I would like to dedicate this week’s blog to all the strippers out there. I salute your dedication, upper body strength and swan like grace. Without you the pole would be a lonely place.

When I was twenty-one I had an insane body.

I was five-foot-ten (I still am, I think), had legs that went on forever and curves resembling an hourglass (now I resemble Sponge Bob Square Pants). I ate potato chips and Pepsi for breakfast and Coronas and Mac n’ Cheese for dinner. Working out meant  dancing with my girlfriends at our favorite clubs seven nights a week with a drink in one hand and the other making, “I’m so cool look at me dance” movements similar to those made by  a traffic cop. In short, I thought I was hot shit.

If I had a crystal ball to see what was to become of me, I definitely would have  eaten healthier and been a tad less conceited.  I also wouldn’t have had permanent lip liner tattooed on my sausage lips because now I understand that dark lines around the rim of your mouth are best worn by clowns and Atlantic City Hookers.

So what happened to me you ask? Well, I got married, was impregnated, gained sixty-pounds (because I thought all the weight you gain during pregnancy disappears after childbirth), then birthed a nine-pound baby.  Unfortunately I only shed twelve pounds from my two-hundred-pound body. I was a mushy, stretch marked blob. I looked just like the creepy older brother, Jed, in Weird Science when he was turned into that disgusting pile of lard by Kelly LeBrock (just add some hair and plump the lips a bit).

I was miserable but I did nothing about it.

Over the years, I slowly lost thirty-five pounds but that wasn’t enough to make give me the confidence to parade around the pool in anything less than a moo-moo. I now had a saggy belly that only a mother could love and I don’t even think she could admit to loving it. I was a smaller version of Chunk from The Goonies.

When I got divorced, instead of really working at becoming a hot MILF, I met a nice Italian boy to settle down with.  I gained most of my weight back because we ate pasta and Chevys at least three times a week. Those Chalupas are sooooo friggen good!

So there I was happy, in love and chubby again. Thank God my boyfriend is a freak of nature because he actually loves girls with meat on their bones and is practically blind without his glasses so he has never really noticed the stretch marks on my stomach in the four years we’ve been together. Then I turned thirty! Not only was I older, none the more wiser and forced to sleep with a sports bra on thanks to gravity, I was also ready to kick my fat ass into gear and really start to slim down and feel healthier. I lost 3-pounds that year and boy did it not show. Clearly I was lazy and really liked McDonalds and brownie sundaes.

Now we are in March, 2011 and I will be thirty-one in three weeks. Back in January I joined a competition (Staten Island Slim Down) and I am in the running to win a $3000 cash price among other things. Being someone who needs a new tooth and who strongly likes money, I have committed to my weight loss this time.  I have lost almost twenty-pounds just by eating right but now it’s time to tone the bod. The problem is that The Von HATES to exercise!

I have joined every single gym in my home town at least once and have gone to each one about once. I get out of my contracts by bringing in a doctor’s note stating that I am in no physical shape to work out in their facility. They buy into my bullshit note filled with lies and allow me to quit with no questions asked. I’m pathetic, I admit it. I’m more pathetic than Charlie Sheen after a three day coke binge (sorry..had to do a CS reference).

So what can a person who is lazy and has the attention span of a four-year old do to get fit? You can go to a belly dancing class with your mother and realize that you have less rhythm than Elaine Benes in the holiday party dance scene on Seinfeld.

You can go to a Thai Chi class and not even want to talk about how ridiculous you looked during that hour and a half of stay still torture.  Or you can take a pole dancing class and become bruised, battered, the butt of everyone’s jokes and severely pissed that you can’t even swing around one time on a metal pole without looking like a jackass with a heavy case of Vertigo. Needless to say I chose the pole dancing class.

I recruited seven of my friends to join me last Monday night. In my head I pictured myself swinging around, hanging upside down and doing so many glamorously slutty tricks on that shiny silver pole. I thought I was gonna be a natural and put the other girls to shame. Unfortunately that is not what happened. In fact I was the worst one. I didn’t look like a hot, sexy, seductive stripper like the ones you see at SCORES NYC, instead I looked like a dancer you would find at the end of the Vegas strip in one of those hole in the wall establishments where all the “entertainers” are so strung out on downers that they can’t even walk straight. I was a terrible at it and everyone, including our instructor, found this to be hilarious. I even had my friend Lauren video tape me with my phone but she was laughing so hard she screwed it up and it never recorded. Thanks a lot LAUREN!

I will be the first to admit that I thought swinging on a pole was going to be fun and extremely easy but it wasn’t. I grew a whole new level of respect for strippers after leaving that class. How do they do it? Is there a secret organization for trampy ladies that meet once a week in somebody’s cold, dingy basement teaching you how to work the pole the correct way? I picture it to be sort of like The Fight Club but with implants and g-strings. Maybe it’s a gift you’re born with if God feels that you will make an amazing whore when you grow up. Who knows?!

All I know is that God definitely does not want me anywhere near a pole or anything that has to do with dancing for that matter. I should have known that I was not going to be able to move gracefully because my own mother looks like she is having an epileptic seizure when she dances.

My Mom

The apple obviously doesn’t fall far from the tree and now I have welts on my inner thighs and bruises all over my arms, legs and ego to prove it.

My favorite part of this whole experience was the conversation that ensued when I told my grandmother that I was achy because I took a pole dancing class. She stopped me mid sentence to yell to my grandfather who was watching television, “Jennifer is taking pole dancing!”

“Pole dancing?” he asked.

“Yeah, you know…slut class with a pole!” she replied.

He then said, “Oh, I see. She’s not gonna have to put on a recital is she?” The man knew not to have faith in me and my new endeavor. A recital would be horrific considering Helen Keller would have worked that pole ten times better than me.

Bottom line, strippers are amazingly talented individuals and if I ever get fired and need to find a big money job that doesn’t require a college degree or a full set of teeth, stripping will not be on my list of potential career choices.