Hurt Me

Longshoreman, Matt, bought an hour room with me after trying his hardest to avoid the purchase. We’d gone back and forth over text as he drove out to the club. He wanted to meet at a hotel so that he could avoid having to pay the club split. I wanted him to boost my bottomline to help me maintain good standing as I heard whispers of layoffs. Apparently, dancers who did not recoup minimum wage by selling dances were on the chopping block. While I’d already attained the minimum that night, I hadn’t earned much more. I knew I was safe, but I didn’t feel safe enough. Of course, the system is fucked up. Strippers shouldn’t be forced to pay their own wage and wage tax. Firing dancers for struggling to earn a living during a recession is cruel and punitive. Believe you me, I know. But I bees in the trap. I knew I could make more money from Matt if I met him outside of the club, but aside from the benefits of being in good standing with management, I also wanted the convenience of not having to leave the safety and boundaries of the club. It’s a lot easier to leave a customer at the club than it is at a hotel. Customers in the wild beg for more time, imagine they have a degree of seductive power and do everything within their means to convince you to stay an extra few minutes, hour or actually, why not just stay the whole night? When seduction doesn’t work, they use guilt—leveraging the duration of our relationship and money spent to convince me to stay longer. They ask why I don’t trust them after years of knowing them. The worst is when they go back and forth with me, repeating these same arguments, hoping to wear me down into agreeing with them. I knew Longshoreman would utilize all of these tactics if I agreed to see him at a hotel, which was why I insisted he meet me at the club.

Matt arrived late and buzzed, as usual. Axel immediately flagged him down and pulled him in for an overly familiar hug. It was the hug of someone who smelled money. Axel was a man in a desert coming upon a mirage. The night had been particularly slow, and Axel’s wallet was surely feeling lighter than he wanted.

“Matt, my friend! So good to see you, buddy!” Axel gushed.

“Hey, Axel,” Matt replied with reservation, “Good seeing you too.”

Matt wasn’t stupid. He knew Axel was excited to get paid. He wanted to suck at Matt’s money filled teet as much as the rest of us. A few other strippers hovered nearby, eyeing Matt as I rushed over to grab him. I was in my full body fishnet with my nipples poking out between the crisscross of netting. PMDD is a bitch of a disorder, but having breasts full of cysts can make them look full and fabulous. My nipples refuse to do anything other than remain at pointed attention, and that night they were doing just that.

“Babyyy!” Matt cooed when he saw me.

I gave him a quick hug and ushered him away from Axel.

“You look so good! I can’t believe your nipples are just out like this!” he reached over and groped my breasts, “They look bigger somehow!”

“This outfit really emphasizes them, doesn’t it?”

I continued massaging my tender breasts. While the purpose was to mitigate the pain, the gesture had the additional benefit of keeping the conversation focused. Matt wanted to touch my boobs. To touch my boobs, he needed to buy a room.

“God, you can’t keep doing that, baby! All I can think about are your juicy, delicious tatas! You’re gonna make me have to buy a dance with you.”

“I hope so,” I winked.

“You’re too much, Selena! You’re like fine wine: you just get better and better. C’mon, bebe!”

Axel slid Matt a cup of vodka as we entered the hour suite.

“Cheers, brother! You two have fun in there. Let me know if you need anything.”

As Axel shut the door, I took a seat on the couch and Matt sat on the floor across from me. If you’ve read any of my stories before, you know that this is not the normal lap dance arrangement. Typically, I have the customer sit on the couch. I encourage them to take hard objects out of their pockets like their keys or phone. If they’re wearing a belt, I ask them to remove that too. Then I drape myself over their lap and take control. But Matt has never been one to follow my formula. Even the first time we met, I’d attempted to begin in my normal way, but instead he’d wanted me to sit across from him, so that he could look at me. And that was what he was doing from his seat on the ground.

“Do you ever just look at yourself and see how perfect you are?” Matt asked.

“I don’t really see myself as perfect.”

“But..” Matt scooted closer to me and traced his fingertips across my legs, “Look at this! I mean—your skin, and the way this curves, and your face! How could you not see how gorgeous you are? Look at this body…”

Matt took me in, and I laid back, enjoying the restfulness of body worship. Matt had me take off my boots. He took my feet into his hands and pressed his thumbs into my arches. I felt my whole body relax into his attentive touch. It had been a long, mostly uneventful night. I’d spent most of my shift lounging in a VIP booth, editing my writing. A few customers had come and gone, but I’d had little motivation to approach anybody. Between PMDD and the imminent beginning of grad school, I’d fallen into a motivation slump. In my heart, all I wanted to do was rest and prepare for what would be a substantial life change. I felt ready to put my Pleasers away. Kinda. At least for a time, anyway. After dancing since 2016, all I wanted was to take a break from sharing my body with strangers and keeping myself on a restrictive diet. I was dreaming of eating bread and french fries without care or worry. I could envision my future self embracing the energetic slump of PMDD rather than finding ways to work around it. However, I could not jump ahead three years that evening, so all things considered, a low impact body worship session was probably as good as I could get.

I’d managed to keep my dances tame that evening. The first man I’d danced with had narry attempted to pop a nipple into his mouth. He’d hardly touched me at all. Instead, he kept his hands at his side as I touched him.

“Can you stand up on the chair above me so that I can look at you?”

I obliged, wedging my feet on either side of him. It was a tight space and an awkward position. He wanted me to get him off from my precarious perch, so I bent over and stroked his boner. He balanced a dim electric tealight on one thigh, trying to angle it so that he could better get a look at my labia. He didn’t reach to touch me. I was relieved that he had opted to keep his distance and simply receive. I imagined what it might look like from the CCTV feed upstairs. Could they see everything? Was it a fisheye view of the tiny booth? I would likely never know.

“Can you step on me?” he asked.

“I think so.”

It was logistically complicated, and yet there are few things I enjoy more than when a customer asks me to hurt them. He gestured for me to dig my heel into the area right above the base of his dick. I put my weight into it, noticing how the pain caused him to swell with pleasure. It was a demanding position to hold: a half squat paired with a steady hand job, but it didn’t take too much longer for him to come. I didn’t notice it until he shakily tapped my hand away. I stepped down from my awkward perch and cleaned my hands off with a paper towel I’d stashed in my purse. We still technically had more time on the clock, and I didn’t want to leave the booth too soon. What I do isn’t explicitly a secret. I discuss it here, and with other dancers I trust. I also can’t imagine that management hasn’t caught me on camera once or twice. But I like to at least maintain the veil of deniability. I looked down at the man as he gathered his things. He was an introverted engineer, the nerdy kind of guy not a lot of people look at. I liked his shyness and how easy he was to handle. I hoped he would come back again for another minimal-contact-handy.

***

Matt took a sip from his cup of vodka. The AC came on and the temperature of the room rapidly dropped. I found myself shivering.

“Come over here, I need you to cuddle me. I’m cold,” I demanded.

“Do you want my shirt? I’m not cold,” he offered.

“Do you not want to cuddle with me?” I asked.

“Of course I do!”

Matt relocated onto the couch and I nestled into his arms. A lot of my long-term customers get to a point where they treat me as if I’m untouchable. They find reasons to give me space, sometimes to the point of completely avoiding contact with me. I probably give off “stay the fuck away from me vibes,” and that’s a beautiful thing, but it isn’t always what I want. Especially when it’s a customer who spends good money on me. I like my customers to feel like they are getting what they’ve paid for. It is difficult when customers deny themselves. I can’t force them to feel comfortable enough with me to take their liberties, but sometimes I can force myself into their laps and guide their hands toward explorative positions.

“You never told me about the strike. Is it still going on?”

“It is, unfortunately. Fifteen damn weeks.”

“I can’t believe the owners haven’t given up yet.”

“I know. They’re assholes.”

“What are the dancers asking for?”

“Honestly, just basic stuff like safety and for the club to hire Black dancers. There isn’t a single Black dancer working at that club.”

“Is it because nobody wants to work there?”

“It’s because the owners are racist and they keep turning away Black dancers from even auditioning.”

“You’d think it would be a lot easier to just agree to the demands. I mean, it’s not like they’re asking for a union or anything.”

“Well, actually they are. They’re asking the club to recognize their union.”

Matt is part of the Longshoreman union. As much as his job bores him, the high pay and extensive benefits offered by the union make it hard for him to imagine leaving.

“Is there a stripper union that they could join?”

“Well, not right now. We either have to make one, or they could join another union. The problem is, a lot of the bigger unions don’t want to take on strippers. They don’t want to sink money into what they see as a losing bet. Plus they’re afraid of all the stuff we’re afraid of: clubs being corrupt and connected to organized crime. It’s a dangerous industry to unionize. But who knows.”

“You would think they’d jump at the opportunity to bring strippers into the union.”

“You would think that.”

“Baby, I think I’m gonna need another dance after this one. I want to give you a massage! I’m not ready for our time to end.”

“I would love a massage.”

Axel knocked on our door, indicating our time was up.

“I’ll go talk to him. You stay right here. I gotta go pee pee anyway, boo boo. You know how it is.”

I did know. Matt has a notoriously tiny bladder. Upon his return, Axel pulled Matt aside to invite him to the back for a bump. It had been a while since I’d seen Matt do drugs. It wasn’t his MO. Matt is more of a booze and cigarettes sort of person, but if the night called for a party, who was I to argue? Matt returned to his seat on the ground, sniffling.

“Where do you want me to massage you, boo boo?” he asked.

There’s nothing more beautiful than when someone pays you hundreds of dollars to massage you. My entire body was in pain. I had a headache, my shoulders were tight, my mid back needed to be stretched, my lower back was tender, my ass felt pent up, my legs refused to relax. Matt placed a warm hand on my calf, and I realized even my calves needed attention.

“Everywhere.”

I’d forgotten how bad Matt was at massages. I’m a hard touch kind of fae. I like for my masseuse to drive their knuckles and elbows into my knots. I like to be tugged, stretched, and generally manhandled. When Matt looks at me, he sees a delicate little creature in need of angel soft touch.

“Harder!” I demand.

Matt pressed slightly harder.

“Do it like you’re trying to hurt me!”

“Do you want me to use my feet?”

“No, just press really hard.”

It wasn’t professional by any stretch, but it was exactly what I needed at that moment. I allowed my body to relax as Matt plied me with questions about my partners, school, and as many other details as he could pluck from me. I didn’t imagine he would retain a lot of it, especially considering the combination of drugs and alcohol. But I knew he cared and wanted to know, even if he didn’t remember in the morning.

After the second hour concluded, I spotted another one of my regulars waiting for me by the bar. If I was younger, if I had the energy and drive for money that I did when I first began dancing, I would have stayed to dance with him. But I’m not the baby stripper I once was. I came up behind the man and embraced him. The relief I’d felt enjoying a few barefoot hours was replaced with the compression of my thigh high boots. He looked at me sadly, knowing what I was going to say before I said it. I’d already made the decision. In my head, class was already in session, and I needed to finish my homework.

“I’m sorry,” I told him.

“I was waiting for you all night, but it’s okay. Maybe I’ll see you next time.”

I wondered if the change had already happened, if I was slowly ghosting the club. Maybe he would see me next time, but who could say when the next time might be?