"So let me get this straight? You've been a stripper for the past eight years and you've never slept with anyone during that entire time?" Blair, my co-worker at the strip club, asked.

"I know, it sounds really weird," I said. "I just haven't.  Maybe its guilt from my Italian Catholic upbringing."

"Kiersten, how is that possible? Come on, that can't be true," Blair replied.

I was embarrassed that at 30 years old I wasn't sleeping with anyone. "It's just that… I've kind of been saving myself for Ryan. Just because I'm a dancer doesn't mean I should give it away to anyone. I mean I've only been with like four guys and they were all serious relationships," I said.

We were sitting around the dressing room on a slow Saturday night, legs wrapped around bar stools, swapping war stories. Almost every steel locker exhibited a bottle of inexpensive champagne or vodka. Blair, a preppy blonde, looked more Park Avenue, then Los Angeles strip joint.

"Ryan's that guy from Malibu?" she asked.

"Yeah, that one," I said. "He says we'll sleep together when the time is right."

"What do you guys do then?" Blair asked.

"We do other things," I replied, as the DJ announced: "Next up we have the lusciooous, gorgeooous Kieeersten!"

It was time to become Kiersten, my alter ego. She could handle anything, she was fearless. I liked Kiersten, because I could turn her into anyone I wanted to be. I took half of a Xanax out of my tiny antique pill box and washed it down with cheap bubbly. As I swayed my hips on stage to Q-Tip's "Vivrant Thing," my thoughts drifted to Ryan. In addition to gorgeous models, he loved racing cars and riding one of his many Harleys. He was raised by his late Hollywood-legend daddy. He was 33, and I was 22 when we met at a hole in the wall gym in Malibu. Sweating it out on the elliptical machine, I noticed this hot guy in Devo sunglasses on the treadmill behind me. He looked like a young, tanned George Clooney crossed with a sexy tattooed surfer. He had ultra white teeth and dark hair cropped close to his head. He oozed bad boy sex appeal.

"Where did you get that tan?" he asked as he looked me up and down.

"At the beach," I responded.

As I was leaving the gym, he invited me to his place over the weekend. I took his number and said I'd call him. We were soon hanging out at his house in Malibu, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We sipped white Russian tequila, snorted pink cocaine and talked about everything until dawn. We bonded instantly when we learned that both our fathers had died of cancer sixteen years earlier.

"When I lost my dad, I lost my best friend," he said. Since our mothers were unavailable, we were like two kids no one came to pick up after school. I was out in L.A., on my own, estranged from my family in Boston. They did not approve of my lifestyle. More than I wanted love, I needed someone to take care of me. Ryan acted like a protective father figure. He reminded me of my dad.

There was only one problem. He had two small children out of wedlock with his live-in girlfriend. She was away with the kids the weekend we had our get-together.