Mankato Memoirs: Meme

Mettler's had a dancer who went by the stage name of Meme. She was a savvy business woman, always on her hustle, independent and driven. Manager Woody was very fond of her, which meant he let her leave early and break some of the rules when she wanted to. In the beginning, I considered her an ally, because she didn't engage in petty bullshit. She is a tall, intelligent, beautiful Ojibwe woman. Sometimes she would dispense advice to me, such as reminding me that smiling Minnesotans are actually just secretly plotting and evil, in her words,

“Remember that a smile is an upside down frown.”

Meme turned on me when one of her regulars also became my regular. She could not deal with the burning rage of jealousy. This regular of hers paid me to sit and talk to him. His main goal in talking to me was an attempt to gather behind-the-scenes information about Meme. I protected her privacy and told him nothing of value. This customer of hers learned that I am good at searching for things on the internet and doing investigations on foot. He hired me to do a skip tracing side job, to find out where his soon-to-be ex wife was hiding some of his assets.

Meme did not understand what was going on between her regular and I, so she deluded herself into believing that I was a prostitute banging her customer outside of work. She spread rumors at Mettler's that I am a prostitute. Prior to her customer hiring me to skip trace, Meme told him that I am an undercover cop, and that most people at Mettler's think so.

I am neither a cop nor a prostitute. I was simply a prudish stripper, an occasional skip tracer, trying to make my way in the world, standing up for the labor rights of strippers, while eating high quality vegan food every day, hating the capitalist patriarchy. It deeply disturbs me that anyone would slander me so much as Meme did. I thought about doxxing Meme, to tell the world who this venomous paranoid person is. She has been pursuing a career in medicine for many years— we are roughly the same age. I will not do her dirty like that. I still respect Meme, one of the greatest hustlers I have ever known.

Meme knew that labor violations were occurring at Mettler’s, but also recognized that in many ways, Mettler’s is an easier place to work than every other club in the country and many vanilla jobs. So, Meme kept her mouth shut about labor violations there. Having people at Mettler’s suspect me to be a cop put a real damper on any attempts at labor organizing in the workplace.