Phoenyx: Flesh & Fire (13 page)

“Yeah, I remember Trixie,” Petra said dreamily. “She was such a sweetheart.” She added to me, “She was our MC before Mel. She used to do an amazing turn as Marlene Dietrich.”

I was more interested in Bruno’s attitude to the present rather than the past. I pulled him close. “Don’t be prejudiced. I always say I’d try anything once. What about you? I’m sure you could get to like her.”

He looked past me with an alarmed stare as the doors crashed open again and the controversial individual in question re-appeared, carrying a sports bag over her shoulder.

“Got a changing room?” she asked as she brushed right past us.

Bruno pointed to the
Ladies
at the other end of the bar. “Try in there.”

She stomped off with a swinging gait and her two-tone blonde and platinum hair bouncing like the crest of a surf wave behind her. Bruno leant heavily over the bar and blew a long, heavy and exasperated breath out from his puffed cheeks, and then it was my turn to laugh into my drink.

Bruno sent us both packing to the backstage area and told us firmly ‘no peeking’. Petra and I sat in silence, looking at each other while the audition was carried out in the theatre next door to the tune of Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The next thing we knew, our brash visitor came breezing through the swing door, dressed only in blue leather knee boots and G-string, which barely held her lower assets from public view. The huge smug grin covering her face told us both that she had somehow – against all odds, and perhaps even all sense – managed to persuade Bruno to give her a go.

She dumped her bag on the floor, dropped herself onto a stool and spun around to face us, legs crossed, as though waiting for us to welcome her with a song and a dance.

“Well, I’m in,” she grinned. “Guess I’d better get to know you chicks now.”

“My mother wasn’t a fucking hen,” Petra sniffed, refusing to budge.

I held out my hand, quick to douse any sparks of potential conflict. “Phoenyx,” I said. “I was once the new girl around here, but I guess I just handed that paper crown to you.”

“Don’t worry, dear. I’ll turn that paper into diamond-studded gold before long.” She grabbed my hand and smeared a lemon-shaped outline of dark red lipstick over the back of it. “Care to show me around?”

“This is pretty much it,” I said, indicating the long, narrow changing room. “You’ve already seen the bar and used the toilets and the stage. There’s not much more to see, to be honest.”

She plucked at the laces which held the front of my bodice together. “I think there’s a great deal more to see.”

“Well, I’m on tonight,” I said, “You can have a good look at me then, if you like?”

She then proceeded to grab both my tits in her hands, weigh them up and ask me if they were natural.

“One hundred percent,” I said.

“Bitch,” she snapped back, and then with what would soon become her trademark dirty grin, pushed her shoulders back to exhibit her own B-cup and surgically-modified breasts. “Well, when I grow up, I wanna be
you
.”

“So what do you do, exactly?” Petra asked cautiously, still unable to shift the lingering shadow of distaste from her face.

“Hmm, more like, what
don’t
I do.” She spread her arms and slid off the stool. “I’ve been around. Made a couple of movies and videos that you can buy in any store here or in Amsterdam or New York. And am pretty damn fearless when it comes to public exhibition.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Petra retorted.

Our newest arrival bent over Petra, causing her to draw back. “Don’t believe I’ve yet had the pleasure,” she said, taking Petra’s hand. Petra just peered at her, either not accepting or not understanding that she was being invited to introduce herself.

“This is Petra,” I said, trying to be diplomatic before things went awry. “Our resident retro queen. Loves the old ‘flapper’ look.”

“Devastating. Well, I’m not old enough yet to be a queen, so I guess I must be just a princess. Anyway, you can call me Honey.”

“Like hell I will,” Petra growled. “You’re not my type. I like my men to have flat, hairy chests, thanks all the same.”

At that, Honey demonstrated her hoarse, loud and very infectious laugh. She gripped Petra tightly and pulled her off the bench to her feet, showing also that she had lost none of her original masculine strength.

“I love it,” she beamed. “You’re trying so hard to be nice, but you know what?” She leant in close between us, as though about to welcome us into a dark and secret conspiracy. “Just say what you think. Really. I have this thing about honesty. So don’t hold back.”

“Okay,” Petra said, with a sigh of relief. “You’re a fuckin’ freak.”

“I know,” Honey said, stepping back. “That’s the whole point. Any other concerns you want to raise?”

That shut Petra up. Finally, sounding rather subdued, she muttered, “No. And don’t ever call me a ‘chick’ again.”

“I shan’t ever, duckie,” Honey smiled. She grabbed me by one wrist and Petra by the hand. “C’mon, let’s get drinks and we can get to know each other properly. I’m buying.”

As Honey led us both back out into the main bar, Petra stared at me behind her back with a look of lingering horror. I just grinned in reply. This was definitely going to be interesting.

As it turned out, Honey proved herself to be a wonderful character to be around – disarmingly frank, ferociously intelligent, if opinionated, and with a loud and utterly filthy sense of humor. I loved her straight away, although it took me a few days to realize the fact.

I guess I was still recovering from the aftershock of that hand grenade.

Honey didn’t lower herself to walk anywhere – she pranced, or strutted, depending upon her footwear at the time, although I never saw her in anything less than a four-inch heel. Her problem – if I can call it that – was that she was a natural exhibitionist, and got off greatly on being stared at – the more naked she was at the time, the better. Not necessarily a big drawback for an erotic dancer but it meant that well before the end of her set, her cock would be rock solid with excitement and she made no attempt at all to disguise this.

On her first night the following weekend, she went out with a bulge the size of my fist in her G-string and spent her last three minutes stroking herself to within half an inch of a cataclysmic orgasm.

The regulars in the audience sat open-mouthed at this and so did we, sitting in the wings studying and commentating upon the ‘new girl’ as was the habit, so I was told (I’d have loved to know what was said about me on my first night, but everyone was too polite – or embarrassed – to say). On Honey’s début night, there was no discussion, no jokes, no sarcastic yet grudgingly admiring commentary. Me, Melissa, Petra and Bruno just gaped with increasingly heavy jaws at one of the most unbridled displays of self-loving I’ve ever seen. She loved herself, she loved to do so, and the crowd loved her right back for it. Perhaps because they’d seen nothing like it before – or perhaps because they’d had a taste of it somewhere else, somewhere more exotic, and Honey raised the bar on what was expected, or even legal, within the walls of the Kitty Klub.

For her second appearance, the place was absolutely heaving, barely even SRO. When she hit the stage the release of expectation on the part of the crowd was nothing short of orgasmic, and it pushed her along to even greater and more outrageous behavior.

It all got Bruno into a sweat, and not in a good way either. After that night in which she spent half the set rubbing herself up against patrons like some kind of oversexed dog in heat, he pulled her aside and told her straight to ‘tie a knot in it next time’. When the predicted howls of objections started, he went on by making it plain that he didn’t possess a live sex show license – and wasn’t likely to be paying for one any time soon either, which meant that her erect erotic antics risked crossing the line into unlicensed territory, especially if she decided to go all the way.

“I don’t want to be getting visits from the cops, or having any of you gorgeous people losing your jobs,” he concluded.

But Honey wouldn’t be easily appeased. “I’m not shaking a flaccid little dick around out there,” she objected. “I give those bastards my full eight inches – anything else is just a cock tease on my part and makes me look impotent.”

“Well, that is what this Klub is about,” Bruno reminded her. “Tease, not sex. No hardcore, no erections.”

“But they love it. And it adds such an edge to my show.”

“I’ll be honest, shall I? I love it too. But – I’m just saying. Tone it down. Okay?”

But Honey didn’t tone it down. She ramped it right up, as far as she could possibly go. And that was just several steps too far for Bruno, steps which took her right off the deep end.

Her next spot was a week later, and she was sandwiched between Gloria and me on the bill. The bar was even busier than on the night of her last appearance, and Petra was still unhappy. She had point-blank refused to accept Honey as one of us, and was growing increasingly agitated at what she saw as her hogging of the limelight, as if Petra was feeling the push to intensify her own coquettish routines to keep pace with the rampant she-male glory-seeker.

“Are you trying to say we’re only stuffed to overflowing now because of
her
?” she snarled as we hung out backstage before Honey’s set.

“She does seem to pack them in,” I said. “Got to admit, I haven’t seen an empty seat since she arrived.”

“Fuckin’ perverts,” she hissed. “Whatever happened to good old tits ‘n ass?”

“We’ve all got them in abundance, baby,” I laughed, and slapped her playfully on the bottom just to remind her. “And so does she. She just happens to have something extra, as well.”

“Yeah, well it’s something extra too much for my taste.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t force you to taste it.”

“If she did, I’d bite the bastard off. Then at least she’d be a real woman, although I’d still say she was a cunt.”

I sucked my lips as I tried hard not to laugh aloud. Petra could be so delightful when she was angry. I made do by giving her a big hug, and that at least brought the ghost of a smile back to her usually sweet little features.

“Ladies, gentlemen, perverts, and inter-sexual hermaphrodites,” Melissa announced to the bar once she’d finished her latest musical parody, California Creamin’ , with it’s genuinely inspired line ‘I got down on my knees and I began to play...’

“Those of you who have been in attendance here lately, or who at least have been paying attention – yeah, I’m talking to you, Sleepy Sam, at the back…” She waggled a finger at someone half-hidden at the back of the club, provoking a lot of laughter and a distant heckle in return. “Fuck
me
, did you say? No baby, I might just swallow you up. Go off and pleasure yourself through the eye of a needle.” The next round of laughs drowned out any further abuse, and she went on with her introduction: “Anyway, if you’ve been anywhere here at all lately, you’ll have noticed that we have a new member of our exotic dance troupe. Uh huh. You know who I’m talking about.”

Honey had brought her fan club this evening, it seemed, as the expectant cheers and whistles stopped Mel in her tracks again.

“Yeah, that’s right. She walks like a woman and talks like a man, but she’s not called
Lola
. So as she obviously needs no introduction – I’ll clear off and let her get on and show you what you’re all waiting for. Here she is, boys and girls, and those who aren’t too sure yet;
Miss Honey
.”

But Melissa might as well have been speaking in ancient Latin as nobody in the room heard a word she said. The wall of noise was deafening and only once the band started up was I able to hear something that wasn’t the sound of rowdy expectation.

We knew from the outset that this set would be different, as Honey had no sooner stepped onto the stage than she jumped off the front edge and began walking among the tables and the chairs, chatting to patrons as she went. We couldn’t hear what was being said but going by the reactions, it was clearly filthy, and equally funny. Well, I would have expected nothing less from her.

Bruno was nowhere in sight and I had visions of him sitting in the toilet with a bad case of constipation, swallowing stress pills as he worried about what bizarre and potentially troublesome antics Honey would be getting up to – antics that he was unable to bring himself to look at, even through his fingers, from behind the bar.

“How fucked-up do you think this is going to get now?” Petra asked me as we watched from the wings.

“My guess is she’s going to go all the way.”

Petra shook her head. “Really wish you’d stop calling that character ‘she’. For crying out loud, it’s a fucking
guy
who just happens to have stuffed a bit of silicone into his pectorals. That doesn’t make anyone female. I don’t care what you wear or how you walk; she’s just another tranny who couldn’t even go the whole distance.”

I smiled as I caught her using the contentious pronoun ‘she’ there, but let it lie. I didn’t want to antagonize Petra any more, knowing that she was already deeply unhappy about the backstage situation. And besides, the front of the house situation was unfolding rapidly and demanding our attention.

Honey had taken up residence at one of the bigger tables which currently accommodated our old Social Studies professors. She said something to the oldest one of their number, a kindly-looking, grandfatherly gentleman who always wore a velvet bow-tie and whom we had nicknamed ‘Professor Plum’, after his resemblance to the character in that old board game. The Prof pushed his chair back and next thing we knew, Honey had flipped herself up onto the table. The other profs snatched their drinks away quickly before she got the chance to send them flying with her size eleven boots and this, I guessed, was where she planned to make her last stand – assuming things panned out the way I (and Bruno too, no doubt) feared.

She wiggled herself across the table on her hands and knees, shaking her ass in everyone’s face, then pulled her miniskirt up to show off her bright red G-string, and the very generous package hanging underneath. The Profs had already seen her last two performances and so probably knew what to expect from a spectator’s point of view. But now they were being invited to interact. And that was something very few of us ever did, always mindful of Bruno’s ‘look, don’t touch’ policy for the punters.