beyond control in ways that cannot fit easily into categories of dissidence or party dogmatism.

Everyone has heard that you have to love yourself before someone else can love you. The reason for this is simple – our ideal partner is a reflection of us.

We attract people that are like us. Not just in terms of romantic, sexual/physical attraction. We attract them metaphysically – these people tend to turn up in our lives.

Each of us has a unique belief system, a way of seeing the world that is slightly different to everyone else’s. It’s almost like our ego has a fingerprint. What turns us on, what turns us off? What we feel is important.

Our political preferences, tastes in food and music, and so on, all arise out of this belief system. Our particular thoughts and feelings resonate with different aspects of the world around us. If your thoughts are dark, you like heavy metal. If your thoughts are happy, you like cheesy music. We like certain foods, like for example, coffee, because of the way they make us feel.

The types of people that come into our lives are affected by our beliefs. We meet people who have made the same sorts of choices we make. Where to live, which bar to go to, which supermarket to shop at. All these choices reflect our values and our way of being from day to day, minute to minute.

When you enter a seminar or lecture theatre, where do you sit? On the front row where you can ask questions or the back where you can fall asleep without being noticed? Our personality is reflected in the places we turn up… and so we end up being surrounded by people who are the same way.

Romantic compatibility has a lot to do with this. Why do we always ask our love interest what sort of music they like? We want to know they are on our wavelength. We want to know they are drawn to the same emotional experience, so we can trust that they will understand us.

It seems like this is easily faked. All you have to do is listen to someone talk passionately and agree with them. Find something from your own experience that is similar emotionally and share it. But this can be hard work. It’s much easier if your passions really are similar emotionally. That way, things just happen.

The problem comes when you are romantically attracted to people who are not on your wavelength. This means, people who are not right for you, but who have something that you respect, or admire, or just desire. You want to be with the other person to feel good about yourself, to fill some hole inside you or to change what other people think about you. These relationships are doomed to failure from the start, because of the amount of energy it takes to maintain them.

Do you like yourself? Would you be attracted to someone who was the opposite sex version of you? Are the people you are attracted to your mirror in terms of life philosophy, success, and social hierarchy?

The right person for you has similar political and religious views. Their life philosophy, work ethic, which matches yours perfectly. There are certain adjustments to make across the genders, for example power in men roughly equates to looks in women. But the stress in the relationship is directly proportional to your differences. A certain amount of stress is healthy and keeps things interesting, but only up to a certain breaking point.

When you think of the men or women who naturally come into your life, the ones who have the same interests and world view as you, are you attracted to them? The girls or guys who you know you could get, and just be with, just by turning round and saying you wanted them, and are they the sort of person you want? Are they the sort of person you want to be? If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll probably realize that the things you don’t like about them are the things you don’t like about yourself. So you reject that person and look for the qualities you want to see in yourself, in someone else.

If you like yourself, you will like the people you naturally meet, and they will like you. If you don’t like yourself, you will waste energy trying to get with people who aren’t like you, or you will settle for being with someone you don’t like.

There are two solutions to this. The first, and most important, is to learn to like you. The second is to turn yourself into the person that you want to be.

If you want to like yourself, one way to do it is to realize that you are the perfect you that anyone could be. No-one else can do the things you do quite like you. No-one sees the world quite the same way. No-one has precisely your talents, ambitions, or lack thereof. No-one screws things up the same way; no-one makes the same mistakes and faux pas’. At being you, for all your faults and weaknesses, you would get an A+. It’s ok to be the way you are – it must be, because the way you are IS the way you are.

Once you adopt this philosophy or one like it with regard to yourself, you will start seeing others the same way. The truth is, you probably are attracted to the opposite sex equivalent of you, it’s just you’re also turned off to them, for the same reasons you’re turned off from yourself. Accept yourself, and you will accept them.

Many people think that their drive to improve themselves stems from the things they don’t like about themselves. Feelings of inadequacy, dissatisfaction, or just dislike and hatred for yourself actually won’t change; no matter how much you improve yourself. It is the feeling that needs to be dealt with, not whichever reason you rationalize at the time for feeling it.

It’s actually easier to change and improve yourself once you accept yourself. The same negative feelings of self-non-acceptance lock us in to being those things that we want to change. Change the feeling first, and the specific details will sort themselves out.

Look at the sort of person you want to get together with. You can become the sort of person who they would want to be with, assuming that you’re not already. If the person they want to be with is the sort of person that you don’t like, then you’ll have to let go of those feelings, because those feelings keep you from being like them.

Take the school computer nerd, who wants to get with the cheerleader. But the cheerleader likes the football players. She’s physically active; she parties a lot, and is confident in herself. So she looks for guys who are physically active, party a lot, and are confident in themselves. It makes no sense that she would want to be with a guy who locks himself in his bedroom, is anti-social, and can’t look her in the eye when he speaks.

So to get the girl, the nerd must become the football player. He can still play to his strengths with computers, and he needn’t play football. But he needs to adopt their way of being in terms of inward qualities. If he is truly attracted to the cheerleader, then he wants those qualities for himself anyway, and he dislikes the contradicting qualities he already possesses.

The nerd that truly doesn’t want to become the football player doesn’t truly want the cheerleader. He wants the bookish girl who is already on his wavelength. Either way, the solution is rooted in self-acceptance. If he accepts himself, he will accept the bookish girl. If once he accepts himself, he finds that he wants to become a footballer, he can have the cheerleader too.

Once you accept yourself you will realize your true motives for wanting someone you can’t have. If you want to be with them to compensate for your own shortcomings, you will no longer want them. If you want them because you want to be like their ideal partner, then you will become that person. So there is never a need to change you for someone else.

Accept yourself, and you will like the potential partners you can get.

Improve yourself, and you will get the partner you want.

By: Harris Smothers