Chapter 2
Adrian
The eight-thirty set started.
Madison lost her mind.
But not in a concerning way.
In the way of a woman who had been promised the best night of her pre-married life and was now, and her sashed sisters screamed with her. The sound hit me in the chest before Jacks had even cued the first track.
The rest of the bar went completely still.
We had a regular named Dennis. He came every Saturday, sat in the same spot, ordered the same IPA, and expressed enthusiasm through the mild appreciative nod of a man who considered visible emotion a personal expense he wasn't willing to incur.
Dennis turned on his stool, looked at the bachelorette party, and then turned back to his beer.
Then turned around again.
Then turned forward.
Then turned around a third time, slowly, like a man making sure he'd seen what he thought he'd seen.
I found the beat, moved into it, and the room split into two distinct experiences of the same evening.
The bachelorette party entered a condition I could only describe as unhinged joy.
Madison had both hands clasped under her chin like she was receiving a religious vision.
Courtney, who had spent the better part of the evening managing a laminated timeline, set her clipboard on the table, picked up her drink, and let go, which was honestly the most moving thing I'd witnessed all night.
The Ride or Die sash was filming. The Mrs. Always Right sash was dancing in place like a woman who had taken one too many wine-and-paint classes and thought she had rhythm.
She did not have rhythm.
She was having the time of her life anyway.
The gay men watched all of this unfold with the collective expression of guys who had paid for a specific show and were now watching a bonus show they hadn't ordered and were still deciding whether or not they were okay with it.
Dennis's neighbor leaned over and said something to him.
Dennis shrugged. That was his version of consent.
That was also the moment the bar became one room.
Once Dennis allowed it, everyone else allowed it, because Dennis's opinion carried weight among the Saturday regulars whether Dennis knew it or not.
He was the Norm to our Cheers, the regular on whom many set their watches and ordered their refills.
Within sixty seconds the whole crowd had absorbed the bachelorette party into the general ecosystem of the evening. From there, the night found its stride.
And the dollar bills started flowing with the second song.
The first bill came from Madison. It was a crisp twenty that she'd clearly had ready in her hand since her arrival. I danced toward her end of the bar and did a thing with my hips that I knew would produce a specific reaction.
The twenty made it into my waistband.
Madison screamed again.
The table screamed with her.
By this point, the gay men started competing with the bachelorette party, because if there's one thing that will motivate the Barbacks Saturday crowd into spending money, it's the implication that someone else might be spending more.
By the third song I had six different hands reaching for my waistband simultaneously, and Benji was watching from the well like a man witnessing a nature documentary in real time.
"You doing okay up there?" he called.
"Perfectly fine," I said, spinning away from a particularly enthusiastic reach from the Second in Command sash.
"You've got a twenty hanging from your left hip."
"I'm aware."
"And a ten from your right."
"Also aware."
"There's a five on your—"
"Benji."
He held up both hands and went back to his bottles.
Dennis, who by this point had fully committed to the evening, produced a bill from his wallet with the dignity of a man making an investment in something he believed in.
I came down between sets for water and an orange Fanta and found Benji already holding both. "Madison wants to dance with you," he said.
"I'm a performer," I said. "Not a—"
"She's the bride."
"I know she's the bride."
"It's her last night as a free woman."
"She is gaining a husband, not entering a correctional facility."
"She would like to dance with you," Benji repeated. "The crowd wants it. I want it. Rod appeared at the pass-through three minutes ago. He looked at Madison and then at you and then back at Madison and then went back to the kitchen, and you know what that means."
I drank my Fanta. "Rod wanted it, too."
"Yep. Rod wanted it. He might even leave his lair just to watch."
I glanced at Madison. She was looking at me with her full-moon eyes and both hands clasped again. She had, at some point, acquired a foam tiara that sat precariously atop her veil.
I finished my Fanta and rolled my neck.
"Tell Jacks something danceable," I said. "Not his EDM crap, something with a real beat."
Benji was already texting before I finished the sentence.
I climbed down off the bar.
The crowd parted without being asked, then the automatic human instinct to create a circle when something is about to happen took hold. The ring was wide, with good floor space at the center.
Madison stepped forward.
She was two or ten drinks past her usual limit. Her veil fluttered in the draft from the A/C vent blasting down from the circle’s center. Her foam tiara was slightly askew.
I sauntered forward, my speedo now less impressive, as I’d emptied it of cash before stepping into the ring.
I bowed like some Elizabethan noble, and the crowd hooted.
Sharper than her alcohol blood level suggested, Madison giggled then curtsied.
The crowd hooted louder.
We started slow with a simple two-step. It was nothing ambitious, the kind of thing you might do at a wedding with someone who’d never danced before.
She was actually decent, better than the Mrs. Always Right sash, and she knew it.
She stood up a little straighter when she realized I was genuinely dancing with her rather than managing her.
"You're good," I said in her ear.
"My mom made me take lessons," she said. "I hated it until literally this second."
Her hands traced down my back in a suggestive way that might make her groom-to-be jealous. I pressed into her, giving the crowd their show. The bridesmaids squealed, as Madison blushed.
We did a little turn.
I twirled her about.
She giggled again, and nearly stumbled. Her girls shrieked in alarm then “awwed” when I caught her and pulled her close.
Then Dennis's neighbor, who had done those shots with the Ride or Die sash and was now operating at an elevated emotional register, shouted something from the edge of the circle.
I didn’t quite catch his exact words, but the spirit of it was: stop being polite and rock her world!
The crowd agreed with the spirit of this.
Madison’s wide eyes glittered in the bar light, as her head nodded eagerly.
"It's my last night," she said.
"You said that."
"My fiancé knows I'm here."
"Good for him."
"He said to have fun."
"Madison," I said. "What exactly did he mean by fun."
She grinned and ground against my banana hammock.
My banana responded.
Madison grinned.
Then the music shifted.
Jacks, who understood a room better than anyone I'd ever worked with, moved to something lower and slower and considerably more intentional, the kind of track that required the body to make decisions without the brain’s direction.
What happened next will remain, in the canon of Barbacks Saturday nights, legendary.
I am a professional. I want that noted.
What I did with Madison was tasteful in the way that things can be tasteful while also being completely unhinged. The distinction is real even if it is difficult to articulate.
The crowd had, collectively, been drinking for several hours and had opinions about what they wanted to see and were not shy about expressing them.
Dennis cupped his hands around his mouth and said something that made Courtney spit her drink and drop her clipboard.
The Ride or Die sash had resumed filming, which was probably fine?—and possibly not fine—depending on how much the groom ended up seeing.
Benji was leaning on the bar with both elbows watching the whole thing with the expression of a man storing memories.
Rod appeared at the pass-through.
He watched for a full thirty seconds.
He went back to the kitchen.
Then he came back and watched for another thirty seconds.
"You're going to miss your kitchen," Jacks called over the music.
"I have a window," he shouted back, and pointed at the pass-through.
Madison and I dirty danced through the whole track and halfway through the next one. She rutted against me so hard I thought my cock my squirm its way out of my speedos. Her hands roamed my back and chest and arms and—oh, shit—she grabbed my ass as squeezed as thought juicing a mango.
The bridesmaids lost their shit at this.
Dennis screamed out, “I want that ass next!”
When the music finally wound down, the circle erupted louder than when the Lightning scored on game nights.
Madison hugged me with both arms and said something into my shoulder that I couldn't hear over the noise.
Before I could pull back, she planted a kiss on my cheek and giggled one last time.
I patted her back and told her the fiancé was a lucky man.
This earned a duck of her head and a blush that flared all the way into her ears.
The bachelorette party never left Barbacks to pursue other venues.
They closed out their tab at midnight. Courtney's original hard out had been ten-thirty, but the revised schedule had been revised twice more during the evening and at some point had simply ceased to be a relevant document.
They left in the warm, unsteady, deeply satisfied way of people who had received more than they'd planned for.
Madison hugged everyone individually, including Jacks, Mark, Benji, and Rod, who submitted to this with varying degrees of stoicism.
Courtney shook my hand at the door. "I'm adding Barbacks to the official schedule next time," she said.
"I'll be here," I said.
"I'll laminate it," she said.
The bar emptied out in the half hour after midnight, the usual end-of-Saturday drift.
By one-fifteen, the room had gone quiet, Jacks was running the closing check, and Benji was doing the last of the well inventory.
I sat at the bar with my arms on the counter and rested my head on them, letting the glorious quiet wash over me.
Finn appeared at my side.
He looked at me.
He looked at the bar.
He looked at Benji, who was biting the inside of his cheek.
He looked at Jacks, who had found something interesting to examine on the other side of the bar.
"How was the night?" Finn said.
"Fine," I mumbled into my arms.
"I heard some of it from the office."
"Define some," I said.
"I heard Dennis."
I lifted my head. "What did Dennis say exactly. I couldn’t hear him over the hyena squeals."
"The important question," Finn said, with careful precision, "is not what Dennis said. The important question is what the groom is going to say when he sees the video the woman in the Ride or Die sash posted forty minutes ago."
I let my head drop back onto my arms and groaned.
Benji made the sound he made when something was so funny that he was physically struggling to contain it.
"It's a tasteful video," Jacks offered, somewhere to my left.
"It is not a tasteful video," Benji said. “It’s hot.”
"It's tasteful adjacent," Jacks said.
"It is adjacent to tasteful in the same way that—"
"I'm a professional," I said, into the bar counter.
"Nobody is questioning your professionalism," Finn said.
"You're all questioning my professionalism," again lifting my head to meet Finn’s gaze.
"We are admiring your professionalism," Benji said. "The crowd formed a circle, Adie. Organically. Nobody organized a circle. The circle simply emerged."
"The circle was not my idea," I said.
"The circle was absolutely your idea," Benji countered.
"Benji."
"You climbed down off the bar and the circle happened. That's causation," Benji crossed his arms as though his point was irrefutable. He was grinning with his whole face, the uninhibited grin that meant he had no intention of letting this go tonight or possibly ever.
Finn set a cold orange Fanta on the bar in front of me, which I took as either an “atta boy” from my boss or a peace offering intended to forestall and HR action I might take following a night of deeply invasive groping.
I looked at the Fanta then looked at him. Of all the people in this room, Finn was the last one I expected kindness from at one-fifteen in the morning after the evening I'd had.
"The video has fourteen thousand views already," he said. "Mark texted me."
"Mark is awake at one in the morning?"
"Mark saw the video. His mental cash register won’t let him sleep," Finn chuckled.
I picked up the Fanta and popped the tab.
"He already sent me a revenue projection, complete with future earnings from future bachelorette parties we might host. He’s creating a whole business model around off-night entertainment options. I think your little dirty dancing moment inspired him."
I drank half the can in one go and set it down. Then I glanced between the three of them, Finn with his phone showing me Mark's text, Jacks examining the ceiling with suspicious focus, Benji still grinning like some cannibal who’d just found a lost hiker in the jungle.
"The bride was very nice," I said.
"She was lovely," Benji agreed.
"Her friends were lovely."
"They should be classified as accomplices, not friends." I shot him a glare. “I’ve never had my cock grabbed so many times, and I’ve danced gay bars for years.”
"Dennis had a good time," Benji said, ignoring my complaint.
"Dennis tipped forty dollars on twenty dollars’ worth of drinks," Jacks said. “And that’s not counting whatever he shoved down your crotch.
I finished the Fanta. “He gripped more than he deposited.”
"Customer service demands its due. Good thing you have a lot to grope . . . I mean grip,” Finn said, earning a laugh from Benji that had the poor guy doubled over. Jacks, unhelpful ox that he was, blinked a few times before it registered then joined in the laughter.
“Who knew dancing with a drunk woman could get you so hard? I mean, damn, if I was single—”
“Benji!” Jacks blinked rapidly again.
“It was impressive,” Finn added. “I mean, of you’re into Puerto Rican monster snakes.”
Benji literally hit the floor. Tears were streaming down his face.
“Thanks, guys. Great support. You’re the best, really.” I blew out a long sigh. “I think it’s time I put my anaconda to bed.”
Benji howled from the floor, while Jacks stammered non-English nonsense.
Unhelpful as ever, Finn shook his head and turned to walk back to his office.