Firsts and Lasts at the Strip Club

I was excited all right, and sitting still was a major challenge. I kept my hands firmly to myself, digging my fingers into the bench until my knuckles turned white, but my hips were beginning to move on their own.

I prayed that wouldn't offend her.

Lolly giggled, riding my rising and falling knees, and didn't seem bothered at all.

Jesus, the sensation was building so fast. My friends were all watching this happen in riveted silence. Were they actually going to end up seeing me--

Lolly giggled again and rolled over onto Evan's lap beside me.

"What about you?" she asked him. "Do you still remember that life is supposed to be fun?"

"I, uh..." he choked up as hard as I had. "I'm not sure I ever really knew that...."

"Oh, that's so sad!" said Lolly, walking her fingers down his chest to his skinny abs. "I'd better help teach you."

She found a very firm surface for her fingers to walk on when she reached the crotch of his suit slacks. It was probably for the best that none of the guys had joined me in yoga pants.

Lolly climbed down onto the floor between Evan's legs, nudged his erection upright through the folds of his clothes, and mimed licking it from bottom to top, her tongue barely a millimeter from the fabric.

She smacked her lips like it was the best popsicle she'd ever tasted, and then ran her thumb quite firmly over the same path her tongue had less than skimmed.

Evan would know better than I, but it sure looked like she knew her way around penis just as well as a vulva.

"Oh, wow, uh... hello there," said Evan.

I wanted to laugh, just a little, because I had almost said the exact same thing when she'd started touching me like that. But I couldn't make a sound.

Now I was the one watching in riveted silence, buzzing all over and resisting the urge to grind against the bench like an embarrassingly ill-trained pet.

Lolly made her way around to each of us, stopping for a little personal attention in every lap, though not for quite as long as she'd spent on me.

She saved Glen for last.

"Your fiancée was very, very generous to share you one last time," Lolly said, unzipping her lace and tulle dress and dropping it on the floor.

She had nothing under it but that minimalist pink G-string.

"She's one in a billion," Glen agreed.

Lolly straddled one of his legs and put her hands on his chest.

"I love knowing what it means when I do this," she said, grinding slowly against his thigh, bringing her hand down to stroke him through his pants too. "It's like you're a limited-edition toy, on loan from a collector. Too bad I can't take you out of the packaging."

She toyed with his waistband and gave him a quizzical look, probably checking to see if he'd tell her she actually could.

He didn't.

"The difference..." he gasped with each stroke of her hand, "is that I'm...limited edition for love... not for... profit through manufactured scarcity."

"Oh my god, you are just the sweetest thing!" Lolly said without a trace of disappointment. "That's okay. There's plenty I can do with the packaging on."

She sure could.

We didn't need to pay attention to the DJ's announcements of new songs, according to Seraph, but we could still hear them from our cloud. A song and a half went by while Lolly worked on Glen, rubbing and grinding and moaning until she reached a climax that was either real or a world-class performance, complete with squeaks and muscle tremors.

Then she kissed him on the cheek, whispered, "thanks for making me a part of your big day," and pulled her dress back on.

She thanked us all for our tips and skipped, skipped, in ten-inch heels, back out to the main room, waving back at us for as long as she could see us.

#

Next came Wicked, the one we'd missed seeing next on the main stage. She was actually about my size, which is to say almost twice as big as Lolly, and she made it look amazing in a strappy black dress with an underbust corset. Her headband had devil horns, and her false nails were pointed at the tips and painted with exquisitely detailed flames.

She stepped up onto the benches and walked right across them between all our legs, getting her red stiletto heels unnervingly close, but never quite too close, to each crotch she passed. Every so often, she'd slide one stocking-clad foot out of its shoe and give one of us a high-pressure rub with it.

I'd never really understood the appeal of feet, but I had to admit, she had nice ones for a dancer, and with plenty of fabric safely in between, I got to relax my semi-germophobic side and enjoy her talented toes.

Walking the bench also put her at the perfect height to shake her ass right in front of most of our faces. She could get some serious speed with that shake, exercising precise control over muscles I hadn't even known existed.

#

It didn't take me long to lose count, but at some point, there was Sativa, who carried the distinct musk of her name and stretched out across three of our laps, guiding an incredibly casual conversation about our favorite breakfast cereals. It felt just like hanging out with a good friend we hadn't seen in a while, except for the part where she was unhurriedly touching herself the whole time.

There was Sky, who brought out some of the classic lap dance moves I'd been expecting, rubbing her ass right against our laps while smiling coyly over her shoulder at us. I understood why it was a classic. It was a hands-free way to put the friction right on the guys' readily available erections. I wouldn't have thought I'd get anything out of it other than a nice show, but Sky was so skinny and so strong that she could rub my clit quite forcefully with nothing but the back edge of her hip bone.

There was Nirvana, who did some incredible contortion work. She could arch her back far enough to sixty-nine someone backward.

By that, I mean, she could start, facing you, with her head upright between your legs, put her hands on the bench, and hoist her lower body up into a handstand. Her legs would drape over your shoulders, putting her pussy right in front of your face, while her own face was still right where it started.

She still had her lingerie on when she did it, but even the possibility was amazing. And I could feel the wetness of her breath through my pants when she nuzzled me with her chin.

#

Then there was Piety, who spent a whole song stripping out of a full-length nun's habit, to reveal nipples pierced with thick bars, and a pair of full tattoo sleeves that extended onto her chest in a tangle of spiked chains.

When she was on my lap, she rubbed those piercing bars right against my own nipples, and then up to my face.

I didn't make presumptions. I was so careful not to.

But after several seconds of her rubbing one of those bars against my lips, it seemed clear enough that she wanted me to suck.

I did. I kissed the heavenly textures of cool steel and warm, silky, hardening skin, for as long as she let me.

#

Even sipping on nothing but water, it was hard to call myself sober at any point during the party.

The whole experience was intoxicating. The angels' visits were almost like the dreams that used to leak through the shell of faux-straightness I'd built around my brain, except that they were more varied, not bound by my one paltry imagination.

I was fully aware that the angels were performers, like those you'd interact with in a living museum, but that faint sheen of polished unreality did nothing to drain the heat from their presence.

The word artistry kept coming to mind, in contexts where I would never have expected it.

On top of the sheer awe I was feeling, there was a heavy chemical effect to being touched, affectionately, intimately, over and over again, with none of the expected pacing or resolution of sex.

Staying there in that limbo was so much more pleasant than I would have imagined. There were occasional moments of frustration when a dance ended, or a dancer moved on, but those feelings faded away almost instantly into the hazy background euphoria of wanting -- and getting -- forbidden extremes of a beautiful stranger's attention.

At least, that was what it was like for me.

In one of the gaps between angels, Tom asked, badgered, and finally begged Evan to switch seats with him, so that he could be next to me, on the other side from Glen.

Evan eventually relented.

"You know," Tom said, when he plunked down onto the bench next to me, "I was a little bit skeptical when Glen told me, but I'm glad you're with us tonight."

"Probably not as glad as I am," I laughed, too giddy to be offended.

"No, seriously," said Tom. He was at least four whiskey sours deep by then. "I was thinking, is it going to be weird objectifying women in front of a woman we know? But it's like bringing a puppy along as your wingman. You being here gives us all this, like, nonthreatening person legitimacy. It's great."

"Oh, Tom, what would you need with a puppy wingman?" I asked dryly.

"I know, right?" Tom said without sarcasm, taking another sip. "I'm like the most nonthreatening person ever!"

#

Tom's general awareness might not have been the greatest, but he was on the money about the seating arrangement.

Every angel handled things differently, a couple even avoided me completely, like they didn't know quite what to make of me, but on average, they definitely paid me more attention than anyone else except for Glen, and there was a certain spillover effect that got plenty of them right into Tom's lap after mine.

I swear I wasn't trying to spite Tom when I decided to take a break from the cloud. It was just that having him poised next to me, like a dog begging at the table, made me extra aware of how much my presence was throwing the dynamic off-balance.

"Everything okay?" Glen asked when I stood up.

"Totally," I said.

It was basically true. Me feeling guilty about having too good a time was not a problem Glen needed to be bothered with at this daring bacchanal.

Glen raised an unconvinced eyebrow.

"Seriously," I said, squeezing his arm. "I just want to stretch my legs. I dare you to take someone into the little heaven before I get back."

He glanced at the still unused cubical of curtains and blushed a little. "Well, if it's a dare." He grinned. "It's not like I'm going to do anything different in there than I would out here, though."

"Sure, but maybe it'll feel different when we can't see you," I suggested. "Give it a try."

I got his sheepish promise before I stepped back out onto the main floor of the club.

#

Yes, I get that I was being ridiculous. I was overthinking things and causing the exact problem I was trying to prevent: reduced fun for Glen.

I get that maybe Pastor Martin did more to stunt my capacity for pleasure than I ever gave him credit for.

Thankfully, a strip club isn't an easy place to hole up inside your own head. That's kind of the design.

I found myself an out-of-the-way armchair, with a clear but distant view of the stage, and within a matter of a song, a dancer dropped into the chair beside me.

In spite of everything I'd taken part in since arriving here, my stomach did a flip when I looked over and saw Violet, fixing me with that same unshakable gaze she'd used on me from the stage.

"Buy me a drink?" she asked, as if asking a stranger for a fifteen-dollar cocktail were absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about.

Drinks were only free in the prepaid party clouds.

I didn't want her to be embarrassed, though. On the contrary, I would have spent every dollar I had left in my purse showering her with overpriced booze, if it meant that whatever magic had allowed her to ask in the first place might rub off on me.

I nodded, and she flagged down Seraph to ask for a cabernet.

Violet didn't look away from me once during the time it took Seraph to bring her the glass of deep red-purple wine, and she continued eyeing me over the rim as she took her first sip.

"So, what happened?" she asked, finally.

"Who says something happened?" I asked.

"This little squiggle, right here," Violet answered, smoothing her thumb over the bridge of my nose and up my forehead.

My skin tingled under her hand, even there.

"It's stupid," I said.

"It's not," Violet argued back without a second's pause.

"It's not even a thing that happened," I said.

"All right," said Violet. "What didn't happen, then?"

"It's not a thing that didn't happen, either. It's...." I sighed. We were doing this, apparently. "Do you ever feel like you're in danger of ruining everything by being too... yourself?"

This was where Violet's stock answers, or stock questions, ended. Having successfully pried me open, she sat for several seconds, carefully mulling over what had come out.

Then she said, "Well, I pay my mom's medical bills with a job she'd disown me for having, so... yes."

Jesus, my seriousness was getting contagious. Lolly was a lot of fun, but she was wrong about me. Finding the sour side of things took no effort on my part.

"I'm sorry," I said.

Violet shrugged it off, all her focus back on me.

"Were you not all the way out to your friends before you got here?" she guessed, dubiously.

"No, I was," I said. "For almost a year, now. I thought that feeling would go away once I stopped hiding. And it did get better, but it's still...." I let the rest of my lungful of air out through my lips, lost for words to use it on.

Violet waited patiently.

I took another breath, and tried again.

"It's all so big, still," I said. "Everything. All the things I never talked about. Big enough to fill the room and crush everything in it. I mean, back in the cloud, I got so excited. Like, in what universe do I get to be in a place like this, and get treated like I belong? That's like... like a fairytale you tell yourself about what you'll get to do if the world stops sucking someday, and I got to do it today. I almost lost myself in it."

"So?" asked Violet.

"So..." I shrugged. "So, I think maybe I missed my chance to be 'girl crazy' when I was supposed to, back in middle school, with adults around me to make sure I still ate and slept and did homework, and showed up when people were counting on me. If I'd gotten some of it out of my system back then, maybe I'd be able to enjoy looking at a beautiful woman now, and still be enough of a grownup to control myself and say, 'no thanks, none for me today, please take care of my friend instead.' Maybe I wouldn't be in danger of letting my best friend's bachelor party turn into the coming out party I never had."

"Maybe you'd be more like our usual clientele?" Violet suggested.

"Sure, I guess."

Violet nodded. "Makes sense. I mean, guys who have that experience of openly liking girls their whole lives, it totally turns them into pillars of selfless dignity around us."

She lifted her eyes to watch something over my shoulder.

I turned to watch with her, as Tom stumbled drunkenly out of the private cloud.

"Bri?" he shouted. "Come on, Bri, seriously, I need bating bait!"

Deftly, Violet got up, grabbed her drink, and my hand, and pulled me toward one of the less conspicuous alcove benches.

I laughed. I couldn't help it.

Violet cracked a smile too, and I could swear it was real.

"The standards we hold ourselves to, huh?" she mused.

We sat in silence for a while, watching Tom make a circuit of the club floor.

"What's it like," Violet asked, in a voice strangely empty of learned sultriness or customer service, "being friends with men?"

I took a long breath, deciding where to start. "It's like... being friends," I said, shrugging. "You hang out. You make in-jokes. You argue about movies. Sometimes you swap notes on how your parents screwed up, and you cry. Most of the time, it's the same with men as it is with women."

I didn't tell her how few women friends I'd actually had to compare it to.

"And the rest of the time?" Violet asked.

We both watched as Tom coaxed one of the angels into dancing with him, not a lap dance, but a clumsy middle school shuffle in one of the aisles, with flailing clasped hands.

"What's it like," I asked back, "approaching men you've never met, and just assuming they'll be attracted to you? Like that's the default?"

"Well, firstly, I get rejected all the time," Violet answered.

"Seriously?" I asked, trying not to sound happy about it.

"People have their types," said Violet. "Lots of guys only come in to see one or two of us. Which is fine. There are other ones who come in just for the chance to be mean to someone."

"I'm sorry," I said.

Violet shrugged. "You get used to it. And secondly, you're fucking gorgeous. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise."

I smiled, in spite of my business mode rearing back up inside me. "I bet you say that to all the girls."

Violet's mouth twitched, and she didn't deny it. "That doesn't make it any less true."

"What's it like," I asked, "flirting and flattering so much that no one believes you when you mean it?"

She took a long sip of her drink without looking away from me.

"Lonely," she answered, finally.

I let out a breath, just short of a laugh.

So did she.

She gave me an appraising look, up and down. Or, more like a reappraising look.

"Do you care about being attractive to men?"

"Oh yeah," I answered. "I mean, not all of them, but yeah. I'm blessed with the joy of striking out on all fronts."

It was a joke, a bad one, and Violet met it with dead seriousness.

"Like the Glen front?" she asked.

"No." I shook my head. "Not that one. We really are just friends. Always have been."

Violet raised a politely skeptical eyebrow.

"Why do people always believe me when I say that about a woman, but never about a man?" I sighed. "They're equally likely to be true with me."

"Sorry," said Violet. "That's fair. I guess I'd know that if I had men friends," she chuckled.

The song reached a transition, and the DJ's voice started up.

"Coming up next on the main stage, Eden! New song starting for all of you counting in heaven, and-- Sir, get down from there, please. Sir, get down!"

I braced myself before looking up, hoping to see a stranger making an ass of himself, but sure enough, it was Tom, stumbling drunkenly across the low stage to swing himself around one of the poles.

Apparently, he wasn't expecting it to be free-spinning. He lurched a full circle around it, trying to catch up with his own weight, like someone who'd just unknowingly stepped off a curb.

"Speaking of the rest of the time..." I said, but Violet probably didn't hear all of it, because by the time I trailed off, I'd left our nook and marched most of the way to the stage. "Tom!"

The dancer, Eden, made her way up the steps on schedule and paused to look at him for a moment, adjusting her corset of cloth fig leaves.

"Tom, get down here, right now!" I shouted.

I wasn't used to shouting, but there was a lot about this night that I wasn't used to, and Tom-wrangling was the part of it that I'd most clear-headedly signed up for.

"Bri! There you are! Come try this," he said. "I bet you'd be great at it."

By this point, Eden seemed to have decided to get on with her act, and she was twirling languidly around the stage's other pole, with a lot more grace than Tom.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" I asked, stepping onto one of the armchairs, then the drink rest, and then the stage proper to reach him.

"I just want my turn!" Tom moaned, swinging himself out of my reach and toward the other pole, where Eden was now spinning around horizontally, holding it between her legs. "It's not fair. I wish I were a dy--"

Thankfully, I didn't have to hear the end of Tom's sentence, because right as he was getting to it, things happened very quickly.