Diablo Cody, a stripper-turned author, says she doesn’t mind stripping to get ahead.
“As long as the guys aren’t obnoxious,” she says in her new book “Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper.”
The book, published by Gotham Books, tells the story of how an advertising agency typist grew tired of the daily 9-to-5 grind and turned to the life of a stripper in Minnesota’s dimly-lit strip clubs.
It was by sheer chance, she says, that she entered a local bar’s amateur stripping contest. It was just for fun, she told herself. But it was all it took for the 24-year-old office worker to get hooked.
Encouraged by her boyfriend, Cody says she saw the life of a stripper as something more than a way to get attention or make quick money. It was a ticket to excitement and a way to share her once inhibited sexuality with total strangers.
Learning the ropes from other dancers, she soon found the way toward big tips with lap dances and a come hither attitude which was helped along by the dry humping skills she was perfecting.
Although she continued to work in the daytime, she found her nighttime gigs more enthralling than anything else she could do, she says.
But when a much needed promotion came her way, Cody had to bid her dancing days goodbye.
“I was burned out at that point,” she told David Letterman during his show Monday.
But she wasn’t through with stripping. She soon decided to write a book on her escapades and the sexual encounters in between, earning her praise from tough New York literary critics. Yet she takes it all in stride.
“But if this book thing doesn’t pan out,” she says, “I’ll just get back to the pole.”
