I quickly fell into a routine; any day that I wasn't working at the library, I danced at Lipstick, so Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays were characterized by bare flesh and grimy money. Every day I was greeted with the same smell of stale beer, grease, and cigarettes. When I arrived, the kitchen staff would already be unloading cases of beer, hosing down the floors and outside area, and firing up the ovens. Rolling in around 10:30 or so, I straightened my hair, plastered on some make-up, and got dressed. (Or, undressed, I should say.) It was extremely slow-going at Lipstick. In one full hour, I would meet and greet a customer, make small talk, give them the dance, and try to get them to buy another. Sometimes two or three hours would go by where no matter how many customers I greeted or talked to, no one wanted to shell out for a lap dance. There was the occasional three-dance customer, but I rarely got more than two songs out of a single customer. I lacked both experience and a c
When I left the club to go out to the parking lot, I met up with him near my car. He suggested that we could both ride in his car, and my face must have betrayed me (as it always does). Stranger danger! Stranger danger! Stranger danger!"I promise I'm not going to kidnap you and murder you. It'll just be easier, so you won't have to follow."But that's what a murderer would say!However, my intuition said that this guy was being honest. He had treated me with respect in the club, hadn't aggressively pressured me, and didn't seem like the human-trafficking type. When I climbed into his black Audi S5, I noted the California license plates. The inside was pristinely clean, like it had just been detailed, but had a subtle yet distinct smell of weed. I took a whiff of that sweet, oily scent and shot him a smile and raised eyebrow. "Yeah, ha ha, well, I am from Cali, and you know how we roll."I grinned at him. "No worries, I totally smoke." See, I am cool. I smoke pot. See Jane smok
The citrus smell of Goo-gone was invading my brain; it smelled good in a sickly sweet way, but it was making me slightly nauseated. My fingers were sticky with adhesive from peeling yellow "New" stickers off books. When new books arrived, the library kept them in a separate section for six months to promote the shiny, hot-off-the-press bestsellers or replacement copies of favorite classics. After that, they returned to the main collection. I tried wiping the glue off with a combination of Goo-gone and Clorox wipes. I couldn't wait to be a full-fledged librarian and never peel off another sticker ever. "What are you going to do this weekend, Ariel?" My coworker, Brianna, asked as she walked by with the "To Shelve" cart.My mind flashed to bare breasts, sweat-slick stages, grimy money, and men's hands. I kept my face blank as I said, "I don't know, probably just work on homework, or read. Binge-watch Star Trek, if I get done with everything." I ignored the sudden uptick in heart rat
He's in the VIP, so he must want dances, right?I sauntered up to him. "Hello, my name is Rose; may I sit down with you?" He obliged, and we began talking. Pretty soon, I started dancing. I was grinding on his lap, facing away from him, when I felt the unmistakable silky texture of bare skin against bare skin. About halfway through the first song, he had pulled his dick out. Now, I had seen and handled plenty of six-inch male organs before, so I wasn't afraid of it so much as I was afraid of someone (manager, other dancer, waitress, plainclothes cop) seeing an obvious dick hanging out. I turned around and started to get up and said, "Hey man, I'm not comfortable with that. You gotta put it away. Thanks for your time." I started to walk away.He quickly tucked himself back in and said, "Wait, wait! I'll make it worth your while." As I wanted to leave right then, we bartered for a bit for how many dances I would continue with. I asked for three; If I had to deal with this creep,
I opened the front door to my parents' house without using my key. My family never locked their front door, or the back for that matter. The back yard didn't even have a fence. The reasoning was, nothing ever happened in Azle, Texas. The neighborhood was safewhite, middle-class, and filled with Evangelical Christians. My own bedroom had been built without a lock. "I'm here," I called out. "Sister!" my little sister, Mariah answered from her usual spota brown faux leather recliner chair. She had our mini-dachshund, Penny, clutched tightly in her arms, and a pair of headphones around her neck. I took a deep breath and maneuvered around the piles of junk everywhere: a discarded stationary bike that had never been used, shoeboxes filled with trinkets to send to the starving, heathen children in Africa, plastic garbage bags of old childhood clothes still needing to be taken to Goodwill (and probably never would), mounds of toys for "holiday gifts." My mother was the kind of person to
Jeanna burst into the break room. I glanced up from Pillars of the Earth, where I had been deep into medieval England, with knights battling for honor and monks building colossal cathedrals. "Someone was masturbating in the stacks!" She looked like she wanted to both laugh and vomit."Again?" I asked. "Did they catch him?"Jeanna's eyes looked as round as full moons. "Yeah, he tried running out, and he got as far as that vacant lot next to us, but one of the other patrons tackled him."I stifled a giggle and asked, "Who found him?""Me." Jeanna's face was blooming red from mortification. "He was watching some dirty video, and he had his fly undone, and he had his thing half out of his pants and he was stroking it, so I ran to go get Kraleen. But I think he must have noticed me, because he had already left when I came back."I shook my head at the antics of The Public. "Was he…?" and I made the motion for heavy-duty wanking. "No, he just had it out and was kind of flopping it a
"What are you?" asked the customer.A woman? A librarian? A stripper?"You're very exotic looking," he continued. "What's your nationality?""American," I replied, having an inside joke with myself. "What?" he asked, confused. I rolled my third eye. Put away your tertiary liberal arts education. Trying to score a table dance is not the time to explain that nationality is the country or nation of origin and ethnicity is a sociocultural heritage. "Native American," I clarified. "My grandfather was half Ottowa""Oh I'm Indian too," interrupted the blond, blue-eyed teeny bopper before me. "I'm like one-sixteenth on my mom's side. Or was it my dad's?"Sure, but you didn't grow up with a Native name, christened with a powwow, didn't grow up learning the circle dance, the fancy dance, or the dance of the 49 Warriors. You don't have hand-sewn shawls that your mother made you or a hand-carved tomahawk.He finally asked for a table dance.I don't think this is what The Great Spirit
"Excuse me, ma'am?" A soft country drawl pulled me from my surreptitious homework. Describe information theory and how it relates to Boolean logic. Include references to Shannon's "A Mathematical Theory of Communication." A woman in short, blonde hair and a Louis Vuitton purse stood before me. "Yes, ma'am, how can I help you?" I asked. "Look, I don't want to seem like a horrible person," she began. This sounds promising, I thought. "But I was wondering if you could ask that man to leave," she pointed at a man wearing a paint-stained t-shirt and torn sweatpants that looked like they hadn't been washed since Clinton was president. He was snoozing in a chair.I feigned ignorance. "Do you mean leave his seat?" I asked. The woman tried to not look guilty. "No, I mean leave the building." She leaned in closer. "He smells. It's bothering my daughter who's trying to read."I leveled my gaze at this woman, who wore camo chic and had fake rhinestones on her manicured nails. She