FOURTEEN

I really didn’t want to take Mitchell up on his offer. I still don’t want to. In fact, my skin is crawling as I ride the subway downtown to 14th Street to go meet him. I have butterflies in my stomach. My jaw is set so hard that my head aches.

I haven’t made enough money this week. People in the club are saying that this is a slow time of year. I’m scared that it’s going to be this way for a while. So yesterday I broke down and called Mitchell. The number he gave me was his work phone number. He’s married. Nice. I swallowed all my bile, and told him that I wouldn’t mind seeing him tonight.

The fat fuck is already waiting for me at the table when I arrive at the restaurant. He’s got several plates of appetizers sitting in front of him, and he’s already started pigging out. The steak house is swanky. There are tablecloths, hosts, and a maitre-de. I look at the menu. The prices are astronomical. I would never eat at a place like this on my own.

“Order whatever you want,” Mitchell says, talking with his mouth full of food. I try to ignore the breadcrumbs that are getting caught in that hideous moustache.

I order a salmon steak, medium, and he stares at me.

“Are you sure that’s all you want?”

“It’s probably all I can finish,” I tell him primly.

“So what?” he asks. “Live a little. I don’t care if you order three entrees and only take one bite.”

I give him a funny look. “Okay, fine. What kind of drinks do they have?”

“They’ve got everything.” He flags down a waiter.

I wind up ordering several drinks and a bunch of appetizers in addition to my meal. Mitchell seems pleased. “The fried calamari here is great,” he encourages me.

He watches me while I eat. He’s making me kind of nervous. I try to hide my chewing mouth behind my hand sometimes, but whenever I look up, he’s still staring. I don’t know what he wants me to do. Or what he thinks he’s going to see.

Finally I give up and just shovel the food into my mouth as gluttonously as I can. He smiles a little bit when I do that. You know what? Fuck him. I’m starving.

After dinner, he urges me to have dessert and coffee.

“Mitchell, I can’t eat another bite,” I protest. I have a tiny little paunch protruding over my belt line. It didn’t exist before I walked into the restaurant. I’m so full that it doesn’t even feel good.

“Just order it to get the taste in your mouth,” he says. “Haven’t you ever done that before? Ordered something you wanted, just so that you could take one bite?”

“I don’t like to waste food,” I explain. “I work hard to afford it.”

“That’s adorable, babe.” Mitchell beams. “But don’t you worry about my wallet – I’ve got money to burn. Tonight is all about hedonism. Yours and mine. So if you feel like ordering a whole extra meal just to get the taste in your mouth and then you only wanna take one bite, you go ahead.”

I find myself looking back at the table longingly as we’re leaving the restaurant. The portions of gourmet food we’ve abandoned could feed me for a whole week at home.

I resent this guy for being able to just throw money away like that. I can’t help it. No matter how much I ever make on any given night, I still feel poor next to the customers. These rich perverts run the whole world, and I’m just a pawn in the world they run. What did he do to make his money?

“Cosmetic mirrors,” he says. “The kind they sell at drug stores. You know. I inherited a factory that makes them. I’ll bring you one next time.”

I frown behind his back, thinking that usually the guys that have the most money have done the least to earn it. Inherited it. Fuck. The only thing I ever inherited was a bad temper.

Mitchell flags down a taxi on 14th Street, and when we’re nestled in the back, he tells the driver that we’re going to The Velvet Rope on 20th Street. I sit up straight and nearly gag.

The Velvet Rope is a topless, top-shelf “gentleman’s club” that is far more upscale than the bargain basement joint where he found me. I know the place. I auditioned for them once, because girls at the other clubs have said you can make over a grand a night, easy, at The Velvet Rope.

The “audition” was humiliating – I was told to strip down to my g-string and stilettos and stand in a line next to four silent, untouchable blondes. When I stepped forward from the line, the manager looked down his nose at me, had me turn around for him once, and said, “Thank you.” Those people think they’re working in Las Vegas or something.

So now I have to go spend time in a place where everyone thinks they’re better than me. What if someone there remembers that I was rejected for that audition? The last thing I can take tonight is a smug look from anyone in that club.

When we pull up in the cab, the doormen open our car doors for us as if we are entering a Hollywood premiere. The coat check girl’s face lights up when she sees Mitchell, and a few of the dancers that are working the crowd wave to him. He’s obviously pretty well known here. He must come in a lot. I’ll bet he spends more money in this club than he does at my club. Top shelf girls, and all that crap.

I’ve never actually been to a strip club as a customer before. I’m so mesmerized by all the perfect naked bodies milling around us that I nearly forget I’m a dancer, too. This place is big, and lavishly decorated. The walls and the carpets are royal blue. The dancers that aren’t performing wear gowns – no trashy bikini outfits in this joint. And there are no poles. Mitchell takes my hand. I’m so busy looking around that I let him.

“Come on, pick a girl,” he eggs me on. “You want a lap dance, right?”

A tall, lithe girl with olive skin, big eyes and dark curly hair walks by.

“Okay, her,” I point. Mitchell motions her over.

“Would you give the lady a dance?” he addresses her, waving a twenty-dollar bill.

“Sure, sweetie,” she purrs.

She sits on the arm of my chair. “Have you been here before?” she asks me, stroking my hair.

I know it’s an act. I do it every night. But… goddamned if I’m not into it anyway! She starts dancing near me and I close my eyes.

It’s an air dance, which means her body barely touches mine. No grinding the way we do at Angels. But she smells good, and she’s touching me, and besides, I don’t really need her to grind in my lap, because, well, I don’t have a dick.

Suddenly, I’m becoming intimately aware of why this works on the customers. Sitting in the chair looking up while a woman’s body teases you with its presence is thrilling. When her hand or her knee seems to slip as if by accident and graze your skin, a lump starts in your throat. How far will she go? Did she mean to touch me? Does she think I’m sexy? Your brain knows it’s an act. But your skin whispers different things to you that could be just as true. On a certain level, if she makes eye contact and is nurturing enough, it’s impossible not to hope that some of it is real.

After she leaves, Mitchell buys me four more air dances with various girls. He has girls dancing on him as well. But I’m not paying attention to him.

I’m getting drunk, and I’m really beginning to enjoy myself. An upbeat song I’ve never heard before comes on. I instantly wish I was on this club’s stage dancing to it. It’s very catchy. “I get knocked down / but I get up again / you’re never gonna keep me down,” asserts a cockney voice, to the swell of the music.

Just as I’ve decided that I like this place and could stay here all night, Mitchell leans over and whispers to me that we’re leaving.

“I promised a friend at Peek-a-boo Palace that we’d stop by. She wants to meet you,” he explains.

“Peek-a-boo Palace?” My eyes widen. I sober up with a jolt. “Mitchell, I can’t go there. That’s a Splash club.”

“So?”

“Some of the DJs and bouncers that work at Angels also work at Peek-a-boo Palace. They’ll recognize me.”

The doorman flags down a cab for us. Mitchell pushes me gently into the backseat.

“Mitchell, I’m serious.”

“It’s fine. You don’t get it yet, do you? If they see you with me, they won’t say anything.”

“Mitchell, it’s a bad idea.”

“Trust me.”

My gut heaves. Everyone knows which girls go out with customers. Those girls get branded.

Then again, that describes almost all of my co-workers.

I could jump out of the cab right now. I could put my foot down. I’m feeling really uncomfortable.

But I ignore the impulse. I’ve already come this far. I want my money.

When we get there, I recognize a doorman from Angels. He recognizes me, too – I’m sure of it. He gives me a strange, veiled knowing look. I put on my best poker face.

Peek-a-boo Palace is a dark and crummy joint. Especially compared to the club we just left. Five Japanese guys sit against a wall, all wearing the same suit. I notice right away that they’re only tipping the blondes. There are a handful of other customers here. Each one sits at a table alone, adding to the overall desolation.

The drinks are impossibly watered down. How irksome. In a place that’s this much of a dive, the drinks should be stiff enough to distract from the atmosphere. The waitresses aren’t overly friendly, and the dancers are older than the ones at The Velvet Rope.  Most of these girls look pretty hardened. None of them are as pretty as the girls at Angels.

Mitchell waves to his “friend,” Gia. She’s dancing over a mark, a tubby little man in a suit with white hair and a bulbous nose.

“She’s the best hustler here,” Mitchell whispers to me. “If she wants him in the VIP, she’ll have him there in five minutes – watch.”

Sure enough, at the end of the song, a waitress approaches Gia and her customer, and out comes his credit card. The three of them head towards the back of the club.

“We’ll wait for awhile. Hopefully she won’t be in there with him all night,” Mitchell says.

Two girls approach us. He asks me if I want a dance. I’m not really into the girl who is eyeing me, but I would never begrudge a sister her hard-earned cash, so I say yes.

The dances here are short. I don’t think this chick even gave me a whole song. I don’t care, though. I don’t like this place. It depresses me. At The Velvet Rope the girls looked like they were having a good time. At Peek-a-boo Palace, all the smiles are forced, and it’s obvious.

Is this the way I look when I’m working?

We sit at the stage tipping the dancers. Eventually Gia makes her appearance.

“Mitchell’s told me a lot about you,” she says to me in greeting. Her eyes meet mine directly. I look away before she does.

Gia is a tall, stacked blonde with a snub nose. She’s broad-shouldered, not willowy, and her body is toned. Her large breasts look natural.

Gia is polite and she’s one hundred percent business. If Mitchell wasn’t a sure thing, I doubt she would have even said hello to us. She’s constantly scanning the rest of the room. I don’t think she’s missing anything that’s going on in here while she pretends to give us her full attention.

She strikes me as being somehow reptilian. Perhaps it’s the way her eyes click mechanically back and forth around the club, making contact with mine at precisely the right point in the conversation. The words Stepford Whore run inexplicably through my head. I guess I’m still drunk after all.

We drink together and Gia dances on Mitchell, then on me. Her movements are swift and deliberate. The two of them flirt, baiting each other back and forth.

“Filthy slut,” Mitchell whispers to Gia affectionately.

“That’s right, troll. Maybe I’ll fuck you in front of your wife. Make you come while she’s packing her things, and you won’t be able to do shit about it,” Gia returns, and Mitchell’s eyes light up.

I’m beginning to have an inkling of what he’s into. He thrives on mind games and power struggles. This is what turns him on.

I ponder the revelation until Mitchell’s had his fill of Gia and Peek-a-boo Palace. As we’re leaving, he suggests that one evening the three of us will all hit the town together, and then “play.” Gia glances at me appraisingly. “I can’t wait,” she purrs.

I smile back, but I think that I can wait. The dynamic between these two makes me nervous.

The cab takes us to a mid-priced chain motel in the west 40’s. My stomach churns in the elevator. This is the part I’ve been dreading all night. Tina’s words come back to me, and I grimace visibly as I struggle to push them away. I can see my face in the elevator’s blurry mirror. I look like a little kid swallowing medicine.

Fortunately, Mitchell doesn’t notice.

When we get into the room, I see that he’s already tied leather restraints to the legs of the bed. I decide to assert my position before he can dictate the rules of the game.

“You’re not putting me in those,” I tell him sternly. “If you want to be tied up, that’s fine. But don’t try to put those things anywhere near me.”

“Okay,” he answers. He’s unruffled. “You tie me up, then. Oh, wait, try this first.”

“What is it?”

He holds a small bottle up near my nose. I pull away.

“Hey, relax. Haven’t you ever done poppers before? This just relaxes you a little bit, that’s all. Here, watch.”

He holds the bottle under his own nose, and takes a long, deep breath. After a few seconds, his face turns red and his smile turns goofy.

He holds the bottle up again, and I take it from him. Oh, hell, why not? I’ll try anything once. I put my nose next to the bottle and inhale deeply.

I come up wanting to spit, but my throat is dry. I get a mild head rush and that’s it. I think I got higher off the scent of the magic markers we used to use in grade school.

“Mitchell,” I say, coughing, “Don’t you do any real drugs?”

“I don’t know where to get anything anymore,” he replies. “I used to do blow, but I haven’t done any in about twenty years.”

“Oh, sweetie,” I chide. “I can get us some blow! Why didn’t you just say so before?”

I’ve recently become closely acquainted with that bouncer from Clarissa’s after-hours hangout. I’ve just discovered that he deals coke out of his parents’ apartment in Harlem.

“Yeah? Is it good stuff?” Mitchell wants to know.

“Sure is.”

I’m maybe not the right person to ask. Lately I’ve been of the opinion that unless it’s cut to shit, all coke is good stuff. After the night with Katie in the back room, I went looking for my own connection. Now, in the last several weeks, I’ve done it whenever it’s been available. Every time, I’ve liked it more than I did the time before.

“Well, okay. Why don’t you get us some for next time, and I’ll give you the money for it,” Mitchell agrees.

“How much should I get?”

“I don’t know. Two grams?”

“How about four grams? A gram’s a pretty small package,” I push.

“All right,” Mitchell indulges. “Get two for you and two for me.” He pauses. “Now why don’t you come over here and tell me why I’ve been so bad that you have to punish me.”

Mitchell is undressing. Goddamn, but he’s ugly. Oh, sweet Christ… what the fuck is that on his cock? Pervert’s gone and tied a leather cock ring around his whole package. He must have been wearing it all night. He’s got huge balls that are probably even bigger now that they’re swollen. His sad little penis looks even smaller next to those saddlebags.

And he’s not even hard. For some reason a flaccid penis on someone I find repulsive has always grossed me out much more than a raging hard-on.

I turn my disgust into severity. It isn’t difficult. Anger is anger, I guess. I’ve just traded one form of anger for another.

“You need to be tied up for your own good,” I hiss, falling into character. I take one of his whips off the night table. “Let’s go! Lie down. Now! Before I get really annoyed.”

Mitchell complies, his big, fat pasta gut shaking as he hustles himself into position.

I bark commands at him. I slap him around with his toys. He drools. He answers me with “Yes, mistress,” whenever I address him. At one point, he tries to kiss me while I’m bent over him. I crack him in the mouth with the whip. He winces, licks his lips, and he doesn’t try that one again.

It really isn’t so bad, though eventually I run out of ideas. It all seems so silly. What am I supposed to do with him now?

He sees me hesitate, and suggests that we switch roles. I repeat firmly that I don’t do that. Yeah, picture that – ninety-pound me, tied to a bed in a motel room by some fucking john I met in a strip club. I’m a little crazy. I’m not fucking stupid.

After he’s had his fill, I untie him and he sits on the edge of the bed. “You know, I’m really not into being a sub all the time,” he says. “It’s more fun for me to switch things up. Less predictable.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I answer. “I’m not submissive. Ever.”

“Maybe we should try it with two girls next time,” he muses.

“Hey, that’s a great idea!” I exclaim. “Have you met my girlfriend, Clarissa? She’s really submissive. There’s plenty of variety when she and I play. We just never get bored. I make her beg and crawl, and she loves it.”

Of course, I’m making this up. I’ve never done role play with Clarissa. I’ve only said hi and bye to her since that time she tried to shove her tongue down my throat at the after-hours.

But I know she’d mess around with me if I ever gave her the okay. I’m pretty sure she’d also go out with me and a customer if I told her it was safe.

And most importantly, I know she can keep a secret.

“Yeah, sure. Bring her along next time,” Mitchell says.

I grin. These outings will be much easier to tolerate if I have a partner.

Mitchell hands me five brand new hundred-dollar bills, and then I’m dressed and out the door. Maybe it won’t be so bad to do this once and awhile. I could really use the money… and for once, my knees aren’t killing me.

I stumble into the kitchen at four in the afternoon, open the refrigerator door and slam it shut again. I don’t know what I’m expecting to find in there. I haven’t been to a supermarket in weeks.

The cat rubs at my ankles. She needs food in her bowl. I gave her the rest of the cat food last night. I open the cabinet under the sink to see if, by some chance, I have more cat food. And I cringe.

It’s not only the fact that the mouse is dead, though dead animals do give me the willies. It’s that the mouse is as flat as a pancake, glued down to the wood by its own blood. I would have to scrape it up and…

“Gah!” I feel myself retch, and I shut the cabinet doors, ignoring the cat that is still whining at my feet.

Shit, last night I witnessed fat, nasty Mitchell’s naked body in restraints. I saw his pathetic little soft member wrapped up in a leather cock ring. I like to think I have a pretty strong stomach. But I can’t bring myself to touch that mouse.

I walk into the bedroom still shivering, pick up the phone, and dial a number I know by heart. I know where he stays whenever he’s not at my house. The phone rings. One of the other old guys living in the free-for-all squat in that Chinatown loft answers it tersely.

“Hello.”

“Can I please talk to Barry?”

The guy grunts. He doesn’t like me. I don’t care.

Barry comes to the phone.

“What?”

“Barry, there’s a dead mouse in the kitchen…”

“So, throw it away.”

“No, you don’t understand.”

“Jesus Christ, angel, it’s just a mouse!” He sounds annoyed.

“I can’t… I don’t want to touch it.”

“Well, you threw me out.”

“I know.”

“Up again, back again. Up again, back again,” Barry recites.

“Barry?”

“What?”

I sigh.

“WHAT?”

“Barry. Just come home.”

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