Chapter 14 Green Valley
Green Valley
OUR MINI MANSION IN GREEN VALLEY WAS THE ULTIMATE bachelorette pad. It was a huge, two-story number, with five bedrooms, in a gated community. We even had a sprawling backyard with a trampoline.
There were two master bedrooms, so I took the one downstairs and Tasha took the one upstairs to be closer to her son. Coming from the couches I’d crashed on through my teenage years, it might as well have been Wayne Newton’s estate. I was so fucking proud of us. We’d made it.
Our girl gang would visit every day like something out of The Golden Girls—we were our own little family. It was our compound—and men couldn’t enter without an invitation.
Aalijah had one hell of time growing up in that house of girls who would fawn over him and take care of him.
We loved to barbecue out in the backyard, jump on the trampoline, and lie out in the sun.
There was so much love going around, and it was always laughing and dancing and rock ’n ’ roll blaring in a never-ending blondetourage.
It was truly one of the happiest times in my life.
* * *
IT WASN’T PARTYING THAT GOT me hooked on what would become my chemical love affair. It was my damn wisdom teeth.
I made it to twenty-one before I had to have my wisdom teeth pulled.
I always called my front indented tooth my “Jewel” tooth—like the singer with one pushed-back tooth.
I had the same exact tooth, and I hated smiling.
I left home before my parents could have put braces on me.
Not like they would have in the first place.
Now I was ready to fix my own teeth, and my wisdoms were up first. One guess who went with me to the appointment?
Fucking Mark. Why did I always have these exes hanging around?
I never could seem to shake them. But it turned out that Mark and I were better friends than we were lovers.
I still have an extremely bad habit of befriending my exes—there’s something in the We survived that together, congratulations.
You can be my friend for life. The doctor opted out of putting me under or giving me much of anything in the way of a numbing agent—to this day, I don’t know why that was allowed, or if he was just too shady to follow basic rules.
He just yanked and ripped my teeth clear out of my jaw.
Poor Mark had to watch the barbaric surgery front and center.
He almost passed out a couple of times. It left me with two black eyes and a face so swollen you couldn’t recognize me.
It was horrific, and I was absolutely miserable.
Back home, I was trying to muscle through the pain like I’ve done with everything in life.
Blood trickled out of my mouth every so often onto my cheek, which was swollen as round and big as the damn moon.
Tasha and I were floating in the pool, and I was desperate for anything to make the pain go away.
“Why don’t you just take one of your pain pills?” she asked. My head throbbed, and the raw, vacant gums screamed in razor-sharp pain.
“I don’t want to take a pain pill,” I snapped.
“Bitch, you won’t be in pain if you take the damn pill,” she snapped back. She got out and grabbed me a Percocet, and I reluctantly swallowed.
Thirty minutes passed and the minute that pill kicked in, it was like sweet heaven, 7-Eleven.
I was euphoric, just wading through the water, letting it wash over me.
That perc had me in a chokehold instantly.
I didn’t have a care in the world. Anxiety, where?
Pain? Gone. I was floating down the river of love.
Tasha had her own stash on hand, and the two of us laughed our asses off together in the pool that day.
Tasha was used to pills, but I sure as shit wasn’t.
It was nothing to her, but I was on another planet.
It was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to me.
Little did I know that opening up the drug gates again was a gate to hell.
Because once my fear had subsided around percs, I started in on other pills too.
First it was Lortabs. Then more Percocets.
Then Norcos. And once I felt steady with those, I moved on to Xanax, the ones the emergency room doctor tried to give me so many times. And those little pills changed my life.
I’d never known peace like I did on Xanax—not even for a minute of my twenty-one years. It felt like all the muscles that had been twisted up so tight for decades could finally relax. It was peace of mind for the first time in my whole life.
* * *
TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, dancing was hard for me when I was getting started.
All the religious trauma came rearing its ugly head.
So I made a deal in the beginning: I worked my square real estate job during the day while I danced at night.
I figured that if stripping wasn’t my main job, I was only part-time sinning, and I could live with that.
I told myself that I was dancing so I could work my way up in life. I’d work nine to five and then dance from ten till two. The burden on my body was intense, and honestly, just downright exhausting. But I made myself juggle. I couldn’t be a full-time sinner.
I was making good money during the day—but I wasn’t making the kind of money that made this hustle worth it.
I could make five or ten grand a night dancing.
And those numbers stacked up pretty heavy against my moral guilt.
I could pay my bills and take care of myself without sacrificing my body—because what had this guilt gotten me?
A busted body and soul and not enough in the bank to do anything about it.
Remember, if it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense, baby. So I up and quit my square job.
If I was going to be a full-time sinner, at least I would be getting paid.
Dancing back then in the early 2000s wasn’t like it is today.
It was much more taboo, and it was so glamorous.
The girls were beautiful. They’d be in elaborate gowns with stunning hair and makeup.
And all the girls worked together. We didn’t compete or get catty.
It was one big family. The bouncers were our big brothers or uncles, and they protected us.
The house moms loved us, and they always had meals for us to eat during breaks.
We took a lot of pride in our looks: Our nails were done, hair was perfect, makeup on point.
I’d die without my girl Hailee who does my makeup nowadays, but then, we sure as hell didn’t have professional makeup artists getting us ready to dance.
As glamorous as it was back then, we learned to smoke out our eyes as black as night and gloss our lips so glittery they sparkled under the club lights.
We were our own glam teams, and it meant we brought another kind of creativity and artistry to the work.
The way we looked wasn’t just sexy, it was art.
When I’d get too low on nights at the club, we’d all snort rails off each other’s naked asses or dirty bathroom sinks—or even worse: the back of the toilets.
It was all money flowing and Playboy’s heyday and celebrities rolling up for VIP dances.
It was rock ’n’ roll, and it was sexy. I don’t think there will ever be a time like that in the clubs again.
You fucking bet there were plenty of seedy parts of the business, but it also had a kind of innocence that could only exist before cell phones or cameras or clout chasing for social media.
It was iconic, and I miss those days. They were singular and wild, the kind of magic you just can’t re-create.
* * *
PLAYBOY WAS ALWAYS IN THE background, and a lot of my friends were in the magazine.
It was what we all wanted, and it was another step up into the glamorous, sparkling life.
Playboy scouts came into the clubs all the time, looking for girls with the perfect look.
By the time I was twenty-three, I’d already headed out to Santa Monica for a test shoot.
I still have that series of Polaroids. I look so young, tiny, fresh-faced, and excited.
I still have the letter they sent me saying I wasn’t a good fit too.
Back in Vegas, Playboy held casting calls all the time. I decided to try again, and I walked into the conference room in some hotel. All around me were the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen. Everybody wanted to be in fucking Playboy.
I waited until they called my name, and then stood in front of a few scouts. One of the guys—who was nothing to write home to mom about himself—looked me up and down.
“You’re cute for a chubby chick,” he said.
“What the hell does that mean?” I didn’t weigh more than 120 pounds.
“Honey, if you want to be in this magazine, you have to lose fifteen pounds.”
If that man wanted me to lose fifteen pounds, I would’ve looked like Skeletor—and who the fuck was that pleasantly plump scrub telling to lose weight?
But the shitty comment sent me into a spiral.
At the time, I was sure he was right. My self-esteem jackknifed, and—obviously—I didn’t get a spot in the magazine.
But that doesn’t mean I stopped trying. Today, I’m so damn embarrassed, but I booked a reality show with PlayboyTV.
It was like most reality shows back then: Four or five of us moved into a mansion to see if we could find love.
And to be honest, it was fucking dope. The producers loved me, and we had a blast. But at the end of the taping, a producer called me outside.
“Alisa, I really need to sell this show.” I didn’t understand much about the business then, that we were shooting a pilot that had to be picked up by the network.
“Okay,” I said. “So?”
“So I need you to hook up with Matt,” he said. Matt was one of the dudes who lived in the house with me, and I was not interested.
“I’m not doing that,” I said.
“Name your price.”
This dude is going to pay me to act like I’m fucking some guy?
“Five grand,” I said.
“Perfect,” he said. He didn’t stutter.
“You’re serious?”
“Yeah.”
So I went back into the house and started flirting.
Even Matt knew I wasn’t into him. I tried to convince him, but we ended up faking it for the show.
We went under the covers naked and pretended to have sex by making the noises—but Matt got so fucking excited, he came in my eye.
The load of semen shot across the bed into my fucking eye.
And they have me on camera saying that. Goddamn.
They sold the pilot, and I got my $5,000. It wasn’t like I’d turned a trick. But it planted a seed. One day, if I wanted to, I could make some serious money. And as I learned very young, pussy is power.