In 2018 Stormy Daniels toured Oregon and I went to see her. It was an odd experience. I meant to make a comic about the experience but every week there was a new scandal and I was distracted. This seems like a good time to draw it up. I scanned my sketches and typed out some of the notes. Eventually I’ll draw it up in a more formal fashion but this is a first step in processing the short story.
2006 Jul - Stormy Daniels, 27, had a one-day affair with Trump, 60.
2007 Jul - A year later he asked to see her again to get her on his show, the Celebrity Apprentice. They did not have a second affair and she did not get on the show.
2016 Oct - Cohen pays Stormy $130K to suppress her story and avert another scandal.
2016 Nov - Trump is elected President.
2018 Jan - Wall St Journal published article about her affair and pay off.
I thought this was the biggest scandal to hit a president and it would tear him down.
This was before two impeachments and an insurrection.
2018 May - Stormy tours Oregon.
I went to check it out.
A strip club in a strip mall down the street from the last operating Blockbuster.
It was Sleazy place with sleazy people. I got there early to secure a good spot for drawing.
There are few places more depressing than an empty strip club.
I stood in the corner sketching feeling creepier than the creeps I was drawing.
A stripper walked up and asked, “Are you someone important?”
“I’m a cartoonist.”
She had the third Disney character tattoo I’d seen.
“We saw you drawing us. So we drew you.” She smelled like baby powder which was a disturbing mix of eroticism and parenting.
I buy a beer. They give me change in ones.
Two guys sitting by a stage dropping ones. One is showing his friend pictures of his boat on his phone. The dancer is picking up the bills with her butt. Now she’s dancing with a dollar in her butt. How long is she going to do that? That can’t be hygienic. Does she wash her dollars in the back room? Does she swap them out at the bar? Did I get a butt buck?
The club slowly filled up, mostly with middle aged white guys. There were lots of baseball caps but no MAGAs. It was loud. I wished I’d worn earplugs.
I counted ten Disney tattoos on various strippers before I lost count. I size up the dancing naked women for what they’d be like in bed. They sized me up for how much money they could make off of me. We found each other lacking.
By the time Stormy Daniels was scheduled to go on stage, the place was packed. Mostly it was regulars, tourists, and frat boys who simply wanted an excuse to go to a strip club.
Stormy was late because the airline had lost her bags. The DJ said she’d be come as soon she had her luggage. Everyone was making the same joke about a delayed performance because she didn’t have clothes to put on to take off. The DJ made the joke of blaming it on the deep state. It was only an hour later the show started.
I had a good spot near the stage, perfect for drawing. The crowd erupted when Stormy came out. She had American flag underwear and danced to “American Girl” by Tom Petty. I’ll never be able to hear that song in the same way again
.Two frat boys pushed their way in front of me blocking my view.
“Who wants to motorboat?” She pulled a customer’s head into her breasts. BBBGGGBBBBGGGG.
Then she pretended to fellate another guy. Stormy stood up with her cheeks full. The DJ yelled “Who likes bukake?” On cue she spewed a bunch of white something out of her mouth into the audience. The two frat boys blocking my view took the brunt of the goo. They turned around, looking horrorified, faces and clothes covered with spew. They left in a hurry and I got my primo drawing spot back.
30 minutes of dancing and the show was over. The DJ said $60 would get you a spot at the front of the merch line or you could wait in the long line. She was selling photo ops ($20), movies($20), shirts that said #teamstormy ($40). She was even selling shirts she had worn ($300).
A security guard saw me writing in my book he blocked my way and asked if I was a journalist. I told him I was a cartoonist. He looked confused but let me pass. The line moved quickly but she chatted with each customer. Everyone felt special. She was completely professional.
I got to the front of the line and I looked at the spread of movies. “Which one should I get?” Stormy said, “What do you like?” I looked at her, a deer in headlights.
“Do you like sex or sex with a story?”
“Uh…” I was stunned, doing a mental inventory of my sexual history.
“Do you like funny or scary?”
“Funny?”
She took my $20, signed and handed me a brightly colored DVD titled Switch.
“We swap bodies. It’s funny. I wrote and directed it.”
I had questions.
“You’re making a real impact on our culture. What do you want to do with that?”
“How do you deal with the negativity? What can the rest of us learn from it?”
“What does Trump’s penis tell us about his public behavior?”
Instead, I thanked her, and nearly tripped over the an overweight guy wearing a ‘Ninja’s Do It in the Dark’ t-shirt behind me. He had a box of 3 dozen Hustler magazines to get signed.
Marilyn Monroe slept with Kennedy. Stormy Daniels slept with Trump. I had stood next to a distorted modern echo of a different era. I met Stormy in a sleazy club that was filled with sleazy people. Stormy herself was chipper, clear eyed, and good humored. Somehow, she came across as not sleazy at all.