Placenta The Stripper
A short piece on unconventional wisdom from my book on wisdom
The Unconventional
At some point in my life I spent a few years as a bouncer and bodyguard for fetish models and porn stars. During that stint I worked pretty regularly at a franchise gentlemen’s club in my hometown. I never would have expected to find wisdom in a place like this. That was an error on my part.
Working as a bouncer in a strip club came with a lot of responsibilities. Mostly keeping the girls safe — from overzealous clients, and a lot of times from each other. But like any other business, things could get slow. During one of those lulls I was sitting by the tipping rail, not even pretending to be productive, when one of the dancers sat down next to me.
Her name was Placenta, well not really. I could never pronounce her name right so that’s what I always called her, and she responded to it, so it worked. It was like a little unspoken agreement between the two of us. She was a master at her craft. When she moved it was always in a way like the world owed her money. I respected her hustle, but I never expected anything meaningful to come from her. I mean what was she going to teach me, how to give a lap dance? She wasn’t much of a talker, which I enjoyed because back then neither was I. She was someone you could sit in silence with comfortably. This was one of those times. We just sat, not in a rush to say anything — her in lacy black lingerie, me in a suit, enjoying our shared love of silence.
The serenity of our little bubble was burst by another dancer walking past us. Her name was Nicole, and she was the bane of my existence in that place. She was the girl I was mostly trying to protect everyone else from, like trying to protect a flock of delicate flamingos from a T-Rex with roid rage. Just days earlier I had to stop her from putting her stiletto heel through another girl’s eye, and ended up with it buried in my thigh for my trouble. After she was out of sight I muttered “I fucking hate that bitch” while rubbing my thigh where she had stabbed me — not really to Placenta, but more to let out some of the venom before it could poison my blood.
Placenta surprised me by saying “I don’t hate her Rish, I feel really sorry for her.” “What, why?” I asked, wondering how someone who just last week had been the victim of one of Nicole’s rages could feel sorry for her. “I feel sorry for her because all her anger doesn’t have anything to do with us,” said Placenta. “It’s about her circumstances. She’s aging, and not aging well, and because of that she’s not making as much money here. She can’t be mad at time though. She can’t fight time. But she can fight us younger girls.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know how to articulate what was forming in my mind. I was reeling — not from anything physical, but from being humbled. What she said had just shattered every assumption I had quietly made about who she was and what she was worth. Here I was, a person who walked into every room expecting to be the smartest one in it. Smarts weren’t wisdom though. I remember thinking that exact thought right there at the tipping rail. Wisdom was sitting next to me wearing a thong, with a name I couldn’t pronounce. My ego was spared in that moment because a group of guys walked in. So I didn’t have to fully weigh out my realization.
The Intersect
We have all unintentionally been conditioned to believe that wisdom comes from old men in certain fields. Movies, TV shows, books, and the internet do their part in reinforcing this image in our minds. Try this out. WISDOM. What’s the first image in your head when you read that word? A teacher? A grandpa? A monk maybe? Whatever it was, odds are it wasn’t a 120-pound stripper, right? It’s okay, don’t beat yourself up — this is a learning moment. I went through it myself that night working the club, and I still have to actively remind myself of this lesson.
You can’t become a professor without reading a book, but you can be wise without reading one. How can that be true? Because wisdom comes from perspective, and a life lived — the entirety of life, not just the polished parts. That was my mistake with Placenta. Judgment. Somehow thinking I was better than her and had more to offer, not once considering that her life experience might hold something to teach me.
That’s really what this book is about. Everyone and everything holds wisdom within. Drug addicts, the homeless, a bad experience, a heartbreak, strippers, pimps, people you hate, ass beatings. They all hold wisdom, if we can change our mindsets to see it. Everyone has value, and when we judge them as lesser than us we miss what they could teach us.
This book was inspired by my realization that day with Placenta, and in part by Jay Shetty, who says something I love — “I can learn from anyone.” At its core that’s what this is about, and something I am still working on in my own life.
The Conventional
“Man looks at the outward appearance but the Lord looks at the heart.” — 1 Samuel 16:7, The Bible
I was guilty of it before Placenta even opened her mouth. I had already decided what she was worth based on what she was wearing and where we were. Thousands of years later and we are still doing the same exact things. We can’t be perfect — we can’t see into people’s hearts — but if this interaction taught me anything it was to give pause. Take a breath. That’s it. One breath. One breath is trying. One breath leaves space for a person to give you a tiny glimpse into who they really are. So what would that look like? Let’s say someone is telling me something and that old familiar voice comes up — this person doesn’t have anything to offer you, tune out, ignore, condescend. Maybe when that voice hits, instead we take that breath. One breath as a reset, that leaves us open to what we can learn. I challenge you to try it the next time you find yourself in this mindset. You won’t be able to read into people’s hearts or minds, but I know you’ll walk away with something that surprises you.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” — Rumi
Rumi spent his life saying that truth lives outside the boundaries we build around it. Once someone steps outside of societal boundaries we have a tendency to see them as lesser, reduced in value somehow. Placenta was part of the sex worker industry, and technically so was I. But I still let those boundaries diminish her value in my eyes, and that was a mistake. The field Rumi is describing — out beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing — I see it now as simply being human. It is the place past saints and sinners where things become beautifully simple. Where two humans can sit in a strip club and share some truth.
“How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?” — Plato, The Allegory of the Cave
Plato wrote about people who only see shadows and mistake them for reality. Shadows have always fascinated me because they come from light — they aren’t the absence of it. Something just got in the way. My shadow was the assumption that there was nothing to learn from a woman like Placenta. But what was distorting the light? My own ego. The belief that because I could recite facts and knew things others didn’t, I had nothing left to gain from anyone. I was the object blocking my own light. The reality Plato was pointing at is the same one Placenta handed me that night — we are not masters. The work of learning is never done. And the people we dismiss most confidently are often the ones carrying exactly what we need. What about Nicole? Could my hatred for her actions had been casting a shadow that didn’t allow me to see what she was struggling with like Placenta did?