Any Port In A Storm 1

(Author's note: I'm revisiting this story to add back in the deleted sex-scene, which is mostly my own imagination, because so many readers felt this story was like birthday cake without the ice cream. If you like the newer version, or not, please comment.)

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This is one of those stories that could have started with "I have a friend who ..." or perhaps "Once when I was young ..." However, neither of those is strictly true, although this story is essentially factual. The names have been changed to protect the innocent or guilty; take your pick which applies. This is not my story, but rather the story of one close to me. I have pieced this together from comments and a few shared secrets from the lady in question and from her husband as they try to get past these times and these events. All this took place more than a decade ago and you will surmise, dear reader, that some of this has been filled in from my imagination, as I could not have witnessed the specifics, nor were those details shared with me. Other parts of it, are right on the money, and if not in the proper sequence, are as complete as my knowledge allows.

The lady of this tale is called Katherine and during this period her live-in boyfriend was Daniel. I say lady with the greatest love and respect because she is exactly that, a lady of the highest order. She is soft spoken and loving to a fault. She cares deeply for everyone around her and cannot love in half measures, but rather throws her entire soul and being into any relationship. During the years she spent with Daniel, I saw her change from a modest and circumspect woman, very demure in her dress and manner, to one quite bold and provocative. I concluded that she had grown out of her childish modesty into a normal sexually active young woman. I tried to like Daniel, although he seemed beneath her. I guess my reaction was normal for one in the role of parent; you always want the best for your child, but a grown child makes his or her own decisions with little regard for your wishes. It's only recently that I learned that what I could not warm up to in Daniel was the tiniest part of many things that I detest with every fiber of my being.

Kati was always the most precocious of my brood of four, perhaps it was her tawny red hair or her startling green eyes, but privately I think it was her quick and eager mind. If she had just spent half the energy that she devoted to taking the easy way, the fun way, to more serious pursuits, then life would have been a breeze for her. Instead she partied and played fashion plate and dated bad boys. She was working at Knockers, the beer and pizza joint with the one-size-fits-all tees and shorts the waitresses were required to wear when Daniel and his buddies picked her table. Later, Daniel would often comment about how well Kati's uniform fit her. The standard "small" shorts and tees would have been cute on her petite frame. I say "would have" because, like most of the Knocker's girls, Kati had implants, and the full D's looked huge on her 32 inch chest. Knocker's made no bones about exploiting its all girl staff.

It wasn't long after when nineteen-year old Kati and Danny decided to share an apartment together. This was also when we began to see less and less of her. It seems that holidays were always with Danny's folks or there were jet skis to ride or a trip to the mountains or some other activity that my life partner and I were not to be a part of. Kati accumulated more cute, but borderline-sluttish outfits. She had her belly button pierced and later her tongue. She even commented that the tongue piercing gave her something to do besides eat and she hoped it would help with her dieting. Kati was still looking for the easy way it seems. I later overheard her telling her younger sister, "Guys love tongue toys when you go down on them." I was biting my own tongue not to admit that I had heard and I secretly rejoiced when hers came unscrewed and she swallowed it. The tongue is a healing place and a hole only stays open if you keep it constantly filled, so this at least was a passing fascination.

During these early stages of her relationship with Danny dark clouds began to appear. We were on a shopping trip and I offered to buy her some darling little boy cut panties which she dismissed out of hand with the remark, "Oh, I've stopped wearing underpants, Danny doesn't like them!" I again bristled at Danny's controlling ways, telling myself that Kati was old enough to make her own decisions and live by them.

Knocker's was a pathetic excuse for a job. Each server was responsible for the tab for all assigned tables, even though entire parties frequently exited the door right past the hostess. While the server was back in the kitchen picking up an order or doing a thousand menial tasks like uncapping their beers or dumping their dirty dishes, they could make a hasty exit and her pay would get docked

The first cracks in Kati's happy-go-lucky demeanor began to appear just after her twentieth birthday. She complained about Danny, saying only that no one knew what she had to put up with. Danny was too demanding and too typically male, but this was not unusual for Kati's standard volatile relationships with men.

What she did next shocked me even more. She decided to dance in a topless club in Dallas (about fours hours drive away) and swore me to secrecy that I would not tell her biological father. What can one do? If I had forbade Kati to do this, she would have rebelled and done it anyway. I opted instead to keep her secret and helped her with stage clothes and actually made a visit to the club when she was performing to make sure everything was legitimate. Kati seemed to grieve over this decision to perform. Certainly the money was good compared to Knocker's, but she seemed to have to psych herself into doing the degrading job. She would drive out on Friday afternoon to dance from 8 PM to 4 AM, crash at a cheapie motel, do it again Saturday night, then drive home and crash again. One of the other dancers, Suzie, also commuted to Dallas and she and Kati became cohorts in crime. Suzie eventually relocated there and Kati often made use of Suzie's couch instead of the $29-a-night place. This also allowed her to grab a few hours sleep before hitting the roads on Sunday morning, which helped everyone's stress level, including mine.

I first met Suzie the night I dropped into Zillionaire's and sat at a table in a dark corner of the smoky club. The smoke was so thick in the place and the lighting was so dim, I wasn't even able to pick Kati out at first. The fact that she was smoking a cigarette and had her back to me didn't help. Also, I would have never guessed it was her in that bizarre black vinyl outfit that seemed to consist of strategically placed dog leashes wrapped around her body above the connected thong. I later learned that the Dominatrix getup improved her tips significantly and that it actually belonged to Suzie. The dancers frequently traded makeup, insider information, and costumes and discussed how to "skin the fish" more effectively.

A patron of one of these clubs is a "fish", if he tips with dollar bills; he's a "skate", obviously reference to "cheapskate." If he tips with hundred dollar bills, and there were plenty of those in Dallas; he's a "whale". Anyone in between was a "shark", something to be approached with caution, lest it bite. I also learned that these clubs are full of shrewd women who mostly dislike the customers and regard it as a game, where your take home cash is your score and you lose points for doing anything that doesn't keep the money rolling in. Texas permits full nude dancing, but that involves steady payoffs to various local VIP's and ultimately the operating expenses are passed along to the dancers. Therefore, most of the clubs are strictly topless and each club has it's own set of rules and standards.

Suzie was a veteran at the young age of twenty-two. She was a voluptuous blonde with sparkling blue eyes and a cute turned up nose. She was a naturally curvy girl that you'd expect to see captaining the high school cheerleading squad (she done that) or running for senior class president. She was the perfect girl next door, save that she had scars under her arms from the implants and that she'd spent a good portion of high school on her back or knees or other fun positions. She was a very practical, very sexual, very self-assured woman, and Kati's friend and confidant. It was Suzie that tried a few nights at the nudie bar and pronounced it "bullshit". "Christ," she reported to Kati, "there I was balanced on the back of a chair so this shark could look INSIDE me, and all for the same lousy twenty bucks. Keep your t-back on Kati, the tips are just as good and you don't risk breaking your neck."

Each club had a back stage "Mom" that helped the girls dress and kept a modicum of peace, but she was paid 10% of the tips. The club took another 20% of the tips, to cover security and DJ's. Dancers bought their own drinks and food. Of course, a dancer made fifty cents on each drink the customer bought at five dollars a pop and which was essentially colored water. Dancers collected $2 for a bottle of champagne and nothing from going into the VIP room. The club got $150 for that, and the dancer got $50 from the customer. Did I mention that you had to hire two dancers to go into the VIP room and you had to buy two $50 bottles of champagne? Ah yes, the money rolled in!

Dancers love to foster the image, which is, of course, part of the tease, that table dances are more intimate upstairs (a semi-private area) or in the VIP room. Security monitors the upstairs area directly and the VIP rooms via closed circuit TV. It's actually club rules rather than state law that dancers must have something over their pussies and nipples. Zillionaire's required you to sign up to dance in rotation (pay that DJ) and otherwise you worked the tables. Dancers wore lip-gloss on their nipples and t-backs on the bottom. A t-back is an opaque thong, nothing translucent, nothing sheer. The dancer can move it around, even hold it out for the insertion of a bill, but brother, you weren't going to see the goods. Customers could never touch the dancers, although the dancers touched the customers. All of this was intended to control the situation. The dancers love it when a customer breaks the rules, because then they can get irate and get a bigger tip. If security steps in, then they get tipped bigger still, or you get ejected from the club.

Each set consisted of one dance in your dress or something that more or less passed for street wear, then during a 15 second pause you unceremoniously removed your street wear and danced a second song in your t-back. There was no stripping to it; just one dance with your breasts exposed (with lip-gloss) and one without. If a customer approached the stage, the dancer humped an imaginary partner or worked the pole, or brushed his crotch. She would typically whisper something like, "I like you, do you want a table dance?" and then shake her boobs in the fish's face. When things got slow, one dancer would come up to tip another, this time with actual kisses, actual gropes, and other contrived actions to simulate a Lesbian encounter, because this invariably improved the score.

It was Suzie that helped Kati perfect her act, nuzzling her glossed nipples and groping her pert behind theatrically. Kati often traded back with Suzie, so no net money changed hands although a twenty or fifty was passed back and forth. All of this was part of the gimmick or "twist" in dancer-speak. It was all designed to keep the fish in the frying pan, to send them home light in the wallets and blue in the balls. Unaccompanied women were not permitted to be guests in the club, so the rare woman customer was typically a girl friend or wife indulging her partner or her own curiosities. The no touch rule for female customers was rather like the ploy between dancers, with one tiny exception; the guests weren't in on the ploy.

Kati was watching from a table as Suzie expertly worked the stage when a thirty-something woman in blue denim shorts and a midriff Daisy Mae blouse approached the with a dollar in hand. Suzie immediately went into her over-the-top theatrics and kissed the woman firmly on the mouth. Kati stifled a smile at Suzie's boldness and mentally logged an entry for "female fish". Kati was sitting to Suzie's left and the frumpish blonde with the emerging cellulite had her ample ass to her loud and boisterous friend at the table. Suzie dropped her lips to the woman's neckline and started the typical scene, but this one went suddenly further. Suzie extracted the blonde's large left breast free of the bra cup and immediately covered the coral nipple and areola with her rapidly suckling lips. After a second or two she replaced the breast and rearranged the woman's clothes, before taking her tip and sending her off with the titty-shake and a whisper to the ear.

The blonde, now glowing, sat back down with her date and when asked what had happened clearly responded "Oh, she was tickling me between the boobs." They departed soon afterward with the lie apparently accepted and no one the wiser, save Kati from her advantageous angle. The wheels were turning furiously in her head, because of the way Suzie had caressed the woman was thrilling and interesting in strange and compelling way.

The dressing room chatter sounded like the female version of a men's locker room after a winning football game. This is not to say that there was not petty jealousy and a certain amount of cat fighting and vindictiveness. Things disappeared from lockers, costumes accidentally got things spilled on them. A dancer kept her take with her at all time, often trading in small bills for larger ones through the Mom. Where does one keep the money when all you have on is a t-back? The answer is obvious, and that is yet another reason why a fish never sees what a girl has in her panty. Of course, if you have been drinking a bit too much, trying to bolster your courage, and you momentarily forget that you have half a dozen hundreds in your crotch when you stop to pee, and don't remember it until after you flush...

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Kati came out of the stall, suddenly sober and crying miserably. "Kati, what's wrong, honey?" Suzie asked, taking her friends hand. "Are you sick?"

"No, just stupid and drunk. I just flushed six or eight hundred dollars down the toilet. God, I'm such a failure at everything" she sobbed.

"Don't worry about it, it happens to everyone one time or another. Someone's always out to fuck you, and failing that, life will find a way to fuck you. Stop crying please, I did OK tonight and I'll share with you. You're still sleeping over before you head home aren't you?"

Kati suddenly staggered, the weight of the world and the impact of the alcohol making her head throb. "No, I'm going home right now!" This was false bravado, of course, because Suzie was practically holding her up. Also, Kati had parked her Eclipse at Suzie's apartment earlier that evening, and left her keys on the breakfast bar. At a minimum, she had to ride back to Suzie's place in her Camaro. The world lurched again and Kati realized with horror that she'd not made her final deposit of the evening in the stained bowl of the dressing room's single commode. As she knelt on the dirty floor, half naked and vulnerable, vomiting up drinks and club food, Suzie held her hair out of the water and gently stoked her bare back.

When she finished, Suzie had a wet paper towel ready to wipe her face. Suzie quickly packed both their athletic bags with the dancers paraphernalia. Kati peeled off the rest of her costume, slipped into her jeans and her sports bra and sweater. By that time Suzie was dressed as well and had the Camaro at the side door and their bags safely stowed in the back seat.

She drove carefully through the dark streets, still holding Kati's hand and after a few moments, nosed into a space at the local all-night pancake joint. Kati followed meekly in Suzie's wake and collapsed into the booth feeling wretched. Suzie slid in beside her and ordered coffee and scrambled eggs for two.

Before Kati could protest her lack of funds and her lack of appetite, Suzie was forking eggs into her mouth and ordering her to eat. Kati chewed and swallowed almost without thinking, her brain just starting to emerge from the haze and incredible tiredness setting in. Kati warmed to her friend's mothering ways, grateful for once to not be making decisions, for just a while to not be responsible if things didn't work out.

By the time they returned to Suzie's apartment, showered, brushed their teeth and donned pajamas Kati was starting to feel coherent, and thoroughly despondent. Emerging from the bathroom in a long pink tee with a kitten on the front she was surprised to see Suzie bending over the bed arranging pillows. Suzie's shaved slit peeked between her pink thighs when her yellow baby doll rose. The surprise was that Suzie was obviously setting the bed up for two and the couch was covered with laundry and both of their athletic bags. Again, Suzie pre-empted her protests by saying, "Look, there's plenty of room in here and after the night you've had you shouldn't be on that rotten sofa. Besides, I thought we might have a little talk, if you are up to it."

Kati meekly sat down on the edge of the bed and Suzie knelt at her feet and took both of her hands. Suzie's blue eyes were full of concern and compassion as she looked up at Kati's and asked, "How long have we been friends? Don't you think it's time that you trusted me?"

And with that it spilled out of her, all the vitriol, all the poison. Kati had never wanted to be a dancer; that had been Danny's idea, even her stage name, Dani, was homage to him. Danny was a wannabe Dominant, and Kati submitted to him in ways that degraded her. She'd caught Danny cheating, and not only with women. Each time she had forgiven him, each time he swore it was his last. Their lovemaking had been so sweet in the beginning, so wonderfully naughty. Danny had tried to do anal on her, but it hurt her terribly. Danny was a veteran, and one evening she pushed her right fist into his anus and stroked his penis with her left. That had been strange but it was an experiment to be tried on a lark. Except Danny had wanted more and more. Danny had gotten along so well with his boss at the advertising agency. They were invited to a weekend at his house on the lake. Except Boss and Wife were swingers and they'd loosen up by skinny-dipping first. Kati had demanded that Danny take her home and had packed their things. Then Boss had entered the bedroom and said "You owe me a blow job, my wife is downstairs giving Danny one right now." Again Danny had promised, had sworn this was the last time, but it never, never was. At the worst point, Danny had brought a girl home and fucked her right in their bed with Kati watching and fondling the girl's breasts.

Suzie had listened to it all, holding Kati's hands as she sobbed out her story. The lights had been dimmed and in the tiny hours of the morning Kati at last unloaded her dark burden. Suzie helped her friend into bed and slipped in beside her, cradling her in the crook of her arm. She murmured softly, "There, there, it's out now Kati. It's OK. We all do crazy things for the people we love, even if they don't deserve it, even if it breaks our hearts." Somewhere in the middle of all of this Suzie had kissed her forehead. She had tasted the salt of Kati's tears and added her own to them. Kati, lying down, felt the soft patter on her cheek and had reached up in affection and compassion to stroke Suzie's cheek. This seemed to make Suzie shudder and suddenly Kati realized that Suzie was wound as tightly as a coiled spring. She just had time to whisper, "What is it, Suzie?" when the answer came in the form of Suzie's moist lips pressed against hers in a chaste, though rapidly deepening kiss.