Hello there,

The little Victorian ghost boy in me (who will tragically never pay taxes) tends to obsess over language, and wrestle with salutations—Dear reader? Hi sexy people? Good day beautiful humans? I even looked up the lyrics to Pink Floyd’s “Hey You,” but the tone is a tad morose. A better idea, perhaps, is to greet you as the Dirty Napkin Club, but I worry some might take offense, absent any context. A previous newsletter, “Love in the Time of Stripping,” opens with this confession:

Underneath the appurtenances of stripping—the lash extensions, the matte red lip and winged eyeliner that grows in proportion to my impatience, the manicured nails, the partially tamed hair, the micro bikinis revealing fresh bruises from pole tricks—I often feel like a dusty Cheeto or dirty napkin.

There is an explicative footnote, too, which reads:

Napkin Manifestos existed prior to the publication of Kathleen Hanna’s memoir, so I screamed in delight when the punk singer and former stripper describes feeling “sometimes more like a dirty napkin than a rebel girl.”

What can I say, I’m a big fan of Kathleen Hanna’s memoir, music, and general vibe. Despite successfully resisting TikTok for nearly a decade, I may have to cave because Hanna’s on there now making hilarious, rad, often satirical, videos. A recent post comments on the constitutive thefts of AI, which I’m currently writing about in relationship to sex work… more on that soon, but please enjoy Hanna’s entire TikTok archive in the meantime, starting here.

I’m going to resist (or postpone, at least) going down another Kathleen Hanna rabbit hole, one of my favorite pastimes. This prolegomenon was all to say, what are your thoughts on the Dirty Napkin Club as an abstract concept? I haven’t rewatched The Breakfast Club in a hot minute, and Lord knows millennial classics have not always aged well… but the epistolary essay Brian reads before the closing credits stands the test of time, I think:

Dear Mr. Vernon,

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question?

Sincerely Yours,

The Breakfast Club

Of course, this move to collectivity could be read as a flattening of differentially structured material realities. But, taking this into account, might there also be room for strategic identification with some version of each archetype—or for a shared orientation across them? I, for one, feel nerdy, disturbed, hysterical, athletic, and lawless, a pretty pretty princess raging against the rule of capital. How about you?

I remain so grateful for the positive reception of my last post, “Welcome to the Comic Strip Club.” Thank you for clicking that magical little heart button and sharing my work whenever you feel the urge, truly truly, as I love feeling connected with y’all.

Welcome to the Comic Strip Club

Alison Rose Reed

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Apr 27

I’ve been working in earnest on my stripper ghost stories, but as I try to connect the dots of an authoritarian regime that gets off on cruelty, I had a thought: I need a little more levity. I won’t trouble you with the details, but suffice to say this past month I’ve been moving through a lot of grief, and last week, well, to quote the title of my lovely friend Raechel Anne Jolie’s recent post,

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In a similar vein, I have been brainstorming ways to show my appreciation to paid subscribers. I also wondered, after publishing my last newsletter, if the impromptu post-shift voice note I recorded for a dear friend was a bit more humorous than the written version. Given those simultaneous concerns, an idea struck me: why not share that audio note, even though it was only ever meant for an audience of one? I asked the dear friend to whom I sent the voice memo, and with their blessing I’m sharing it with you, too.

The original note was over seven minutes long, but I cut out a long-winded preamble as well as an extended aside about trail mix in which I compare myself to a squirrel, concluding that “No one needs to eat a pound of nuts… not even a squirrel!”

Afterwards I questioned this faulty logic, because who the fuck am I to put a cap on nut consumption. I also investigated my claim and a squirrel does in fact eat a pound of nuts, but in a week, not at 4am after a shitty strip club shift, hunched over a kitchen counter pawing pistachios down the hatch between semicolon sentences. So anyway, you’re welcome for the abridged, albeit uncensored and unhinged, version.

Most of my posts will remain free, as the paywall usually functions to protect particularly vulnerable, raw writing. Even then, I never want to turn anyone away for lack of funds, so please don’t hesitate to reach out for a comped sub. I get it, trust me.

This audio note, though, is just a little gesture of appreciation for paid subscribers who have enough faith in a scrappy sex worker’s unwieldy writing process to materially support this newsletter. I do not take this for granted whatsoever <3

And to all my subs: thank you so much for being here. I am very excited to address you again soon, maybe with the above-proposed moniker?

xx,

Alison

P.S. Here are my preliminary thoughts on the latest SW-related news…

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