The job wasn’t ideal, but it left him days to write and look for legitimate work.
As for colleges and universities, he’d started close to home and then widened the distance in a circle in an old atlas a hundred miles at a time. He was up to a four-hundred-mile circumference. He hoped that before it reached a thousand, he’d be placing his resignation at the bar and packing for his real job.
Sandy jumped him for being such a snob about the bar and his position there later that evening. “A lot of people have to take jobs they didn’t want to get by. And this job will likely help you pay off your loans quicker than a teaching job would.”
He was rightfully embarrassed over his reaction. “Sorry, Sandy. Thanks, by the way, for the heads up about it. I’m just disappointed that I’m not already teaching.”
Rhianna was walking through the living room and overheard them. “Teaching…what did I hear? Oh! There are substitute positions open close by. Why don’t you sign up for them?”
“For the college?”
“No, elementary,” she said, tossing her pink dreads over her shoulders. She was pretty, dark skinned, and looked ten years younger than her real age of thirty. “The little school down the block has a banner on the fence about it. Might as well get the experience. Didn’t one job turn you down for that?”
They had, but he doubted elementary experience would matter to a college or university. Still, it was closer in line with his career than he had been. “Thanks, Rhianna. I’ll check it out.”
“You gonna quit your club gig?” Sandy watched him closely for his reaction, and Eli nearly said yes, then thought better of it.
“It’s nights. I don’t start until ten on Thursdays and Fridays, so it’s perfect. I can do both. Get a little money and experience from one, and a lot of money from the other.”
Sandy laughed, pointing at him. “You got it, finally. I should sell my services. I’d get rich.”
“I’d pay you, but I’m broke, so…”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s what all the girls say to me.”
Eli laughed, throwing one of the flattened couch pillows at him. “Gigolo suits you.”
“Gigolo? That’s an old word, Plato. Hustler is too, before you say that, and generally meant for you gay dudes. How about sexual entrepreneur?”
“Okay. We’ll go with that. And, seriously, thanks.”
The first three nights were rough. He wasn’t the best dancer, so he felt self-conscious enough because of that, but then there were all those men, staring at him, making hand gestures, and calling lewd things to him.
He wasn’t a total prude, of course, and had plenty of great sex partners when and if he wanted them. Still, he wasn’t exactly one to run around nearly naked and he’d never worn tight speedos or G-strings in his life.
Then, he got used to it. It wasn’t gradual or something that took long. Like a lot of other things in his life, he simply adapted quickly. The fourth night there, he was set in the VIP section, which was weird to him. There were no leering faces at his cage. In fact, there was no cage. He danced on the low table in the center of the sectional couch, and the men there all wore masquerade masks over their eyes and upper faces.
The lights were low except the one right over the table, and he swayed his hips, thrusting them. In the shadows, glasses were being tipped while the men in fancy suits drank their bottles of expensive vodka and scotch, even as faces were tipped to him.
Money was thrown out now and then, Eli nearly slipping off the table on a hundred-dollar bill. He righted himself before he fell, but he danced a little more cautiously afterward.
He managed to make almost five thousand dollars that night. When he was dressing in the back, where the dancers each had a locker, he asked one of the other dancers, “Have you ever been to the VIP?”
“Sure. Lots of times. Was tonight your first?”
The dancer, who’s name Eli thought was Josh, stared at him like being there, making that money and dancing for men that wore masks, wasn’t anything.
“Yeah. The patrons, they wore those masks people wear to costume parties. The fancy ones.”
“Sure, sure. They were…special clients then.”
“Special? Like how?”
Leaving in, Josh whispered, “In DC? Probably politicians, maybe a billionaire lobbyist, head of some foreign state. They’ve all gone through here, and Gary caters to them well. He has a whole bunch of those masks so none of the fuckers have to wear one that’s been worn before.”
Not that it should shock him, but it did. “Like…the big ones?”
“Big ones, little ones, dicks come in all sizes,” he explained, like Eli was a virgin or something.