Memoirs of a Stripper: Aimee Bushong Bares All in Rock 'N' Pole

Aimee Bushong's story is anything but common. Two decades after she started writing down the tales of her working life as a stripper, Bushong's memoir, Rock 'N' Pole, is now available to readers. And you can get the book and meet her in person at Off the Beaten Path Bookstore in Steamboat Springs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, October 12.

"I wanted to tell my crazy story about chasing my dreams and self-resilience and personal growth," says Bushong with a smile. "Learning to follow your own path, no matter how unconventional or strange. When I started writing the book twenty years ago, people were always telling me I should write a book — 'It'll be amazing.' So when I retired from dancing, I figured, well, better start writing it down."

Most people have a certain curiosity about a story such as Bushong's, centered in a world they may not be familiar with, or have only encountered in passing. Perhaps even more so when they encounter someone who was a part of that world, but seems, for lack of a better term, like a totally "normal" person. "I think a lot of people have a preconceived notion of what strippers look like because of Hollywood movies and stuff like that. I mean, strippers don't walk around in stripper-wear," she laughs. "But yeah, people totally have this morbid curiosity about what happens in the catacombs of a strip club. Or at bachelor parties, for that matter. There's this mystique to it, I know, but it's also just a job. In the end, it's just a job."

A job that carries a lot of built-in questions from nosy types of folks: How does her mom feel about it? According to Bushong's book, her sage advice was, "As soon as you don't feel good about it anymore, quit." (Bushong suggests that that is good advice for everything.) How about her dad? The first time she told him, he paid her college tuition at UC Santa Barbara so she could quit. Later on, when she admitted she'd gone back to it, he shared the story of himself losing his virginity at a whorehouse.

But perhaps the most commonly asked question is: How and why did you start?

The answer, as Bushong explains in her book, is rock and roll. As a high school kid growing up in Aurora, attending Smoky Hill, she had dreams of performing for a crowd — but they encompassed acting, writing and singing. "I was mostly focused on being cool in high school," Bushong admits, shaking her head, "so I didn't do school plays or anything because I didn't want to be labeled a drama nerd. But I was in cheerleading, and that was performing. It was awesome, doing dances every weekend at the football games. But my goal back then was to go to Hollywood and get into the movies or be on TV. That was the plan."

But you know what they say about best-laid plans. And Bushong's actually got diverted in a musical direction while she was still in high school. "I was always good at writing," she says, "always came easy to me. I was writing poetry, and then I found myself writing songs, and I decided I wanted to make a demo tape. That was my ticket in."

Demo tapes cost money, of course, and so there it is: the need. The opportunity to fill that need with some easy cash came from a fortieth-birthday party her mom was throwing for a male friend — and as entertainment at that party, she'd hired a stripper named Erica. Bushong loved the performance that Erica put on, describing her as "the prettiest girl in the room." When Bushong asked the dancer how much she was paid, Erica told her $100 — exactly how much Bushong had to pay per demo song.

It seemed like a completely rational way to get ahead, especially in that era. Bushong points to a few pop-culture film touchstones of her youth that seemed to always portray sex work and stripping as absolutely normal, even laudable: Flashdance, Trading Places, Night Shift. "I saw Flashdance when I was really young," says Bushong. "There were these dancers on screen, and they were beautiful, and men just loved them, and it was all very enticing. Of course, the reality of it is nothing like any of that, at all. It's not as bad as some make it out to be, but it's not as good as we sometimes see it portrayed, either."

In the end, some of Bushong's teen wishes came true. She wanted to write, she wanted to perform, she wanted to travel the world — and she's done all that. She's worked overseas as an ESL teacher, she's performed on stages across the country, she's worked the slopes in Steamboat and rocked out her own music with a band of her own. And now she's written a book.

"You have to take what comes and see what you can do with it, right?" Bushong says. "When things don't work out, you just have to keep pushing through. It's heartbreaking, that failure. But you keep pushing through. I look back at goals I've written down in the past, and I come to realize that hey, I've done that. It may not have happened how I dreamed it, but I did it."

Aimee Bushong will be signing her new memoir, Rock 'n' Pole, at Off the Beaten Path Bookstore, 68 9th Street in Steamboat Springs, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, October 12. For more information, see the bookstore website.