The following was first published on my Chic Arkansas Substack and includes a short film that is omitted here. Despite being set in Arkansas, the scenario and arguments I put forth in this piece are relevant most anywhere in the world.

You gaze upon the cold December night via the passenger window. The scene alternating between shadows and the dim amber glow of house lights. Adorning upscale abodes clamoring for space on the shores of Lake Hamilton. One is yours for the night. Belonging to you and your girlfriends for an exciting weekend adventure in Hot Springs. Approaching rapidly as I navigate the maze of residential streets on this island. Endlessly shifting hears with every turn and hill. Along every dangerous curve in the foggy darkness. “Oh my God,” you contemplate, “What will they say?” Your imagination running wild. Moving treacherously close to catastrophic thinking for an instant. But the promise of libertinism in action too much to pass up for any threat real or perceived. The music plays while the anticipation builds. And the droning engine throbs in time with your beating heart.

Heading back to your weekend place following a late night drive through the area. Down Central Avenue where I pointed out all the hotels and bars where I’d delivered private performances for party girls who came from all over North America. As well as the small nightclub where I once took a date and she almost got into a fight with a toothless woman. Past the DoubleTree Hotel that was previously named Clarion on the Lake where I tore up numerous bachelorette parties. Then down Higdon Ferry Road where The Big Chill lies. Regaling you about the time I rocked a bachelorette party there. My music competing with the blues rock band playing on the other side of the wall that divided our private party room from the live music area. Pointing out that it was after this gig when I took a girl to Maxine’s and she almost got into a fight with a toothless woman. Finally, we passed a home in the neighborhood of your rental. A home that was also a rental one cool night in October 2006 where I delivered perhaps the most epic bachelorette party performance in history.

Hot Springs was a natural choice for my performance tonight. You and your friends recognized this immediately upon announcement of this show. Easily the most libertarian area of Arkansas. The most welcoming of late night debauchery as live entertainment. Although most places throughout the state are capable of hosting performances this provocative. You and I know this as well as anyone. But Hot Springs is the best starting point tonight. It’s a place to come and feel comfortable while letting your inner wild child run free and naked. Building a girls’ weekend around the event, your fun and fabulous gang of four scored a temporary residence on the lake. Too cold for swimming this time of year but nevertheless enjoyable from the hot tub on a large rear deck overlooking the waters. Sunlight raining down from partly cloudy skies when you arrived this afternoon. Drops of gold shimmering across the waves. Framed by evergreen trees. “The magic is already starting,” you recognized.

And the magic continued to build from there. Starting with a trip to the nearest liquor store because priorities, of course. The energy grew as you strolled down one aisle after another. Selecting the most potent of potables for your night enjoying the pleasure of my company. From there, you and the girls made your way downtown. Strutting up and down Central Avenue. Past bars, restaurants, boutiques, museums, theatres, and hotels. As well as the many bathhouses for which the city is famous. Stopping at one of those restaurants for dinner. I have no idea which one. But it definitely wasn’t Fat Jacks. That place sucks. The check arrived, and you handed your debit card to the waitress with the same twinge of doubt you always experience when breaking out your bank plastic. You know the money – you’re money – is accounted for and waiting for you to spend it however you want. But you must always trust your bank to release your money to anyone you choose on your command. Maybe there’s a system error. Those happen all the time. Or perhaps a bureaucratic error that results in your account being frozen due to no fault of your own. And while haircuts are only a staple of nations with especially poor economic management like Argentina and Lebanon, anything is possible. Even in the good ol’ US of A.

But such pondering would have to wait as you and the girls rushed back to the lake to get ready for showtime. Clamoring for mirror space while enhancing hair and cosmetics. Teasing more pronounced. Lipstick and eye shadow bolder. Changing into sexier clothes. Skimpier tops. Tighter pants. Higher heels. The cutest jackets possible to keep warm on the ride to the venue and back. Then you all convene in the kitchen. Combining liquors and mixers in large plastic bottles. Creating a variety of cocktails to pass around and enjoy at my performance. It was a BYOB event. And you all understood. Knowing full well that I’d never get away with what I was about to do were I operating under the draconian thumb of Arkansas liquor laws. Nor would any venue operating with a liquor license want to risk running afoul of the Arkansas Alcoholic Beverage Control Division. Aside from that drama, there’s also an outside chance that the club’s bank may take faux moral issue with it hosting me. I’ve told you how I burned through several PayPal accounts over the years. Each getting shut down for this reason. Yeah, the Las Vegas casinos hosting big-name male revues can use PayPal all they like. Because they’re corporate. And it doesn’t hurt that they barely pay their entertainers. If you can call them that.

You had one extra last thing to do before departing. Unlocking your phone and checking your wallets. Your cryptocurrency wallets. Knowing that, along with accepting cover charges and tips in US dollars, I was offering my audience members the option to pay me in crypto. Your curiosity was instantly piqued and eventually got the best of you over the ensuing days. That’s when you decided, “What the hell?” and purchased $20 worth of Bitcoin on Cash App and planned to pay for your entrance over something called the Lightning Network that allows users to make small Bitcoin transactions with payment confirmation in just a second or two. You were excited to try this and see if it actually worked. It helped that you only heard me speak of cryptocurrency not as a way to get rich but as a payment option between two individuals. Cutting out the bank middleman and the need for their permission to spend your money. Thereby circumventing censorship, geographic restrictions, and other nonsense that only benefits banks, corporations, and governments. Though you know that I appreciate Bitcoin as a top-tier long-term store of value alongside assets like real estate, gold, blue chip stocks, and intellectual property. You’re also aware that I never give financial advice and that the previous sentence is not intended as such. I always tell people to do their own research and form their own opinions.

Despite your recent introduction to the space, you’re smart enough to have seen through the lies of this lazy and lopsided propaganda piece on Arkansas cryptocurrency mining published on the KATV 7 News website a few days ago. And you get why I ran the link through an internet archiving site lest KATV attempts to backtrack later. This also deprives the station of advertising revenue that it clearly doesn’t deserve. “Exactly who’s side are you on anyway, KATV,” you asked rhetorically while suffering through this pro-central banking tripe. You know damn well this “controversy” is nothing more than politicians shilling for banks per Rep. Matt Duffield’s insidious statement:

’You're not going to find anybody that's more for limited government regulation than me, but this is a totally different animal,’ Duffield said. ‘These crypto-mining facilities have less regulation than my small business or very small businesses around the state, farmers...’

That’s right. Nothing says, “You’re not going to find anybody that's more for limited government regulation than me,” than demanding more government regulations. You’ve already read about how it’s in the best interests of large-scale crypto mining operations’ bottom lines to keep in touch with energy providers and shut down mining during peak energy times. And you have to ask whether the concerns voiced by Rick Smith were his own or brought out of his mouth via leading questions from an unscrupulous journalist. Finally, the claims of Chinese-owned crypto mining operations in Arkansas could’ve been confirmed or debunked by the author through a little research. And opposing Chinese-owned businesses in Arkansas wasn’t an issue before as former governor Asa Hutchinson (who just came out in support of crypto, so credit where credit is due) courted Chinese firms throughout his two terms. But research doesn’t appear to be KATV’s concern. My research on author Andrew Mobley didn’t yield much beyond a few mundane Facebook posts. Perhaps he doesn’t care one way or another on the subject and merely wrote what he was told to write. Regardless, his name is on it, so he’s getting his share of criticism. I believe the real objective is KATV white knighting for Senator Pocahontas while on her latest warpath against crypto on behalf of her big bank benefactors.

You and your girlfriends chatted up a storm on the drive from Lake Hamilton to the western outskirts of Hot Springs. Crammed into the rear seats of a Chevrolet Tahoe. Your Uber driver raced down US 270. Driving defensively while seemingly oblivious to his passengers. This provided you some relief given that you’d brought open containers of alcohol into his vehicle. Bottles wrapped in paper towels and stuffed in an old tote bag worthy of being discarded on arrival. It’s not as if any of you planned on getting drunk, and none of you did, but you wanted to err on the side of caution and go with an Uber rather than drive. You don’t like potentially putting your driver in this position, but the law itself has failed you in this context. Infringing on your rights as government is wont to do. Too many people believe their rights are granted to them by the blessings of bureaucrats. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rights are inherent for every individual. Government ostensibly exists to protect those rights but inevitably infringes on them constantly.

The old watercraft parts warehouse building on the edge of town enjoyed a new lease on life tonight. Early birds packed the small parking lot. Other vehicles lined the street on either side. Into the blackness of night in either direction. Your group was smart to grab an Uber given your decision to arrive fashionably late though still minutes before showtime. People streamed in and out the front entrance. Bright flashes of various colors sneaked out along with them. The beat of the music blasting inside powerful enough to vibrate the cracked and faded blacktop you strutted across with great expectations. You’d read in my paid post about the event that the owner of this property was a member of Arkansas high society who’d inherited it. Placed in a blind trust, his ownership is not a matter of public record. Still, he was wary about maintaining privacy and agreed to receive his share of tonight’s proceeds in Monero. A privacy-focused cryptocurrency that records transactions on its blockchain but, unlike Bitcoin, obscures details such as the sender and amount. From there, he’s free to swap into Bitcoin and sell it on Cash App for USD among many options available to best suit his needs.

And then the moment of truth as you prepared to pay your cover fee with Bitcoin. Your girlfriends watched with amused curiosity when you opened Cash App and scanned a QR code containing a Lightning Network invoice for the equivalent of $20 USD.

“Thank you,” the hostess smiled literally two seconds later, “Okay, who’s next?”

“That’s it?” you questioned with a mix of excitement and bewilderment.

“That’s it,” she assured you, “You’re good to go.”

You reveled in the thrill of making your first cryptocurrency transaction while waiting for your friends to pay their way in using boring old federal treasury notes. To be fair, they also paid electronically via Cash App or Venmo with the same instantaneous confirmations. But none of them experienced the thrill of stepping outside the restrictive parameters of polite society and paying with a currency that wasn’t issued by any government. Even before discovering crypto, you’d sometimes wondered why governments issued currencies. And you wondered why so many people accepted this as a way of life without question. Countless societies existed and thrived on a gold standard for thousands of years. And gold is something that people are free to dig out of the ground themselves. It seems weird to you that money had, at some point, become a government entity. And it troubles you how much money governments print out of thin air every day.

The show was unlike anything you or the rest of the audience had ever before experienced. An explosive pageant of sound and vision as I performed beloved eighties classics. Trippy lights and mysterious fog engulfed the stage and expanded into the crowd. A showcase for my raspy and powerful baritone singing voice and electric guitar heroics over backing tracks. It could be described as an overglorified karaoke performance. But oh how glorious it was. I demonstrated – both alongside my female backup dancers and with women in the audience – the bold and sexy moves that made me a premier bachelorette party entertainer for many years. While not exactly as transgressive as a human sacrifice or Amsterdam sex show, it was still a racier spectacle than you’d ever see in a licensed Arkansas venue. And the sheer self-awareness of individual liberty among you, me, and everyone else permeated throughout the venue nonstop. Bouncing off cinder block and corrugated metal walls. All of us liberated from the judgment of courts administered by state and public opinion manipulated by and for corporate greed. The electricity filled the air and the world around us. Shock after exhilarating shock.

You observed audience members tipping my cohorts and me throughout the performance. Mostly in USD in the form of Cash App and Venmo payments along with some physical cash here and there. You noticed that I was also accepting tips in Bitcoin, Monrero, and a few other cryptocurrencies. Still enthralled about having paid your way inside with Bitcoin and eager to have me dance on you for a slow number, you opened Cash App and purchased another $20 worth of Bitcoin. Catching my eye by virtue of being a hot girl holding up her phone with an image of the Bitcoin logo open, I glided towards you like a dark Baryshnikov.

“Ummm…” you stammered with adorable nervousness, “Can I make a lightning payment for a dance?”

“Of course,” I laughed reassuringly as you scanned the QR code on my phone with yours.

You took another sip from the vodka cranberry bottle as the lights dimmed and more fog filled the warehouse. I circled you, microphone in hand, with the provocative beat and dangerous melody of the Psychedelic Furs’ classic “Love My Way” guiding us by the hand. Straddling your lap. Eye to eye as a deliver the second verse in a sinister croon:

They’d put us on a railroad

They’d dearly make us pay

For laughing in their faces

And making it our way

There’s emptiness behind their eyes

There’s dust in all their hearts

They just want to steal us all

And take us all apart, but not

We took on the world together as I made you part of my performance until the end. Bid your friends farewell. Assured them you were in good hands before we drove off into the night. Enjoying honest discussions about entertainment. About money. Privacy. Freedom. And life in Arkansas. I had so much to show you – to explore with you – that all the time in the world wouldn’t have been enough. But we traveled together on the road to liberation. Which has finally led us to your weekend getaway. And it’s all that matters in this moment.