I end up going to a strip club that night with Marcus. Things are going good between us and he's really chilled out now he's seen I'm holding up alright (I'm careful not to mention Alice, I still don't really know how I'm playing that one.) It's clear he's still doing his best to look out for me though.
It's an enormous strip club with poles that stretch right on up to the ceiling way above. The seats are all leather which at one stage must have looked elite and prestigious, but now is littered with tears and marks, and when you sit you have to try and avoid the sponge poking out from the holes. The cocktails are all horrible, probably mixed by strippers not hot enough to make the cut, and the beer and wine range is laughable. In other words, it's your average second-in-line strip club really (not the place you're most inclined to go with your mates, but the place that everyone ten years older than You talks about that probably used to be great but by the time you go there, it's ratty, draggy, largely unentertaining, and you're wishing the whole time you went to the new hipper place.
The reason we're here is that I scored Marcus and myself free entry and drinks (within reason) due to 'industry connections' with the manager (he came jokingly to Championship one time whilst drunk, fucked himself silly and broke, and offered me and the girls free entry and unlimited bonuses if we just waived the charges. I'm determined to make profit on that deal. It's been almost two years and I've been here probably at least weekly with a mate when possible, and the girls come here for free after-work drinks... we're probably about halfway there.
The club is about half-full, and when I look around I see a few of my girls and a few more of my clients. This is about as busy as this place ever gets.
There's one woman I've come to see though, and the moment I heard she got signed by this manager, I knew I had to speak with her. The simple truth is, I think she has 'it' and she's going to earn sweet fuck-all in this place, where I could guarantee her three fucks a day, absolute minimum, any day of the week.
There are a lot of single guys in here. Not single as in unmarried, but single as in no friends. In this sort of company the two of us - me morose and monosyllabic, Marcus tired but slightly excited, and both of us trying to get any free drink we can - constitute a massive stag outing.
There's no live music, just a playlist playing through a speaker system from someone's phone that sounds as if it hasn't been updated in a few years. People are standing around cradling their drinks, staring at either the main stage or the girls circling the room, trying to figure out their best 'pickup-line' to make the stripper fall for them like they've never done for a paying customer before. Vivian Vulva comes on stage at around 11:30, and I can see instantly that she should be working at Championship. The way she moves is inspired by sex and arousing men for sex, rather than just dancing around a pole like most girls seem to. I hold up a fifty-dollar bill to gain her attention, and then get the full experience as she strips and moves just for me. Given the age of the music playlist it's hardly surprising that some songs came on that Lust used to dance for me to, and I'm simultaneously nursing an erection and having an emotional conflict. I'm incredibly close to being physically overcome with emotion, and question why it needs to happen in front of a naked stripper I'm doing my best to hire. Couldn't it have just been at home in private looking at photos and listening to my old CDs?
By the time she's finished I'm convinced of two things: a) I suddenly miss Lust with a passion that has been entirely absent for the last few days, and b) I am in love with Vivian and convinced she wants to fuck me. She's coaxed the $350 for a private dance out of my pocket before I can even think of talking business with her. These conflicting emotions happen at times. Or at least, they happen to men. Or at least, they happen to a particular type of men. It's difficult to explain the logic behind being emotionally pulled in two opposite directions at once, though certainly a level of horny irrationality is a prerequisite. But there's a logic to it too. Vivian is sexy, in that 'erotic fantasy' way. She looks like a modernised pinup girl - and if you were going to develop a spontaneous sexual addiction for someone, you could do a lot worse. And she's a sweetheart as far as I can tell, and not without talent. She's gotten money out of my pocket and gotten me convinced we love each other and my one road to success is paying her for more time. All my life I've wanted to be with - no, have a relationship with - a pornstar stripper: I'd want her to practice routines at home, and ask me to be her audience, and maybe include one of our private jokes in her small-talk, or thank me at the end of a show, or maybe I'd even be an extra wanking in the background somewhere, and I could watch her perform live from the owner's section, and meet up with her afterwards in the dressingrooms.
The Vivian bit is easy enough to understand, then. The Lust thing takes a bit more explaining, but what it is, I think, is this: sentimental emotions brought about in some way by nostalgia, have a way of taking you back somewhere at the same time it takes you forwards, so you feel nostalgic and hopeful all at the same time.
Vivian's the hopeful, forward part of it - maybe not her necessarily, but somebody like her, somebody who can turn things around for me. (Exactly that: I always think that women are going to save me, lead me through to a better life through their companionship or performance in a professional sense. They can change me and redeem me.) And Lust is the backward part, the last person I think I loved, and when I hear that music playing whilst watching a beautiful naked body swinging and dancing on full display in front of me, suddenly I'm transported to romantic evenings with Lust where we ate exquisite foods and made passionate love, or grand beach holidays where we fucked in a villa perched on an island that was all our own. But we never actually did that in real life. We never went on holidays, and we certainly never had romantic evenings with good food. This is why I probably shouldn't be in this kind of club right now.
Tonight it feels like it really doesn't matter either way. Vivian could leave the club with me and I'll fuck her brains out before booking her in for an audition root the next day, or I'll go home to find Lust sitting there naked with her legs spread and waiting for me. Both of these daydreams sound equally attractive.
By the time we're back in a private booth I have collected my thoughts more. And have some idea what to say as Vivian puts on a more intimate show.
"So, are you at all interested in going further than just dancing and earning loads more money?"
