Authors note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Dancing Queen
Chapter One:
Gentlemen, how about a big hand for the wonderful lady leaving the main stage... let's hear it for 'Queeeniiieee'.
The sporadic, half-hearted applause from less than half of the dozen or so patrons at 'The Nipple Gaze' strip club followed the woman who, after collecting the items she'd shed during her performance, made her way off stage.
"Good set Queenie" Lara said as she brushed past, rearranging her large bust inside the too small glitter embossed bra she was wearing.
Queenie merely grunted in response, heading back to the so-called dressing rooms to tidy herself up. She found herself alone in the small gritty space the club's dancers used to change in and apply their make-up. The management had provided a line of vanity dressers for the use of the dancers. Six in total, running the length of one wall. Each one different from the others, paint chipped and fading, mirrors cracked, hastily repaired with strips of electrical tape. The furnishings looked like they'd been rescued from a series of car boot sales, which they probably had been.
Queenie sat on a stool in front of one of the dressers, picking up a small hand towel to begin daubing away the sweat she'd worked up on the stage. She looked at her reflection in the mirror as she did so. There was a time, not that long in the past, when she would have said she was admiring herself in the mirror. Not anymore, now she merely 'looked'. It wasn't that the reflection there was unkind to the reality, it was simply that seeing herself only served to remind her of what she had lost.
Time was the first thing, she was forty now and despite a liberal use of oils, ointments, creams and cosmetics, at best she appeared as a woman in her late thirties. Her station was another thing that was gone, for now at least. She had been a Queen of sorts, rich, popular, wanting for nothing. Back when she was Elenor Phillips, wife and socialite, not Queenie the stripper. Her loss of station then brought to mind another thing taken from her, her husband. Xavier 'King' Phillips had been one of the brightest stars in a brokerage firm, the youngest partner in its history. Together they had been an 'it' couple in Manhattan society, always with a party or an event to attend, never a dull moment in their lives.
For Xavier though, this life, his wife, hadn't been enough for him. He had strayed, some blonde haired, blue eyed personal assistant turning his head. Had that been it, Queenie could have forgiven him, could have made the best of things. After all, it wasn't like she hadn't had the occasional extra marital dalliance herself. But the idiot had managed to get the young woman pregnant. It seemed the little Miss perfect had no qualms about sleeping with a married man, but had serious moral issues about having an abortion.
That was when he should have come to her, shared the sordid little secret with his wife and his Queen could have devised a plan to make it all go away. Instead, the fool had tried to buy the young woman off, clumsy in his approach and demands. She'd resisted, lashing out angrily that she would tell the world about 'their love'.
Her husband had snapped, a momentary loss of control that had ended with the young woman lying dead at his feet. That moment of madness, he had murdered not only the woman and her unborn child but also Queenie's life of ease as well. Xavier had been arrested, charged and found guilty, sentenced to life for his terrible crime.
She had tried to distance herself from it all, shunning him at the trial, filing for divorce at the earliest opportunity. Too little, too late. The invitations to parties and events disappeared. Her former friends finding their calendars too full to see her. The final nail in the coffin that had been her life of luxury... a civil suit brought against her now ex-husband by the family of the slain girl, a suit that had seen all his assets, hers included, stripped and sold to pay the court-imposed settlement.
That's why she was here, now, in this place just a year later. This strip club was not unlike the one she'd started out in. A fresh faced twenty-year-old, stripping five nights a week to pay for a life of hedonistic fun. She'd met her husband that way, he was starting out, still a young trader at the firm. She'd quit dancing and married him inside a year, the good times starting then. Nineteen years later and she was back to square one.
Queenie had cleaned herself up by this point, the little trip down memory lane just long enough for her to 'get her face on'. Now she looked at herself with a critical eye. Her last set was over, for the remainder of the night she'd work the patrons in the bar, offering them a moment of company for the price of a drink, a private dance should they wish for more. This was where she could make a decent amount of money, so she needed to look her best.
For forty she could still turn heads. While she might not have the advantage of youth and massive fake breasts like many of the women working here, Queenie could take a lot of satisfaction in the way she looked. Her black hair was kept short, the curly ringlets full of volume. Her dark skin was wrinkle free and still tight around her throat, jaw and cheekbones. A petite woman, barely five feet tall in her bare feet, she had always worn heels whenever possible to add some inches to her stature. It was her athletic build that Queenie was proudest of. While she wasn't dragging double D breasts around, her slender and toned body with its respectable 34B cup was akin to that of a younger woman. She wouldn't admit it, not even to herself, but if she had a drawback in her features, it was the hard look her face seemed to permanently wear. It could have been attributed to the events of the year before but she'd seen herself losing the softness of youth long before that.
Inspection complete, Queenie finally made her way back to the club itself. She was in the same outfit she'd begun her last set it, knee-high black leather boots, a short black leather skirt and a white crop top, the scoop neck plunging down to augment her cleavage, the front of the top held in place with a single chain, stretched wide by the tight fit. She was the only black woman working that night and Queenie liked to wear lighter shades to highlight that fact, all done to pull a customer's eye in her direction.
Not that there was a lot of choice in the club that night. Mid-week was always slow but by the time she reappeared in the club, the number of men watching the stage, nursing the drinks in their hands had fallen from a dozen to just eight. Five of the men were familiar to her, their faces as recognisable as their reluctance to buy a drink or a private dance. That left three men to focus on. One, a man in his sixties, looked extremely uncomfortable sitting in the club. He constantly glanced at his phone, nervously swiping a thumb over the screen. Recently divorced or widowed Queenie thought to herself. The man's nervousness spiked as one of the other women working there approached him, her hand resting briefly on his shoulder. His flop sweat reaction confirmed the title of 'widower' in Queenie's mind. Such men found it hard enough coming to a club like this, much less participating or engaging with the women working there. So that left two others.
The first was a youngish man in his mid-twenties who was sat as close to the stage as he could get, one hand clutching a bottle of beer, the other nervously tapping his upper leg. If the room had been slightly darker, Queenie felt sure that free hand would have been bouncing on his own crotch. The young man stared up with rapt attention as Lara and her big augmented tits went through their routine. His wet lips that grew wetter still as he licked at them revealed to Queenie that he was a 'tit man' and would have no time or money for her.
So that left her with one lone option. Another young man, so young in fact that Queenie wondered if he'd used fake ID to gain entry to the club. If he was twenty-one years old it was by the skin of his teeth. Given his youth she had doubts he'd have much money to spend indulging her. Still, he was dressed well, very well now that she considered him. High end labels, expensive looking shoes. Before she could wander over, Colette, a young red head with a gravity defying bust and an ass to match, sashayed over to him, leaning forward across the table so that his eyes would be drawn to the Grand Canyon sized cleavage she sported. Oddly, he demurred, his refusal apparent despite Queenie being too far away to hear, the pout on Colette's face telling the story all by itself.
'Boy has good taste, in clothes and maybe women too' Queenie thought to herself, deciding to give him a minute before approaching him herself. She waited for Lara to finish, only the young man sat before the stage offering anything like an enthusiastic show of appreciation. Watching the well-dressed man offer a polite hand clap, Queenie made her move.
