Welcome to my Blog

The girl voted “Most Shy” in high school swung open the blackened-out door with the “No Fat Women Allowed” sign and entered the darkness. I slipped on my stripper stilettos and danced in my underwear for a room full of drinking men. For every dollar bill that I clutched, another word was recorded into my journal, where I tried to make sense of what I was witnessing, feeling, and becoming.

I now find myself fully clothed sitting at a laptop beginning a blog about being a mom who once shed her clothes for a living. The only men who pant after my naked breasts are my fiance and my daughter. I wear comfortable shoes. And the only exotic poses I find myself striking are when I am teaching yoga.

I now find myself living an ordinary life as a new mother, but life does not feel simple by any means.

I struggle every day to fully embrace who I was and who I have become.

I diligently try to keep my eyes open to get a little writing done in between nursing, teaching and taking care of my home.

I wonder how I will manage to finish my coming-of-age memoir, All this Useless Beauty: My Life as Exotic Dancer, attend graduate school in the fall, take care of my baby and have a fullfilling personal life.

And I wonder if anyone will want to read a blog about how all of this past experience of being an actress, a model, a dancer affects my life now in some way every day.

While I write about all of my experiences and revelations during the years I worked in the adult entertainment business for my memoir, I will journal here about the issues that arise for me in the present--from living in Queens with my fiance, Nick, and my 11-month-old daughter, Genevieve, to figuring out why I have this need to write about it all and share it with the world.