Excerpt: Chapter II of Boingers! A Club for Gentlemen – Ted Prokash

February 14, 2020

Atmosphere is on you all at once. Or, rather, maybe your senses and synapses fire in a certain determinate order, running green in your brain like dense computer code; like fast-falling dominos. But for a simple man like Fred, it was like meeting the place all at once –  with a firm, full-body handshake. Freddo, our brave pilgrim at the gates of sensual discovery.

 

Dim strip club lighting, splashed with slippery neon streams. Steady bass thumping the cloistered dusk, bumping ripples on the visual pond. Nipples on the good beyond.

 

Then, maybe a millisecond behind, the human influence on the Boingery ol’ atmosphere. It was a settled sort of starin’ out. Not the electric-challenge glare of amped up youths and red bull fighters, but the shame and disinterest of practiced old drunks. The sort of slow, shy-eye balling you get walking into a very low-down dive in the early afternoon. No room for judgment here, friend.

 

The sirens of the song, interspersed here and there, big eyes starin’ out flat. Lounge-array leering out in the black light’s beam. Skin dark and slick. Sister on the pole being the force of her nature. Fit, lithe, aggressive, Fred noted, while feeling in the general ambiance.

 

Fred bellies up to the bar. Met in due time by a pretty lady veteran; sweeping side-cut and shiny snakeskin pants. Big, toothy smile and a practiced equanimity. Bling-bling bling-idy jewelry. Put together and sly.

 

What’ll you have hon?

 

Just a Coke off the gun.

 

Pshhhhhloooooop  (No comin’ off of the New Iron Edict in this kinda ‘viro-ment!)

 

Thank you. Can I get singles for that? Thanks.

 

Freddo goes right up to the stage, soaking up the feeling of nobody taking notice. Sirens paying attention, no doubt. Tryna ascertain a tip off on Fred’s tipping tendencies, no doubt. He plop down right in front. Nobody else sitting by the stage. 

 

She come striding over on long, mean bootheels shaped like the barrels of six-gun shooters. Hell-heeled she was. Come smilin’ over and spike them heels right in front of Freddo’s face. Sharp report, CRACK! Pelvis tilted out, she starts swayin’. Strong lines, sweet smile.

 

Stripper’s smile might contain many a thing – multitudes, even. Sometimes a great distance. Seldom a great notion. Sometimes just the mercenary, mercantile truth of the trade. But often times, more often than you might think, even, there’s like a real friendly kinda co-miseration. In the moment. Stockholm-sweet syndrome in the skin dome.

 

Fred take his dollars out right away. She plop down smilin’, guns astride him. (Room fades deferentially, low-key creepily into dim corners.) She flip her glow-white g-string to one side, flashing purple smile. A dollar for a smile and one between smallish tits. Smilin’ up top too.

 

What’s your name, baby?

 

Fred. What’s… what are you called?

 

Mocha, baby.

 

Of course.

 

She spends a little time. G-string gyrating close enough to sniff… fruity perfume in rolling waves and… Oops! A hard bump against Freddo’s face. Ahhh… the dank musk underlying… the rotten promise of youth.

 

You’re beautiful.

 

Thank you, honey.

 

These boots are amazing. Freddo run a finger down one long, plastic barrel.

 

Now one dawdling, old twit shuffle his way up to the stage. He hold Mocha hostage for a while with a dollar bill folded up in one fat, pasty fist.

 

Fred sips his Coke. Still swaying in the heady aura left lingering…

 

Mocha entertain the old boy with eye-rolling patience. He spitting who knows what kinda honky gibberish in her diamond-crusted ear.

 

Mocha finishes up pretty graciously with the scaly old boy, takes a self-collective turn around the pole as the sultry strains of Stuffin’ Nasty by Loota Chris Dimes give way to the nocturnal-type thumpa-bump beat of Booty-vicious by Lumpz Luscious.

 

Old Freddo didn’t keep up with the latest urban jams in particular, but it all sounded appropriate enough.

 

Mocha does her thing for another three minutes. Thump, bump, bump and swaaaaaay… something more than a semi-sweetness. Shimmering heat in the black light darkness and the sweet possibilities in the seppo-human foulness… Angling for foul territory.

 

She drop down, whip around and pop hips; splayed, arch back and head forward, a lot like some kinda fornicatin’ animal. Gun barrels poking Freddo’s sides. And her gluteus-musclest, left-right twitch. The dankness in between… the soul’s depths implied. So close for the sniffin’. The poophole. The surest path to the guts of anyone. Fred’s dollar bills just fall out grateful.

 

Then Lumpz Luscious fades out. Mocha stoop down, scoop up her bills.

 

Thank you, honey. She touch his cheek.

 

Freddo in a perfume stunned. He sits back and sips his Coke. Look around the club. Patrons not paying attention. In a drink buying klatch with a lingerie-clad siren. At the bar looking grave up at the TV, or shame-faced looking down. Fred figures nine or ten patrons, besides himself, and near as many dancers. Slow on a Sunday afternoon, boy. Rural cum urban sub-standard Wisconsin.

 

Next luscious lady come stridin’ up rough, as a hard beat 2000’s kick up on the bump. Spray bottle wipe down the pole in a rush. Whip off her top like it pissing her off. Pull her g-string astride of her bumpy-shaved muff. She train her blood eyes on Fred from the jump. Business-tight haircut (or maybe a weave), wiry-sleek muscles, cocoa button a puff, dance on a washboard like it’s gonna jump off. She slam her crotch right in Freddo’s face.

 

What’s your name baby? She snarls.

 

Mmmmph… mmmPhred… mmmph…

 

I’m Coffee.

 

A club with a theme is the better a club.

 

Coffee with lips in Freddo’s left ear: we can get a private room, baby. $75 for three songs… ALL KINDS of freaky shit goes on back there. She grinds it in Fred’s face. Pelvis like devil horns and the stink of sweet death. Gaping maw under/after world sweet death stink breath.

 

Fred drops his last two dollars and makes for the exit. Thank you, he waves reflexively at the bartender, Silver, according to a glow marker menu board at the side of the bar. Silver gives him a wink.

 

The flap of fake eyelashes against rouged, gaunt, pale cheeks. The sound of the last butterfly.