Reprinted from Strip City by Lily Burana

Instead of turning to the peep show I could have gone back to New Jersey, but in my view, returning home would have been tantamount to failure and I couldn’t have that. In the way that fear cleverly masquerades as pride, I convince myself that working at Peepland is the best thing for me. I can handle it. Besides, it’s only for a few weeks. Then I’ll find something else.
I know the threshold I have crossed, that I have entered a dangerous and possibly damaging world. This is not cosmetic defiance like being a hardcore kid; a very serious taboo has been broken, and there is no turning back. This is scary, but in a small, sleazy way, it’s exciting, too. I never would have thought that I’d do something like this, but now that I have, I am full of my own daring. I feel more in control of my life that I have in months.
In my journal that night I write with a flourish of neophyte brio, “I am working this business, it’s not working me,” not yet knowing that in this business everyone gets worked, at least a little bit.

I am young, but I am far from the youngest girl working at Peepland. Some of the girls told me they had started there when they were thirteen. Depressing, for sure, but if you’re on your own, where else would you go? “Back home” isn’t an option.

It’s no great achievement to get hired at Peepland – all you need is lingerie and a pulse. There are chunky girls, skinny girls, downright fat girls. Girls with saggy tits, small tits, freakishly large tits, surgically mangled tits. Cellulite, scars, stretch marks, bad tattoos....some come for a day or two, others have been there for years.

The women I get to know are aspiring models and actresses, single moms, illegal immigrants, druggies, rocker chicks, runaways, party girls, artists, secretaries, and security guards who drop in on the weekends for extra cash, hookers who want a break from the streets, world travelers who want to finance their next adventure. Some women I only know by sight, as they clack by on their cheap heels on their way into the toilet stalls to smoke crack, the burning plastic smell filling the dressing room.

There is nothing about working at Peepland that I find erotic – such as I know from erotic at my age. I’m not inncoent, but I just can’t understand the attraction of such a place, it’s so filthy and pathetic. I know why the women are here: Money.