I first encounted Lily Burana’s byline in a funny story, and fabulous read, about NYC strip joints — from an inside perspective, because Burana’s a long tall drink of water in a brick shithouse. Or, you know, whatever. She’s a stripper with a keen wit, a sharp eye and a pen. And not afraid to use it.

Later, she was New York magazine’s spy for a story on plastic surgery. They sent her around to all the nip/tuckers who advertise heavily in the city, collecting on the free consultations they all offer. I forget what she asked for, but based on the discreetly draped nude photo of her on the cover she had nothing to ask for. Her body is, how you say, perfect, and her face is nothing to hide, either. Would it surprise you to learn that only one of these doctors had the confidence to tell her so?

“You look like an ‘after’ picture that any one of my patients would kill to resemble,” this brave man of medicine told her. “It would be criminal to touch you with a knife.”

Anyway, she wrote a book a while back, a farewell-to-the-pole valedictory, and I haven’t heard much from her since.

Until this week, when she popped up in Slate as a diarist. Surprise, surprise: She married an Army officer, and she’s living at West Point. Isn’t life strange.