'Stripping Down': A Memoir about Life, Hurt, Growth

Sheila Hageman isn't sure how she's going to tell her daughter, now 7, that her mother used to take her clothes off and dance in front of strangers for money.

"It will be an in-the-moment thing that you can't prepare for," Hageman said. "We are playing it by ear."

Hageman, 40, married her husband Nick a year after her daughter was born. They have three kids now and live on Broadbridge Avenue in Stratford.

After graduating from Trumbull High School in 1989, Hageman forged her mother's signature on a promissory note so she could start stripping at the age of 18. She said the promise of making $1000 a week -- she saw the ad in a local paper -- was enough to leave her job at JCPenney where she was earning minimum wage.

The highs and lows of the next seven years spent both on stage and off are the focus of Hageman's recently released memoir, "Stripping Down," available for purchase on Amazon.com.

From the feeling of entering "a whole new world" on her first day to reccuring bouts of depression and emotional abuse, "Stripping Down" is Hageman's story of opportunity, regret and growth.

"I wouldn't go back and change my past, it allowed me to be the person I am today," Hageman said. "I don't look at it as a mistake; I look at it as my life."

FIRST DAY ON THE JOB

The Hideaway in Stamford.

Pulling up to the club Hageman said she thought to herself: "Not glamorous, but a stage."

She had started acting at age 13, around the same time her parents got divorced. As a girl, Hageman performed at local theatres such as the Polka Dot Playhouse in Bridgeport. She said her initial approach to stripping was to "play a role on stage."

An 18-year-old Hageman arrived at the Hideaway early and was directed to the dressing room, which was in actuality a bathroom. Hageman said she put on some lingerie she had recently purchased and went out to the bar.

"You can put on a robe or something," she said her manager told her.

'THE ODDEST SENSATION'

When it was her time to go on stage, Hageman said she climbed up, the music came on and she started "kinda like dancing."

"It was the oddest sensation," she said. "I tried to keep moving. My mind was a blank after taking my clothes off."

After 30 minutes of pseudo-dancing, Hageman left the stage to take a half-hour break before going back on again. During her break she took mental notes of the other dancer.

"She was much older, you could tell she was doing it a long time. She was barely dancing, she'd talk and ask for cash."

Hageman said she realized then and there that the job wasn't so much about separating yourself and playing a role on stage, as it was about communicating with the men. She said the off-stage role was one she struggled with constantly because she didn't know how much of her personal life was appropriate or comfortable to share.

"I was not one that would out-and-out lie to customers," Hageman said. "I got into a terrible split of how to act."

But at the end of the first day those anxieties were cured in the form of $300 in cold, hard cash. "There was this feeling of excitement," Hageman said. "I had entered a whole new world."

However, not long after counting her bills, Hageman said another cold, hard aspect of this new world became apparent. As the second shift of dancers -- the evening shift -- came into the club, one stopped and said to Hageman: "I'm just gonna warn you, you better watch your back."

'I TRIED TO SPLIT MYSELF INTO TWO'

About three years after the Hideaway Cafe, Hageman moved to New York City where she started to dance all nude. At around that same time, she said she began cheating on her husband who she had married at 20.

"I really tried to split myself into two [but] they bled into each other," Hageman said of her life inside and her life outside the clubs. "It's not possible to split myself like that."

Hageman said she had moved to New York City in part to find acting opportunities. But even though she was only dancing 30 hours a week, she stopped auditioning for shows.

"I got sucked into this world of going to work and having no other responsibilities of looking good and making money," she said. "I don't know what my hours were eaten up by."

MOVING ON

At the age of 25, Hageman got a job at a financial investment firm as a secretary, a position she swore off a few years prior. She worked during the day and took evening classes at nearby Hunter College, where she eventually earned an MFA in creative non-fiction.

During her first semester at Hunter, Hagaman relapsed and found herself back in a club she had stripped at when first arriving in NYC. She said it was at that point when she realized she'd never strip again.

"I couldn't pretend at all anymore. I left in the middle of the shift."

BODY IMAGE

Hageman's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer during the time she was stripping in New York City. Hageman said she had an on-and-off relationship with her mother -- due in part to her decision to strip -- but once her daughter was born seven years ago, they became best friends.

A year-and-a-half after Hageman's daughter was born, Hageman's mother succumbed to the cancer.

In the months before her death, Hageman said she looked at her mother's weak body and thought about her uneasiness about her own body.

"I would look at my own body and say, 'when am I ever going to get over these issues, when am I ever going to get over this issue of looking good?'"