strippers...they're just like us

People who don't live in Las Vegas have a lot of misconceptions about people who do live in Las Vegas.

"I would die if I tried to live in Las Vegas," was the most common response by people when I told them I lived there. And they literally meant "die," since most trips to Vegas--at least for the 35 and under set--are nothing if not--let's face it--very close calls. A small sample of friends' and acquaintances' close calls include blurry-at-best nights that inevitably terminate in the emergency room, jail,* or the water fountain at Caesar's. For one poor soul I know, it included all three.

But the truth is that life off the Strip is as ordinary as life off any main drag in any town--almost. There are dry cleaners, post offices, and Dairy Queens. There are Targets, school crossings, and bike lanes. There are churches, parks, and girls-next-door, though--and here is where Vegas distinguishes itself from places like Piedmont, North Dakota--there is a 89% chance that the girl next door is a stripper. Or the sister of a stripper. Or the roommate of a stripper. Or the boyfriend of another stripper, which, of course, is another topic altogether.

The one defining characteristic, I noticed, in life off the Strip is the disproportionate number of strippers per capita. LA has waiters who aren't really waiters; New York has Ford Models; Gary Indiana has deliquents and well, Vegas has strippers. They are everywhere: buying groceries, dropping off dry cleaning, and showing up barefaced at Starbucks in their Juicy yoga pants. Even in plainclothes, you can't really miss these women. They are always wearing anklets, and if their Amazonian proportions don't tip you off, then the rolls of hundred dollar bills they pull out of their Fendi and Ferragamo bags when buying a latte will.

And I'll never forget meeting my first real live stripper. It felt momentous, not unlike the day I met President Clinton on the Capitol Steps or Santa Clause at the Eastwood Mall. I had thrown a birthday party for a friend at a cigar lounge and not one but two real live strippers had been on the list of invitees. My friend had worked in the service industry in Vegas for three years at that point, he was plugged into the stripper circuit by default. All service industry people in Vegas whether they keep their clothes on or take them off, mind you, know one another, and Kevin Bacon has nothing on their interconnectedness.

When the two women introduced themselves at my friend's party, I was admittedly fascinated. As the women told me about themselves, I leaned in for the Faustian plot--after all, haven't all strippers made a deal with the devil? I had assumed that Vegas strippers fall into one of two categories: magna-cum-laudes paying their way through med school or high school dropouts on the lam.

But as it turned out, Chrissie and Fiona were surprisingly...ordinary. Their stories, like the stories of most women I know, fall on a continuum that starts with heartbreak and ends with happily ever after. Both women seemed ambivalent about their jobs. They were supporting themselves, as well as their young daughters. Both of them were taking classes at a nearby community college and biding their time until they could find "better," though less lucrative, jobs. These women, nor their stories, were nearly as heroic or pathetic as I at first had imagined them to be.

Except for the fact that Chrissie and Fiona were veritable fountains of information when it came to where to find the best go go boots in town and how to repair a snagged pair of fishnet stockings with lip gloss and a mascara wand, they really weren't that different than me.

They were just normal girls doing the best the could--like the rest of us--with the hand they were dealt.

*I have to say here that anyone who does actually end up in jail deserves some kind of special mention because getting thrown into jail in Sin City is actually A LOT more difficult than getting thrown out of jail. In fact, Las Vegans know that the subplot regarding police enforcement in The Hangover is the only part of the film that is not a documentary.