Nick
NICK
I’M RELIEVED TO arrive home to an empty house, a rare occurrence since Tate hardly ever goes out. Tonight, his car is not in the driveway, and there’s no sound of video-game gunfire ricocheting up through the floor when I walk in. I bought this house to get closer to my son, but right now, I’m grateful I won’t run into him.
My head is a mess, my thoughts too incoherent to hold a conversation, and my body is on fire, burning up with pornographic memories. After Mata Hari, or whatever the fuck her name is, left the booth, I sat there in shock before composing myself and walking out. I couldn’t speak to my friends or pretend to be interested in anything. I accepted another birthday shot, feigned drunkenness, called an Uber, and left.
The one thought that keeps running through my head over and over is simply: What the fuck?
I’ve been to strip clubs before, had lap dances before, and nothing has ever even come close to going off-script like this.
From the minute I saw her on stage, wrapping her body around the pole and contorting herself to a strangely gothic cover of an eighties pop song—all of it so completely different than what stripping is supposed to be—I was gobsmacked.
She was abnormally attractive, abnormally athletic, and abnormally inventive. Strip clubs are generic and tired, but David was certain I’d have a good time if I went, and he was right. She was exceptional, and I was instantly drawn to her.
But what happened in the booth took things to a whole new level. Some strippers go further than others, but none have ever guided my hand down to their pussy. None have ever had an orgasm on my lap. Every time my thoughts circle back to it, my balls contract, reminding me of how very close I came to coming myself, and how much I still need to, now.
I have to reassure myself that I didn’t do anything wrong, didn’t misread any signs. She’s the one who moved my hand, who pressed her pussy up against it, and dropped her head back over my shoulder as she rode my fingers. I have to reassure myself that there wasn’t a subtle cue I missed, some sign I ignored that made her run off afterward. From top to tail, everything about my experience with this girl was so strange and dreamlike that my mind is still making sense of it.
Lying down on my bed, I close my eyes, and I’m right there all over again, pressing my erection through my clothes against her ass, moving and swaying and grinding in unison with her. I start stroking myself, remembering the impossible softness of her skin, the sweet, wet dew of her pussy that I never washed off my hand.
The thought of the juices from her cunt on my fingers now, running up and down my shaft, makes a small moan escape my lips. What a strange girl. What a strange, wondrous, bewitching, fucking exquisite girl.
I imagine myself in that booth again, unzipping my pants this time, slamming my cock into her right there, feeling her quiver around me as she comes, and within seconds I’m squirting into my hand, breathing raggedly as my heart hammers with my release. I collapse against the cushions just as I hear the front door closing downstairs. Then I hear a sound that truly surprises me: the soft tinkle of a feminine laugh.
I hold my breath, listening intently, focusing my ears to pick up the tiniest of sounds in this large, airy house.
Tate is twenty-three years old, a handsome guy by anyone’s measure, and I’ve often wondered if he ever dates or has a girlfriend. In the six months we’ve been living together in this house, he’s hardly ever gone out. He spends his days sleeping and his nights playing those annoying fucking shoot-em-up video games.
The sounds subside, and I assume he’s brought her downstairs to his basement lair. I wonder if he’s cleaned it up for her. The fact that Tate has a girlfriend and I had no idea is just another reminder of how little I know him. There’s so much time that I’ve missed.
Not that I wanted to miss any of it. But when Rebecca and I broke up, it was easier to follow my job when it led me around the world—to lose myself in the illusion that I was making money for them so that Tate could have a better life—than to stay here and face the dissolution of our family. I believed that working hard was the best way for me be a father to him. That what I couldn’t give to him emotionally, I would make up for with opportunity and privilege.
It’s what I’ve always done, given gifts or money when I couldn’t be emotionally available. At least, that’s what Rebecca always said. She enjoyed painting me as some unfeeling brute, incapable of connecting on a human level, and so I left to give them space, and make money for Tate’s future.
Time moved faster here than it did over there. Over in Shanghai and Rio de Janeiro and Istanbul, time was suspended. Every day was new and exciting, and because of that, it always felt like the beginning of something—like I’d only just arrived. But back home, Tate was growing up. Twelve years designing hotels all around the world, and before I knew it, my son was an adult, and I’d missed everything.
I came back ready to settle down, bought this big house with tons of space for him to live in, and now I’m still no closer to him than I ever was before.
I didn’t know he had a girlfriend.
I wonder if I’ll ever meet her.
* * *
“You need to get laid,” says David the next day over brunch.
I arch an eyebrow at him as the waiter places drinks in front of us. “Oh?”
At least he waits for the waiter to leave before continuing. “I can tell. There’s a certain pinched bitchiness you get when you’re full of cum.”
My best friend since grade school, David is the only person who can speak to me this way. I feign irritation, but it’s just part of the banter, the roles we’ve been playing for almost forty years.
“ Lovely .”
“I mean P in V, to be clear,” he continues. “Not jerking it outside some girl’s window. How long’s it been since you were actually inside a woman?”
“None of your business.”
“Oh shit.” He whistles and leans back in his chair with a grin. “It’s been a minute.”
I roll my eyes at him and take a sip of my mimosa. It’s fresh, sweet, and bubbly—an absurd drink, especially at one o’clock in the afternoon.
“Clearly, I do need to get laid,” I concede, “so I have better things to do than get day-drunk with you.” I frown at my drink. “This tastes like orange juice that’s gone off.”
He smirks, allowing me the deflection. Although he can be a nuisance, David is a guy for whom every kind of sexual expression is unique and beautiful. He judges no one. Maybe because he’s the most perverted of us all.
He always marched to the beat of his own drum. When our group of friends graduated high school and most of us went to college, David traveled Europe for three years with his moderately successful band. Later, when everyone was marrying and settling down, David moved to India to live in an ashram. But four years ago, he found his true calling when he opened an exclusive sex club called the Ball nothing more will come from the experience. This consuming interest can’t turn into an obsession.
“You should come. It will be good for you,” says David, as if he’s continuing the train of my thoughts. “You need to get off, I can tell. Release the valve a little.”
I roll my eyes but smile, all the while hearing the stripper’s breath in my ear, remembering the way she bounced and rubbed and moved, my cock thickening under the table.