Older Strippers and How They Play

You always hear some asshole who thinks he's smarter than you say, "Well, in the grand scheme of things...", but I don't believe there's any goddamned grand scheme or master plan or whatever the fuck you want to call it. If there is, whoever wrote the fucking thing forgot to ask me for my input, because the plan isn't turning out like I'd like it to.

No, shit just happens and you deal with it. That's what I was doing in the alley behind my office/apartment that night, dealing with shit I didn't start but was going to have to finish. It was all Reggie Adams' fault. Reggie is my landlord.

Reggie inherited the building in the older part of downtown Nashville where I live from his dad, Homer Adams. Reggie was twenty-six when his dad passed. I rented the first floor of that building that same year. I was twenty-four at the time and the rent I was paying for a tiny little office in a strip mall was proving a problem. I couldn't afford both the office and an apartment, so I was living with Mom and Dad. I wanted to move out.

I talked to Julie Richardson, a realtor I knew from finding her long lost brother. It turned out he'd changed his name from Charlie to Charlize and then gone to Denmark for a year. When I told Julie that Charlize was living in White House, she wrinkled her brow and then said, "Charlie always did like to dress up in Mom's clothes. I always wanted a sister, and I guess I kinda have one now. It's gonna take me a while to figure out how I feel about that."

Julie laughed when I said my rent was too high.

"Harry, the only place you're gonna find lower rent is down in the old business district downtown, and I don't really think you want to move there. It's all resale shops and hookers now."

Well, that part of town wasn't the best, but it wasn't the worst either. I was young and thought I could handle about anything, so I asked if she had anything for rent down there. She found the place I live in now, and put me in contact with the owner, Reggie Adams.

When I first talked to Reggie, he tried to give me the impression he was the next up and coming real estate mogul in Nashville. The rental contract was fifteen pages long and had all sorts of shit I could and couldn't do. It was obvious it was a contract he'd copied from somewhere so he wouldn't have to pay a lawyer to draw one up. I mean, since the front yard was the sidewalk and the back yard was a loading dock, there was no grass to keep mowed to a maximum height of three inches. None of the three floors had balconies, so it wasn't likely I was going to have more than two people on the one I didn't have. It must have been an old contract too, because the only thing the contract didn't include was the standard clause my old rental contract had that said I'd pay for any repairs under five hundred dollars. Reggie was supposed to pay for any repairs.

The rent was affordable and I could move out of Mom and Dad's basement and live there too, so I gave Reggie my first and last month's rent, signed the contract, and moved in. That was almost thirty years ago and it's been great. Well, the place has been great. Reggie's been a fucking pain in the ass.

Reggie's a pain in the ass because he's a goddamned cheapskate, but other than that, he's actually pretty harmless. What that means is he's dumb as a fucking rock about most things. Other things, well, Reggie isn't ever going to get an invitation to join Mensa, but he gets by somehow. I didn't realize how dumb he actually was until he got married.

One of the things Reggie liked to do to impress people was spend money where they could see him spending it, and Reggie's dad had been pretty good with money. In addition to my building and three others, his dad left him a pretty large bank account, and Reggie started going to The Starlight Lounge every Saturday night and spending it.

Now The Starlight Lounge sounds like a place where you could kick back, have a couple of drinks, and listen to some of the local jazz bands. That's what it was until the owner retired and sold it. The new owner turned it into a strip club.

Shirley Gene Gentry was one of the strippers there, and Reggie decided he liked her. I could understand that. I went to see her once after Reggie said he'd tried and tried but he couldn't get a locksmith to fix the lock on my back door. Then he changed the subject and told me I'd really like Shirley Gene. I hung up the phone and called a locksmith who came out half an hour later and charged me forty bucks for the ten minutes it took him to fix the lock. That night I drove over to The Starlight Lounge and sat down at the bar in front of the stage.

I'm not really into strip clubs. I mean, going to a strip club is like when I was a kid and went to Sears with Mom for school clothes. Sears had a bunch of glass cases full of all kinds of candy right in the store and it was frustrating as hell. I could look at it, and I could imagine how it was gonna taste if I ever got any, but I knew I wasn't going to.

Anyway, Shirley Gene strutted out on the stage and I could see why Reggie had the hots for her. She had big tits, a nice, tight ass, and long legs. She dropped her bra about a minute into her dance and then did this thing with her tits where she could make one raise up all by itself. She'd do that, then let it fall back down, and then her other tit would raise up. It was amazing how fast she could make her tits do that. After she peeled off her g-string, she turned around and made her ass cheeks do the same thing.

Well, about two months later, Reggie invited me to their wedding. I was a little suspicious because of Shirley Gene's wedding clothes. It wasn't a formal wedding so she didn't wear a traditional bride's dress. She wore a dress that fit like a second skin and she looked more like a hooker than a bride. That made me suspicious until Shirley Gene walked up to me at the reception at Reggie's house and smiled. After that, I wasn't suspicious any more. I knew.

"You're Harry, right, the PI that rents the first floor of our building?"

I was thinking she'd taken ownership pretty fucking fast since they'd only been married about half an hour, but I said I was.

Shirley Gene put her hand on her hip and grinned.

"Well, if you have any problems, Sugar, any problems at all, you just call me and I'll be right over to fix you right up."

Now, in spite of what my ex would tell you, I'm smarter than your average cocker spaniel. It didn't take much thought to know the way Shirley Gene stroked her hand down her ass and pushed out her tits at me meant she wasn't talking about a leaky faucet. I probably should have said something to Reggie, but I figured he already knew how she was and didn't care.

It was about a year later that Reggie walked into my office with a worried look on his face.

"Harry, I'm concerned about Shirley Gene. She's still dancing every night at The Starlight. It's OK with me if she does because she likes it and she brings in quite a bit of money. It's just that for the last six months, she's been coming home later and later and she always says she's too tired to do anything with me. I think she might be seeing someone else. Can you check it out for me?"

Well, I did, and it was a lot different than Reggie thought. Shirley Gene wasn't seeing a different guy. She was seeing a different guy every night she was stripping. Some of those guys...well, after watching her for a week, I figured Shirley Gene would fuck anything with two legs and a cock. On the last night I watched her, I had to revise that opinion. She walked out of the Starlight Lounge holding on to a guy on crutches who only had one leg.

Reggie didn't get mad. He did what he thought any real estate mogul would do. He hired a lawyer and divorced her. Reggie really should have paid more and gotten a better lawyer, because his lawyer wasn't a very good divorce attorney. Shirley Gene's was, but then he was one of the guys I'd seen her come out of the club with, so he was probably putting in some extra effort to pay for what he was getting on the side.

Reggie claimed Shirley Gene was being unfaithful. Shirley Gene said when those men walked her out of the strip club, they were just protecting her until she got to her car. Well, they were protecting some of her. My pictures of her and her guys were a little dark because the only light was from streetlights, but it was easy to see what they were protecting. They guy would usually have at least one hand on her tits. Sometimes it was his hand on her ass, but usually it was her tits, well, except the guy on crutches who only had one leg.

I think Reggie just wanted out, so he didn't have his lawyer push very hard. I found out later the negotiations gave Reggie a choice of two options. He had to either pay alimony to Shirley Gene or give her ownership of the building where I lived. Reggie chose alimony but insisted that had to end if Shirley Gene got married again. They agreed and parted ways.

After the divorce, Reggie changed a lot, but I understood that. I changed a lot after my ex divorced me. I was already a cynical asshole, or so she said, so I just got more cynical and more of an asshole. Reggie stopped liking anybody, including me. I think he blamed me for showing him Shirley Gene was fucking everybody besides him.

I didn't really give a shit if he liked me or not. I've never been big on anybody who pretends to be something they aren't. You can always tell, just like I could tell with Shirley Gene, and it pisses me off that they think I'm enough of a dumb ass I'll believe them.

Reggie didn't speak to me about anything after that unless I called him to complain that something had stopped working, and then he'd only say he'd call somebody to fix it. After giving him a week, I'd call a plumber or an electrician or whoever I needed to fix the goddamned thing and pay them myself. Reggie never changed my rent, so I figured I could foot the bill for the small stuff and still be ahead.

Anyway, I was really surprised when Reggie knocked on my office door one afternoon and then let himself in. He walked up to my desk and sat down, then smiled a really forced smile.

"Harry, I know we don't talk much but I still consider us to be friends, and I need your help."

In my experience, the use of the words "friend" and "help" in the same sentence usually means somebody wants me to work for free. That's exactly what Reggie went on to explain.

"The divorce settlement said I wasn't supposed to tell anybody about it, but I have to do something. I agreed to pay Shirley a thousand dollars a month alimony until she got married again. When I agreed to that, I still had about four hundred thousand of Daddy's money in the bank and I owned three other buildings besides this one. I figured Shirley would find another guy in a year or two and get married and it would be over. Well, it's been almost thirty years and Shirley hasn't told me she's gotten married yet. I really need to know if she has because if I have to keep paying her, I'll have to sell one of my buildings or raise everybody's rent because I'm about out of money. I can't really afford to pay you and I thought since we've known each other for so long you might do it pro bono."

The chintzy bastard couldn't even just come right out and say he wanted me to do it for free. He had to say "pro bono". I suppose using fucking lawyer-speak was supposed to make me think he was smart and sophisticated.

Lawyers say they're working on a case "pro bono" and then go on to explain that "pro bono" is Latin for "for the good". I suppose it does make them feel good, but they can afford to work a little for free. I cant. To me, "pro bono" means the "pro", that's me, is getting the "bono" right up his fucking ass.

Reggie saw me frown and tried to make me feel better about doing what he wanted me to do.

"Harry, if you do this for me and I do have to raise everybody's rent, I won't raise yours. How would that be?

Well, how it would be was me busting my ass for nothing, but I didn't tell him that. I'd have liked it better if he had raised my rent so I didn't have to deal with him. Instead, I asked if he'd just fix the leaky faucet in my shower. It wasn't a bad leak. It just kind of dripped after I shut off the shower, but about once month, I had to take the showerhead apart and clean out all the sludge so it would spray again.

Reggie said he'd get somebody right over, right after I found out if Shirley Gene was married or not, so I grudgingly said I'd see what I could find out. I asked if he knew where she was living and he said he didn't, but a friend had told him she was working at a club called "Southern Belles" out on Nolensville Road. I didn't think Reggie had any actual friends, but there must have been one other fool out there as dumb as Reggie. Since Shirley Gene would be a little over fifty now, I figured she was working the door, tending bar, or waiting tables.

I'd never heard of the place, so when Reggie finally left, I typed "Southern Belles" into my search engine to see if the place had a website. I got back about a hundred links to porn sites and one to one of those review sites where they list a bunch of restaurants and clubs and people write reviews about them.

The place didn't have a web site, but the review site did have an address and a description.

"Want to see older babes strutting their stuff, those MILF's and GILF's you see on the internet? Go to "Southern Belles". They have the largest selection of dancers in their 40's and 50's of any club in Tennessee."

There were two reviews as well. The first reviewer said the girls were hot but not worth the thirty dollars he had to pay to join the club for one night. The second said it was well worth the hundred he paid for a month's membership because the lap dance he got had a really happy ending.

Now, I have to admit that there are some pretty foxy gals out there on the internet who claim to be that old, but those sites are free. I didn't think there were many guys who'd pay actual money to see one up close and personal. I mean, I like women my age and all that, but usually, they're a little gravity challenged, if you know what I mean. Some are pretty much gravity overpowered. I don't have a problem with that when they're in bed with me, but stripping to music is a different story altogether.

I drove to the place about eleven that night. They opened at two in the afternoon, but I didn't figure there'd be much going on before eleven and I didn't want to sit in the place for longer than I had to since I was going to wait until it closed to talk to Shirley Gene.

The door opened into a hallway with another door at the end, and at a table by that door sat an older woman with shoulder-length, snow-white hair. She smiled at me and asked for my ID. I said she had to be kidding, but she smiled again and explained.

"We're a private club so I have to see everybody's ID before I let them in. That's to make sure you're a member and to keep out the boys under twenty-one."

I pulled my driver's license out of my wallet and handed it to her. She looked at it for a few seconds, then looked at the computer screen in front of her, and then looked up and smiled again. I was starting to like that smile. I think it was her lips. She had a wider mouth than usual and those soft pale pink lips looked really sensuous.

"I see you're not a member. Would you like to join our club for just tonight or for the whole month? If you join for the whole month, I'll give you a pin for your jacket and the girls will be really nice to you. It's thirty dollars for tonight or a hundred dollars for a month's membership."

I said just for the night until I decided if I liked what was inside or not. She put my thirty dollars in her till, typed my name into her computer, then fluffed her hair and smiled at me when she handed me my license.

"I thought you were about sixty, but you're only fifty four. I like younger men. If you don't see what you like inside, I'm here until three. My name's Kathy and I used to dance too."

Well, that shook me up a little, not the part about her being a dancer, the part about how old I looked. I could believe Kathy had been a stripper. Her tits didn't sit very high on her chest, but they looked pretty big so I figured it was just her bra. I just never thought I looked sixty.

I said I'd bet she was a really good dancer and I'd think about it. Kathy grinned, fluffed her hair some more, said she hoped I would, and then buzzed the door so I could go in.

There weren't a lot of guys sitting in chairs in front of the stage when I went in, and most of them weren't the young guys who used to frequent the strip clubs. They were all at least thirty and several looked my age or older. I only saw one guy who looked like he was in his twenties and he was sitting way down at the end of the stage where it would be hard to see what the girls were doing. I found an empty table in the first row behind the row of chairs.

The woman on stage was easily fifty, but she was in pretty good shape. She didn't carry her tits high like most young strippers, but they were pretty nice tits and they looked real. Her ass was great, but then I like a woman to have a round ass. She still had her g-string on and was riding the pole in the center of the stage like she was fucking it. Here and there, I saw a wadded up bill hit her on the ass.

About ten seconds after I sat down, a young girl walked up to my table and asked what I wanted to drink. I never drink when I'm working so I asked her to bring me a Coke. A few minutes later she sat a plastic cup about the size of a tea cup in front of me and said, "That'll be four dollars, please".

I'd thought since the membership fee was so high they might go easy on the drink prices, but they didn't. They were probably getting a markup of about four thousand percent on that Coke, because half the little glass was ice. Even so, I handed her a five and told her to keep the change. Four bucks was a lot to pay for a Coke of any size, but I like to keep waitresses happy. Waitresses see everything that goes on in a club, and sometimes they know a lot more than anyone would think.

I understood the reason for the membership fee. It used to be that there were two types of strip clubs in Nashville. In one, the girls would strip down to a g-string. In the second, the girls stripped down to nothing but their high heels. In both, you could get a lap dance as long as you didn't touch the girl and she didn't touch you. That worked out fine for everybody except you could only get soft drinks if the girls stripped off everything. That was the law -- g-strings and booze, naked and nothing but sodas.

Before the ordinance took effect, there was nothing else going on in any of these clubs besides some guy getting his cock hard when the girl waved her tits in his face or turned around and showed him her shaved pussy, because that's all that happened. Any guy who touched one of the girls would be thrown out and banned from coming back. The guy who paid somewhere between twenty and fifty bucks for a lap dance would have to go home horny and alone because any girl who met a guy after the club closed would have been fired.

That wasn't the case in some of the massage parlors and "health spas" in town. I'm not saying I'm in favor of prostitution, though I think that making it legal would solve a lot of problems, but there were some really narrow minded people in Nashville who thought women doing anything without clothes on was right up there with murder as far as sin goes.

Personally, I think the women were jealous of the girls and the men wished they had the balls to watch some young girl strip down or get their cock sucked. They wanted everything - strip clubs, massage parlors, and health spas - shut down, so they pressured the Metro Council to enact an ordinance that would do that.