Jason Geth had never been to a strip club before. He was nearing his thirtieth birthday and was neither a sexual neophyte nor a middle-aged beer-guzzler. Glancing around the crowded lobby, he wondered if that made him stand out. Other than the suited and heavyset bouncer at the end of the room, all the men in the vestibule (Jason saw only one woman) looked like either twenty-year-old frat boys or someone's plaid-clad uncle whose gut wobbled as he shouted his commentary at referees.
Forbidden Fruit, which was the name of this place, was on Jason's route to work. He'd had his current job at an investment firm for going-on two years and the club had appeared closed almost every time he'd driven past it. This made him wonder at the number of people in the room.
The amorphous line moved Jason closer to the bouncer. He felt around in the pocket of his slacks (the internet had said to wear slacks to a strip club) and felt the folded piece of paper on which he'd printed his barcode and ticket number. There were only a few people ahead of him now, each presenting a ticket to the bouncer, who scanned the barcode with some handheld device before nodding them through the nearby doorway into the darkness beyond.
Jason extracted his ticket from his pocket and unfolded it. There was a ticket number- A7246685, a barcode, and a checkbox labeled "Contest". When Jason bought his ticket a week prior, checking this box had cost him an additional $25. He figured this whole thing was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, though, and the jpeg of a woman's flirtatious winking face proclaiming he could be a "lucky winner" gave him more of a boner than it had any right to, so what the hell.
The man in front of him was waved through the door and Jason approached the bouncer, ticket in hand. The bouncer was one of those ageless guys. He could have been Jason's age, a decade older, or anything in between. He was a large man, though not especially tall, sporting a dark suit and a Rolex watch. As Jason handed over the ticket, he noted the tattoos on the man's fingers. They were letters, one on each finger, in the way that you sometimes saw spelling out "love" or "hate" or maybe a year. In the bouncer's case, they spelled "chew". Well that was fucking stupid. Maybe it was the name of his dog or some shit? Jason was pretty sure that no one was that into 5 Gum.
"Contest, huh?" The bouncer said, examining the ticket. "You don't look like the type. Good luck to you, though."
Jason moved through the open doorway without questioning further, not wanting to hold up the line. He wasn't sure what the type looked like, but he was sure he probably wasn't it. He'd never been in a place like this before and probably wouldn't again. The whole thing really seemed like a waste of money, but hey. Might as well have the experience one time.
Experience wasn't something Jason had much of, truth be told. In his three decades, he'd never really been in a relationship and he doubted if he ever would. He'd had sex a few times in college with a girl he still sometimes texted with, but she had a boyfriend now and had never really been interested in pursuing much more with Jason anyway. That was okay. Jason certainly found women attractive and he spent plenty of time jacking off, but he wasn't certain if he really wanted a partner- either romantic or sexual. In some ways, commitment to a relationship seemed like an extreme choice to him and he wondered how anyone ever did it. Hookups, on the other hand, seemed like they'd get boring fast.
So, here he was. Jason supposed that he was at Forbidden Fruit to seek novelty. It seemed like he felt compelled to do that every so often. One time it was skydiving, another it was entering a backyard MMA match for Youtube. It was things that got him to feel. If you were feeling, you were living and maybe doing something worthwhile with your life. At least he hoped so.
The room wasn't so different from a theater- rows of gray padded chairs on an incline above a large open stage. Jason took a seat at about midway between the stage and the door he'd come through. Within a minute or two of having sat down, there were men seated on either side of him. It was hard to tell in the relative darkness, but it soon seemed as though it might be a full house.
Jason shifted in the darkness, feeling crowded and increasingly overheated. This wasn't the setup he'd expected a strip club to have. He was far too up close and personal with the other patrons. The men to his left and right seemed intent on staring straight ahead, despite the stage being empty, so Jason tried his best to follow their example. Maybe he'd be more comfortable once distracted by the show.
A pulse started. It wasn't quite music, though it was certainly coming through speakers, but it could certainly have passed for the heavy bass underscoring club music. In some ways, it reminded Jason of a heartbeat. Between the sound and the hot, sweaty conditions he found himself in, it was almost as though the auditorium were some oversized animal and he was inside of it. The light changed, intensifying slightly over the stage, as a voice sounded over the speakers.
"Introducing Amethyst!" came the robotic vocalization, monotone and tinny.
A woman strode onto the left end of the stage, smiling into the darkness of the audience. Her hair was a dark brown, hanging about her shoulders and framing the soft paleness of her skin. On her chest, she wore a garment which Jason had no name for. It was the shape of a bra or bikini, but made of leather and clutching her breasts as tightly as a second skin. At her waist, she wore a skirt. It reached nearly to the tops of her bare feet, which would have been unexpectedly modest were it not of a nearly-transparent silken material. Her legs were mostly bare beneath the thin fabric, but Jason couldn't quite tell if the woman was wearing any sort of underwear.
"...And Harper!"
Another woman entered the stage, this one from the opposite end. Her hair was darker than Amethyst's; Slightly shorter and more wavy. She wore a bra, covered over on one breast by rhinestones. She wore a skirt of red lace, which encircled her on the sides and rear but reached barely below her crotch in front. Her feet were clad in stockings of alternating black and orange stripes, looking like those one might expect to see as part of a witch costume.
The dancers moved toward each other, each slowly pirouetting until they stood facing each other in the center of the stage. Faces a fraction of an inch from each other, their lips met forcefully- locking together and devouring each other, smearing lipstick across each other's faces like warpaint.
The faces parted and the women sashayed around each other to stand back-to-back. They turned in a circle until Harper filled the audience's view. She caressed herself slowly, hands sliding gradually over her cheekbones, her jaw, her neck, her breasts, and finishing at the subtly toned muscles of her abdomen. She stepped aside then and Amethyst rotated to face the audience. Her breasts were bare now, their leather garment discarded on the floor of the stage. Jason felt his body react to the sight, his cock stirring to press against the clothes that held it in place. He wished he could touch those tits, squeeze them, suck them, maybe jack himself off with them.
Harper soon shed her rhinestone bra and the two dancers faced each other, pressing their chests together and grinding their crotches against each other's thighs. Amethyst flicked out her tongue, snake-like, teasing Harper's earlobe. This seemed to elicit a giggle, though Jason couldn't hear it over the heartbeat sound that still filled the room. Playfully, Harper gave a little bite to Amethyst's neck, making the pale girl smile. That was when it happened.
Amethyst lunged forward, her bared teeth closing around Harper's ear. Harper gave no sign of pain or distress, indeed both women's smiles never faltered, but when Amethyst pulled away she left a flat bloody hole on the side of her partner's head where an ear should have been.
