Exclusive Preview: SongWriter Season 4 Continues with Zelda, Carsie Blanton
Photos by Don Curry, Shervin Lainez
SongWriter is a podcast that turns stories into songs, featuring David Gilmour, Joyce Carol Oates, Amanda Shires, Mary Gauthier, Roxane Gay, Susan Orlean, and Steve Earle. You can hear an exclusive preview of next week’s episode featuring a brand new song from Carsie Blanton, only at Paste.
Social worker Zelda used to work as a stripper, and she sees striking similarities between the two jobs. The patrons of the club in New Orleans where she danced often told her things that they had never told their wives and girlfriends.
“It’s the same thing. You’re paying for the hour, you’re telling deep, dark secrets,” she says. “You’re having that undivided attention and being heard.”
Zelda, who asks that her given name not be used for privacy reasons, said that she began stripping after she got a PhD in educational psychology and couldn’t find a job in academia.
“I was raised in a very Christian, evangelical, fundamentalist home, but I had been a trained dancer since I was in ballet since I was three years old,” she says. “I was also a trained aerialist at the time, and I thought, ‘You know what? I can’t get a job. I’m going to try this club thing.’ At 31 years old!”
Though Zelda found the work demanding, and sometimes degrading, the money was very good. Zelda also discovered that her earnings were often less about taking her clothes off than about being a good listener. Given her background in psychology, this came naturally—she was particularly adept at selling time in private “champagne rooms.”
“The most expensive room for an hour at the club was, I think, $6,000?” Zelda says. “For one hour, that’s no sex. And they’d pay it! And honestly for the most part, in champagne rooms they literally just wanted to talk. Or take a nap.”
Over time, though, Zelda’s work began to take a toll on her mental health. Thinking about next steps, she realized that the skills she developed at the strip club could be repurposed. She went back to school for a masters in social work, and now works in hospice.