Introducing: The Dirtygirl Diaries & NYC in the 70s & 80s

A coming of age memoir set in the Times Square go-go bars when pimps looked like Huggy Bear & no one was stripping their way through grad school.

You know me as my mom’s caregiver, as a dispenser of wisdom & whining about caring for an elderly parent. But, I haven’t always been the doyen of dementia.

I used to be a dirtygirl.

Over ten years ago, the server that housed the original dirtygirl diaries went out of business. Recently, I was able to salvage the content. This is that.

A coming of age memoir in a city on the verge of bankruptcy. The search for truth, love & family in the go-go bars of Times Square—when I was concurrently visible & invisible, singular & replaceable, I was the most alive and so close to dying.

Announcing, a new publication:

I think you’ll like it.

Imagine Sweet Charity meets Quentin Tarantino;
I’m Charity Hope Valentine in this scenario.
I’m also Tarantino.
There are bloodstains on the walls.
There is also vodka. A lot of vodka. And a lot of crazy.
I’m the vodka in this scenario.
I’m also the crazy.

It’s the most vibrant, violent, alive clutch of memories I have.

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Jodi Sh. Doff. Bad ass crone, writer & editor. Former dirtygirl and drunken mess. A pleasure to meet you.

I was drunk or on my way to getting drunk pretty much every day & night from age eleven, until I turned thirty three. Today, I’m sixty-something, single, and childless; a sober writer. I write what I know—I’ve spent decades writing about sex, drugs, and drunkenness. And the occasional crime.¹

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the dirtygirl diaries document a search for truth, love, and family in the go-go bars of Times Square. Stories of life in the streets & bars when silicone was the exception and lap dances were non-existent. Where innocence was snatched, money was stolen, lifted, spent, forgotten and night lasted all day long. Times Square, before Disney got its four-fingered white gloves on it and turned it into Mouschwitz.

We went to disappear, change our names, change our luck, make a dollah, dollah, dollah bill y’all, have a real goodtime, to find out what we were made of.

Sometimes, the outsider subculture provided the community & safety I craved. Sometimes, dissociation, denial & vodka were all I needed to get through a life where I was concurrently visible & invisible, singular & replaceable.

OG Times Square owned my naked ass for ten years, it has my bruised heart for a lifetime. Those years made me who I am today. This is our love story.

If you squint your eyes,
if you believe in fairy tales,
if you listen for the laughter,
it’s a tale of love, survival & hope.

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Flaco says: first one is free, after that you pay.
But dirtygirl says: I’ll give you three free & some music so you can dance…

💲 Paid subscribers get:

• A new episode & soundtrack each week

• Ability to comment, chat, direct message, ask questions & get honest answers

• Access to the full archives & Spotify soundtrack

• A warm feeling, like peeing in a pool, for supporting me & this serialized memoir.

💲 Champagne Room Founder

• everything, plus a signed copy of Whorephobia - Strippers on Art, Work, and Life, edited by the inimitable Lizzie Borden, it includes my story of Robbie’s Mardi Gras along with essays by Cookie Mueller • Kathy Acker • Jo Weldon • Maggie Estep • Jill Morley • Elissa Wald • Reese Piper • Antonia Crane • Lily Burana • and more….

I hope you’ll say yes. I want to tell you my story…

me, circa 1979, waiting for you to find me in 2025

                                              *  100% reader supported  *
                               still depending on the kindness of strangers
                                          but with less thievery & vodka

1. Also sobriety, truth, mom, & righteous feminist indignation, but you’re not going to find that here. But you can find some of mom here, some righteous feminist indignation here.