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Volume 1 finds us spending time with Audream, a retired stripper now making her way as a rapper. The moments that you are about to took place shortly before she left the game.
The following has been lightly edited for clarity.
You shared with me that you were a bartender at the strip club, before you decided to become a dancer. How did life change for you when you made that decision?
The minute I started dancing was when all the controversy, all the hate, all the jealousy, all the drama, and all the bullshit began. It was like I suddenly had a million enemies. It went from everyone being cool with me, to girls now thinking that I was their competition. You could see them thinking, ‘Fuck her. What can we do to fuck up her money? What can we do to throw her under the bus? What can we do to make her less appealing so that customers or other people don’t like her?’
That’s when the rumors started, and when the gossiping, the drama, and the fights began. It was just a lot of shit. I mean, it’s not an easy industry. The other dancers will make up stuff about you to a customer so they won’t to deal with, so they can mess up your money. Anything that you can possibly imagine, they did it.
I don’t understand. Because if I’m in a strip club, and I see you, what could someone possibly say to convince me not to get a dance from you?
It’s simple. Another bitch will come up and be like, ‘oh don’t fuck with her, she’s a hoe. She’s nasty, or she has a STD. Whatever can fly out of their lips, they will say it, and make up any rumor about you. They will do anything they can think of to try to make and someone not find you appealing. And it never worked. NEVER.
That’s why I just sit back and watch it all. If they invested as much time as they did throwing me under the bus, they’d make money too. You know? I feel like what you put out there is what you get in return. So you are basically blocking your own blessings by being negative towards another me. So if you constantly hate another person, you basically are going to get the same KARMA back in return. That’s just my perspective.
Does the culture in strip clubs breed this type of animosity between some of the dancers?
I think the culture here in Atlanta is very toxic. I feel like it’s a crab in a barrel type of environment, where no one wants to see you win. They don’t want to see you make moves, and they don’t want to see you succeed. I don’t want to do this forever. To tell you the truth, I want to be done with this completely in a couple of months after my music is where I want it to be.
I have people right now who don’t fuck with me, and I don’t even know them. They’re strangers. I’ve gotten death threats. I’ve had bitches do shit to my car. I’ve had bitches try to jump me, or to get someone to follow me home after the club. It’s just really toxic. You have to be prayed up and focused. That’s why when I go to work, I don’t fuck with nobody. I don’t talk to nobody. I just get my money and I leave.
Do I take the death threats seriously?
No, not really. I got into a fight at work a few days ago over some money. They tried to cut me out of a section that I was in, and I knew the guy who was throwing the money. When I wouldn’t leave the section, she told me that she had her gun in the car and that was going to shoot me after work.
But that type of stuff does not bother me, because I feel like if someone truly wants to do something to me, they’re not going to announce it. They’re not going to tell me. They’re not going to send me a text message or an email from an anonymous page. So it doesn’t bother me because I feel like if I stay prayed up, and have my own type of anointing over me, then nobody can touch me. I’m not trying to be cocky. I just feel like I’m covered, and I feel like that mentality is what keeps me alive in this industry.
If I was naïve and scary, I wouldn’t make it. I tell people all the time that this is really like the dope game. And just like the dope game, it has consequences and repercussions. Outside of the threats there is a lot of money spent on drugs and alcohol by some of these girls just to make it through the night. They need the alcohol, because they need to get drunk to make money because they have to get their mind to a certain place where they can deal with the bullshit. If your head is not screwed on right, you’ll definitely get lost in the sauce.
** We’ll be back next week with Volume 2 of Stripper Chronicles**
Brittney Keith contributed to this reporting.
