Dear Mikey

Mikey

I know what you told me last night must’ve been hard to say. I know it was hard to hear and to bear. And I know it’s easier to not believe anything anyone says. I know by experience and in my heart that not believing anyone will only lead to heartache over and over. The inability to believe someone’s words is a dark and dismal existence. I’ve been through it over and over just like you. Where the ones you love and trust lie straight to your face and look you directly in the eye and pretend they care but in reality it isn’t true. But I came to a decision before I met you that I would give my best and face each person and trust them until they gave me a reason not to. And I’ll be damned if I haven’t been used and hurt by more than just men but by friends too… or those I thought were my friends.

We spoke last night about my opening up to you and telling you everything. And you said that I haven’t told you everything and you’re right. I didn’t think you wanted to hear about my X’s. I figured if I told you, you would think I was comparing you to them. Or that I’m dwelling on them or that I had baggage that I just wasn’t over. I knew it would come out eventually in conversations but I didn’t realize the importance of my past to you. I know that I had wondered about your X’s and why you split, but I didn’t push because I figured it would come out eventually. Honestly, I was just remarking to Linda that I hadn’t told you about them and that it was good. Good because the things you do and say don’t have anything to do with them. Like your actions are showing me who you are, not showing me that you are unlike them.. you’ll see what I mean as I describe to you the relationships and the reasons behind their demise later.

Before I met you I had decided to quit Vixens on a certain date. I chose that date because I wanted to make sure I had enough money to get by. I decided to quit because of several reasons.

Firstly, I finally came to the realization that I would never have a normal, loving, trusting relationship while being there. And that, ultimately, is what I wanted most in my life. And I still want that. I know now that it is not possible for a man to love or trust a woman who puts herself in that environment or position. It’s not fair to strain someone’s trust that much. A man or a woman can only take so much before they have to detach themselves. It’s a hard lesson learned.

The second reason is that I felt dirty and that I was surrounding myself with bad people and bad energy. I was engrossed in the debauchery and the lies that surround the business. It wasn’t my intention to be in that position in the first place. I started dancing because it was something that I always wanted to do. And as you know I only intended to dance for 3 months and I did quit in July 2005. And then my father died on August of 2005. I found that I needed to work that much in order to quiet my brain from the visions of my father’s passing. It was a very, very traumatic time for me. I couldn’t be alone for more than an hour before I would have severe panic attacks. I would have nightmares unless I worked myself into a point of physical and mental exhaustion. And that became habitual. Always running, always moving for if I sat still my mind would catch up with me. So dancing became my escape… And there I was 4 years later. Broken marriage, living with a woman that was using me, lonely, sad and finally focusing on me and what I needed.

Thirdly, I knew that MoMo couldn’t grow while I was working there. My clients lost respect for me because of the stigma behind “the dancer”. I didn’t have time to focus on the business because I was exhausted.

I decided to quit Vixens “no matter what”. No matter if I couldn’t afford rent, if I lost friends, if I had to sell my STi… no matter what. I was determined that I would never go back, that I would survive without the money. All I had to do was believe it would work. I knew I was making the right choice, I felt I just had to take that leap… and that I would fall and land. Maybe not in one piece but at least I would land I’ve been through harder things than this. I didn’t think I would have anyone to catch me, because I had given up on that idea. My original back-up plan was that if I couldn’t make it and I needed a place to live I would move in with Linda. She had offered her place when I left X-HUSBAND and she offered her place ever since. No worries, no rent and a true friend and someone who would do anything for me. And then I met you.

The reason why I left X-HUSBAND? I don’t even know where to start because there are many reasons. Let’s start with his pot smoking. Everyday, he would be blazed out of his mind, to the point he could barely function. I would plea with him to quit or cut back so he would be more motivated. So we could have better quality time together, so he could focus on getting a better job, to work on the house, to get off the couch. All he would do would sit on the couch and play video games. When I was working at the club.. he would go out to clubs too. Every weekend. Keep in mind we owned that house. I was working 70 hours a week with my real job, MoMo and Vixens and tried to maintain the house too but there wasn’t much I could do. We had a room-mate who would mow the grass. But the rest of the house just fell apart. One time I actually had to drag him out of bed to fix a leak in the roof. The leak was directly over our bed and had been leaking since the day before. Move on to his stealing from me… Pain meds from my back injuries, Xanax for my anxiety attacks, Money I had made from the club I left in the open. There’s no reason to hide these from my husband right? Guess where he got the money to spend at the clubs? It took me a while to realize what he was doing, but when I would go to pay for something large, like a cruise or a trip to England or an emergency repair or appliance.. There wasn’t much money there! I knew I had it, because I didn’t have time to spend it! Imagine being unable to breath the world crashing around you and the only thing that will fix it is a little pill.. that wasn’t there when you needed it? Or pain so unbearable you couldn’t drive or think.. and the meds weren’t there. I chose to bury it all. I stopped getting xanax for myself and learned to deal with the attacks on my own. I didn’t need the pain killers anymore since I had found a chiropractor and a good physical therapist for my needs. The money issue came after I had started dancing, obviously. After I realized that he had been stealing cash, I decided to lock up my money. And several times I would find that the combination lock had been moved from where I had intentionally set it. I told you about the porn addiction. I found that out by tracking his movements online. He would visit hundreds of pages a day, every day. We wouldn’t have sex for months at a time. I got tired of trying to initiate because all I would get was rejection. It was a very hard concept for me to understand. I worked hard at my body and looking good. I couldn’t figure out why I was so repulsive, specially since I had always gotten compliments from everyone else. So I thought he was cheating on me. Eventually I got tired of him acting so suspicious and I confronted him. He told me he was addicted to pain killers for 3 years. That would be from 2004 to 2007. Here I was thinking he didn’t love me or want me and that I would have to live the rest of our marriage like that only to discover he had been addicted to painkillers and the porn and the clubs! He was totally oblivious to how much I needed him while my father lie dying in the hospital, how much the house was falling apart around him, how much life was passing him by. He would pass up promotions and any opportunity to get ahead. His promises were never fulfilled. No matter how many times I would ask him to start helping more around the house, be a little more productive it would all go unnoticed and undone. I wanted so much to get ahead in life. I didn’t want to stay stagnant. I wanted to grow my business and have better things and not have to work for my real job. I had dreams, ambitions and desires and he had nothing. He refused to have a goal or anything. He was afraid to try. I came up with a plan to help him get ahead. I would send him to school with all the money I was making at the club. Then when he got his degree and landed a better job, then I could, in turn, go to school and proceed with growing MoMo and make it a full time thing. He didn’t even look at the brochure for school that I gave him. I had the cash in hand to send him to school!!!! I was extremely unhappy and I found that I couldn’t take it anymore. I was on a double dose of Prozac just to get by without thought or emotion and I wanted to live! So I told him that I had enough in October of 2008. We decided that we would remain friends and roommates. He said he found Star a week after that. In December I was tired of being the only one home since he was always finding something else to do and it hurt me that he didn’t even want to try to work things out. I decided to move out.

After X-HUSBAND and I split and it had been determined we could see other people I started dating Michael Anderson – the Wrestler. He made me feel like I was the most perfect woman in the world. That I was beautiful, smart, sexy and that I could do anything I ever wanted. (doesn’t everyone want to hear that?) He would go to different strip clubs in the area and he knew who X-HUSBAND was. He told me he didn’t know that X-HUSBAND was married cause he was always flirting with all the dancers and “in fact” one of the dancers had told Michael that X-HUSBAND and her were dating AND that X-HUSBAND had a lot of money. Well of course I believed that!! It fit! I don’t know if it was true or not, but the likelihood seems viable. Soon Michael had me in his clutches and I was of course, willing to help him in his endeavor to be a great wrestler. He told me that he once worked for the WWE but he broke his neck and was in recovery. He was in a lot of pain and couldn’t get his career off the ground again until he could over-come his pain. He had no job or money. So I began paying for his physical therapy. And when he started feeling good enough to wrestle I would pay for his trips to local indie shows in the area. Sometimes I would actually drive him there and rent hotel rooms for us to stay at. He had me fooled completely. I couldn’t imagine anyone could look me directly in the eye and tell me so many lies. But I eventually learned he’d done this to many other girls. In fact he had been banned from several other strip clubs for doing the same thing. Lies about not having a wife or kids. Lies about other dancers. Lies about the WWE. I would hear about this from other people and question him on it and he would berate me and tell me not to believe that nonsense. Well his lies caught up with him as I told you. And the last straw was when he flew down to Orlando to “try out for TNA” I wanted to surprise him and fly down too since he would be gone for a week and a half. But I couldn’t help but tell him about my surprise beforehand. I flew down to visit him a few days after he was there. I was there for less than 24 hours before his wife called him on the phone and was flipping out on him because he had taken the phone into the bathroom to talk to her. I could hear her voice through his phone. I knew what was up. We had an argument after I asked loudly who was on the phone and he hung up on her. He eventually left the room to continue his conversation with his “mom” in private. I packed my bags and left immediately. I was on a plane back to VA within hours. I look back on that now and I’m embarrassed and feel supremely stupid at how naive I was. But his lies were good and I wanted someone who had goals and dreams and man did he dream big!! It just so happened that he was a fake and a liar.

It took a while for me to even think about talking to anyone else after that. My god I felt like everyone on Earth was a liar and cheater after X-HUSBAND and Michael. Everyone I would meet at the club was just rotted. I didn’t have time to meet anyone anywhere else. My schedule just wasn’t flexible. Eventually I met someone I felt comfortable enough to talk to and get to know better only to discover he was married to! He told me on his own, but said that they were on the rocks. Yeah right! Kicked him to the curb.

I swore off seeing anyone that ever stepped foot into a club again. No way, I felt that these people were somehow warped and sick in the brain. So not having time to go out and find anyone and not wanting to give up hope that there was someone out there for me I turned to online dating. Heh. After about 400 emails and met 3 people for real I found someone that I thought was pretty cool so we started dating. He was a controlling freak! He told me that he wouldn’t commit to me until I had stopped dancing… even though he would go out to the clubs with his friends. The last straw was him getting angry at me for not texting him for a few hours while I was at work. He told me that since I was too busy for him he would just go to Legz. Uumm yeah.. if he knew me at all, he would know never to use a strip club against me. But the one thing he gave me was the insight about how it wasn’t fair for a man to have to deal with a dancer. A few weeks later I met you.

I made a lot of friends while at the club. Male and female. The ones I still talk to are still in my phone book. Like I told you, If I wanted them I would have had them. Just like you and your friends or X’s. I figure if you had wanted them, you would have had them and we wouldn’t have met. I’m not a cheater, I don’t like it and I will never be that person.

Thom, a 48 year old man who works for the NSA. He would come in and chill with a bunch of us dancers and buy champagne rooms from each of us and sit and talk. I don’t know why he would do it. But I valued his friendship and when he was shipped to Iraq for six weeks during my and X-HUSBAND’s drama I felt it easy to talk to him over email. He helped me a lot with advice and just listening. No I never hooked up with him. No I would never have hooked up with him either.

Adam: a 40 year old married man who I haven’t seen in 2 or 3 years still calls me. When we first met he would come in and talk to me for hours and blow thousands of dollars on me, just showing off. Never a private room, but always throwing wads of $20 bills on stage. I convinced him to go back to his wife that he had left and get rid of the 19 year old girl he was dating. He calls every so often to update me on his life and see how I’m doing. Never hooked up, never would have.

Hamlet: I met in January I think. A Marine based in Quantico. He would come in with his friends every so often. We became friends but nothing ever came of it. He just wasn’t motivated enough for me and he was too young. Never hooked up, never would have had I not met you.

Tommy: you met him and his GF. He’s been a friend of many of my friends for a long time. After I left X-HUSBAND he offered to help with my cars and anything else I needed. I truly think he’s just a nice guy. Never hooked up, never would have.

LJ: I met at the track last year. Like Thom he’s helped me through a lot of the x issues. He’s a good, honest and unwavering friend. He’s always told me exactly what he thinks and how stupid I am or whatever comes to his mind. Never hooked up and never thought about it.

Those are the current guys I talk to. I have several long time friends that may contact me every so often.

You will meet every single one of them.

You have to understand that I think you are the most amazing man! You are so fun to be with! You have your head on your shoulders. You’re a leader and a protector. You are extremely sexy and an incredible lover. We have so much in common!! You have the biggest heart I’ve ever seen. I told you last night that your capacity to love is absolutely incredible. I feel so proud and encouraged by that! You have goals and dreams and desires that I find so attractive! Seeing you with your family and your friends tells me that you are a good person. I can’t tell you enough how much it means to me that you have invited me into your life and opened your arms to me the way you did. It made me fall for you that much more, to find a person that is just as giving as I am. That would take that chance and open your life to me. Every little thing you do makes me know you are the one. You may not see these things in yourself but I see them. You see a man without a job. I see a man who fell victim to the economy and who is fighting tooth and nail to recover and help himself. I find that very attractive. I want to be your partner and help you through these times. You showed me so much that day you took me out on our first date. You told me your walls were down and you were open to me. You felt good about me and I didn’t know why. You showed me so much and you didn’t even realize. I love you and I don’t want to live without you. Please don’t build up walls and push me away. I have done nothing but love you and cherish our time together since we met. I promise to always be good to you, always. Please don’t push me away. I hope what I had to say helps. I want you to try to find something, ask questions. Look over my shoulder until you feel you can trust me. I have the urge to do the same to you, but I won't. I am determined to trust you even though I've been not only burned by that behavior but cremated. I love you. believe it.