7. CHAPTER SIX #5
The party progresses as usual, with rounds of shots interspersed by a dance lesson in small groups.
The girls perform the choreo they’ve learned between the poles and the chairs, and I continue to work on my balance as I deliver the trays of shots and pretzel bites.
While they’re dancing, I work a bit on pacing back and forth, just to keep my calf muscles moving.
A part of me is concerned they might cramp up from this constant tippy-toe action.
Right on cue, when the dancing part of the night is over, we get a firm knock on the door.
I’m accustomed to this now; I know the stripper has arrived with his bodyguard in tow.
I wonder what kind of ridiculous treat the group has in store on this hot, summer night.
Arrow sashays over to the door, dramatically pretending to wonder aloud, “Who could that be?” and when she swings the door open, she’s greeted by the bodyguard.
He’s a huge man – broad shoulders, with biceps that threaten to tear through his black t-shirt.
“Dude, go,” he whispers hard at the guy alongside him.
The bodyguard opens a flask, hands it to the man beside him – who, from here looks like he’s wearing some kind of mask (in keeping with the theme, I suppose).
The masked bandit takes an enormous swig from the flask and hands it back to the bodyguard.
Then, bodyguard guy places an oversized hand on the upper back of the masked bandit, pushing him through the door.
Which is when I notice that he is wearing not only a mask, but a complete Zorro getup.
Cape, vest, the whole nine. He looks… well, it’s kind of hard to say how he looks given the snake mask waging war with my fake eyelashes.
But his vibe is decidedly different than our previous strippers.
He seems uncomfortable, as if maybe something’s got his little Zorro whip all twisted up.
I adjust my mask and see the stripper glance back at the bodyguard, who shoots a real stern look at him like, “Don’t fuck this up, man.”
Then, the stripper turns to face Arrow and gulps once before saying, “I am Zorro, um, the outlaw?” He says this in a real shitstorm attempt at a Spanish accent, and two things run through my mind.
The first is that I am immediately reminded of Puss N’ Boots, probably because Antonio Banderas is the voice of the fiery orange cartoon cat and is also the man behind the mask in the actual Zorro movie.
The second is – and I assume this is because it’s become a recurring theme in my life – that the stripper looks a whole lot like Brady Hawthorne.
But that can’t be.
I mean, right?
“Oh! Welcome, Zorro,” Arrow purrs.
He spins his cape around to face the group of ladies. “I, um. I’m here to… um…” Zorro looks back at the bodyguard with what appears to be real panic.
“Nobody cares!” one of the ladies screams. “Just take off your pants, Zorro!”
They all begin to cheer and whoop and Cherry turns the music on.
Through the speakers, Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee beg the ladies to “let me trespass your danger zones,” (solamente en espanol), and the stripper is fed to the den of hungry lionesses like a sad, lone wildebeest. The bass thumps and Saffron affixes herself to a pole and begins to swing around it, tossing her hair and moving her hips like the pole itself is a long-lost lover.
Arrow pushes Zorro into the crowd of ladies and flips open a folding chair.
The gagglefuck of penis-starved, masked maidens push their friend, the bride, into the chair, where I hand her a ruby red shot, which she gratefully accepts.
Zorro helps himself to three of the shots on my tray and crushes them with his fist, the Jell-O dripping into his mouth.
He swallows, tosses the plastic cups back onto my tray, stops to look at me as if he’s confused, and then mumbles, “Thanks.” He shakes his head quickly, as if trying to situate himself, takes a big, deep breath and approaches the chair slowly.
His walk, tentative at first, morphs into a slow strut (amen for alcohol), and I cannot help but notice that through his Zorro mask, he gives me a sideways glance.
Like, even though he’s walking towards the bride, his gaze is trained on me.
It’s Brady, my scrambled brain decides. But, no.
It can’t be. That makes no sense at all.
He’s working. It’s a Friday night! He’s definitely at the Diamond Excelsior.
This is just your mind playing tricks on you.
My eyelashes choose this exact moment to affix themselves to the edge of the eye-hole on my right side.
I turn and carefully walk away into the tiny office, where I set down my shot tray and pull the eyelashes apart from the mask with the utmost caution.
I blink several times, making sure I’m free of the glue trap that is the inner edge of this dumb snake face.
While in the office, I grab a fresh tray of shots and fluff up my hair.
I emerge into the darkness of the studio to see Zorro – now sans vest , but still with his cape on – doing something with his hips.
Sweet Lord, those abs, I think. They’re like perfect little boxes, all lined up neatly, leading down to a gorgeous V-shape that dips below the waistband of his black pants.
Zorro’s lower half undulates like the waves at Nauset Beach, slamming into the shore, thrusting from the dark blue ocean onto the sand.
Pounding into the personal space of the bride, whose obvious enjoyment is making me feel perhaps the tiniest bit snakeface-green… with envy.
Fucking control yourself, Gretchen. It’s not Brady.
And even if it was Brady (which it’s definitely not) , he’s your asshole neighbor, not your friend, and especially not your boyfriend. So let him fuck the air in front of this random, betrothed bachelorette. No (snake) skin off your back.
I breathe in the warring scent of plumeria body spray from the ladies and Malibu from the Jell-O, mesmerized by the angles and lines on Zorro’s hard-as-a-rock body. Until – my God – he rips off his pants.
Wow.
The pouch of the barely-there man-thong that remains is filled with stripper sausage. Like, whoa.
The women screech and howl. “Fuck, yeah!” one yells, shoving dollars into his underwear.
He pauses and takes a deep breath – before diving smoothly onto the floor and dry-humping the ground, putting his entire hindquarters on display for the adoring bridal bandwagon.
He slithers up from the ground and – literally just centimeters away from the bride’s body – slides his torso along her silhouette, until he places his hands on her face, cupping her cheeks with his palms, leaving the poor bride to stare into the face of Zorro and wonder if she’s making a gigantic mistake by marrying anyone other than his fine ass.
He runs his hands down her jaw and into her hair, smiling as he gives a gentle tug on her blonde curls before bending backwards into the ground, motioning with his finger for her to follow him, which she does, naturally.
Now, with dollars raining down around them like confetti, she is basically having dry-outercourse with him on the filthy floor.
Yes, her clothes are still on, and yes, her friends are all there, hollering like a feral pack of pants-burrito-craving horndogs.
“Ay, papi!” the whitest girl in the crowd yells, and I laugh at the ludicrousness of it all.
At some point, Zorro makes his way over to the area where the poles are.
Saffron, Cherry and Indigo are swinging away, climbing, spinning, spreading their legs in fankicks and a move called “Hello, Boys,” in which they pole-sit atop one fist while they lean back and split their legs open as wide as possible.
The partygoers attack the remaining poles as Zorro takes turns grinding on each girl, making sure nobody leaves without having had the chance to slide their manicured fingers along his rippled stomach or paw at his ass cheeks like a tribe of horny circus clowns.
It’s funny – well, sort of, until he begins to saunter up to yours truly.
I tend to stay out of the way during this part of the night.
I mean, I’m just the shot girl. No need to interact with me.
Tonight, I look like a cross between a reptile and a fish-woman, so yeah, we’re not exactly working with A-game material.
Plus, poor Zorro is undoubtedly awash with every germ known to man, so it’s not like I’m trying to bathe all up in his pornflakes.
But he’s coming this way. And he’s licking his lower lip with the tip of his tongue.
Oof.
I can’t seem to look away, despite the mask sliding down my nose, trying to blind me with my own fake eyelashes.
I push it back up with my forefinger as he places his hand on my waist, pulling me closer to his winding hips.
Charly Black’s “Gyal You A Party Animal” blares through the speakers, the dancehall delight making it impossible not to sway my body from side to side.
Then, when my knee is solidly between his legs and we are rocking together, he releases my waist and places his hands on the back of my head, lightly pulling at my hair in what is possibly the most sexual touch I’ve ever experienced before.
Zorro silently runs his fingertips down my arms, starting at my bare shoulders and sliding all the way down to my hands, where he twists his digits around mine as we move in time with the music.
He’s not exactly grinding into me, but if I were to push my pelvis forward even just an inch or two, I can all but guarantee that I’d accidentally bump into his massive package.
In some strange way, it’s almost hotter that we’re not pressed fully up against each other.
Wordlessly, he raises my hand in his and drops it up over his head, suspended in mid-air.
Then, he does that famous move from Dirty Dancing where he slides his one hand down the inside of my arm, which tickles me as he nears my armpit.
I tug my hand back instinctively, laughing, and my finger gets caught on the elastic of his face mask.
I pull so hard that before I realize it, the cheap elastic has snapped, and the black mask of Zorro snaps off, floating for a split second like a puff of black smoke before falling to the floor.
It’s Brady Hawthorne.
I stop dancing. It can’t be.
He winces, touching the side of his eye line where the mask snapped.
A red welt is forming. He rubs it and looks up at me, crossly, before his face swiftly changes.
His gaze sweeps over my barely there T-shirt and mermaid panty, then down my fishnet-clad legs to my sky-high platforms. He looks back up again and settles on my blood-red hair.
It registers.
He knows it’s me.
Zorro – er, Brady – takes three steps backwards before turning hastily and high tailing it out of there, leaving in his wake the groans and miserable sighs of Team Trashelorette.
His bodyguard follows him out the door, with Arrow hot on their tails, shaking her head.
Meanwhile, I force myself out of my deer-in-the-headlights moment and wobble back to the office to grab more shots, which I set down on the table and the girls gratefully devour.
Right on time, the caterers enter the space, a pair of men from Anejo in Hyannis who are swiftly setting up a fajita station, as I excuse myself from the building and teeter outside into the parking lot.
“You don’t just fucking leave!” Arrow yells. “That’s not how it works!”
“Yo,” the big bodyguard guy says, pulling off his hat to reveal a head of bright orange hair. “Don’t come at my man like that.” He takes a lumbering step towards Arrow. It’s not threatening exactly, but I would be scared if it were me. “He’s new. ”
Arrow shoots a sharp look at me, while Brady fumbles into a pair of sweatpants, leaving an oil streak along the passenger side of the blue Hyundai Elantra that is unmistakably his. “What, Summer?” she asks, annoyed. “What do you want?”
“Summer?” Brady asks.
“What do you want ?” Arrow asks again, more firmly this time.
I shake my head and adjust my snake mask so it doesn’t stick to my eyes. “Um, nothing.”
“Get back in there,” she seethes at me.
I go.
But not before hearing Brady say to his bodyguard, “Bro, I could have sworn she was my neighbor.”