Mouse's Ear in Knoxville did not serve alcohol, but was BYOB. Special plastic cups were required for dancers to drink the alcohol that customers brought in, and these cups were available for purchase at the bar. The bar also sold buckets of ice for customers to put their beers in. The bar also sold juice, soft drinks, and assorted snacks. All of these items were much more expensive than they would've costed elsewhere in Knoxville. The bar area was more like a concession stand one might find at a roller rink or community baseball field. The bartenders didn't get a lot of tips from customers, partially because customers weren't sitting at the bar getting drunk, as happens at normal bars. Therefore, bartenders at Mouse's Ear depended on dancers to compensate their otherwise lowly income that the Brownings paid.

One Mouse's Ear bartender named Atheena wasn't much into bullying dancers for tips, due to her overall sweet and sedate personality. She compensated her income by selling opiates to the dancers, in between slinging non-alcoholic drinks and ringing in snacks. Many Appalachians are involved with opiates. I didn't like it that she was preying on the weaknesses of drug addicts, but I also didn't taddle on her or get involved. Eventually, Atheena was fired for selling pills. A dancer named Aspen theorized that the Brownings caught her on camera doing it. My guess would be that Lilith tipped the Brownings off about it. While I didn't get involved in Atheena's business, I was relieved when she was gone. It was also the bartender's job to take a tally of all the table and couch dances each dancer was selling, but unfortunately Atheena was bad with numbers. She often over-counted the dances with her tallies, and over-charged the dancers.

The other bartender was Alex Cave, who this post is about. Alex didn't sell opiates like Atheena. She just bullied and harassed dancers who didn't tip her at the end of the night, by screaming at them or otherwise insulting them. The Brownings did very little to stop her from doing those things. Alex has worked at Mouse's Ear for a long time, and the result of her status there has filtered out a lot of assertive, intelligent dancers from working there, instead favoring dumb/submissive ones who will just tip her a bunch of money to get her to leave them alone and go on with their lives. The types of dancers who last the longest at Mouse's Ear are unaware of the benefits of socialism, worker rights, or unions, and instead believe it is their duty to give a portion of their income to Alex Cave. She hung out with some of these kinds of dancers, and instructed them to be mean to me, while victimizing herself because I wouldn't give her more of my money.

I mentioned Alex Cave in yesterday's post. She was upset that I wasn't giving her more of my money, so she'd call me Brandi at work, tell customers my real name, and otherwise doxx me. Most people at work knew about my litigious history for most of the time I worked there, but usually just didn't say anything about it in front of me. I didn't tell most people about it myself, but people like looking me up on the internet. I told Buddy about Alex doxxing me one day. He called us both into his office and allowed Alex to vent. On the brink of tears, pointing at me, she said something along the lines of,

“All I know I know is she's making TONS of money and she's not sharing it!”

Buddy didn't seem to care either way, but he did request that she stop calling me Brandi at work, and use my stage name. I didn't say anything to Alex at the time, because I didn't want to rock the boat. But, what I was thinking was,

“All of my money that I make at Mouse's Ear belongs to me. I deserve every penny, working hard fully nude, hustling, risking my knee cartilage and mental health. If you want more money, why don't you organize a labor union and demand higher wages and benefits from your employers, the Brownings, who spend half the night in the office on coke? The Brownings make thousands and thousands of dollars per week off of the dancers, in the form of illegal tips, fees, and wage theft. You are only bullying me because I am an easy target, because dancers are vulnerable to the capitalist patriarchy, and because if you confronted your real oppressor, Buddy Browning, you would be fired. You pathetic fucking coward.”

But, I didn't say any of that stuff. I just passive-aggressively avoided her and continued to tip her like $1 per night, sometimes $0. She still continued to harass me and call me Brandi from time to time, after our conversation with Buddy in the office. One of her nick-names for me was “Sausage Link,” when I wore a leotard that was too small for me and made my body look like a sausage link to her. Ralph overheard this and it made him chuckle. He did nothing to defend me or prevent Alex's harassment.

Dancers were required to pick one drink per night, tell it to the bartender, so that when customers offered to buy us our mandatory drinks and we accepted, the waitresses and bartenders would already know what to bring. My pick was usually pineapple juice. The pineapple juice Mouse's Ear sold in plastic cups were Dole 100% pineapple juice from small cans. The bartender would open one can, pour some of it in the plastic cup, and the customer would pay an exorbitant price for it which the Brownings pocketed. As mentioned in previous posts, I never wanted these drinks, and only said yes because I didn't want to lose my job. Sometimes I noticed a strange film on top of the pineapple juice, or weird looking chunks of ice. I suspected that Alex was fucking with my pineapple juice in some way, especially because I'd glance over and see her staring at me with a sinister expression after being served. I consulted with dancer Lilith about my suspicions, who was privy to a lot of things at Mouse's Ear. Lilith informed me that Alex might've spat in my juice, but that it was unlikely anything else was done, because Alex could not afford to risk losing her job in that way. I also didn't want to lose my job, so even though Alex probably spit in my pineapple juice from time to time, I still put up with ingesting her disgusting DNA.

A year or two ago, I found some Caves who I am descended from. They immigrated to the Carolinas from England a few hundred years ago, before eventually making it to Tennessee. I am disgusted at the thought of even vaguely sharing DNA with Alex Cave.

Alex used to intentionally over-count my dances on her tally so I'd get charged more at the end of each night, and team up with DJ Chris Conner with his tallies. His job was also to tally, and if there were any inconsistencies, the DJ and bartender could cross-reference. The only way I got them to stop over-counting mine was to take my own tally on a dollar, and obsessively check their tallies throughout the night.

One night, Alex got jealous that I was giving Ms. Holland $2 at the end of the night and not her. She shouted some vague comment about needing money to get a vital surgery for her medical condition. I don't know what kind of medical condition Alex had, but again, harassing strippers for money is not the answer to Alex's problems. Organizing a union, finding a job with benefits, promoting socialism, harassing the Brownings for better wages are all better answers.

Alex probably isn't attractive or gritty enough to ever make it as a stripper. While her face is pretty and she is technically voluptuous, her whole body looks like it is melting, from an utter lack of muscle tone underneath lots and lots of flabby skin hanging off her bones in strange places. Sometimes when she was walking around, I couldn't help but marvel at how strange it looked in a Ripley's Believe it Or Not sort of way. I did wonder if maybe her medical condition prevented her from growing muscles or certain internal physiological components. I've tried to find a photo of it online for reference, but with all of the filters and retouching technology available these days, all I could find were very strategically captured angles of her that are not realistic whatsoever. She is so unbelievably ugly and gross looking in person compared to her internet photos. If any of my readers have more information about her medical condition, please contact me.

Alex is liberal in that general mainstream kind of a way, in that supporting BLM, Planned Parenthood, LGBTQIAWTF way. She dislikes JK Rowling and but has Harry Potter tattoos. She likes to read. She's kind of this Appalachian hipster with a Daria Morgendorffer or Janeane Garafalo cynicism about her, which makes a lot of the dancers want to be her friend, support her efforts to get more “tips,” and not do anything about her toxic behavior. I've noticed these days there are a lot of liberal and “alternative” people like Alex who don't give a shit about labor rights or anything remotely revolutionary which would hold business owners accountable. Jeff Bezos would probably get along with Alex Cave. To Alex, she's perfectly fine thinking she's some kind of crusader for her rights by harassing dancers for money. I really hate libertarians.

I want Alex to know that with my settlement, I got every penny that Mouse's Ear stole from me. Every unpaid hour I worked as a misclassified employee, every “tip” I was pressured to give Mouse's Ear staff, every dance tally taken and subsequently charged for, every illegal “house fee” was accounted for in my settlement. What I will never get back is my knee cartilage, the years shaved off my life due to stress, the time spent documenting misclassification, and my lawyer's cut.