Thank You, John, page 1
Thank You, John
A MEMOIR
Michelle Gurule
AN UNNAMED PRESS BOOK
Copyright © 2025 by Michelle Gurule
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Permissions inquiries may be directed to info@unnamedpress.com
Published in North America by the Unnamed Press.
www.unnamedpress.com
Unnamed Press, and the colophon, are registered trademarks of Unnamed Media LLC.
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-961884-68-7
EBook ISBN: 978-1-961884-69-4
LCCN: 2025940200
Cover Photograph by Joe St.Pierre, Courtesy of Stocksy
Cover Design and Typeset by Jaya Nicely
Manufactured in the United States of America by Sheridan
Distributed by Publishers Group West
First Edition
To my family. Ever loving and ever unruly.
Author’s Note
This is a work of nonfiction based on my personal memories and experiences. In order to protect the privacy and dignity of individuals, names and identifying details have been changed. Any resemblance to real people beyond those explicitly acknowledged is purely coincidental. While every effort has been made to honor the emotional truth of events, this memoir reflects my perspective and recollections.
john (plural johns)
1. (slang, US) A sex worker’s client.
Part One
The Climb
1
Pretty in the Face
I met John during my Wednesday night shift at Penthouse. He appeared with the dinner crowd. Mostly middle-aged men who stopped by for the $13.99 rib-eye deal. This group was despised for its bad manners: a general lack of tipping, shooing women off, and complaining that we strippers were like vultures, only after their money. Forgetting, I suppose, that this was our job.
I had been topless on stage when I caught John’s eye. Contrary to how that might sound, it was not me at my prime. “The trick,” a customer once told me, referencing my natural asymmetry, “is to never face the crowd head-on.” It was, I could later admit, sound advice.
John lifted his hand and wiggled his fingers. Friendly, but awkward. I was prepared to give the cold shoulder I reserved for dinner patrons, except John wasn’t eating. Come on over, I mouthed and gestured toward my stage. He stayed put as my final song began. An electro version of Ellie Goulding’s “Anything Could Happen.” I stripped down to my underwear, then imitated tucking dollars into my waistband in tandem with the bass. When I caught my reflection in the mirrors, it looked like I was scratching. Not good.
I wasn’t much of what the industry called a “stage-money girl.” Dancers who’d mastered the art of pussy popping could rake in the Washingtons on weekends, but I was born with my mom’s white rhythm gene rather than my dad’s suaver Chicano one, so I stuck to weekday evenings when I’d peel a dollar or two from the floor before homing in on my niche market—lonesome men dropping in after work. I prayed I could scramble together $350: about half of what a seasoned dancer could pull on the same shift.
In a last-ditch effort for a buck, I plastered one foot to the ground, hooked my other calf around the pole and spun. Ellie’s voice crooned over the sound system. John bobbed his head along. It was, yet again, a profitless set.
I played it cavalier as I collected myself on stage, but it stung to dress without a single dollar to fold away. I was nude aside from a microscopic G-string, and the lack of financial appreciation made it feel as though every customer thought, Not for me. To rub salt in the wound, I spotted the shift manager by the bar, arms crossed, looking fussy. I worried these public rejections would cost me the gig.
Dancing wasn’t my dream, but it was the only job I’d ever had that sustained my being alive. An absurd fact, considering I was living pretty bottom of the barrel. At twenty-four years old, I was halfway through state college, in $35,000 of student loan debt, freshly dumped by my ex-girlfriend, once again living at my mother’s place: a two-bedroom apartment where my older sister and seven-year-old nephew also resided. I lived off bare necessities. No frivolous shopping, no health insurance, not even lattes. I comforted myself by admitting that while I wasn’t the best stripper, I was a reliable employee. I showed up to all my sets on time, never missed a shift, and I respected all the Penthouse rules even when I was invited into the VIP lounge the one time.
The next dancer, Cindy, a lean pseudo-Australian, strutted on stage, swaying to a Poison song. It was bad stripper etiquette to linger while the next girl performed, but my dress was an impossible-to-get-into bodycon from Forever 21 (on sale). And legally, I couldn’t leave the stage until I was decently covered. A man stood from his table and moved to the stage. Before Cindy had even taken off her top, he threw four singles. She climbed the pole, wrapped her thighs around the metal, leaned back, twirled down, and landed, miraculously, in a split. I was still there. “Sorry,” I whispered and tugged at my dress harder.
When I eventually left the stage, I nodded to my manager as though to say, Don’t count me out yet, and sauntered over to John. “Hey there,” I said. “I’m Lola. Mind if I join you?”
“Please,” John said as he booted the roller armchair out from underneath the table. Fairly polite for Penthouse standards. I took a quick inventory of him. Asian American and presumably in his mid-fifties. His head was shaved. An acceptance of the fact that he was balding rather than for style. I looked back at the manager to check if he’d witnessed this exchange, this small yes, but he had disappeared into the club.
“So,” I said to John, teasing. “I saw you waving. Why didn’t you come say hi?”
“I’m shy,” he said, hiding behind his hands, then peeking through his fingers.
There was a sweetness to John’s demeanor. Something I’d learned to sniff out at the club after being insulted a few too many times. I relaxed a little and eased into my spiel of asking a handful of basic questions, Where did he work? Was he from Denver? How was his night? etcetera, etcetera, nothing special. A few minutes into it and everything was par for the course, so I moved into phase two of getting a customer to buy a lap dance: breaking the barrier between our bodies with a neck massage.
“My massages make up for my lack of dance skills,” I said to John. This line was rehearsed. It was usually a success.
He smiled, revealing two perfectly square front teeth. “What are you talking about? You’re a great dancer!”
I paused, slapped his shoulder in a contrived, playful way and said, “Oh, you’re just being nice,” then thumbed deep into his traps. While I worked, I studied Cindy’s set to scavenge a few easy-to-do moves for my own routine. Like rolling her hips with slightly bent knees. The men showered her with dollar bills. When her second song began, she untied her sequined bikini top to reveal flawless, silicone breasts. Embarrassed, I checked John’s face to see if he’d regretted not waiting for her. He was undeterred. The colored light streaming from the ceiling melted from purple to blue and then, at last, Cindy shimmered an extraterrestrial green.
“It looks like she’s about to be abducted by aliens,” I said.
John rotated his head to the side, ear to shoulder for effect, and said, “Huh. I guess it kind of does.”
We both laughed.
“Are you a believer?” I asked, lowering my voice. “In aliens?”
“Uh,” John stumbled, unsure which answer I wanted to hear. Then he laughed again, nervous and prickly. “Not really. Are you?”
I nodded. “My dad raised me like The X-Files was a docuseries. He’s convinced Earth is on the cusp of an extraterrestrial takeover.”
“Is that so?” John said, very cool about our impending doom. “Does he think we’re all screwed?”
“Well, he thinks people like us are screwed,” I said, motioning between the two of us.
“People like us?” he teased. “What are you trying to say about me?”
I flicked his polo collar. Grabbed his hands and rubbed his smooth, callous-less skin.
John smiled. “Okay. You caught me. What about your dad?”
“He intends to survive,” I said, then told John that my dad, who was raised on a ranch and had been a laborer his entire life, had been plotting his post-apocalypse plans for years. The key elements of which included a house, ten guns ranging in size and power, and, until recently, a dragon’s hoard of canned Chef Boyardee ravioli. “He called me the other day, and said, ‘Did you know canned foods expire? I was checking my supply out, and I saw a goddamn expiration date on the bottom of a can.’”
John looked astonished. “Doesn’t everyone know they expire? It’s food.”
I shook my head. “My dad had a good rebuttal. He said, ‘In any movie I’ve seen, they’re always eating old-ass canned beans.’”
John’s face dropped into concern. “What’s he going to do with all those raviolis?”
“He’s dedicated himself to eating his whole stockpile before time is up,” I said. “He refuses to waste money.”
“You’re so comical,” John said, without so much as a chuckle. The word comical stuck with me because it was stiff. It was exactly the word a man like John would use. “You should write a book about your dad.”
Funny for John to say that, because I penned stories about my dad all the time. In fact, writing a book about my family’s chaotic yet playful antics had been a dream of mine ever since I was a kid. One I didn’t take too seriously after hearing the phrase “sta
“Tell me five jobs you could get with that degree,” my dad said when I broke the news.
I could only think of one. “Nonprofit work or … hmm.”
“Flipping burgers,” my dad interrupted. “Might as well have stuck with poetry. Pursuing your dream or passions, or even these feminist interests of yours, is for rich people.”
“In a parallel universe where I have the time and money to write a book, I’m doing just that,” I said to John now. “But in this one, I’m stripping to pay my way through college, and on slow nights, sitting in the dressing room, drafting stories in my Notes app.”
Mindful not to dominate the conversation, which could deter the customers, I turned the attention back to John. “So,” I said, “who are you in a parallel universe?”
“Hmm.” John paused for a long moment and told me that he’d never thought about anything like that before.
It was the first gap I’d feel between us. I wondered how John had gone through his days unbothered by all the what-ifs. The other routes he could’ve taken. The families he could’ve reared. The alternate careers. If he had accessed another Universal plane, he might’ve discovered something better out there. I looked at John. Studied his upright posture. Noted his too-perfect teeth, indubitably the work of a cosmetic dentist. His gold-plated watch. Perhaps John had never needed to think about better things. Which was something I resented and envied in equal measure.
“Well, I have always wished that I wasn’t such a nerd,” John said. “So, could I just be someone else? Someone cooler?” His voice revealed utmost sincerity, but John caught himself and backpedaled. “That’s embarrassing. Now you’re going to think, Wow, this guy is a loser.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think that at all. Did you hear what I just said? I’m a total loser.”
John smiled and took a sip of his beer. “You’re just being nice.”
“I wish I was being nice,” I said. “And I only gave you a portion of the story. I’m a real mess.”
“Paint me the whole picture then,” John said, good-naturedly. “I can take it.”
Most Penthouse men wanted the conversation to revolve around them. My job was to pepper in compliments about how smart they were or how cool their career sounded. But John was different. He was interested in an actual back-and-forth. “Okay,” I said and gave him the whole lowdown—commuter college student without so much as a laptop, doing all my schoolwork in the computer labs, in debt, living at home—then topped it with a luscious cherry, “I sleep on the couch.” I made an L with my thumb and forefinger, pressing it to my forehead.
“Oof,” John grimaced. “Sounds crowded.” Then he smiled and found the only possible way to compliment me. “You must be pretty smart and dedicated to be in school and stripping at the same time.”
I beamed and then told John that words of affirmation were my second-favorite love language.
“Love language?” John asked. “What’s that?”
I explained that love languages are how we prefer to receive and give love. “There’s five of them,” I said. “Words of affirmation, physical touch, quality time, gifts, and acts of service.”
“I’ve never even heard of these before.” John ran his hand across his chin and asked where I had.
“Alanis Morissette,” I said, not missing a beat.
“The singer?” he asked, confused.
“She’s so much more than that.” Alanis is a songwriter, a poet, a self-work guru, and, though I assume she would frown upon this, my personal deity. “When I was eleven, I wrote ‘therapy’ at the top of my Christmas list all because Alanis sang about her shrink’s leather couch. My parents couldn’t afford it, of course. Left to scrounge for free resources, I started reading Alanis’s blog on the family PC (which went with my dad in the divorce). She wrote about emotional intelligence, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, connection to the divine, and, yeah, attachment styles.” What I withheld from John was that after my ex-girlfriend left me—a total shell of myself, but still too broke for therapy—I’d begun obsessively listening to Alanis’s podcast episodes. With her help, I’d moved beyond naming my love languages and was now able to diagnose myself with all sorts of attachment issues. I was a parentified child with a disorganized attachment style and a core fear that the world was unreliable.
“You’re so …” John took a moment to find the right word. “Fascinating.”
Whenever I told a customer he was fascinating, I’d watch his poised veneer melt away to reveal the wounded man beneath. Which, in the context of simulated intimacy and tip expectation, felt sort of tragic. But when John was awed by the love languages and gazed at the “self-actualization” tip of Maslow’s diagram as if it were a mountain peak and told me I was the most interesting person he’d ever met, I swelled with an unfamiliar fondness. For the first time at Penthouse, I wasn’t just some half-naked girl there to boost a man’s ego or listen to him speak until I was nothing more than a mirror. I felt seen. John was doing my job better than I was. Soon enough, I broke my own club rule and told him my real name, Michelle.
★
I’d gotten so caught up in talking that I forgot to mention my three-for-a-hundred-bucks lap dance deal. I only remembered at 9:00 p.m. when John looked at his watch and said, “I should probably get out of here.”
I glanced at my flat empty purse, feeling a surge of anxiety. Not many men would trickle in during the late hours on a Wednesday, and I worried I had blown my only chance of making any cash that night. Giving one customer too much attention was such an amateur stripper move that even I knew it. “Would you be interested in some private time before you leave?” I asked.
“I think I’d rather be surprised,” he said. Then, in one swift movement, he whipped his business card and $400—the price of twelve lap dances!!—from his wallet, leaving it all on the table. “Call me if you want to have dinner.” He paused, looked at me confidently, and added, “I’ll compensate you for your time.”
Without further warning he turned and walked away, disappearing under the glowing red exit sign. Never mind the weird comment at the end, I couldn’t believe my luck. It was exceptionally rare for me to make my nightly goal in one fell swoop. And this may have been the most organic connection I’d ever had with a customer. It hadn’t even felt like work.
With John gone, I turned my attention to the stage and admired the current dancer’s ability to look sensual during “Cherry Pie.” Had she ever had a nice time with a customer then later had a compensated dinner with him? What precisely did a compensated “dinner” entail? I’d heard of girls having highly profitable drinks with men from the club (even the lesbians like me), but each occasion included a bit of gray area. Hand holding. A lower back graze. A kiss. I could’ve easily found a girl on shift to talk to about John’s invite and whether this was some ruse for sex, but I didn’t want to become locker-room fodder. I’d heard rumors of girls sleeping with wealthy VIPs or, more commonly, getting felt up in the lap dance cubicles for an extra charge, but no one ever spoke about this as good business. Just basic catty remarks, “slut” this and “whore” that.
I figured if John would pay me $400 to talk with him at the club, an off-site meal would likely be more lucrative. I started counting the money in my mind. Paying bills with it. Daydreaming that I would charm John so much, he’d want to see me once a week, and I could replace one of my Penthouse shifts with dinner!
Then I remembered John saying, “I think I’d rather be surprised” about, presumably, seeing my vagina later, and since I definitely didn’t want him to pull any kind of move on me, I decided that I wouldn’t agree to anything sexual in text message, and if John later gunned for something extra in person, I would just dodge his advance and go about my life a couple of hundred bucks richer. No harm done.
