There is a certain sweetly scented species of mold particular to much of Tennessee, and even up into Cumberland Gap State Park, past Kentucky state lines. I first became familiar with this scent as a child, when my maternal maw maw sent me birthday and Christmas cards with accompanying cash inside. I'd sniff the cards and cash, and wonder aloud what the smell was. I was instructed by my mentally ill and abusive mother to keep these cards and communications a secret from my aunt and cousins, who I was coerced into hanging out with once a year, who were estranged from maw maw. I was instructed to lie about communications with maw maw. My mentally ill and abusive mother was the only person who I discussed the scent with as a child. While in East Tennessee in 2019, I alone and quietly thought,

“Oh, it's that smell! It's everywhere! East and West!”

This moldy scent, this Holy land, is special to me. Part of my desire to work in Tennessee was to understand the origins of myself, in whatever warped way a person comes to understand one's origins through long term labor activist stripper road trips, anonymously tracking things down. In 2009 when my maw maw died, and in subsequent years, my maternal Tennessee relatives would ask my mother if I was going to visit them. I had only been down there once as a young child. My mother would passive-aggressively avoid taking me with her down there, then lie to the relatives down there, state that I didn't want to go. It wasn't true; in 2009 I was very curious to visit the Tennessee kin in the context of some type of reunion, and vocalized my wishes frequently. It would've been awkward to go alone to visit people I didn't know, so I didn't visit them at all. While working in Knoxville, I encountered many two-faced back stabbing fair weather stripper friends who reminded me of people I share DNA with. Tennessee contains one of the most violent, threatening and bigoted cultures I have ever encountered. The culture of Southern Hospitality often misleads outsiders to believe that Southeasterners are genuinely kind people. They are in fact fake people, liars to the extreme. While “Minnesota Nice” cultural tendencies cause a people to smile politely and icily turn away, “Southern Hospitality” is a tendency to smile politely, engage in conversation, only to cause great distress, harm and possibly death when a victim isn't looking-- there is an unbearable fakeness and threat of harm when engaging with polite Southerns.

More than two years have already passed since I last worked at Mouse's Ear in Knoxville. It does not feel like two years. It seems like just yesterday. I've been wanting to do this series for a long time, but didn't want to mess up my lawsuit in any way by posting about the situation before the settlement checks cleared. I worked at Mouse's Ear from May 2019 until November 2019. I settled my Mouse's Ear NLRB complaint in the Summer of 2020. This past Summer of 2021, I settled the private claims. All the checks have cleared. I can finally talk about everything, about everyone. There's so much to talk about. I noticed some recurring themes among the individuals, labor violations, and cultural tenancies during my time in Knoxville. Those themes will be discussed in this series.

Mouse's Ear in Knoxville had some of the dumbest, meanest coworkers I have ever had in my entire life. I know that's saying lot, considering all past entries on this site. To avoid being emotionally effected by the PTSD, and to keep posting in a timely manner, I may robotically discuss the situations, or otherwise reminisce in a detached way. It is the only way to avoid taking a year or more to make a few simple entries, as happened during the Teazers mini-series. The Mouse's Ear series will be much more dense than the Teazers mini-series, but hopefully it won't take as long. The Mouse's Ear series will not exclusively discuss the labor violations and workplace; my connections and geographic thoughts about East Tennessee will be explored.

Most people don't know that Appalachia and the Scottish Highlands are the same mountain range, which was once connected without the Atlantic Ocean in between. For many years, I have been fascinated by the guerrilla warfare tactics that the predominantly Scots-Irish population of Southern Appalachia engaged in, to defeat the British during the American Revolution. Andrew Jackson, polarizing Indian murderer that he was, is one of my favorite presidents to research. A first-generation American born to Irish immigrants, Old Hickory had a passionate hatred for the British, and is responsible for securing the fate of much of the Southeastern United States.

Knoxville is historically home to the Tsalagi or Cherokee peoples. Most people in Knoxville believe they are “part Cherokee,” and will vehemently claim it with no evidence, tribal membership, physical appearance, or even knowledge of where the Cherokee live now.

Much of my traveling stripper life has been casual anthropology studies, retracing my genealogical steps, backward and forward through time, going this way and that. I stayed in two motels while in Knoxville-- a Motel 6 right down the road from Mouse's Ear, and no-name place which was a bit of a drive away in Raccoon Valley. Not far away from Mouse's Ear in Knoxville is a road called Londonderry, and it joyfully made me think about how cute it was to have a road named after the Northern Ireland town, an homage to a rugged and rag tag group of individuals forced to uproot and relocate, making their way. All interstate going into Tennessee are called "Albert Gore, Sr. Memorial Highway.” It always warmed my heart to speak with Mouse's Ear customers who voted for Al Gore and passionately discussed the 2000 election almost twenty years later, as if it were yesterday.

Pigeon Forge is less than an hour's drive from Knoxville. I grew up repeatedly hearing an anecdote from my mother about her piece of shit dad, about how they once visited the area. He stopped to urinate in the woods, and ran back to the car in a panic, with a black bear following behind him. And so, I feel connected to the mountain range in a variety of ways that make me smile in an ancestral whimsy, admiring black bears from the safety of my vehicle.

I first heard about dancing in East Tennessee at Blackjack's in Elgin, Illinois, around 2011. A young woman was talking about all of the money she easily made down there, simply for having a full set of teeth. While satirically relaying her anecdote, she was making fun of the locals who did not have all of their teeth. She discussed how cruel they were to her, but she was still joyously reminiscing at the insane amounts of money that she made. This particular Chicagoland dancer was of Italian descent, and I was slightly offended that she was making fun of Appalachians. In the Summer of 2012, I spent a day or so in Knoxville while on a road trip. I had researched clubs in the area, auditioned at Mouse's Ear, decided not to dance there after they hired me, and subsequently left the area.

In March of 2019, I was illegally terminated from a manufacturing plant in the Chicago area, after complaining about all of the sexual harassment that I experienced there. They gave me a decent settlement in a timely manner, and I left Illinois. I traveled to the Knoxville area in April of 2019, hoping to find welding work and relocate to Appalachia. I returned to Mouse's Ear in May of 2019, did not mention 2012 to them, auditioned and was hired. I worked for almost exactly six months before being fired.

“Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus was released in 2019, a song which was played with frequent enthusiasm all over the Southeast at that time, all the fucking time, everywhere.