About Natalija

I was almost 23 when I finally screwed up my courage to walk into a strip club and ask for a job. Plagued by insecurity, acne, and a few extra pounds, I’d always been fascinated by the way strippers had power over men, but never thought that I could be stripper material. But then I found myself halfway through my Master’s degree in human behavior psychology with no scholarship, no stipend, and no money with which to buy even food. I was desperate. One of my girlfriends from high school had become a stripper after graduation. We’d lost touch, but I recalled my surprise at hearing of her career choice. She wasn’t a particularly pretty girl, but she’d always had a lot of confidence: prancing through the halls in the shortest skirts, the highest heels, her hair sprayed into the biggest pouf. Even in high school, men loved her. I was different: plain, mousy, average in every way with the exception of my grades, which were excellent. It wasn’t until I was with the biggest financial crisis of my life thus far that I realized something about myself that had been there all along: inside my nerdy, bookish exterior, a smoldering femme fatale was waiting, dying to prove to me that I could be sexy as well as smart. I named her Natalija, and it wasn’t long before she got me a job, stripping for men’s money.

After a few months as a hopeless newbie, I finally honed my look and skills and began to make the kind of money they tell you strippers make. Fascinated with the power struggles and mind games taking place around me at work every night, and being obsessed with human behavior to begin with, I worked as many shifts as I could handle with my course load at school. The more I watched, the more I learned, and the more surprised I became at how simple the art of manipulation really was. Men began to do things for me; give me things; behave in a manner most flattering. One of them bought me a plane ticket to do an independent study in Europe over one summer. Another just flat out paid my student loans. This is to say nothing of all the flowers, shopping trips, jewelry, expensive dinners, and extravagant offers of money for things I wouldn’t do with a customer unless, of course, I really wanted. It was a whirlwind. I didn’t even have time to grow jaded or bored with it, because after a few years, something I really hadn’t expected happened.

I got a chance to use my powers over men for real: a handsome, brilliant, independently wealthy lawyer who had been desired by all the girls at my university walked into my club while I was dancing on stage. He had since gone on to begin a successful start-up law firm and date the entire city’s social register. But as soon as he walked onto my turf, I knew I had him. And I did. A few months after that night, over seven years ago, he put a ring on my finger. And my husband has never since strayed from my side, despite throngs of women throwing themselves at him on a routine basis. I have borne him two beautiful children, and he still persists in making me breakfast in bed every Sunday morning and remembering our anniversary with more dazzling jewelry than I could ever wear. All of my friends ask me how I did it: a girl with no money, no confidence in anything besides the answers on that week’s test, average looks, and a bad habit of chewing on my fingernails when I got nervous not only landing the most eligible bachelor in the tri-state area, but keeping him! Well, it took me a few years to work up the largesse to tell them, or anyone else, how easy it really was. This blog is about what I did to get where I am now, and what you can do too.