Pressing the button that automatically opens the glass doors to my balcony, I step out onto my deck and lean over the rail. From this high up the cars below look like those Matchbox cars I had when I was a kid and the people look like ants. My deck is my favorite place. It’s wide, welcoming and the perfect place to party or relax.
Inside, I take the steps one at a time, in no hurry to get to my room. By the time I’m at the top of the stairs, my tie is undone, my cufflinks unsnapped and my shirt pulled from my pants. My walk-in closet is full of labels, all designer and all custom tailored to my body. I change quickly, setting today’s suit on the table in the middle for my housekeeper to deal with and head into the gym.
With the music on and the dumbbells in my hands, I stand there looking at myself in the mirror. Muscles aren’t my thing but being toned is. My friend Seth is one of those bodybuilders whose skin looks like it’s about to pull apart if he sneezes. I don’t get it, but he loves it. The bigger the muscles, the happier he is. I want to be fit, with no flab but with some abs. There’s nothing hotter than watching the chick you’re with lick her way down your torso, over the ridges of your stomach, through the smattering of your hair until her lips wrap around the head of your dick. That thought alone makes me horny, but not enough to call Brandy.
No, tonight when the Strip comes alive, I’ll hit a club or two, find someone from out of town who doesn’t know me and wants only one thing, mind-blowing sex. That’s about all I can offer someone right now, or ever. I saw what my mother’s death did to my father and his subsequent marriage to Stepmommy dearest cemented the fact that I’m perfectly happy living the single life. No attachments. No strings. Straight-up pleasure is the most sinful kind in Sin City.
After my workout, which concludes with a five-mile treadmill run, I’m standing in my shower, letting the warm spray drip over my head, creating the illusion that I’m caught in a rainstorm. My interior designer told me that women love this feeling. I have yet to ask a single one of them if they love getting fucked in the rain. My only thought when I have them in there is putting my dick between their wet folds. If they want to feel like it’s raining, so be it.
Once I’m out, dried and dressed I text my best buds, Seth, Brady and Cory, and offer up a plan for the night. It’s pushing midnight and time for the party to get started. All three respond, letting me know that they’re ready.
Game on.
3
Macey
Strippers lie. It doesn’t matter if they’re your coworkers or not, they’re not your friends. That is the first rule I learned years ago, but I seem to have forgotten it because now that I’m in Vegas, I’m cleaning out the savings I put aside for rent to pay for the “extras” needed in order to strip here.
Everything was going according to the made-up plan I had in my head. Get to Vegas, find a club and start making money. I’d worry about a place to sleep after I had a few hundred in my hand.
But I quickly find out it doesn’t work that way.
After I auditioned and was told that my fresh face would drive the regulars crazy, I was handed two sheets of paper listing everything I needed: work permits, a license to serve drinks and a Las Vegas address. Cora never mentioned anything about work permits or having to serve drinks. It shouldn’t bother me, except it’s spending more money that I don’t have. What is it that they say in business, “you have to spend money to make money”? Easily said when you have it to spend. The second sheet kindly provided a list of hotels that would accommodate my needs.
It’s been hours since I left the stage. I’m hungry, tired and running out of patience. I’m starting to think being an escort is the fastest way to make money, but the thought of sleeping with someone for cash repulses me. Not that stripping is any better, but at least then I’m in control. I decide who and for how long.
Once all my paperwork is in order, complete with a Vegas address from some seedy hotel, I find out that I’m now allowed to strip here for five years. Five years! That has to be some career or long-term goal to get your act together, except it’s not. Some of the women I saw today had me by twenty years, but looked so much better than me. I don’t even want to do this now, let alone for the next five years. This isn’t how I saw my life panning out.