Firsts and Lasts at the Strip Club

(Contains graphic depictions of a sapphic woman's first experience with f/f oral sex, grinding, touching, and breast play in a strip club. All characters are consenting and over the age of 18. Enjoy!)

***

I think I was more nervous about being the "Best Woman" for Glen's wedding than Glen was about getting married.

Which made some sort of sense, I guess. All Glen had to do that week was show up and marry the love of his life.

I, on the other hand, had to put together a perfect sendoff for my best friend's bachelorhood, while explaining to everyone I interacted with along the way what a "Best Woman" was, and how the bride could possibly be okay with one existing.

Apart from appointing me to this role, Glen made it clear that he wanted a pretty traditional event. Strippers, too much drinking, questionable decisions we'd talk about in coded, haunted whispers for the rest of our lives, the whole bit.

The bride, for her part, didn't mind at all. Gemma was probably the most fun-loving, least insecure person I'd ever met, and she'd jumped on the excuse to track down some male performers to treat her and her bridesmaids to a roughly similar experience.

And if Gemma didn't mind, who was I to argue?

So, I threw myself into it. All the way. I spent months on research and planning. I made a list of every club within a twenty-mile radius of Portland and combed through reviews, which ranged from intriguing to gross to obviously fabricated by the competition.

I made dozens of calls verifying which ones served drinks (a surprising number didn't), what their "private party" specials actually involved (the descriptions were frustratingly yet promisingly vague), and which ones would even let me in the front door (almost all of them, to my pleasant surprise).

I researched the etiquette too, for my own reference, and in anticipation of playing referee to Glen's three groomsmen. I wasn't planning a once-in-a-lifetime night of debauchery just for us to get kicked out in the first half hour.

The groomsmen made no end of jokes about this. They called me "den mother" a lot, and jokingly solicited my approval on their outfits, their colognes, their dollar bill-throwing technique. It was in good fun, mostly.

As usual, Tom pushed it about fifteen percent too far, which prompted Evan to ask Glen why we kept taking Tom out in public. The answer, as always, was a half-joking, "I dunno, habit?"

The five of us had all known each other since elementary school. The guys were awkward, airheaded, way too in love with how edgy they all thought they were, and it was no wonder at all that Glen was the only one of the bunch to pair off so far. But they were generally harmless.

Still, when we got to the lobby of the Angel Room club, I took a little pleasure in realizing that I wasn't the only one who was nervous about the whole thing. Tom kept wiping his palms on his suit pants, and Mark looked like he was expecting to spend the rest of his life in a secret prison when the security guard found a metal ballpoint pen in his pocket.

Finally, we were past the door and inside the dim, windowless, surprisingly mellow-feeling club. The walls and ceiling were all painted sky blue with clouds. Imitation candles bobbed their little plastic flames on every table.

The main stage was low enough to be surrounded by a tight ring of armchairs and a convenient surface for resting drinks. There were only a couple of men already settled there, quietly watching a beautiful, willowy woman in purple lingerie spin dizzyingly fast around one of the poles, holding on with her thighs.

I'd imagined having to elbow our way in, just to find somewhere to stand where we could see the main stage, based on the few times we'd gone to watch live entertainers in bars.

We all glanced at each other, a few eyebrows pricked up with excitement, and the five of us jumped in to claim all of the chairs along one of the short sides of the stage. Glen was smack in the middle, on my right.

The blaring dance music reached a break, and the DJ's voice cut in over the speakers, quick as an overcaffeinated auctioneer.

"Once again, that's Violet on the main stage, Violet on the main stage! New song starting now, for all you lovely souls enjoying your three minutes, seven minutes, or more in heaven!"

The next song began with a heavy beat. Violet spread her legs into an upside-down splits in the air, and then flipped herself down into a crouch on the stage. She walked her hands up the pole until she was in a standing position, leaned against it, and teased the edges of her bikini top with her fingers.

On the perfect dramatic beat, she pulled the bikini cups aside and pushed herself off of the pole. Crossing each foot slowly in front of the other, she sauntered across the stage, bouncing her small, completely exposed breasts in her hands.

I didn't know how anyone could possibly be so confident walking in those ten-inch heels after how fast we'd just seen her spinning, let alone doing it partly naked in front of a crowd. Her inner ears had to be more finely tuned than a jeweler's laser.

Just watching her from the comfort of my chair, I had an off-balance, unsettled sensation through my whole body.

A year ago, back before I realized I was bi, I would have converted that sensation into blistering jealousy faster than you could blink.

Thankfully, I'd found I was much more comfortable looking at beautiful women (and talented women, and effortlessly cool women, and all-of-the-above women) now that I understood why I reacted to them so strongly. I could admire Violet with the awe she deserved, without giving a second thought to how her awesomeness reflected on me. I let my eyes follow her, soaking in everything about her, from her rhythm and balance, to her powerfully muscular arms, to the way she smacked her pleasantly rounded ass against the pole as if she had no fear whatsoever of her own jiggly softness.

Watching her was easy, liberating, even relaxing, until she turned her head, and started watching me right back.

She swished those impossibly long heels back and forth, carrying her right toward me. Without giving me a moment's break from her eyes, she knelt down on the edge of the stage, picked my hand up off the drink counter, and pressed it right to her breast.

All the guys erupted with laughter, whoops, and wolf-whistles.

I could feel all the blood rushing up to my face, and down to other places. Part of me wanted to sink through the floor, but I was smiling too, so widely that it hurt, and I couldn't stop.

We hadn't been sitting here two minutes, and already I'd broken what I'd thought was the most essential rule of strip club attendance, the one I'd drilled into all the guys accordingly: we were here to look and maybe be touched, not to do the touching.

But I supposed that was up to the dancers, when to make exceptions.

I wondered how often they did this, how often she did this. Was this a scripted move aimed at whoever happened to be sitting in this seat at this particular moment of the evening? Or was it just what Violet liked to do when she caught an abjectly slack-jawed sapphic woman staring up at her, from among all the playing-it-cool men? How often did that happen? How much did she already know about me just from recognizing a type?

Could she tell that hers was the first breast I'd ever touched that wasn't my own?

More importantly, what did I do now?

I really wanted to move my fingers, to explore more of the enticing springiness of her breast -- so different from the you-could-literally-suffocate-someone-with-them weight of mine -- but I didn't know how far this implicit permission she was giving me stretched.

Reading my uncertainty, she guided my thumb back and forth, right over her nipple. My own nipples tingled, like a sympathetic vibration, as I felt the firmness of hers.

"First time?" she asked, effortlessly dialing in her volume to be intimate yet audible over the pounding base.

I opened my mouth, but couldn't force sound out of it.

"It's just that I haven't seen you around before," Violet prodded gently.

"Oh. Yeah," I managed to say. That was the kind of first time she was talking about.

"What's the occasion?" she asked.

"It's, uh... he's the... it's his party," I mumbled, pointing at Glen's tuxedo T-shirt with the word "GROOM" printed across the chest.

"Oh my god, congratulations!" Violet exclaimed, turning to look at Glen and caressing his cheek with her free hand. "I'm so glad you decided to celebrate here! I want to see lots of you tonight."

Glen leaned into her touch, with the faintly guilty enjoyment I was expecting to see on his face for the rest of the night.

"And lots of you too," she said, looking back at me.

I don't remember exactly when or how my hand left her breast, or when I was able to breathe again afterward. I just remember Glen clapping me on the shoulder and shouting, "I like this place already!" over both the music and the ringing in my ears.

Then Violet was on her hands and knees facing away from us, untying her little purple thong, and Glen was very carefully showering singles over her rhythmically flexing ass.

She grabbed his hand next, and guided him through spanking her lightly with each new dollar bill.

"Oh, hell yeah!" said Glen. "If you insist, babe."

Violet arched her back, far enough that we could see her pussy, just... being there, right out in the open, like that was an everyday thing, which, for her, I guess it was.

Looking over her shoulder at me, she licked her middle finger and reached between her legs to touch herself, while Glen went on slapping her ass, with a fresh dollar in his palm each time.

Fanning through the carefully prepared stack of cash I'd arranged in my purse for the day, I put a couple of fives on the stage next to her. Just being in such unbelievably close proximity with what I was seeing, that felt like it was worth... well, a lot more, actually. But I had to pace myself.

Eventually, Violet moved on to work the rest of the stage, though she didn't get quite as up close and personal with anyone else.

"That was Violet on the main stage!" the DJ reminded us as the song came to a close, and Violet gathered up her tips and discarded lingerie. "Violet's available for three, seven, fourteen or twenty minutes in heaven! Coming next to the main stage, Wicked! For now, here's a brand-new song for all you lucky souls back there in the clouds."

The stage remained empty as the song started up, and in seconds, a woman in a little white toga, halo headband, and feathered wings came up behind Glen and me. She leaned her head low between us, showing off even more cleavage than I could have.

"Are you Briony?" she asked.

"Yes," I answered, clicking back into business mode, prepared to explain my presence as many times as it took to get Glen the experience he wanted.

"I'm Seraph, we spoke on the phone," she said simply, and turned her head. "And you must be Glen! It's so good to meet you in person."

Seraph administered a slow, lingering kiss to the back of Glen's neck, while somehow at the same time performing a head count with her eyes, matching our party to the one in her notes.

"Feel free to enjoy the main stage as much as you like," she said. "But whenever you're ready, we've got your private party cloud waiting for you."

"Oh, I'm very ready for that," said Glen, getting up.

I tapped the others on the shoulders and gathered them together to follow.

"We'll be sending in a steady rotation of angels to keep you company," Seraph explained as she led us up an aisle between more rows of armchairs. She had that same zigzagging saunter, and made it look impossibly natural. "No need to keep track of the number of dances, it's all included in your package price as far as the house is concerned, just tip your angels when they make you happy."

She smiled sweetly and pulled back a hanging blue curtain to let us into the "cloud."

It was an irregularly shaped room with rounded corners and artificial golden light streaming in at diagonal angles. Cushioned benches swooped outward from the walls, full of billowy, swirling cloud shapes that managed to include plenty of comfortable spots for two or three or even more people to cuddle comfortably together.

Another set of blue curtains sectioned off a space at the end, smaller than an office cubical, with a gold sign on it that read, "Little Heaven."

"Only one guest and one angel in the Little Heaven at a time," said Seraph, with the very slight firmness her sweet voice allowed. "But, if any of you get the urge for even more privacy, just let us know, and any of the angels can talk you through your add-on options. You'll also get regular complimentary cocktail service right to your cloud. What can I get you started with?"

"Water for me," I said. "Driving."

"Champagne!" Glen answered so shamelessly that no one even paid attention to Tom when he made his usual show of requesting a whiskey sour -- the perfectly masculine combination of high alcohol content, unpleasant taste, and a name that made you feel like a creepy, safari-going English gentleman from the nineteenth century when you ordered it.

Evan and Mark stuck to the same rum and Coke they'd been drinking since we were fifteen.

When Seraph left for the bar with all our orders, there was a moment of awkward silence, as we figured out how far apart from each other we should sit on the benches.

If the guys hadn't figured this kind of thing out in the course of sharing locker rooms and bathrooms all our lives, how was I supposed to?

I just sat, and pretended I knew it was right.

"So..." Evan broke the silence. "Does anyone else still feel like we're about to get in big trouble just for being here?"

I snorted and put my hand up. My hand that had just been on the breast of another woman, in front of a roomful of people, and I didn't even know her real name.

Mark and Evan followed suit, then Glen. Tom was the last holdout, but eventually, he sighed and joined in.

"Good!" said Glen, vibrating with enthusiasm. "That's the point! It's all about the thrill of doing something that feels wrong and dangerous, but really isn't. It's about breaking those old hangups while we can, before we're too busy passing them on to kids of our own or whatnot. We're not doing anything wrong. We're all adults here, respectfully purchasing the services of some adult businesswomen. Nobody's cheating, or lying--"

"Oh, I'm definitely lying to my mom next week," said Mark. "When she asks what the party was like."

"Moms don't count," said Tom.

"Can you imagine Pastor Martin's face, if he ever found out?" I asked, before I could properly consider whether that was a party-benefitting thing to say.

The guys winced in unison.

"Just what I wanted to be thinking about tonight," said Tom. "Our youth pastor's bald, wrinkly face. Thanks, Bri."

"Sorry," I said. "I don't know why I said that."

I was not in the habit of apologizing to Tom. It tended to encourage him too much. But this time, he had a point.

"Okay, Pastor Martin was a dick, though," said Glen. "I mean, we're old enough to not mince words about that, right? He was a straight-up dick."

"Oh yeah," Mark agreed, then broke into an eerily accurate impression of Pastor Martin's reedy voice. "The girl you're holding hands with is someone's future wife! Now, how do you think your brother in Christ would feel about that?"

Tom joined in with a less precise but still substantially accurate, "Every lustful act robs four people of God's marital gifts!"

"Oh my god, oh my god," Evan sighed, putting his head in his hands. "Did you all get the same speech about nocturnal emissions? I mean, probably not you, Briony, but.... Oh."

The awkward silence returned, this time distinctly focused on me. It felt as if I were taking up an awful lot of space, what with the distractingly large breasts and hips I'd always had a hard time hiding to the adults' satisfaction, even in middle school, and now the rainbow highlights I'd given myself when I'd declared myself one of those people, who were the monsters in about half of Pastor Martin's sermons.

My parents had barely spoken to me since.

I could have told the others stories. But now wasn't the time for stories that might not be able to generate their own laugh tracks.

I let the silence stretch to just the right devastating length before casually cutting through it.

"No, please, I'd love to hear more about how traumatic Saturday night fellowships were for you."

I gave them all a good-sport grin, and they laughed, more from relief than anything else.

"Seriously, though, the stuff he said to you guys was messed up too," I said. "It's okay to say so."

"It was, right?" Evan exclaimed.

"Yay, sex positivity!" Glen cheered, patting me on the back and raising an imaginary glass over his head, just in time for Seraph to return and replace it with a real flute of champagne. "Oh, sweet!" he said, bringing it down to his lips. "Like magic."

"Do you need another minute to yourselves?" Seraph asked, visibly assessing the vibe of the room, reverse engineering the seriousness that had just threatened it. "Or are you ready for company?"

Glen drummed his hand excitedly on his knee. "Company. Definitely company."

#

The first angel to visit our cloud was a tiny woman, probably less than five feet without her heels.

Blonde pigtails, gummy bear earrings, pink dress with a tulle skirt in the back and no skirt at all in the front. She entered with a twirl.

"Hey, I'm Lolly. Are ya ready to play with me?" she asked in a crisp Australian accent.

I cheered -- it seemed like the thing to do -- and Glen joined me. The others nodded with grave seriousness.

The DJ on the loudspeaker announced that a new song was starting, and I planted my hands firmly on the bench on either side of me, preparing myself not to move them unless Lolly specifically told me to.

Like Violet, Lolly started with me.

"Wow," she said, straddling my lap and running fingers through my hair. "We don't get a lot of women, especially not at bachelor parties. You two must be really close."

"Like siblings," Glen gave his usual answer. "All of us, really."

"Aww, that's so cool." Lolly ran a hand down my neck, over my breasts, and down to the gap in the front of her tulle skirt. "Not too much like siblings, though, I hope," she said, rubbing her pink lace thong. "Not the kind of siblings who would have to cover their eyes if they accidentally saw this."

She turned her hand around, fit it between my legs, and stroked me through the yoga pants I'd specifically bought for the occasion.

All the advice articles had said to wear soft materials, to avoid chafing or scratching the dancers' skin. No one had mentioned the benefit of how much you could feel through those materials.

I gasped out loud. Tom whooped.

My head tilted back, nearly knocking over the glass of water Seraph had left on the flat section of "cloud" behind me. Lolly kissed the exposed skin of my throat. I moved reflexively back up and toward her, and she met my face with her chest, surrounding me on both sides with her perky, barely lace-covered breasts, knocking them back and forth against my cheeks.

Her hand kept on rubbing, and holy shit, holy shit, this was so much more than what I'd ever imagined a lap dance would involve. It shouldn't have surprised me that Lolly knew exactly where to find my nerve endings. She presumably had them in the same places. But I'd never been touched so precisely, so effectively, by someone I hadn't had to teach how.

"I bet you're a sweet girl, just like me," said Lolly. "You try to be all sour and grown up, but you still get so excited you can't sit still, every time you see what the world is really made of. Sweetness. Sunshine." She fluttered my hair with her fingers. "Rainbows."