The Stripper

Finally, around 7:30, I decided it was okay for me to head over to see if I could find Stacy.

* * *

I got to the Hang 'Em High a little before 8:00. There were already a fair number of cars in the parking lot, and lots more people arriving. I had never been in a place like this before and had no idea what to expect. I was wearing blue jeans, but I didn't own a pair of cowboy boots. Pretty much everyone I saw walking in, male and female, was wearing cowboy boots.

I paid the cover charge and walked inside. It seemed pretty dark, but then my eyes adjusted and it was dim but okay. There was a dance floor in the center of the room, with a railing around it with a shelf for drinks and stools for people to sit on. Practically all the seats by the dance floor were already taken. The bar was over on the left side. I went over to the bar, looking to see if I could spot Stacy. It took me a minute or two, but then I saw a girl turn around wearing a shirt with silver-spangled lettering on it.

She broke into a big smile when she saw me. I walked over to the bar, feeling slightly nervous.

"Daniel. I'm so glad you came. I didn't know if you would. I wore the PIZZAZZ shirt in the hopes that you would come see me. I only wear it for occasions involving you."

There were a lot of people at the bar and coming up to the bar wanting to get drinks. Stacy said to me, "Look, it's getting really busy and I have to get back to work. Why don't you grab a beer and go find a table and sit down and I'll find you as soon as I can take a break."

* * *

The place was filling up. Fortunately, I was able to find an empty table that wasn't too far from the dance floor and settled in with my beer.

While I waited, I watched the people on the dance floor cruising along. They all seemed to be having a great time, and most of them seemed really plugged into the music. They seemed to know the lyrics to the songs and you could see a lot of them kind of singing along. But mainly it was the way the couples seemed to be connected with each other while they were dancing. I was used to watching people doing "shake your booty" dancing, not touching each other at all but just trying to show off their moves. Here they were holding each other and dancing to the same rhythm and seemed totally in sync.

I began to envy them that effortlessness and almost weightlessness as they went down the dance floor. I was pretty sure was not as easy as it looked.

* * *

Finally, Stacy took a break and came over and found my table. "I'm so glad you came tonight. I was worried that you wouldn't."

"Why would you think I wouldn't?"

"I don't know. A lot of things. Maybe you would have decided to get back together with your girlfriend? Maybe you wouldn't want to come into a honky-tonk? Maybe you would think I was too young for you? Maybe after the way I behaved last night you would think of me as some kind of total slut -- just a one-night stand? Maybe it was just a one-sided fantasy on my part? I guess I was just worrying about everything."

I suppose I shouldn't have been delighted about all the worrying she had been doing, but it was good to hear that she had been thinking about me as much as I had been thinking about her. "You don't have any reason to worry about any of that," I assured her. "I was spending my day missing you, and worrying about whether you really wanted to see me again."

We both had our hands on the table. Stacy took my hands in hers and held them.

"I had a total crush on you. You know, when I was in your class?"

"Do you still?" I asked.

"Wow. That's complicated. Now I know you. Or at least, sort of. I mean, the crush hasn't completely worn off, but some things are different. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I think I do," I said. "Everything's complicated right now. I mean there's still that hot girl from my class who kept doing things to my head. And now you've done a whole lot more, and all of it has just completely blown my mind. And I don't just mean the sex. I mean in one night you changed me, and the course of my life -- or at least what my life looked like it was going to be."

I was looking at Stacy's face, and she was waiting to hear me finish explaining. So much had happened since she had knocked on my door yesterday afternoon. I felt like I was in love with her, but it was way too early for that, and way, way too early to say anything like that. Was I crazy about her? Crazy seemed pretty much on the mark, but it was too soon to tell what that meant or how long it would last, if it lasted at all.

Still, I had had my own crush on her as well. "You know I never did forget about you. That image of you sitting there in class, smiling at me, wearing that T-shirt with PIZZAZZ written across your chest, it just kept coming back to me. Even before the semester was over. And after the class was over it never really went away.

"After I got engaged, thinking of you and that shirt was a reminder of a feeling of loss, of having missed out, of having fucked up somehow. And especially in these last few months when...well, when she was making all these plans for the wedding, that image and those memories kept coming back. I kept trying to block all of it out, because I was trying to feel good about my situation. But that only lodged it in my brain more securely.

"So when you showed up at my door, it was a surprise, but it also felt like some strange kind of inevitability. Like it had to happen. And maybe this is why.

"It's not like I believe in God or fate or any of that stuff, but I guess this was the next closest thing."

Stacy smiled. She had been holding my hands in hers, and now she raised my hands to her lips and kissed them.

* * *

"Look, I'm going to have to get back to work pretty soon. I was wondering what you thought of the dancers."

"I've really been enjoying watching them," I said. "They look like they're having a blast, and there's something about the way they seem to just cruise down the floor. It's almost like ice skating or something. It's kind of beautiful to watch, you know?"

"It's really neat," she said. "The thing is, it's not just rednecks who come here, it's teachers and nurses and tech people, all kinds of regular middle-class people and even some people with money."

That helped me relax a bit. I mean I'm not a redneck or a cowboy at all, so I was worried whether I could fit in here.

"Do you know two-step?" she asked.

"I grew up in one of those white-bread suburbs of Houston. They gave us lessons in two-step in junior high and my first year of high school. But none of the people in my crowd got into it. I don't know if I remember any of it, but it sure didn't look like that."

"You need to give it a try. If you come here with me on a slow night sometime, I can teach you. It's totally worth it. And when you learn it and get into it, it becomes kind of a Zen experience. You lose yourself in it. Some people call it 'the closest thing to sex that you can do with your boots on.' I love it.

"Look, I get off around midnight or 12:30 tonight, and I'm going to be pretty busy until then. If you want, you can just go home for now and leave your front door unlocked and I'll come see you when I get through here. That is, if you want me to?"

I didn't have to say a word, my smile said it all.

* * *

When she got to my apartment that night, and I heard the front door open and then I heard her make her way to the bedroom, I felt a sense of relief and a sense of joy that I knew I had never experienced with Trixie, or with anyone else, ever.

The next day, Stacy took me to Boot City to buy my first pair of cowboy boots.

* * *

A lot has happened since that night when Stacy first knocked at my door a little over eight months ago. We're still together. My experience with Trixie made me cautious about relationships, so Stacy and I are going slow with each other. I don't mean going slow about sex, obviously. But now we're finally beginning to hint to each other about the idea of living together.

We've been spending a lot of time together. I end up with huge piles of freshman papers to grade, and Stacy will come over and hang out and study and work on her papers, and afterwards we can just spend time talking about favorite books, movies, whatever. She really is smart, and my discussions with her tend to be a lot more interesting than the discussions I have with most of the other instructors.

I usually go over to the Hang 'Em High at least one weekend night while Stacy is tending bar, and then she and I go together one of the slow nights so that she can teach me two-step and some of the other dances. She's a really good dancer, and a really good teacher. I'm not great yet, but I've gotten good enough that we can really enjoy going dancing together. It's kind of our version of the "date night" that some married couples set up to keep things romantic. Sometimes she even wears the PIZZAZZ shirt for me.

Over the summer, the college offers two six-week sessions of summer classes. I taught during the first session, and took the second session off. I had thought I would use it to try to figure out a dissertation topic, but I just wasn't feeling it. For one thing, I knew it really wouldn't make any difference in my job situation. There are too many PhDs on the market already.

Instead, I decided to try writing some short stories. I think I had become an English major because of some dreams of becoming A Great American Novelist, but there was no time to write any fiction during my regular course work. The thing is, I really couldn't figure out what to write about. Stacy told me I should try writing something hot, something sexy, something that would turn her on. She'd be up for reading that, big time. In fact, if I did a good enough job, she said, I might even get laid.

I've dated girls in the past, slept with a few of them, was engaged to one, but somehow this feels like the first time I've ever had a girlfriend, someone I really wanted to be with -- and maybe even stay with. And she seems to feel the same way about me. Whenever we see each other after being apart all day or whatever, we both break into smiles. You know that feeling of being with someone who makes you just feel like a teenager again? That feeling hasn't gone away. I hope it never does.

©Ron Ehrs, 2023