Another mouthful of citrusy tequila slides down my throat, sweet even though my thoughts are bitter.
I have no need or desire for a man in real life, but I can enjoy watching the performers no matter their age. This club exists to sell women their fantasies, and afterward, we can all return to our boring, mostly unfulfilling lives.
It’s all a tease. A temporary escape. A mental vacation.
Different men come out next, a team of doctors. The audience loves them, especially when their scrubs come off, but I find I’m not that interested until the twins come out again, and the two hot men who had been on stage with them.
Attraction is a strange and mysterious thing, and these four definitely do it for me.
The third time they come out, and after I’m halfway through another drink, I find myself cheering for them. Brittany gives me a look, but I don’t care.
It’s the four of them again, dressed in army fatigues this time, and I want to enlist. Scratch that. I want to be their drill sergeant and put them through their paces. I want them to put me through my paces.
Such dirty, dirty thoughts go through my mind when all four of them drop down to do pushups. I’m fanning the fabric at the top of my blouse when they pop up to do jumping jacks, their dog tags bouncing on their bare chests, their torsos all hard muscle, trained to perfection.
They march in formation toward the audience, then away, giving us all a stunning view of their broad backs and tight butts in their camouflage pants. As a unit, they turn back toward us, bend forward, grasp their pants and pull them off in one quick movement.
Until now, I’d had a hard time deciding where to look, with so many attention-worthy features among the four of them. Now, with them down to thin black boxers that fit like a second skin, I gape shamelessly at the bulges between their legs, which make me question reality. Are the size of their packages also part of the fantasy?
Their faces are handsome, their bodies are incredible, and now this. No real men are this perfect.
I raise my glass for another drink, lubricating my throat so I can scream encouragement at them.
“Take it off! Show me everything!”
3
Lorraine
I’m trapped in a horror movie. Someone is chasing me with a chainsaw, and they’re getting closer. I duck into a barn and hide behind hay bales, but the loud buzz grows louder still until it’s the only thing I hear.
I wake up, my heart pounding, and the sound vibrating in my brain turns into a dull ache. My head drops back to the pillow, but then the noise resumes. I’m no longer dreaming, but I still hear the chainsaw.
Blinking my eyes open, I try to sort out what’s real and what’s lingering from sleep. The pain in my head is as real as anything, and the noise seems to be coming from the backyard. It’s not a chainsaw, but it may as well be, because my skull feels like it might crack in two.
A few more blinks and a shuddering inhale, and I remember the landscapers. Nick had promised to take care of the yard, at least until the divorce was final, but he’d neglected it for months. At some point, I gave up on waiting for him to come over and realized I needed to do something about it myself, but I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to make any calls.
Finally, a couple of weeks ago, a brief moment of motivation kicked in and I got a referral from a neighbor.
Ugh. I didn’t expect them to be so loud.
I try to muffle the sound with my pillow, but my efforts are futile.
I need an aspirin, and maybe something to settle my stomach. The drinks at Club Red felt good going down, but they’ve turned into a queasy ball of regret low in my belly.
After visiting the bathroom, I head to the kitchen, wondering if crackers would be a good idea or a bad one. My stomach recoils at the mere thought of them, so I decide to wait. The noise from the landscapers is even louder in the main part of the house. There’s a chorus of buzzing machinery now, a very discordant chorus. How big is the crew?
I part the vertical blinds that hang at my sliding glass door and peer out to the backyard, the harsh sunlight slicing a sharp pain into my head’s dull ache.
Several dark figures are at work, visible only as fuzzy silhouettes through my squinting eyes. One is running a lawnmower; another is hacking at the weeds in the flower beds.
As the men come into focus, I rub the inner corners of my eyes. There is some kind of disconnect between my eyes and my brain, because I’m having flashbacks to last night.