CHAPTER ONE
Sapphire
“And now, feast your eyes on Sapphire,” the deejay says, and about fifty pairs of eyes look toward the stage. Some of those eyes belong to middle-aged, harried-looking men. That’s good. Middle-aged, harried-looking men tip well. Some of those eyes belong to young, rambunctious-looking frat-boy types. That’s not as good. They’ll stay a long while and drink too much, get too grabby, and not tip as well as they should. Some of them will probably be kicked out.
Some of the eyes belong to regulars who tip exactly what they need to tip in order for girls like me to continue to show them attention. Most of the regulars are good guys who’ve just substituted actual relationships with real girls for fantasy relationships with the girls here. Some of the men have actual relationships of a sort with some of the girls. Prostitution is officially off the table here, but the truth is no girl ever gets fired for it as long as it happens off the premises.
I mean, Karl, who owns this club, owns the motel room next door, so he knows all about the girls who end up there. He doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind because the girls give him lap dance cuts. See, if I give a guy a lap dance, the guy gives me twenty-five dollars for a single song. Karl gets eight dollars from that. If a girl goes to the hotel with a guy, she just tells Karl she gave a private show with lap dances and gives him eighty to a hundred bucks.
Do you think Karl really thinks she just gave a guy ten lap dances in a row?
But the fiction lets everyone pretend nothing illegal is happening and so Karl makes money, the girls make money, the club makes money, and the motel makes money. The fact that the hotel has bouncers might make people think twice about it, but it works.
I don’t date. I don’t do that, but I don’t have a problem with the girls that do. I do dances and real lap dances. I like it. I mean, it’s not politically correct but if you look online for the top fantasies for women, you’re going to find being a stripper or being a sex worker is always on the top ten list. I enjoy men appreciating my body. I enjoy it a great deal.
They’re enjoying it now as my clothes are coming off. This is not a full-nudity strip club. That’s because alcohol is served here. Given there are panties these days that use less fabric than a scrunchie, it seems like a pretty damned silly thing that the restriction exists at all. I mean, a girl can dance on the stage and her panties cover so little that it’s laughable. I know mine do. When I dance, though, I also wear a garter belt and stockings. I just think it looks sexy as hell.
Lights flash and dollar bills spray from slots in the ceiling. That means someone put a card in the tipping machine. They can choose between twenty and a hundred dollars at a time. This time it’s at least forty but could be all the way to a hundred. There’s no way to tell because the machine only drops forty on the stage. The rest is just recorded, and I find out after the dance.
I make a lot of tips.
I don’t think I have a better body than the other girls. I think what I have is a skill from dancing, a skill developed since starting this job three years ago at eighteen, without the jaded expression girls usually get after a few months of working here.
I know it might seem surprising to you that I actually like my job. I know I’m not supposed to. I’m supposed to be doing this either because I’m so jaded about the rest of my life that I don’t care much about my dignity, and this is just easy money or because I’m struggling, and I desperately need the money to make ends meet.
The real reason is that I just like the way I feel when men are desperate for me but can’t have me. There’s a movie I watch from time to time where one of the girls is a dancer like me. In the movie, she’s asked to say something that isn’t a lie, and the true statement she tells is that lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off, but it’s better if you do.
Now, I’m not exactly lying. I never tell any of the men who watch me dance that I’m going to give them any more than a dance, but I know that they want more. I know they fantasize about more. I know that when I leave them and they go to one of the other girls to get more than I’ll give them, they’re thinking about me and secretly hoping that one day I’ll be the girl who takes them to the motel room. I never will, but I allow them to think that, and it’s one of the most fulfilling things on earth.
Judge me if you want. I don’t care.
I also love that guys don’t believe that Sapphire is my real name. None of the other girls use their real names, but come on, my name is Sapphire. It doesn’t get more perfect than that.
I finish my dance and when I hop off the stage, Karl tells me that a stranger tips me a hundred dollars. I lift an eyebrow and say, “Oh?” and Karl points to an attractive boy just reaching adulthood who sits near the stage.
I smile and sashay to the boy. When I reach him, I lean over so my tits hover in front of his face and say, “Thank you for the tip, dear.”
“You’re welcome,” he says. “I was actually hoping you might agree to a little more.”
Dammit. I should have known. I open my mouth to politely decline, but he says, “Just dancing, no more. I’m having a bachelor party, and I think my friends would enjoy a chance to see you.”
That’s no good. Bachelor parties are filled with drunk, desperate men who want to kid themselves into believing they can have some fun they aren’t allowed to have anywhere else in life.
Still, this could be a gold mine. “One thousand dollars,” I reply. “Dancing only, and it happens at the motel next door.”
“I was hoping we could have it at the Franklin Hotel downtown,” he says.
I sigh. “Fine,” I say, “But it’s two thousand dollars.”
He surprises me by immediately saying, “Agreed.”
CHAPTER TWO
Adrian
The world is pretty damned fucked up in the city. I fucking hate it. I mean, I really, totally, utterly, and completely fucking hate it.
Yeah, I guess I’m overstating it a little.