Virgin on Bourbon Street

It was a little after ten when Brian tiptoed through the dark hotel room to the foot of his parents' bed. "Dad." Too soft. He cleared his throat and said, "Dad."

His mother stirred. "Huh?"

"I'm going for a walk."

"What?"

"You said I could go for a walk around the French Quarter if I was packed and ready to go. I am."

His mother said, "I don't think so. It isn't safe."

"You said I could."

"Your father said you could. I say you can't."

His father said, "For God's sake, it's a Monday morning, not Mardi Gras." His dad looked at him. "Be back by noon. I mean it."

"I will!" He grabbed his wallet and headed for the door.

"Leave your wallet," his mother said. "Put your money in your sock so pickpockets don't get it.

"Pickpockets?" Brian asked.

"Jesus Christ," his exasperated father said. "How much money do you have?"

"A hundred and forty dollars."

"Let me see," his mother said, and made him count out the seven twenties.

His father said, "Come back with all of it. Don't go spending it on junk."

"I might stop and get some beignets."

"Fine. But that's it. And back by noon."

"Can I take the camera?"

His dad sighed. "OK."

He trotted through the door and it slid shut and there was silence, blessed silence.

He was free.

He jogged down the stairs and through the lobby and was on Rampart Street in fifteen seconds. Already the air was heavy and damp and he knew it would be another scorcher. But who cared about that now? He was on his own, a man about town, and what a town! New Orleans, the Big Easy. He could see himself back home in Pittsburgh, telling his buddies about the forbidden joys of the busiest street in the world, the one and only Bourbon Street.

The past week had been utter hell. They'd flown to Phoenix to spend time with Brian's grandparents. It should have been a lot of fun, golf and hiking and lounging in the pool, but a freak storm rained out two whole days, and then Brian came down with the flu. The trip was a complete loss.

His parents drove him nuts, he thought on purpose. He started college in the fall and they were still trying to get him to forget Penn State and go to Pitt. "If you went to Pitt, you could live here and take the bus to class," his mother said, unintentionally making the case against Pitt absolutely air-tight. All he had to do was convince them to let him go. The problem was, he had no idea how. and he didn't know if he had the guts to stand up to them.

He walked up St. Anne's Street and admired the pastel-painted houses and their formidable defenses. Every house was guarded by a tall wrought-iron fence, the tops of the fences festooned with barbed wire, metal spikes, even shards of broken glass. He grinned, thinking of some drunken slob, desperate for a quiet place to piss, climbing up and getting a very rude surprise at the top. He took pictures of the most lethal-looking contraptions and moved along.

Bourbon Street was mostly deserted but it was still a remarkable sight. He looked downtown and it stretched on forever, block after block after block, an vast avenue of full of forbidden delights. And he had two glorious hours to explore them.

It was already getting oppressively humid, and Brian paused in front of a saloon to soak up the freezing air blasting out of its open door. He walked a few feet and there was another bar, it's door open, sub-arctic air creating a cone of cold just outside the door. The frigid air felt wonderful on his skin.

It was too much to take in all at once. He walked past a karaoke bar, a souvenir shop, a three-star restaurant, and a place that sold all sorts of voodoo trinkets and other spooky stuff. And the chaotic jumble of bars and shops and restaurants continued to the horizon. There was this little hole in the wall, barely big enough for five people to stand in, that sold frozen daquiris. A pretty blonde girl with very large breasts and a tight T-shirt tended plastic tubs filled with different colored slurries. It was 10AM and she already had a half-dozen customers. Unreal.

He walked past a storefront and stopped cold. The sign said, "Nude Girls!", the two-word combination most likely to get the attention of an 18-year-old boy. It was a strip joint, obviously, a low-rent, seedy place with a bright green awning over the doorway. The entrance was covered by thick plastic slats, the kind that keep the cold inside a meat locker.

"Nice place," he murmured to himself, trying to imagine the goings-on in a place like this. His mother would literally kill him if he went in a place like this, actually break his neck and dump his body in the woods. Even if she saw him looking at it she'd flip. He thought about taking a picture, just to freak her out, but he knew better. Freaking out Mom was a losing game.

He remembered that ghastly day when his mother walked in on him masturbating in the bathroom. Did she turn away in embarrassment, or run away screaming? No. She grabbed him by the arm, dragged him down to the car, Brian desperately trying to pull his pants up, and took him to see their parish priest. There he was subjected to an hour-long lecture on the evils of self-abuse by a 65-year-old man who probably hadn't had an erotic thought in his life. Father Walter, perpetually befuddled, oblivious to the outside world, telling Brian about how spilling his seed on the ground was a ticket to eternal damnation. That's the phrase he used, spilling his seed.

That day convinced him how ludicrous his Catholic upbringing was, the hypocrisy, the disconnection from reality. Once he got to school he would never set foot in a church again. He wondered how badly his own sexual health had been damaged by that day. He couldn't know for sure, because he was still very much a virgin, never getting beyond a shy kiss on the lips with a girl.

He walked a few yards past the club and lifted his camera to take a picture of a restaurant that had a second-floor balcony with a magnificent cast-iron railing. He was taking aim when a voice behind him purred, "You do know you aren't seeing the real Bourbon Street, don't you?"

He turned and there was a woman standing right behind him. She was maybe five years younger than his mother, but she looked like no mother he'd ever seen. She was very attractive, with thick black hair, sly brown eyes, and lips painted a rich, creamy red. Her perfume was exotic and oddly spicy, her scent surrounded him in a miasma of feminine softness.

She was nearly a foot shorter than Brian, and her petite body was almost obscenely curvaceous. She was dressed all in white-corset, garter belt, stockings, heels. Her big milky breasts jiggled inside the cups of her corset.

Brian looked at her and his mouth went slack as he stared. He couldn't help staring. He'd never seen a woman up close wearing such sexy lingerie, and the fact that he was standing with her in the middle of what is normally the busiest street in the world added to the shock. "What?" he asked in a weak voice.

She reached out and tickled his belly with fingers tipped with long, red fingernails. "Here you are having a walk around my town, but you aren't seeing us at our best." She stepped even closer and put a stockinged knee between his thighs. She pointed down Bourbon Street, toward downtown. "You need to come for Mardi Gras, honey. The biggest party in the world. Can you imagine, as far as you can see, people jammed together as close as you and me." She put her other arm around his waist and slowly, gently, tugged him toward the tiny awning covering the entrance of the club.

Brian let himself be led, paralyzed by her overt sexiness, his nervous system overwhelmed by the sensation of her fingernails caressing him just above his belt. He was actually shaking. She didn't seem to notice. She said, "Everyone all packed together, everyone having a good time, no inhibitions, no worries." They were under the awning and she turned him so his back faced the street, his big body keeping passersby from seeing her clearly behind him. She slowly untucked his shirt from his shorts slid her bare hand under his shirt. her nails dancing across his belly.

"And everyone dressed up in sexy costumes, showing themselves off for everyone to see. This is what I wore for Mardi Gras." She leaned away to give him a better look. "Do you like it? Do you think I look nice?"

Brian nodded like a drunk. The woman smiled and pulled his hips against her. His erection stuck out like a chisel. She leaned up and kissed his cheek. "You're so polite." Again her hand disappeared under his shirt, and now her fingers probed the waistband of his shorts. Brian's trembling grew worse. He looked over his shoulder. Other people walked past and paid them no mind, and Brian guessed that this wasn't the most shocking thing Bourbon Street had ever witnessed, a sexy woman toying with a petrified teenage boy. He turned back and her dark eyes smiled up at him.

"What's your name, honey?" she asked.

"Brian," he stammered.

She leaned back for just a second and shook his limp hand. "My name is Vanessa. It's nice to meet you, Brian."

He managed a sickly smile. "Nice to meet you, too."

She released her hand and her fingers resumed their burrowing in his shorts. "Where are you from, Brian?

"Pittsburgh."

"Are you in town with your mommy and daddy?"

He nodded. "Our flight leaves at four," he said, hoping she would release him from her tender clutches.

Her red lips curled in a dramatic frown. "Oh, that's too bad, you won't get a chance to see everything the French Quarter has to offer." Then those creamy lips spread into a mischievous smile. "But I can show you something very special, something you'll remember a long, long time." She took his hand again and said, "Come on, darling."

He wanted to pull away. He wanted to jerk his hand free and run, run the seven blocks back to St. Anne's Street and then sprint back to the hotel. Get on the plane, get back to Pittsburgh, get away from this terrifying woman. But he didn't. He couldn't. The spell she'd cast over him with her lips, her scent, her fingernails, was far too strong for him to resist. She pushed aside the thick plastic slats that served as a doorway to the club, and he was taken from the safety of the street.

It was very dark inside the club. The overhead lights were off, the only illumination coming from soft lights behind the bar and a bright green EXIT sign above the hallway in the back. Brian could see a circular stage with tables set around it, and a long runway that ran through the center of the club. The big room was empty, except for a big, bearded man whose bare arms were covered with dark tattoos. The smell of stale beer and sharp strawberry disinfectant competed with Vanessa's heady perfume and eventually carried the day. This wasn't what they called a "gentleman's club". It was a dive that had naked girls straddling poles.

"This is my place." Vanessa said. "I've been entertaining here for nearly fifteen years. We're a New Orleans institution." She led him by the hand toward the bar. "I'm going to take our guest on a tour," she told the scary bartender.

He shrugged his massive shoulders. "OK with me," he said, bored. He stared at Brian with obvious contempt and his terror multiplied tenfold. He'd heard about the crime in New Orleans, how it was for a time the murder capital of the United States. Did people here lure innocent tourists into darkened clubs to rob them, kill them, sell their organs on the black market?

He wanted to cry as the woman led him down a darkened corridor and up a creaky staircase. It was totally absurd, this sexy woman in luxurious white lingerie walking up stairs that could have easily been in a run-down tenement. "I want you to meet some friends of mine," she whispered.

They came to a door and Vanessa tapped gently. "Is everyone decent?" she said.

"No," a bored female voice called from inside. Vanessa smiled and opened the door. She made room for Brian to go in first, and once they were inside she closed the door. He looked around the room. There were four girls in the room lounging around on various pieces of beat-up green leather furniture. None looked to be more than 21 years old. Three of the girls were white-a tall girl with straight platinum blonde hair, a chubby girl with big jiggy breasts and curly, dirty-blonde hair, and a willowy redhead with pale, pale skin. The fourth girl was black, and maybe a few years older than the others. She was topless, and her huge, over-inflated breasts floated on her chest like two volleyballs.

"Girls, this is Brian," Vanessa said, wrapping her arm around his waist and snuggling close. "This is his first time in N'Awlins."

The four girls looked at him with an odd combination of indifference and amusement. "Hey, Brian," the black girl said, drawling out his name so it sounded like, "Braaan." He looked around. All the girls had dark, disinterested eyes that added an even shaper edge to his nervousness.

"I was telling Brian about how it's too bad he's here when it's so quiet around here," Vanessa said. "He needs to come back and visit us during Mardi Gras."

"Oh, yeahhh," the black girl said, rising to her feet. Her giant breasts thrust out before her and wobbled stiffly as she walked up to him. "Biggest party on earth." Brian couldn't meet her eyes, her big tits begged for close inspection.

She cupped her breasts in her hands. "You're momma probably tells you it isn't nice to stare." Brian felt his face flush red and he looked her in the face. Her smile was lazy, practiced. He felt like he was in the middle of a performance that had been put on a hundred times before, but he didn't know his lines. He just had to follow where these scary, sexy women took him.

There was a flash of flame to his left, the red-haired girl put a cigarette in her lips and lit it. It broke his concentration for a second and Vanessa said, "Doesn't Charita have lovely breasts?"

"What?" Brian said.

Vanessa gently caressed the black girl's perfectly round globes. "Aren't they wonderful?"

"They should be, what I paid for them," Charita snorted.

"Do you mind if our young friend touches them?" she asked.

Charita shrugged, and turned to present her big tits to him. "Go ahead."

Brian tried not to stutter. "No, no, really, it's OK, really."

Charita said, "You ever touch a girl's tits before?" He shook his head. She raised her arms above her head, tightening her cavernous cleavage. "I bet the girls back home don't have titties like these."

He shook his head. She took his hands and put them on her breasts. He squeezed them tentatively, the hard, firm flesh hardly giving under his touch. His pale skin almost seemed to glow when contrasted with the dark, smooth skin of her body.

"You have any black girls in your school back home?" Charita said.

Brian caressed her breasts with moist palms. "A few."

"One? Two?"

"Just one," he admitted.

She snorted, and put her hand on the front on his shorts. Her fingernails were long and painted with a glossy, opaque finish. "You ever take her out someplace nice, show her off around town, take her to meet your parents?"

"She, um, she has a boyfriend," he lied. In fact he barely knew the girl, and felt guilty that was the case.

"Righhhhht," she said, her tone showing she didn't believe him. Her fingers traced the line of his erection inside his shorts. Brian trembled from head to foot as her nails found the head of his cock. "You ever jack off thinking about black girls?"

He didn't know what to say. "I don't do that."

All the women laughed out loud. The room suddenly seemed very small, claustrophobic, the air thick with the smells of perfume, tobacco, disinfectant, and excitement.

Charita didn't smile, she just kept stroking his cock through his shorts. "Bet you jack off thinking about a black girl tonight." She turned around, bent over, and rubbed her buttocks against his crotch. She said, "Tell me, what do you like better? Big tits, or a nice round ass?"

Vanessa patted Charita's left cheek and eased her away. "What does that matter, when you have both?" Charita smiled at her boss, and said, "He's got a big cock for a skinny boy."

"He does?" drawled the redhead smoking the cigarette. She stood and slowly crossed the room. Brian tried to back away but Vanessa held him fast with a gentle palm in the small of his back. She had cloudy blue eyes and wore black raspberry lipstick. She held the cigarette at her side and put her warm palm on the front of his shorts. "That's a big one," she said. She put the cigarette to her lips and blew a milky stream at the ceiling. "Can I see it?"

Vanessa caressed the girl's cheek. "Of course, Janine."

Brian tried to pull away. It was impossible-he had to see what would happen next. The red-haired girl unbuckled and unzipped him and pulled his shorts down around his ankles. He felt the cool air circulate around his penis. He could hear the ocean in his ears, it was like his brain was full of ginger ale. The world was reduced to his narrow field of vision, which was focused on the pretty girl kneeling between his legs.

She wrapped her fingers around his cock and Brian trembled from head to toe. It was the first time a girl had ever touched him. The other girls crowded around close. He felt fingernails tickle his ass and knew Vanessa was standing behind him.

She said, "Is this the first time a woman has seen you naked?"

"Yes!" Brian gasped.

"Besides your mommy, of course. And I bet she's never seen you like this." She tweaked the fat end of his erection and he groaned. Vanessa helped him step out of his shorts and boxers, and pulled his shirt over his head. He was totally naked in front of them now, his cock throbbing with every beat of his pounding heart.

Charita knelt next to the redhead and gave her a look. "Well?" she demanded.

The redhead peeked around Brian's right hip. "Is it OK??

Vanessa said. "Go ahead, honey."

The redhead still held her cigarette in the slim fingers of her right hand and used her left to heft his erection to her lips. Brian squirmed, waiting breathlessly for her to lick him, and when she did, when her pink tongue slithered between his dark lips and caressed the big bulb at the head of his cock he squeezed his eyes shut and moaned like the frightened boy he was.

The pretty redhead engulfed the head of his penis in her mouth and began sucking him slowly, her berry-red lips tight around his shaft. Her head went up and down his cock eight, nine, ten times, before Charita put a finger on the girl's chin and eased her lips away. She licked her lips and then put the cigarette to her lips again. She slowly blew a cloud to the ceiling. "Was it OK?"

Brian almost cried, "Yes!" but the question was directed elsewhere. "You'll learn," Charita said. She said, "Go on, Ashley." The skinny platinum blonde leaned over and her silky hair formed a canopy over his groin. Again he felt warm lips surround his penis, felt that incredible slippery friction. This girl worked him faster, her head bobbing back and forth as she sucked his dick. She let him slip from her lips and used her tongue up and down his shaft, and Brian writhed because the sensations were too intense to bear.

The chubby girl stroked his inner thigh with her long pink nails. He turned to look at her and saw a kittenish smile on her lips. Her lipstick was the same color as her nails. "You like that, don't you?"

He nodded hard. "Yes."

She scratched his thigh with her nails, raking his skin gently, and it drove him crazy. "I could make you come just with these," she said, now letting her nails glide across his chest. The platinum blonde rose to her feet and the chubby girl leapt off the couch and settled between his legs. She didn't suck him into her mouth, she just wrapped her long-nailed fingers around his pole and started pumping. She jerked him off and used her tongue on the crown of his cock, her tongue as pink as her lips, a stiff, flexible, slippery muscle caressing his tip with maddening speed. She looked up into his eyes and he couldn't look away, she had him totally under her control.