Fucking Daphne (13 page)

My customer was studying us avidly.

I grabbed Daphne's arm and pulled her away from his table, toward the gloom of the VIP area, where we could talk without being fodder for a cheapskate jerkoff's wishful softcore lesbian speculation.

“What are
you
doing here?” I asked. I know it came out rude, but I couldn't figure out a better way to say it.

We'd met only a few times down in San Francisco—through friends, at parties, and once at one of her readings. Seeing Daphne Gottlieb at my work was like some kind of fucked-up mirage—like those dudes crawling through the desert, seeing tall, cool Pepsi machines just on the horizon and practically being able to taste the ice on their tongues. She even shimmered a little in the gloom of the club, wavering in the dust and funk of men's body smells and the fruity body spray of my coworkers.

She didn't belong at the Sugar Shack. And I was suddenly savagely embarrassed by my stripper drag: the push-up bra, the wig, the makeup, the shoes. I felt castrated, like my dick had been chopped off or taped back to my asshole, gaffed into a more perfect version of straight-girl femininity. To tell you the truth, I felt like a fucking jerk.

Daphne, of course, looked cool and comfortable and Daphneish, with long matted hair all down her back in orange and black Halloween candy-cane stripes and bright red lipstick that clashed with her hair, yet somehow managed to look like exactly the right thing. She wore a short, torn slip dress and giant boots, like any little S.F. riot grrrl ironically appropriating the “underage, but I'll fuck your shit up” look.

I realized I was clutching her arm. I unclenched my hand and dropped it to my side.

“I want a dance,” said Daphne. Her eyes appeared to focus on mine for the briefest of moments before they bounced off again, taking in the sad, unoccupied stage and the tired working ladies lounging near the pop-and-coffee bar.

Fuck me.
Was this some kind of San Francisco thing, some kind of girl-on-girl genderfuck
statement?
Where the trappings of gender performance are utilized by women to appreciate other women in a queer way, like all those ridiculous and boring burlesque performances currently in vogue—where fat girls with shaved heads and bad lesbian tattoos peel off their bras to enthusiastic applause, no matter how gross and saggy their tits are—just because they're some kind of bullshit
reclamation?

I didn't want any part of it. I'm not stripping at the Sugar Shack to reclaim
shit—
it's because I have rent to pay, and shaking my tits for
customers gets me enough money for my bills and—occasionally—the time to scribble my dumb little stories that I never fucking publish, because they all end up being about sex in some embarrassing way.

Making a statement? With my ass being sliced in half by my nylon thong? I just wanted to make my stage fee.

I'm not a dancer and I'm sure as fuck not one of those ugly burlesque bitches who think that stripping's some kind of freedom. I'm a working stiff, a girl on my own doing the best I can, with no college education and no resumé and no experience doing anything other than rolling around onstage and grinding my crotch on men's legs for money. Most of my friends don't even know where I work. I was gonna kill the one who told Daphne I was at the Sugar Shack.
Fuck!
I felt like hiding my face, or running out the door. Not that I could make it very far, tripping down Pac Highway in my stupid plastic see-through stripper shoes.

Was Daphne making fun of me?

“You want a dance,” I repeated slowly. “From me?”

“Yeah,” said Daphne. She looked shy. “I have the money.”

She opened her lunch box—Powerpuff Girls; it figured—and took out three folded-up twenties, pressing the bills into my hand before I could think to pull away.

Daphne looked triumphant.

So it's that simple,
I thought
. You just buy me with twenties. And I dance for you, for whatever reasons you have.
I scrunched up the bills in my hand. They were brand new—fresh from the ATM, I guessed.

Had she
planned
this?

Obviously she had—she found out where I worked, got the money, came in on my shift. Fucking Daphne Gottlieb! Was this
whole thing for some article or some poem? I'd be a laughingstock in every dyke community, all the way from S.F. to Seattle! The thought of it made my face burn.

The crappy thing was, her whole little scenario actually
worked.
I needed the money so bad, I was gonna dance for Daphne. Sixty bucks was sixty bucks. Even paying my $10 to the house would leave me with $50, free and clear.

“Come on,” I said. I turned and lurched back to the VIP area in my shoddy heels. She glided behind me, smelling of rose oil and, faintly, of girl sweat. Ordinarily I'd appreciate that and huff in big hogly gulps of her—as much as I could, in greedy mouthfuls, as if I were burying my face between her legs—but right now I wasn't in the mood.

The VIP area sounds fancy, but it's just three nasty, sagging couches that even Goodwill wouldn't take, covered strategically with blankets so the worst of the stains aren't visible. They sit in a U shape in a shadowy little alcove separated from the main room of the Sugar Shack by a jerry-rigged curtain, imperfectly pulled closed by the girl doing the private dance. The carpeted floor is sticky, and the smell of semen hangs like a ghost over the unventilated area, trapped by the curtains and living in the seams of the ancient couches.

I yanked the curtain back, and made a sarcastic “after you” gesture. Daphne obediently entered the VIP area, and stiffened as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. I knew she could smell the cum stench—it was unmistakable, combined into a thick and unholy
roux with the aroma of unwashed G-strings and flop sweat and pure, ugly need. I was perversely happy to see her so uncomfortable.

You want a dance, DAPH-ne GOTT-lieb?
my mind sang merrily.

I have to confess that when I'm attracted to a girl, part of me wants to take her out and show her a good time and light her cigarettes and buy her drinks, and not lay a hand on her except gently, if she allows me to. I think about kissing her mouth for a long time, then slowly moving down to her pussy—fluttering my tongue tenderly against her clit while pushing a finger or two inside her, being careful not to go in too quickly. Making sure she comes, and kissing her afterward. Nice stuff.

But part of me just gets mad when a pretty girl turns me on, because I know damn well she knows what she's doing, and I hate being manipulated. Then I think about grabbing her hair, wrapping it around my fist, and making her cry. Slapping her hard. Ramming my fist inside her, not caring if it hurts.
Liking
the hurt. Being brutal—a horrible, bestial oaf of a lover; an
abuser.

This kind of desire—even when briefly and euphemistically mentioned in BDSM-friendly roundtable discussions and panels—has made me wildly unpopular with the local lesbian community, where safe, sane, and consensual are the directives you must never flout. I learned a long time ago to keep my mouth shut, after a few regrettable instances and a fair amount of shunning. Now I mostly just write stuff down, read it later, and come under my own fingers so hard that I gasp and flail like a fish on my own single-width mattress. It's probably better this way—for everyone.

But now I'm sneaky in my desire: I observe ladies carefully, noting their discomfort, appreciating their embarrassment and their small humiliations. Imagining—other things. But keeping those things where they belong: in my head. I enjoy what I can.

Daphne sat on the middle couch, a shimmering, shiny ornament perched on the lowest curve of the U. She crossed her legs, then uncrossed them. Finally she sat with her knees together primly, her lunch box at her side, her back rail-straight. I imagined she wanted to avoid as much contact with the herpetic couch as possible, to avoid wallowing in the bodily fluids of strangers.

The next song kicked in—“Talk Dirty to Me,” by Poison, the national anthem of all strippers everywhere—but instead of whipping my wig off and placing my hand over my heart, I started Daphne's lap dance. Lumbering onto the couch and pushing my heels into the couch cushions on either side of her thighs, I clung to the back of the couch with my fingertips while gyrating a few inches above her crotch. My ribald fucking motions made it clear that I was imagining riding her big dick, sliding up and down like a monkey on a stick in a pantomime of female-superior copulation. Attempting to put some space between the two of us, Daphne leaned back awkwardly. Soon she was slumped against the back of the couch, like any other horny customer cowed into submission by my aggressive humping.

She reddened, determinedly gazing into my eyes as I made Porn Face: lips a moist, glossy O, like a blow-up doll; eyes soft and half-lidded. A successful Porn Face was like slipping on a ski mask: If you
did it just right, the customers couldn't see past it and you could stay imperviously private, despite the close physical contact. A good Porn Face was a big “fuck you” to customers attempting to get any more intimacy than they'd paid for—anonymous, and insultingly contrived. “Oooh,” I moaned deliberately, trying to sound as if I were reading from a pornographic cue card.

“Do you like doing this?” she asked after a while.

I bounced on her thighs, rubbing my pussy absentmindedly. “Like doing what?”
Fucking your imaginary dick? Working at the Sugar Shack? Dancing for girls?

“Like . . . dancing here, I guess,” she replied. “Do you like it?”

“Yeah,” I said. I clambered off the couch and onto the floor, where I did a deep doggy-style position, with my back arched and my knees spread far apart, presenting my ass and crotch to her.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury
—
exhibit A
.

We had Baby Wipes in the dressing room, and after every VIP show we Baby-Wiped our hands and knees until they felt raw and scraped and we smelled like diapers for hours afterward—but it was better than walking around feeling contaminated by the VIP floor. If you didn't get on the floor, you had to spend the whole show dodging hands and avoiding the customers' attempts at frottage against your legs.

I reached back with one hand and spanked my crotch lightly, as if punishing myself for being such a naughty girl. “Ooh,” I said again. I used my finger to push my thong into my crotch, bending it at the knuckle to simulate penetration. I was dirty-dancing for Daphne, giving her every nasty old move I could think of. She'd paid $60—three times the going rate for a single dance—and I was determined
to give her her money's worth, in all its erotic, genderfucked glory.
Reclaim
this,
Daphne Gottlieb
.

I felt mean and low. My knees burned from carpet friction. At the same time, I felt alive, electric, sizzling with energy. Watching Daphne suffer was turning me on, no doubt about it.