Let's face it. Sin is fun for a season. Did I know what I was doing was wrong? Heck yeah! You got to remember, I was in church my whole life. I never doubted the existence of God; as a matter of fact, my belief in God and the supernatural was so embedded in me that even when I was strung out on all kinds of drugs, I NEVER touched hallucinogens, because I was afraid that those kinds of drugs would open me up to a realm of existence that I did not want to see. Angels and demons are very real, people, and the supernatural is not separate from the natural, just because we can't see it.
I had a conscience, but every time you ignore that little voice inside of you saying, "Hey, maybe you shouldn't do this...", that voice gets quieter and quieter, until one day you can't hear it at all.
That's how it happened to me. Gradually. The first 6 months that I worked in the club, I thought it was glamorous. I could smoke cigarettes, drink, look pretty and make money! I had been off of hard drugs for a little while; I still smoked weed, but I started dabbling in pills... nothing too serious, but I started taking Xanax again, and then I started to drink a little bit.
My friend Diamond had struggled for a long time with alcoholism. She was 18 years old and already had a problem. She is the one that taught me how to drink. Every day when we went to work, the first thing we would do was send someone to the liquor store to get us a big bottle of Crown Royal, our drink of choice. Then we would go to the front VIP and we would get a nice buzz going before we even went on stage the first time. I still didn't have a car, so when Byron left to go to the army, I had to find another way to Dallas, which was a good 45 minutes to an hour away. I would take a cab most nights, but I was spending $80 on a one way ride, and even though it was chump change for me at that time, it was still a little much. So I started to spend the weekends with Diamond and Derik. And it was great! Me and Derik got really close, but I was never attracted to him like that, and me and Diamond's friendship was stronger than ever.
Something else was happening to me, too. Crystal, the girl with a lot of issues, but a big heart, was slowly fading into the background, and Faith was taking over. I embraced this new persona that I created, because this girl was desirable, people wanted to be around her and she was cool. I had finally remade myself and I LIKED who I was when I was Faith. I was strong; not this messed up little girl who had been picked on and kicked around her whole life. I was pretty and people liked me.
I've always said, when people ask me about that time in my life, that stripping is not just a profession. It's a lifestyle. Some people manage to keep their personal life, and their club life separate, but most people can't. I didn't. I was a stripper in the club, and I was a stripper outside of the club.
During this time, I reconnected with an old friend, Amy, from high school. Me, her and Diamond were inseparable the summer before Don and I broke up. After that happened, we all kind of went our separate ways, but me and Amy started hanging out again, and one day she took me over to this studio, where the guy she liked recorded music. His name was Chris. We started hanging out over there, and I thought a couple of the guys on the record label were cute, and so, of course, I slept with them! Old habits die hard. I started hanging out with Chris and one of his buddies more than the rest of them, and they probably only hung out with me because they knew I stripped, and I would always buy weed and invite them over. Pretty soon, though, I started to only invite Chris over, and then Amy and I stopped talking. I felt bad, but I only really cared about myself at that point.
Well, one thing led to another, and although me and Chris only started out as friends at first, we ended up sleeping together. Then, we kind of ended up dating, but we weren't really dating yet. It was kind of a hard thing to explain. He would come over, sleep with me, smoke my weed and leave. He stood me up several times when he was supposed to come over, and on those nights I would cry and wonder what I had done to make him stay away.
He would come to the club and watch me dance a lot, too. I think it was kind of a thrill for him to see his girl up on stage and see other men give me money; money that he knew I would use on him. I desperately wanted him to love me, so I tried to buy his affection. I was always chasing after affection from men, and like any other girl with daddy issues, i'm sure it was my way of making up for the love of a father that I had missed. If only I had known that my Heavenly Father was desperate for my love, the way I was desperate for Chris's. I paid for his college tuition one semester, which he flunked out of, bought him a $300 dollar outfit for his first day of school, and just about did everything he wanted me to do. I don't think his intention was to use me, but I just made it so dang easy for him, that he saw an opportunity and took it.
Finally, my lease was up and I moved back in with my mom. I was supposed to quit dancing at that point, remember? But how was I supposed to keep Chris around if I didn't have money? I knew he didn't feel strongly enough about me to stick around unless I kept making money and doing stuff for him, so I decided to keep dancing.
I thought I was slick, too. My mom didn't know I was stripping yet. She knew I was working in the strip club, but I told her I was just waitressing, and even then, she was MAD. She even threatened to break my legs (lol) and burn the place down. Looking back, I can understand her anger. I feel this intense love for the baby growing in my belly, and the need to protect it, and it gives me a perspective on the way my mom loves me. I also told the rest of my family that I was waitressing, but they knew the truth.
So, I move back into my mom's house, and one day I get a call from Chris and he tells me that his mom just kicked him out. So I told him to come spend the night with me at my mom's. Well, I never officially asked if he could move in, or even invited him to, but he spent every night there with me, at least until two weeks later.
Why two weeks? Because my mom got into an argument with Nancy's son, who was living in our den at the time, and he blurted out that I was stripping.
She called me into her room later that night and confronted me about it. We got into a big fight and I knew I couldn't stay there anymore. So I packed up my stuff and Chris and I moved into his friend Jamie's house. Jamie was in a relationship with a friend of Chris and so we lived in this small townhouse with them and like, 10 other people. It was cramped and all we did was sit around and smoke weed most of the time when I wasn't at work. We only stayed there for about 2 weeks, until I saved enough money to put a deposit on another apartment.
I got packed up and ready to move, but I didn't want Chris to find another woman to take care of him, so I invited him to move in with me. He accepted, and that was the real start to our relationship.
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