Carnal

Chapter One

A fact about angels is that they're always twirling. Legs crossed and grinding, chafing, dreaming about how there's no wetness in space. I close my eyes against the glaring neon pink and red lights spelling out GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS pulsing behind my eyes. I find the image of a black hole spitting out a star, your hands trailing up my neck, covered in my drool. You smelling my skin, dripping spit pooling on the bottom of my lip. I drop to the floor in a split before the crisp bills smack under the string of my thong; then against my heels. Ask me how to spell humiliating by heart. I can't. They're all foaming by the mouth, me, waxy and unfeeling; teary eyed asking for more.

Champagne tastes like piss and my regulars are spilling into the room again. I understand everything is very formulaic as I blow kisses before turning my attention back to the one promising me VIP. Just a few more words, angels have secrets to tell too, and everyone in the club is desperate to find them all. Maybe that's why they trail you to the trains after every shift.

There's a new man in the room and his presence growing stronger by the second. I've felt his eyes on me since he walked in and he's been sending me free drinks from across the bar. I trust anyone with the same routine as myself, never stopping until you've terrified everyone. A man that won't approach a dancer is the type you run from. I can't feel my face after my sixth glass of champagne, plopped on a sofa, counting my blisters from the pole as I pretend to listen to a man in a grey suit tell me how his wife's pussy hasn't been the same since she's bared his third child.

"It's just unfair to me. I miss the feeling of a youthful girl." His hands are sliding up my thighs, telling me he deals in disasters. Gaping mouths don't make me cry anymore but a foaming one stirs me. I excuse myself from my seat to throw up the heartbreak of a woman I've never met. There's a redhead in the bathroom sniffing her nose, wiping it on the back of her hand. She wipes my wet eyes with the crunchy paper towels and tells me to give it all I've got. We're all just here to give the audience what they need.

"Don't think about who you're performing for," She coos behind her glitter filled eyelids.

We've all been programed to read our customers before they realize we're watching them. I'm on stage again, watching the man paying my drink tab prowl closer towards the stage. I think of injured animals limping, dragging their carcasses like my slow movements in my stilettos. He's in a flannel and jeans, unlike the rest of the men in here, tidied up in their suits and dress shoes. He calls me in with his eyes as I get off stage, allowing me to approach him as he pulls out a wad of bills from his pocket. Like a dog with a bone, my eyes are centered on it so he knows my purpose.

"A girl like you doesn't belong here." His eyes are stern but he pushes a twenty into my hands. Just like every other vapid man that enters this bar, straightening their backs and speaking from a knowledge that doesn't exist.

"Oh, yeah? A girl like what?"

I want to tell him that paradise is sopping wet. Soaking on the couch, sitting grossly in front of the AC, covered in a sweat that isn't mine, a tongue in my ear. I sit down and cross my legs instead. Everything here is very formulaic. I don't want to hear that I'm too soft. You move like an angel, twisting and grinding and chaffing on the pole.

He tells me the same thing they all do. I divert the conversation to thank him for the drinks, scratching at a curling cuticle on my finger tip. It's never safe to assume, but it's fulfilling to be paid. I couldn't see his face clearly in the dark room except for when the neon lights would flash. He seemed scruffy with a dirty thick beard, and either a hard worker or a father based off how deep the wrinkles were set on his face.