Fair warning: this is a very slow story exploring the feelings of a woman discovering that she is an exhibitionist. There is nudity but no sex. It was written primarily as an exercise. Read on, if you care.
Let's get this out there. Confess it, like I used to do on second dates with the boys I met back then.
It's like this: when I was in college, I stripped for cash.
Telling this secret on the second date as a rule meant that the second one was usually the last. I never understood why guys couldn't handle that when you knew it was the same ones who wanted it.
I would guess that just about any one of the guys in my night-time life would have given his left testicle to go on a date with me, the naughty "Wendy" that they watched disrobe for them. But I never dated customers.
To most of the guys in my day-time life, when they found this out, I was damaged goods. Well, fuck them.
Campus was on the east side of the city, and over on the west side, in the older industrial area, were the strip clubs. I had met a girl in Sophomore English who eventually told me she was stripping and when I found out how much she was making for a few hours' work, I asked her to introduce me to the owner of the place where she danced.
He invited me to come over one Saturday night to sit in the DJ's booth and watch the dancers. The place was called Lacey's, and while it looked like a typical old mill-town shotgun house from the outside, on the inside it had been redone as a modern nightclub. It had racks of colored lighting in the ceiling, mirrors on the walls, a high-powered sound system, a bar, and a half-dozen or so round tables on pedestals with high stools scattered around. Up a narrow flight of stairs there was a room with several couches strewn around. That was where the private dances were.
What made the main room different from a nightclub was that, instead of a dance floor, it had a long, narrow stage, surrounded by barstools and a ledge for patrons to set their drinks. The stage was made of polished wood and it had three poles – one in the far back of the place, one in the middle, and one up front, close to where the bouncers collected the cover charge from guests, close enough that you could feel the night air wash in when the door opened and a new customer came in.
I settled nervously in the DJ booth, listening to the muted music while the owner poured us some drinks. He sat down beside me and we looked down through the glass. From here, the DJ had a complete view of the main room below, and he would make his announcements and play music while pretty young women came out on the runway after every third song. Each new girl was usually dressed in some frilly lingerie and high-heeled shoes to start, always with a garter on one thigh, and these young women would come out and tease the lonely men who hunched in the seats pressed up against the stage, one at a time collecting dollar bills from them in their turn.
As the music throbbed and the lights played across the stage, the dancer would eventually remove her clothes, either dropping them lazily onto the stage or tossing them impishly to one of the bouncers with a knowing smile, until at last she was bare – save for the garter and a growing bloom of dollar bills – alone there in the midst of the men.
Once she was nude, the girl would make the rounds of the edge of the stage one last time, squatting or posing with legs wide open, displaying herself in front of each man, collecting his tip, until her third song had finished.
Once in a while a girl would crawl around the stage on her hands and knees, exposing not just her genitals but also her bare little ass to the faces of those men, and sometimes the girl would use her hands on her behind to spread herself even more. But always, finally, as her third song played to its end, each dancer would stand one last time and strut her bare body around one of the poles, as the DJ announced "give it up for Sandy!" Or Brandy, or Desiree.
Then the dancer would walk toward the back of the runway and the curtained opening that led to the dressing room, to disappear and be replaced by the next pretty girl on the stage, only the bravest of them bearing red marks on her knees as she left.
I sat in the booth that first night, looking down through the colored glass at the scene. It was so dirty and erotic what they did in there, a handful of young, slender girls, all smiling and stepping out of their clothing, sharing their beauty with men, trading their soft naked skin for one-dollar bills.
The next scantily-clad performer, it turned out, was my Sophomore English classmate. Watching her come out on stage, I squirmed a little in my chair. I was used to seeing her on campus in baggy sweatpants and a loosely-fitting t-shirt, with her hair drawn up casually behind in a clip.
Tonight, inside this place, she was someone else entirely. Her wavy brown hair fell down softly around her shoulders, and instead of her modest classroom things, she wore nothing but a lacy black bra and a G-string, a black and red garter around her right thigh. She had on high black stiletto heels, and a smile as big as the room that beamed, "look here, boys."
As a new song pulsed from the sound system, she strutted out onto the stage, sliding one leg seductively in front of the other and swaying her hips, then resting a hand on the center pole and twirling herself around it.
She teased the boys by sticking out her backside, swaying to the throbbing music and playing with the straps of her bra. She smiled invitingly and collected a first round of tips from the men by the stage, sometimes moving deftly to avoid those who tried to touch her. Then she took some time exposing her top, eventually dropping her bra in a little pile on the stage. I was sipping a cocktail and seeing my classmate's bare breasts as she danced in a room full of swirling lights and generally drunken, horny men.
I gazed down through the glass, hoping she could not look up and see me watching her. I followed the young nymph as she danced for these ravenous men. Honestly, it was not so much the sight of her breasts that I found so erotic as it was the thought of someone I knew baring them here in this place with these men. I was in awe of her style and her grace.
I knew that I was supposed to think that I was witnessing her exploitation, but the lilt in her step and the way she tossed her head wearing just her G-string and garter made me wonder if she wasn't somehow enjoying it.
Through the glass of the booth, I could hear the muted sounds of the music and the whistles and hollers of appreciation that she was earning from the men. She spun around the front pole once and then, again bending seductively at the waist and gyrating her slender little bum in the face of an entranced customer, she hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her bottoms and slid them down past the curve of her thighs and helped them fall down to the stage. The skimpy fabric caught on a heel for an instant before she kicked them away to the side. I remember thinking what a rush she must have felt at that intimate moment.
