A STRIPPED-DOWN DREAM.

• Author: Walker, Kerri
• Position: LIFE IN AMERICA

I HAD TO GET FOCUSED if I wanted to make my dream a reality. I would need to save money. Time was passing and, as my 28th birthday approached, I--even though a college graduate--still was living with my parents and dreaming of the Swiss Alps. I did not have a plan. So, I went on Google one day and searched for how to make a lot of money.

I am 30 now, and I have been stripping for three years. A lot of us oversimplify what we have not been exposed to and most people do that when it comes to how they perceive strippers--who they are and how they live their lives. Having an open mindset starts with good dialogue. For me, a change in mindset began with that Google search. While babysitting one day, I used the child's naptime to call a club and ask if it was hiring. They asked me to try out the next day. I told my parents I had another babysitting gig and drove anxiously down the Garden State Parkway to a place about 40 miles away.

I was living with my parents on and off in my 20s while in between jobs and going to school. I had started my master's degree in French but had to stop after accruing $20,000 worth of debt in less than a year. I am not the most frugal person--I admit that--but I had no idea how expensive earning a graduate degree could be. I was an editor at a magazine for a little over a year, but I hated the job and it did not pay well, either. In fact, I was relieved when I got fired. It was hard living with my parents, even for just months at a time, but the Jersey Shore town they lived in was gorgeous, and conducive to lazy days at the beach.

As I drove down the highway to that club, I felt anxious but determined to learn what I needed in order to start working there right away and begin to make real money.

When I arrived, I found a dingy hole in the wall on the side of a roadway near a Wawa convenience store, which is about the most commonplace Jersey landmark there is. It was a couple of months after summer, smack in the middle of the dead season, when the Jersey Shore clears out and people leave their summer homes and go back to New York. Kids are back in school and it is just the locals and some commuters who are left to roam the strip malls and strip joints--not an exciting place to be unless you are in pursuit of money and a dream.

I told myself that getting there was half the battle, and since I had done that, I already felt better. That was the toughest part of the whole process--just getting there. That is what I...