Club Paradise

Frank opened the door and looked around his new hotel room. It was clean and modern, smooth grey walls with inset LED lighting and a floor-length window on the far wall. Pretty slick.

He had just arrived in Las Vegas for the week, on the job. The event he toured with was loading-in to the small stage at the SLS Casino, up by the top of the strip.

But today was the travel day. And his site survey tomorrow wasn't until 2 p.m.—a wedding was in the space currently, and the house guys would be loading it out all night long, and into the morning too.

He wheeled his suitcase inside and closed the door, dropping his backpack on the bed. He threw the deadlock and bar as a matter of habit—after two years of being on the road in a different hotel every other week, it was second nature.

Frank was the lighting tech for an experiential marketing event, a gig that involved supervising getting the gear off the trucks and into the air, and then rehearsing and running the event for several days before striking it all back down to the road cases again. He had it down to a routine by now.

The rest of the four-person tour crew lived in California & Phoenix, and were flying in the next morning, but Frank was a New Yorker, with a 5-hour flight, so the production manager had brought him in a day early.

Which meant he had a hotel room on the Strip and zero responsibilities until the next afternoon. He was gonna have some fucking fun tonight.

Frank wasn't the best-looking guy out there. Only 5'-9", a number of extra pounds, and nearsighted with glasses. He was kind of alright with it, now that he was in his early forties. There had been three semi-serious girlfriends throughout his twenties & thirties. They were fun, cool people, but all of them had been a bit on the frumpy side. The relationships had drifted apart gently, but inevitably.

Unfortunately, years—decades! —spent in a business full of pretty people, staring at what he couldn't get, and a healthy porn habit skewed toward the young and the thin had left him with a fetish for gorgeous, beautiful women, glamorous and made up, dressed in daringly flirtatious outfits. Girls who were way out of his league.

So naturally, when he got this job that paid him well, took him from city to city, and housed him in nice hotels, he had explored some of the professional options available.

He had sampled escorts, dominatrices, massage parlors & foot-fetish parties, but one of his favorite dirty, guilty pleasures were strip clubs. There was something about the model-beautiful women, made-up like porn stars and dressed in tantalizing outfits, who were scandalously forward in their manner. and who rubbed their lush bodies up against his - all of that just did it for him.

After an unfortunate overindulgence in Miami early on that cost him a pretty penny, he had learned to moderate, to make his money last. He didn't go to the clubs in every city, but he had sampled most of the big markets.

He had a thing he had started doing sometimes, during lap dances: he would reach down to her leg, if she was standing astride him, and massage it sensuously. He was an excellent masseur—all of his girlfriends had made him give them massages, raving about his strong fingers. Believe it or not, most strippers actually seemed to like this. In Washington DC, the last stop that he had gone out to a club, one of the dancers had moaned into his ear, "I'm melting. No, for serious, I am melting," in her tantalizingly erotic Russian accent.

He had been in Vegas two years ago, and had gone to the Spearmint Rhino for an unforgettable Sunday-funday. It was as big as a Costco, it seemed like, with hundreds of dancers. The most memorable had been a pair of lithe Latinas, who had spoken to him only in Spanish. Frank didn't speak Spanish. But they hadn't been too interested in talking, so that didn't matter.

Since then, something about the changing laws in Vegas—he wasn't sure quite what—had led to a recent spate of new and independent clubs opening on the outskirts of the city.

There was Mary-Jo's Old Time Rowdy Saloon, a classic old-west themed brothel, pretty much right out of Westworld, and across town was Diamond Ravers, half legit dance club and half strip joint. A new palatial and ornamented Moulin Rouge was down practically right next to the airport, and then there was his target for tonight, Club Paradise, at the Paradise High School.

Yeah, that's right; it was a schoolgirl-themed strip club located at an actual high school building.

In 2016, the old Paradise High School had gotten too overcrowded to function. The parking lots were full of temporary trailer classrooms, which didn't have the air conditioning for hot Nevada summers.

Some parents had complained online, and it went regionally viral, and caused a big stink. Then Maxim Winnuz, the Russian casino mogul, had very generously and very publicly built a brand new state-of-the-art high school campus, about 3 miles away. It was so overblown it could hold twice as many students than needed. It even had an Olympic-sized pool and an instrumental performance hall right there on campus.

So, with much fanfare, the township moved the entire staff and student body over to the new palatial Winnuz Circle High School, west of the Strip.

The old Paradise High building was emptied and forgotten about for a while, and then eventually cleaned out and put up for auction last year to raise funds for a Christmas decoration display downtown.

These two brothers from Austin Texas had bought the vacant building after they sold their startup and retrofitted it into a 21st century den of sin. One of them was a Japan-o-phile, and he had gotten the idea from the clubs over there which were like subway cars full of schoolgirls in miniskirts that you could pretend to creep on. He had a hunch that sort of thing would go over well in Las Vegas, the city of grand fantasy.

The girls were supposed to be amazing, gorgeous and personable, and they all had to have some kind of acting background. Apparently, the audition process involved actual acting, in addition to twirling around a pole.

That's what Reddit said, anyway. Frank followed r/BarStage, which was a small group of club aficionados. The subreddit was their public face, but there was also a members-only forum where they would post reviews and write reports about their trips.

This club only had three reviews so far, but they were absolute raves. Each one mentioned a surprise inside, but nobody actually gave the details. They just said it was better experienced in person.

Over on r/ClubThumpers, there was just one review. It was wordless but whoever had posted it had pasted in a GIF of endlessly scrolling stars and the heart-eyes emoji.

So, Frank had been pretty jazzed about visiting this club. High School hadn't been a particularly good time for him, and a lot of that had to do with unrequited attraction to the alpha girls in his class. If there was a chance to play on that field again, especially on fantastical transactional terms, he wanted in.

It was off the Strip, out in a neighborhood to the east, and there was a $100 cover charge, but they dropped that to $30 if you came dressed as a high-school archetype: prep, goth, jock, nerd, teacher, coach etc.

It was all very '80s movie', he thought. But if it left him with $70 more to spend on lap dances, he'd do it.

He had researched this all back in New York before flying out, and he had come prepared: a tan tweed blazer, a pair of fake black glasses, a pocket protector. "Nerd" it was.

He got out of the shower and dressed in new silk boxers and fine black slacks and a blue button-down shirt.

He brushed his teeth & oiled up his upper body & arms with a musky skin cream. He'd had several dancers in the past comment that he smelled nice, so it was part of the routine now.

Then he donned his jacket. His shoes were black Blundstones—a little off theme, but comfortable.

He took his ID, bank card & room card out of his wallet and put them into a thin leather bifold. His cash went into $100 stacks of $20 bills, a couple in each pocket. And he fired up his secondary phone, a cheap Nokia Android he kept for nights like this. And from the bathroom, a pack of chewing gum, a travel-size packet of sanitary wipes and a foil pack of Advil. This all went into the pockets, and nothing else.

He opened the curtains, turned off the light and left his room, descending through the hotel into the casino. The SLS was bustling, full of both restless people pumping away at the slot machines and too-happy revelers at the high roller card tables.

Gambling wasn't his thing, but Frank liked Las Vegas. There was something compelling about the scale of the place — it was like a fun-house mirror on America. And it was also very fun, in more ways than one.

A long block off the strip was a dispensary, in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino, where stopped for a pair of disposable vape pens and a couple of pre-rolls. He'd do most of his flower shopping later in the week, but he wanted something for this evening. The joints were protected in little plastic tubes and didn't smell like weed at all. The vape pens went into his pocket protector—no reason he couldn't be a little cooler up close than he looked in this costume.

Suitably prepared, it was time to start the mission. Club Paradise was south of the Strip, down below above the airport and to the east.

He had learned about the Las Vegas taxicab-strip club partnership last time he'd been there, when his cab driver had explained it on the way to the Rhino. Now that he knew what the deal was, he did not want to participate. He valued his privacy and did not want stupid bro banter with a cabbie, so he ordered a Lyft car and directed it to a municipal park a mile and a half away from the old school.

When it arrived, he popped out of the car and walked inside the park, under the shadow of the trees. As the Lyft was pulling away, Frank tipped out one of his pre-rolls and sparked up.

He had started smoking grass in high school, in a park not unlike this one. The sight of a quiet, darkened neighborhood lit by distant streetlights seemed so natural. The indoor hydro had his head rushing from the first pull, and he felt himself getting excited.

It had been two months since he had been to a club, and he'd been really anticipating this one in particular. The schoolgirl look was in regular rotation in his porn queue, and he loved it when he encountered strippers dressed in plaid skirts. A whole club full of them? This was gonna be awesome.

When the joint was half smoked, he started walking through the quiet town. A half-hour later, the J was history, and his blood was pumping as he rounded a corner and saw his destination: down a long driveway, past several large parking lots, was a large mid-century American school building.

It looked a lot like his old high school from home—classic brick two story campus, large central section in the middle that was three stories tall, with matched two-story wings of classrooms emanating from either side.

To the right side he could see a gym building, with tennis courts across from it, and an empty football field off in the distance behind them. On the left side was the auditorium, with a classic double-tall fly gallery attached to the main space.

What was distinctly different from any high school he had ever seen was the purple spotlights that outlined the front entrance. Above the double doors was a giant neon sign that said "Club Paradise" in bright pink, flowing, glowing script.

Frank walked down the sidewalk that ran by the driveway, past the parking lots and up to the front doors.

In front of the door was a huge man, clearly a bouncer. He was dressed as a gym teacher, in orange athletic shorts and a white t-shirt, with a big whistle around his neck.

"Hey, nerd!" The man bellowed in his direction.

Then he let out a resonant belly laugh.

"Excuse me, sir—I was just kidding. We at Club Paradise are very happy you're here. That's a good costume."

"Thanks, I think?" Frank shook the offered hand.

"You're quite welcome. That'll be 30 bucks."

He handed over the money and tipped another $10 - sometimes it paid to get the bouncer in your side.

The man pocketed the money and then handed Frank a clipboard with a pen under the clip.

"Thank you very much, sir. Now I'm going to need you to read this and then sign & date it."

Frank looked down at the form and read the disclaimer.

'Club Paradise offers a fantasy entertainment experience for consenting adults. All dancers and customers are above the age of eighteen, as are all characters they play, and any taboo relationships depicted are merely character-driven role play—just imagination. Club Paradise does not recommend or condone any activities depicted within outside of the context of this fantasy setting. I, the undersigned, being of sober mind and legal age, assent to this statement.'

Frank signed with the blue pen, scribbled the date in next to his name and then handed the clipboard back to the bouncer.

"You're all set, sir. A word of advice—the school thing is a lot of fun, and the girls love it. Play along and you'll have an amazing time tonight!"

With that, he pulled back the rope and pushed the door open.

Frank walked inside.

The wide linoleum hallway immediately brought back a rush of sense memories, and for a split second he was an awkward teenager flooding in through a hallway just like this one among a mass of other bodies. Early mornings for orchestra practice, afternoons with the A/V Club in the library, French Club once a week.

A parade of old faces flashed through his mind—some friends & teachers, but mostly it was girls: Becca from science class with ringlet curls and deep cleavage; Natalie, tall and tan with her shirts so tight, in the desk beside him in homeroom; Rock and Roll Allie had been dating his best friend, but Frank always fantasized the what-if's. He shook his head clear of the past and centered himself.

He heard the muffled bass thump-thump of music in the distance and walked forward. The locker-lined hallway had doors to classrooms on either side. The doors originally had vertical glass windows, but most of them had been covered over with shiny foil.

In between the doors and the lockers were tall posters on the walls, showing staged setups of beautiful girls—the dancers presumably—in school uniforms, acting out different scenarios.

"Cheerleader Tryouts!" featured a troupe of girls in red cheerleading uniforms with Halloween-short, flared skirts and red platform heels, out on the football field. The scoreboard showed all 69s. They were arranged in a V line, facing off against a hunk of a coach. He was blowing a whistle at the girl in front, cheeks all puffy, as she thrust her pompoms and her tongue out at him. At the bottom was a caption that read, "Do You Make the Cut?"

Another door in and he could hear the snare & hat as well as the bass. Definitely hip-hop.

"Detention" showed a classroom from the teachers' point of view. Big hairy male arms, one with a silver watch, stuck into frame on either side. On the other side of the desk were three model-hot schoolgirls, in short plaid skirts, all done up with dark eyeshadow and shiny lipstick. All three had their hands cuffed with silver handcuffs. The black-haired girl on the right was sneering, while the blonde on the left had a pleading look on her face. The one in the middle, a redhead, had a smoldering stare and a pencil between her lips, held in one cuffed hand, the other dangling from it. The text on the bottom of this one read, "Some Good Old-Fashioned Discipline."

Down the hallway, past the next door, and the music was getting clearer—it had a 90s East Coast sound that went quite well with his buzz, but he didn't recognize it yet.

"Chess Club" featured a skinny little nerd boy with coke bottle glasses, sitting at a chess table in a classroom, playing white. This time the arm reaching into frame was female, with exquisite French-tipped nail polish. She had the black queen between her fingers, about to put it down decisively. The boy was flanked by a pair of mouthwatering teenybopper firecrackers, one blonde and one redhead. They had pigtails and sparkly eyeshadow and big barrettes, and they each were kissing the boy on his ears. The redhead had his earlobe between her teeth. A third bubbly beauty perched above him, her cleavage resting on his head. The tag at the bottom read, "Are We Distracting You?"

The song resolved into Naughty by Nature's "Feel Me Flow" and Frank smiled large. He had already been walking in time with the music, but now that he knew the song he was energized.

"Homecoming Dance" showed a line of beauties in fancy sequined dresses, scandalously short with miles of leg and cleavage on display. Their hair was styled over their heads in intricate up-do's, with ringlets and braidlets and barrettes and little claw-clamps. To one side, just on the edge of the frame, was a male teacher. There was a blonde kneeling in front of him. The back of her head masked his crotch, but the look on his face made it obvious what was going on. On the other edge was a pair of female teachers looking at the girls, and the blowjob, shocked and appalled. This one didn't have a caption.

And then he was at the end of the hallway, facing a pair of double doors. The sign over them said "Multi-Purpose Room".

Beside them was a man in a suit standing at a valet podium. The man greeted Frank as he approached.

"Welcome to Club Paradise. I'm Vice Principal Johnson. Is this your first time here?"

"Yes," Frank replied.

"Wonderful. Thank you for joining us this evening. You're just in time—one of the stage shows should be starting soon."

He pushed open the doors and showed Frank the inside with an outstretched arm.

"The main room is through here, sir. There are tables down by the stage, or you could start at the bar.

He gestured as he spoke, and Frank took in the scene.

It was a cafetorium, sure enough. They had added a runway to the old stage, and it stuck out about halfway into the room. There was a pole where it ended, and another one up on the main stage. There were trusses on the ceiling, and concert-style moving lights spun around the space. Frank's eyes went to them first, out of professional instinct. But they didn't linger there long.

On the center pole, a cocoa-skinned dancer moved languorously yet vigorously to the groove of the music, naked save for a fishing-line thin g-string and a thick diamond choker. Her Ariana Grande topknot of straight black hair spun behind her as she twirled.

The tables that ringed the stage were mostly full, and guys were waving singles in the air, hoping to attract some attention.

One guy down front kept throwing fives down on the stage and waving his arms around. It was clear that somebody wanted some one-to-one study time with the dancer when her stage shift was over.

Frank looked back at the host. "I'll start at the bar."

"Very good, sir." Frank passed him a twenty, and his smile broadened.

"VERY good, sir." he repeated, with emphasis, throwing his arm out like a maître'd.

Frank walked past him and over to the bar, as the song was a winding down. The tall blonde bartender had a punk look going, with half of her head shaved. She whipped up a gin and tonic in a flash, and Frank settled back to watch the dancer onstage.

She ended theatrically on her knees in front of Mr. Fiver. The front tables clapped, and she slipped off the stage. Then all of a sudden, all of the moving lights snapped to the stage at once.

A snare drum cracked like a gunshot as the hip-hop beat was replaced with a strident marching band drumline cadence.

The DJ came over the mic: "Stooooodents of Paradise High! It's time for a Pep Rally! Let's get ready to get peppy. Here come the Paradise Pussycats!"