Nick
NICK
IT’S BEEN A while since I drove downtown at night. The lights roll up over the windshield, like raindrops falling in reverse in bright splotches of pink, yellow, and orange, and the streets are noisy. A girl shrieks at her friends, loud music thumps out of a club door, horns honk, and streetcar bells ring. It’s nothing like my quiet neighborhood, only fifteen minutes away.
I’m driving aimlessly after a pointless business dinner, one I shouldn’t have bothered going to. I wasted everyone’s time. A new hotel is being built in Dubai, but the project would take me away from home for at least a year. It’s exactly the kind of work I made a commitment to give up when I bought the house six months ago, but I’m restless and bored. I couldn’t resist the urge to learn more about the project and kept telling myself that maybe we could find a way to make it work.
Yet sitting at dinner with the same old type-A executive asswipes, I realized that it isn’t just the time away in Dubai that makes the project unappealing.
For years, work was my life, and I felt blessed to be doing something I was so successful at while making so much money. But eventually, it wasn’t enough. I was making money hand over fist, but for what? I hooked up with women and never saw them again, made friendships that barely lasted the weekend, and day after day, I woke up alone.
The idea of creating another enormous luxury hotel doesn’t tempt me in the least. It would mean a year of hard work, but also money, parties, and women—yet it all just gives me that same old empty feeling again.
After a while, an unbridled, hedonistic lifestyle feels meaningless without human connection.
A few blocks down the road, I realize I’m around the corner from the strip club we went to on my birthday. Just a left turn here at the intersection. Parking lot at the back. It would be so easy to pop in, get my mind off the Dubai meeting. Get distracted…
It’s embarrassing how many times I’ve thought about that lap dance in the past two weeks. I don’t want to be that pathetic, middle-aged guy who feels like he had a connection with a stripper, but I can’t get Mata Hari out of my head. Impulsively, I signal a left-hand turn, wondering what the hell I am doing, and drive into the club parking lot.
Why not?
The Paradise Lounge is probably the nicest strip club in the city, located in the popular nightlife area, surrounded by dance clubs and expensive restaurants. When I walk into the front entrance, a man in a suit collects a twenty-dollar entrance fee, and then another escorts me into the club as if he’s seating me at a fancy restaurant.
“This way,” he says, turning towards the line of chairs right up against the stage— pervert’s row .
“No,” I say quickly. “Somewhere more private.”
He nods and turns, indicating an empty table at the back, and I tip him—even though I could have found my own damn seat. It’s the way the club works. Everything here is an economic transaction.
I’ve grown accustomed to being alone, after years of traveling. I’ve been to hundreds of restaurants alone, hundreds of movies, and yes, even the occasional strip club.
I sit and signal the waitress and eye the women moving around the room alertly, wanting to see Mata Hari but not be seen by her. Like the fucking creep I am.
I don’t know what it is I want, exactly. I’m just wondering what it would feel like to see her again. Would I be blasted by the same powerhouse attraction as before, or was it something about the night, the mood, that made me idealize the whole experience? I’m not sure. I order a beer and continue scanning the room, eventually concluding that she’s not here. Feeling equal parts pathetic and relieved, I try to focus on watching the dancer and enjoying my drink. I’m just a man trying to unwind after a business meeting, I tell myself. If I see her, I see her. If I don’t, that’s fine.
Being fixated on her isn’t healthy.
On stage, the dancer listlessly swings a leg around the pole. She has long, lank dark hair and wears a glittering bikini with sparkling tassels, but her dour face contrasts with the bright effervescence of her outfit. She moves slowly, as if to another song, hip movements just a second off the beat, gaze distant and empty. I wonder if she hates her job. Some people aren’t cut out for this line of work, I’m sure. I let my eyes wander around the perimeter of the stage, looking at the faces of the men—and one woman—sitting in pervert’s row. Up front, they’re paying more attention to the dancer, while back here men are chatting with circulating strippers and waitresses—ordering drinks and private time with the girl of their choice.
I’m finishing my drink as the dancer toddles onto a rickety hydraulic lift that lowers her down below the stage, and as I get ready to stand up and leave, the DJ announces the next dancer.
“Give it up,” he cajoles, “for Sa-lo-mé!” He draws out the “eh” sound at the end like he’s Oprah giving away free cars.
I freeze, my hands clammy as I stare at the empty stage, unsure what to expect. It’s like waiting for a celebrity to appear— or a deity. The sight of her will decide something, either ending my fixation or explaining my actions on my birthday. I’m not sure which, but after thinking about her for so long, the idea of seeing her has got me gripped with excitement.
Time ticks by eternally, long seconds feeling like hours, and then there she is. She rises from the floor on the same hydraulic lift, first her blonde hair, now in long, shaggy layers, then her strong shoulders and her perfectly straight back. She’s dressed in a metallic leotard that’s as tight to her body as skin, long sleeves but bare legs. A cape of the same fabric drapes off the back. It’s so different from the bikinis or lingerie sets the other girls are wearing, and even the song that’s pounding out a driving beat is a stark change to what’s been playing in the club so far. The energy around me changes, voices quieting, attention turning to her brilliant presence.
The platform reaches floor level, and she struts forward, slamming the beat on each step, her legs a mile long in platform heels, long lines of muscle rippling up her calves, thighs, and ass.
It’s so theatrical it would be comedic except for the absolute composure on her face. Her chin is lifted, highlighting the length of her neck. Her eyes are bright. Her charisma is mesmerizing.
When she grabs onto the pole and swings her body around in time to the music, it’s a feat of athleticism. She has surprising strength for her size. She climbs the pole and bends over backward, hair sweeping the floor, and the lone woman in the front row whoops in appreciation.
Then she’s down on the ground again, crawling on all fours; savage. She whips her head around, swinging her hair, and tears the cape off her leotard with a loud velcro rip.
It’s as astounding as the number I saw her do on my birthday—maybe more so. It’s not a striptease, it’s a music video. It’s live theatre. She sits up on her knees and pulls a zipper down the front of her leotard, exposing the skin between her breasts and the top of her stomach in a seductive V. My cock jumps to life at the sudden promise of her nudity. She slides the leotard down over her hips and legs, and jumps to her feet, kicking the fabric off her high heels. She’s got a G-string on and nothing else, and I find myself staring at her tits in utter captivation.
Her full, natural breasts remind me of the centerfolds in the old magazines my dad used to keep hidden in the garage, and I feel the same way I did when I first found those magazines—when arousal was so imminently at the surface that the slightest hint of sexuality would send me running to the bathroom with a hard-on. It’s happening to me right now, my cock getting so stiff it’s straining against my zipper.
Up front, a man starts laying twenty-dollar bills out on the stage, and she turns toward him, crawling on all fours with her perfect ass in the air, the fabric of the leotard barely covering the warm, wet slit between her legs I can so vividly remember touching.
My throat feels dry. I can’t wrench my eyes away from her.
“Another?” asks the waitress, suddenly beside me and lifting my empty beer bottle.
“Yes,” I say quickly, without taking my eyes off the stage.
I pull out cash to pay for the drink and hand it to her without looking.
On stage, Salomé slides her ass back towards the man with the bills until her crotch is right in his face, and the ache in my balls blooms painfully.
With laser focus, my thoughts center around her tight, pink cunt. How slick and smooth it felt against my fingers, how it pulsed when she came.
She reaches back and runs her hands over her ass and down the backs of her thighs, and the man’s mouth hangs open, wet lips surrounded by a sparse goatee. She’s so close to him he could lick her, pull her panties to the side and run his fat tongue up her pussy, savoring every inch of her, and perversely, the thought heats me.
How I would love to watch her—breath heaving, eyes closed—as this man, so many leagues below her station and feeling like he won the fucking pussy lottery, sucked and licked at her right here, on a stage in front of a crowd.
Instead, she rolls onto her back, lifting her strong legs into the air and splitting them apart before closing them again on the other side, rolling up onto her knees and running her hands up her body. She cups her breasts and then jumps up in time to the music. She grabs the pole, once again lifting herself effortlessly off her feet until she’s straddling it, and spins around.
I’m choked with arousal, gripped with a wild desperation that’s about to tip over into a loss of control, and I realize with certainty that I need to get out of here right away. I take a long slug of my beer, as much as I can drink in one sip, and then throw another bill from my wallet on the table and walk quickly out of the club. I give a curt nod to the bouncers on my way out the door—just another lonely man leaving the strip club with a boner.
In the car, I fumble with my phone, half-write and then delete a text to David about going to the club, and then look up the number of a woman I fooled around with a few months ago. I crave a mouth, a hole, but I know I’m not thinking straight, and I don’t want to do anything I’ll regret. So, out of desperation, I unzip my pants and start jerking myself off right there in the dark parking lot.
In my mind’s eye, the girl leans her ass off the edge of the stage, lowering herself down to a man’s mouth—a stranger’s mouth. She doesn’t care. Then I picture the velvet-smooth feel of her under my tongue, feel her shiver and squeeze as I slip my tongue over her clit and against her opening. With a violent shudder, I blow my load into my hand and fall back against the car seat, panting.
* * *
I’m at home in bed when I get a text message from Tate.
“ Hey dad. My friend Zo? needs a place to stay in the city so I told her she could live here. She’ll be downstairs but you’ll probably see her around.”
I have to read the message twice before it registers.
He’s moving a girl in here?
And it isn’t even a question—he’s just letting me know.
By text.
There’s certainly plenty of space. Tate and I never cross paths as it is. He could move four people in here and I probably wouldn’t even notice.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that Tate’s the son and I’m the father. This is my house. And this is a serious step to take with a girl I haven’t even met. A girl I only even know exists because I heard her muffled giggle in the hallway a couple of nights ago.
I wonder what Rebecca would do in this situation. She was always the strict parent. I’m pretty sure she just wouldn’t allow it. Am I being taken advantage of?
I’m not up for a fight, though, and can’t see my way through to taking a stand on this. He’s twenty-three, and isn’t this what I wanted to offer him? Independence?
“Moving in?” I reply. “That sounds serious.”
It’s almost one o’clock in the morning. Most people would be asleep, but Tate, of course, is in the middle of his day. His response comes immediately, dripping with defensiveness.
“You said I could do what I wanted in this space,” he writes. “I thought that was the whole point. It’s hardly any of your business whether it’s serious or not.”
The tone stings. So unnecessarily reactive.
“That’s fine, son,” I reply, backing down before I ever stood up.
At least if she’s living in my house, I’ll finally get to meet her.