LingLing was a waitress at Mouse's Ear who started working there closer to the end of my six months. I can't remember all the waitresses who were hired, fired, or quit during my six months, but LingLing stood out. I don't know what her full legal name is. She once told me that her name is Lynn Lane, but that people just call her LingLing because that is what it Lynn Lane sounds like when spoken. Her facebook name is Nikita Lingling. I think that's just her ho name. The name Ling would indicate Asian origins, but LingLing is a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, NYC.

Most of the dancers and staff at Mouse's Ear hated LingLing. I think her Bronx Puerto Rican accent and assertiveness probably had something to do with that. I was relieved when she started working there, because some of their hatred for me was dispersed toward LingLing instead. Whenever LingLing and I worked the same shifts, I felt like some of the pressure was removed from my situation, and directed toward her. At first I felt sorry for LingLing, but after I got to know her, I grew to dislike her as well.

LingLing was the oldest woman working at Mouse's Ear. During our phone conversations, which I did not record, she hinted that she was some kind of a “call girl” in NYC for many years before meeting her abusive husband and moving to Tennessee to be with him. East Tennessee, particularly the Oak Ridge area, has a decent presence of trade unions that are overwhelmingly dominated by men. LingLing's husband was in an airline worker union. She didn't know much else about unions or exactly what it is that her husband did when I asked. LingLing had a number of grown children in different states, presumably from different relationships she had over the years. She started working at Mouse's Ear to save enough money to get away from her husband, who was physically abusive to her. She did not want to be with him. Mouse's Ear was her escape plan.

LingLing's workplace etiquette was extremely inappropriate and disrespectful toward the strippers, who the business relied on to operate, who LingLing depended on for her job. She constantly made fun of my coworkers, zooming around the club whispering in different people's ears, constantly talking shit. She'd steal money off of tables if customers left to go to the bathroom. She called my cousin Holland a “dumbass” openly in the workplace. Several dancers claimed she was giving out her phone number to their customers and going out on “dates” with them. Even the few non-white women at Mouse's Ear, who generally stuck together, hated LingLing and called her “ratchet,” because she tried to steal their tips off the ground or from tables. LingLing would interrupt my conversations with customers who I was trying to hustle, and try to focus their attentions on her as I was sitting there. Strip club waitresses who interrupt hustling dancers is a serious and growing problem within the industry, something which has caused strikes in cities such as NYC. LingLing was apparently used to doing this to strippers, was entertained by it in a sadistic way, and continued doing it the whole time I was there. This behavior is not something that Tennessee dancers are used to enduring compared to larger US cities where it has become common. The stress of LingLing's actions caused damage to a lot of dancer's income. I tried to discuss the labor issue with LingLing when we became phone friends, tried to explain the strikes in NYC to her, but she didn't care to hear about that. She stated multiple times that she was such an attractive woman compared to everybody else. She usually wore blue contact lenses, and I always thought she looked like Cheddar Man.

LingLing's internet photos, like Alex Cave's, are very strategically taken, retouched, and misleading. She is really, really ugly in person, very short, and exceedingly gross. Strip club waitresses and bartenders have a tendency to see all of the money us dancers are making, covet that which is ours, and try to destroy us.

After we briefly became phone friends, she thought it appropriate to approach me at work multiple times per night, to talk shit about my coworkers. While I do that a lot on this website, it's not something I want to constantly hear while I am at work. LingLing disliked a dancer who went by Rhed, because of Rhed's “attitude” with customers who were harassing her. LingLing would ramble about how she believed women and feminism “destroyed chivalry,” and express all sorts of primitive ideas about gender roles. I strongly disliked Rhed, but not so much that I thought she should endure customer harassment. Another dancer named Summer was harassed by LingLing. When I backed away from LingLing after she maniacally approached me to make fun of Summer, she got upset and completely stopped speaking to me in a friendly manner.

After LingLing decided to stop being nice to me, she'd scream at me at the end of the night for not tipping her. One time she placed her hand on my back, likely in a cultural gesture of feminine communication. I backed away from the physical contact from her, which caused her to gossip about me to my coworkers some more. When I turned down a pineapple juice a customer offered me one night, she ran over to Buddy to snitch on me about it. Dancers were only allowed to use a disgusting upstairs dressing room bathroom without a door. Because I wanted more privacy, I'd sometimes sneak and use the downstairs customer bathroom, which did have a door. After LingLing decided she did not like me, she found me pooping in there and snitched about it to the Brownings. Throughout all of this, while at work, I never told anybody how she hid her tips from the bartenders who she was supposed to share with, how she shoved tips down her pants away from the cameras to hide them from Alex Cave. She and Alex Cave did not get along.

LingLing did have a couple of dancer friends at work who felt sorry for her, and who managed to support her quest to get away from her physically abusive husband. Even as I dislike her, think she is toxic and disgusting, I hope she has had success over the past two years.