From 8/30/10 1:55am:
Lap Dance Charlie
Gave in last night. Texted Tam– You boys wanna creep tonight?
It was my need to hunt compelling.
Shit. I stepped in it, I thought, when he texted back that it was his brother-in-law’s 40th birthday and his sister had hired a couple of dancers. And he was coming right over to get me.
Caged or exotic?, I asked him. But he never did give me an answer.
I suddenly felt I needed a low-pro night. It’s about boundaries.
He really shows up at my door, but he can’t get in because the gate’s locked and I’m not listed in the call box. I realize I like not having people be able to walk right up to my front door.
We head for his sister’s house but first we stop off at a house to pick up a cake. As I see him emerge from the shadows of the garage by the light of the headlights, I just know for a fact that inside the white box he was carrying was an erotic cake. And it was. With two of the firmest towers of tits framed by a shirt made of frosting that’s the exact facsimile of a shirt I’m pretty sure I own. It was beautiful in its own way, and it made me realize the gravity of the task given to me–to get these perfect tits to the party without mishap.
It’s a house party. Wow, I don’t usually go with people I don’t know well to houses I don’t know at all, out of fear of getting held for ransom. This dude is really pushing it, I think. We walk in with the cake and damn, I’m in it, this whole other reality I’ve just gotta roll with, like jumping into a midnight pool with my clothes on. All these strangers are looking at me like, where the hell did she come from, and the birthday boy asks Tam if this is Cathy, and he says, no this isn’t Cathy. And I take a deep breath because, who’s Cathy? But I’m here and I’m breathing.
Ham appears out of nowhere, and it’s good because Ham feels safe. He makes me a drink. I’ve gotta keep an eye on how heavy he pours it.
They’re watching music videos on BET (it’s the Vietnamese version of karaoke, except no one has to sing) on a giant TV built into a shrine lined with whiskey and cognac bottles. The host sits on a large padded massage chair that even has the space-boot calf compartments.
There’s some worry that the dancers are running late. They’d tried to come earlier than the arranged time, but since that didn’t work, they were over an hour late. I told the hostess, they better not show up smelling’ like Taco Bell.
Tam sits close to me and finds reasons to rub my back. Why are men always touching my back–is it me or them–but it is what it is. I’m not in an open place to connect so it’s all moot anyway.
These two bruthas show up with a gymbag, red lights on a string to cordon off an area of carpet and a blanket that they laid down inside the ring of lights. You know it’s gonna be serious when they have to lay down a blanket.
They set up a chair in the middle of the room and stand over it. I thought about how funny it would be for the birthday boy to be led in, expecting a stripper, but it turns out it’s a fight club. Like his wife organized a fight club for his birthday, and these two big black guys were here to beat the living crap out of him.
All of a sudden one of the girls at the party grabs my arm and in a frenzy of half English and half Vietnamese, she tells me that the girls are not gonna work because in the picture, they had big breasts, but she just saw them and they’re little. And the birthday boy likes big breasts?, I asked. Oh yeah, she said, almost wistfully.
The strippers marched in, and the lead girl was the bitch in charge. She laid out the rules how much everything would cost for them to do certain things or take off their tops, their panties etc. Everything required about $40 and she was vocal about stopping the show every few minutes to collect more money. She was like one of the street performers out on 3rd Street Promenade, only more naked. The other girl looked like she wasn’t the proudest for being there, but hey, she was gonna make it work.
They got the couple down on the blanket first, the birthday boy and Tam’s sister. This game’s called the Money Tree. People were supposed to lay out dollar bills on the couples’ bodies, and the dancers would get it. Thet basically got straddled and the women took their panties off and did a lot of rubbing, and that was it. Though there was one priceless moment when they were just getting started and thought someone was taking a picture of them on his phone, and the girls angrily stopped the show saying, we’re going to be naked. It reminded me of how the prostitutes in Amsterdam will have your camera thrown into the canal if you take a picture of them, yet for 50 euros on top of their normal fucking fee, you can pay to be in the room while someone fucks them.
They move on to give birthday boy a lap dance, then let people come up and do tequila body shots off them or lick whipped cream off their breasts and pelvis. Lead bitch was still announcing that everything costs money. By the time the lapdances started, I was kind of irritated. What’s the point of this? For what they’re doing, the awkward tease where these people have a woman’s pussy sliding just inches from their face, they don’t question what this is? They may as well be fucking. I was pissed off it didn’t turn into fucking.
I went to a sex club once and it altered me for a while. I didn’t want anyone to touch me for a long time. Sometimes I wonder if it was because of how disgusted I was watching people fucking like dogs, or because a part of me wonders what if I had participated. I’m a sure there’s a me somewhere with a life in balance from that decision.
Ham keeps calling me out that I should get a lapdance. The strippers are calling me out and I don’t want that annoying girl’s tits in my face. So I get out of it by asking the one brutha whose built like a defensive end if he’ll do a lapdance for the girl who was upset the dancers breasts were too small. He was laughing that he didn’t dance but he took off his shirt and did it and the women were screaming. The dancers commented he was more popular than they were. And meanwhile, Ham is determined to have someone dance on my lap. The brutha was big, and I like that. And we’d instantly vibed when he walked in the door originally. But I don’t like that it’s public. I don’t like that there are boundaries. I don’t like that there are people here who know me. And mostly, I won’t pay for it. When I want it, I expect you to know what’s good for you.
But Ham insists and brings the guy over. He shakes my hand. “I’m Charles.”
I introduce myself.
“This guy wants me to dance for you,” he says.
“I don’t think so,” I say, and he says he usually just stands there and takes care of the girls but this is the first time he’s been asked to dance. I don’t really believe him but Ham and him are standing there all hopeful about it so I go with it. “Fine,” I say.
The thing is to look in a man’s eyes and not back down. See it all, everything inside of him, but don’t back down. Feel it, touch it, taste it, but don’t show him what you’ve seen. But let him know, all it would take is the twitch of a tail, and the next thing he knows, he’s on his back getting fucked by you. Sometimes, all it takes is just the trace of a smile and the glint of something cold and metallic, almost a taste, behind her eyes. He’s rubbing himself against me, tempting me and I think about how quickly things could change. How easily I could take the reins and give these people something they would never forget. I was looking at his skin, and I could feel his heat, his moisture. How quickly things could change and by the end of the night, my secrets would no longer be mine, and everyone in the room would be fucked twelve ways to Sunday, even if I never touched them. Someone was sprinkling dollar bills on my head, and I was looking at this giant man crawling on me, daring him, how far is he willing to take it. And I’m thinking, what’s the point of dancing when…
Now he’s looking at me kind of shy and unsure as he moves his hips above me, wanting to know what’s next, where do we go from here. Wanting me to want him, but I’m looking inside him for something else. The music is throbbing around us, as organic and demanding as the pull between two human bodies and I can already see in his eyes I could take his reins, I can feel them deep inside his heat, but I always require they be handed to me.
The big bruthas. Always tempting but again, I’m not into strippers. People as sexual objects you can look but not touch…it’s not my thing. I would rather have the real thing than pay someone I don’t even want to tease me with it.
Ham seemed satisfied that he was able to make the lap dance happen. I told him really calmly that if any photos surfaced I would come after him. Photos are an accent language, never the substitute for actual words or worlds.
The girls do their grand finale where they bring out the birthday boy again, take off his shirt and have him lay face down on the blanket. The cover his back with shaving cream, pull out a razor and shave his lower back, lift up the back of his pants and spray a mound of cream onto his ass then bop him on the back of his jeans so the shaving cream squirts all up inside his boxers. And that was it. What a weird, fucked up thing to do. Not to mention anticlimactic.
Spent the rest of the evening watching drunk guys talk. Was introduced to a guy named Duke who said he heard a lot about me. Something about my catwalk.
A guy thought I was Thai and apologized profusely when he found out I’m Chinese.
I went home, happy to be alone in my own bed.