by A R Steele
“I know,” the other girl said. “This is just… different. It feels like it changes everything.”
Lev didn’t seem aware of the effect his junk had on the room. As Cooper glanced around trying to get a feel for the crowd, no one appeared particularly happy to see Lev’s dick. Girls at some tables were hushed, while others whispered to their friends. A few were covering their eyes.
Lev left the stage to the sounds of muted clapping. It definitely wasn’t as enthusiastic of a reaction as he usually got. When Cooper looked at the ground, there were less bills littering the stage than normal. Cooper listened carefully to the girls, trying to get a feel for what the customers thought of this change. And he watched as Lucas took the stage.
The guy had been Cooper’s neighbor since they were kids. Cooper had even gotten him this job. He’d resisted at first, believing Lucas had the wrong personality for the job. Cooper still had his doubts. Lucas was managing, but he often seemed stressed, and he made less tips than the other guys. He definitely looked good, though. The girls loved his handsome face and powerful muscles. Lucas was hot, like all the guys here, but he did nothing for Cooper.
None of them did, except maybe… His mind went back to Owen. He couldn’t have him, even if he didn’t have to have a personal rule about dating in the workplace. Owen was straight, perfectly straight. The vibes that Cooper sometimes got from him were just wishful thinking. He was never going to get with Owen, no matter if he wanted to or not.
Owen was more independent than the younger guys. He’d never needed him to be a “big brother.” Unlike some, who had a hard time fitting in at the strip club, he’d never needed a mentor or any guidance. He’d never had drama for Cooper to step in and solve.
In general, he respected the guy. Owen was his equal. He guessed he was about twenty-five, which was probably the average age among the strippers, which would have made him three years younger than Cooper. Owen seemed more mature than that, though. Cooper saw them as equals.
Looking at the stage, Cooper brought his attention back to Lucas. Strange that he was thinking so much about Owen.
“This one is better,” the girl in glasses said to her friend. “He’s just perfect.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t change a thing about him.”
“Hopefully he won’t be showing us anything we don’t want to see,” said the first girl. “The last guy must have just gone a little crazy… a little overboard. He wanted to show us a little too much.”
“Do you guys usually do that?” the second girl asked Cooper.
“It’s something new that we’re testing out here,” Cooper said. “All the guys are going to be stripping down to nothing tonight.”
“Well, you can tell your manager that no one wants to see that,” the girl said. “It’s a bit too much.”
Her friend was somewhat less vehement, but she nodded along. “There’s such a thing as too much skin. Those… parts… don’t look that appealing. Definitely not as much as the rest of a man. Some things are better left to the imagination.”
“I’ll pass that along,” Cooper said.
He knew what they meant. Dicks were fun when they were hard and when you could do things with them, but looking at one wasn’t too arousing, especially in its floppy state. Cooper would have chosen just about any other part of a guy to look at rather than a dick.
He was a little curious what Owen’s was going to look like… although he wouldn’t have chosen to look at it when it was soft. If he could see Owen’s hard-on, now, that would get him excited.
Letting his eyes close for the briefest moment, he imagined taking its warm length into his hand. He could picture them doing it in the change room where they always chatted, or maybe up against the wall in the parking lot. Of course, a bed would be ideal. He thrilled at the thought of having Owen in his bed.
But that was never going to happen.
Cooper watched as Lucas took off his underwear. All he felt was a fraternal affection.
He was responsible for these guys.
Three
As Owen left one table, he glanced at the clock. It was somehow still only eleven. It felt like he had been here for several hours already. He was tired enough that it felt like he should have been near the end of his shift. Instead, there were five and a half more hours.
It felt like one dick or another was waggling practically in his face every time he looked at the stage. He wasn’t making any effort to look – in fact, he was making a concerted effort not to – but he had still seen more of his friends than he’d ever believed possible.
Cooper was up there now, and he had gotten naked fairly early in the song. He was dancing in the nude with everything swinging all over the place. Owen looked at him for a long moment, his eyes drawn to exactly what he didn’t want to see. Cooper was large, from what he could tell. And he seemed completely at ease with being naked.
“How are you tonight?” he asked, approaching a table of two older women. They were probably in their fifties. He didn’t mind older women, even if they were less attractive. He tried to treat all the customers equally anyway.
The guys always gave him shit for flirting with the customers. The club was too loud for them to actually hear his conversations, so they just made stuff up. In one change-room conversation, they’d deduced that his preference was for busty redheads in business casual attire. The guesses had so little basis in reality that Owen figured they’d made the whole thing up to amuse themselves.
They had invented all of the gossip about his seductive prowess. Of course he flirted. It was part of the job, for fuck’s sake! If he was there to pick up, why would he ever approach the unattractive customers? He was nice to all of them, no matter what they looked like.
And he never hooked up with them, either. Whatever the guys might think he did after the night was over, none of the customers had ever gotten into his pants. He had only been with his few short-term girlfriends.
“We’re good,” said the first woman. “How about you?”
“I’m great,” Owen said. “Especially now that I’m here with you. What are you lovely ladies doing here tonight? You’re much too beautiful to need to pay to see strippers!”
They both giggled. They probably wouldn’t totally believe the cheesy line… but it would still plant that seed in their minds. The fantasy that Owen really found them attractive could only grow from there.
“We’ve been here a few times,” one said, stirring her martini. “We like to sample all different kinds of man-meat.”
Cringe. What a way to put it. Owen struggled to keep his smile from wavering. “Well, you’re always welcome to do that here.”
“Oh, we intend to.” The woman looked him up and down, which made him feel even more like a hunk of meat.
Time for them to pay up, or for him to move on. “Would you like a private dance?” he asked.
“Sure!”
The woman pushed her chair back enough to give Owen space to move. He straddled her and went into the familiar motions. His concentration faltered when he felt a hand on his lower back. It moved up to his shoulder, and then he almost jumped at the feeling of a tongue on his chest. This woman was way grabbier than the average customer. He didn’t appreciate getting groped like this. Licking wasn’t included in the lap dance.
Another hand landed on his back, and he looked up with a start. The woman’s friend was touching him. She hadn’t even paid for this privilege. He frowned at her and she backed off. Still shaken, he went back to his usual routine.
He gyrated on the woman’s lap, facing her. She looked up at him with unbridled lust. It was enough to put him somewhat on edge. Earlier than he normally would have, he climbed off and turned around. Now his back was to her, and he could see her friend watching with a similar stare.
A hand reached around from behind and landed on his dick. “Whoa!” he yelled, jumping up immediately. “I’m sorry, but that isn’t part of the package.”
“Oh,” the woman s
aid. “I’m sorry, I just thought you would like it.”
“Hell no,” Owen said. “You gotta ask before you do something like that, lady.”
He got up and left without a backwards glance. That was way too much, and he suspected that showing his dick to the whole room wasn’t going to improve the customers’ behavior. Showing it might make the customers even more likely to do things like that.
Well, he could defend himself. This whole night was just making him want to go home, though. He guessed another guy might have been willing to let a customer touch him, but not him. The fact that he was straight didn’t mean that he was down for anything. He had some standards – high ones, actually!
Trying to calm down, he walked around for a minute. He passed Cooper, who was heading back to the change room. He was still fully nude after his turn on the stage. Owen’s heart skipped a beat, and he avoided Cooper’s eyes. His stomach felt funny. Something made him want to look, but he wouldn’t let himself. That was his buddy. His bro.
His own leopard print thong was still on, for which he was grateful. His turn on the stage was going to be unpleasant. Normally he enjoyed showing off his dance moves. He just had no desire to show off his dick along with them. He was sure no one would force him into doing it, but he seemed to be the only one who had a problem with it. The other guys had stripped down without a second thought. They’d have a field day with him if they saw how sensitive he was about this.
“What’s up, man?” Cooper asked.
Owen stared into the air behind his head. He wasn’t going to look down, he really wasn’t. “Just had a grabby customer,” he said. “I missed your performance. How did it go?”
“Great,” Cooper said. “Everything is swinging wild and free. Feels better than I expected. Maybe you’ll like it, too.”
“I doubt that,” Owen said.
He rubbed a hand absentmindedly over his leopard print thong. He still felt pretty ridiculous wearing it, but the customers said they liked it. It was one of the most popular pieces from his underwear collection.
“I better go get some clothes back on. When are you going to go dance?” Cooper asked.
Owen shrugged. “I guess I might as well go now.” Might as well get it over with. He definitely didn’t feel like giving any more lap dances at the moment.
“Good luck, bro.”
Owen was going to need it. He threw some more clothes on in the change room. Then he made his way up to the stage, ignoring the women who stared or gawked at him. He would normally have smiled or acknowledged them in some way, but those two just now had left a bad taste in his mouth.
The women still seemed somewhat scandalized by the full nudity tonight. The applause for Cooper had been less enthusiastic than usual, which surprised Owen. Judging from the other dicks he had seen in his life, Cooper definitely had a nice one. Maybe women just appreciated them less than men did.
He got up on the stage just as the next song was starting. It had a good beat punctuated with some hand claps and finger snaps. He put one hand on the pole and posed, looking out at the crowd with a seductive half-smile. He started to dance, clapping when the song required it. Some of the customers started to clap along, too.
The energy level was rising. He could do this, and he was good at it. But he knew he could never get an erection in this kind of situation. The women here just didn’t turn him on enough to make him forget about his soon-to-be nudity.
He spun around the pole once, then used the beat to accentuate him taking off his shirt. His broad chest and cut abs were bare now. The shirt nearly caught on his pierced eyebrow. He did another spin, then put his hands on his tearaways. He took his time, slowing down from normal pace. If he could draw this out, he would barely have time to be naked. Ideally he’d only spend a few moments with his dick out. He didn’t want to show it off for any longer than he had to.
As he danced, he tried to concentrate just on being there. But he kept thinking about his coworkers and about working here. This night was almost enough to make him want to work somewhere else. He’d had his share of other jobs in the past, although none paid as well as this one.
He greatly enjoyed making money. He liked having nice clothes and a nice car. The money from this job had allowed him to buy and maintain Eileen. The classic blue Chevrolet was expensive to keep in running condition, even if he did all the restorations himself.
The song was coming to an end, and most people in the room were watching him. The moment of truth had to happen now. He pushed his thong down to the floor in one rapid movement. There, it was out. He stepped out of the thong without bothering to try and be sexy.
A quick shake of his hips made his dick swing out in the open air. It felt weird as hell, and not in a good way. He was happy with his dick, he had no issues with its size, but it was different when there was a whole room full of people looking at it. Not to mention, he might have given it a closer trim that morning if he’d known half the town was going to be checking it out.
He came down off the stage, putting his thong back on before his feet even hit the floor. He refused to walk around naked for a second more than he had to. Taking rapid steps toward the change room, he twisted his clothes in his hand. Once they were in the locker, he’d take a quick breather. He could seriously use a minute to himself right now.
Cooper caught him at the edge of the room. With a pat on the back, Cooper said, “You did well.”
Owen’s eyes drifted down Cooper’s body just long enough to see he had his underwear back on. That was good. Made it a little easier to have a normal conversation with him.
He forced himself to look Cooper in the eye. “Thanks, bro. You saw it?”
The other guys would have been pervy about it, but when he talked to Cooper, he just felt like he was getting feedback from an objective peer. He could have completely forgotten that Cooper was gay.
“Yeah, I saw it all,” Cooper said. He gave Owen a strange sort of look, which made Owen question whether he had liked his dance as much as he said. “It was great. I guess the girls are a little freaked out by the full-frontal thing, but they’ll get used to it.”
“I hope not,” Owen said. “Trenton should catch on that they don’t like it and not make us do it anymore. I don’t see the point, especially since they find it so strange.”
“You found it that weird to be naked?” Cooper asked. “You looked perfectly natural up there. And you have nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“What, you thought I had a problem with my size?” Owen said, his pierced eyebrow raising.
“No, bro. Not for a minute. That’s not what it was about.”
“That’s cool. I just figured that might be it.”
“No, I just don’t want a bunch of gay guys perving on my junk. I’m fine with it, otherwise.”
Was it completely true? He still felt strange even now that he had his thong back on. Normally he felt fine in this amount of clothes, but being naked had made him more vulnerable. He was going to feel strange until he was fully clothed again.
Cooper looked hurt or something, and Owen remembered again that he was one of those gay guys. It was just so easy to forget. “I don’t mean you, man. You aren’t like the others. You’re cool.”
“Well, thanks, I guess.”
“You know what I mean. You don’t make jokes about wanting me. You should all know it’s never going to happen, but the others make a thing about it and you don’t.”
“I’m not that kind of guy.”
“Exactly. I don’t know if you want me or not, but if you do, you don’t talk about it.”
For once, Cooper seemed to be at a loss for words. Owen realized he had just made it awkward. He couldn’t go around saying things like that. Of course Cooper didn’t want him. Even in some alternate universe where he was gay, Cooper would be well out of his league. If Cooper was going to date a stripper, he would date one of the hottest ones here.
“Sorry,” Owen said. “I know the guys don’t
all want each other. If they did, there’d be a lot more hooking up going on here. I just meant you don’t joke about it like they do.”
“Oh, I see.” Cooper was still giving him that funny look. “You’re right. I don’t joke about it.”
Four
Cooper walked back into the change room. After this long night, he was eager to get back to the apartment he had once shared with his ex. Even though it was lonely there these days, he desperately wanted to sleep.
His coworkers were just as boisterous as earlier as they changed back into their street clothes. Despite the late hour, most of them seemed to be wide awake. Cooper glanced at Owen. He was the only one who looked as tired as him.
When Cooper was half-dressed, Trenton came into the room. “Get out of here, we’re not decent!” Cooper said, covering his chest in mock modesty.
“As if I haven’t seen all of you tonight,” Trenton said, rolling his eyes as he leaned against a locker. “This isn’t the place for someone who cares about being decent.”
“Well, we knew that much,” Ace put in.
Crossing his arms, Trenton stared at each of them in turn. His face was serious, even if he was willing to play along with their jokes. “I wanted to review how things went tonight,” he said. “What did you all think about the full frontal? How did the customers react to it?”
“I don’t think they liked it,” Owen said, standing with his back to everyone and just turning his head enough to see Trenton. “They seemed freaked out.”
“I agree,” Jesse said, shrugging on his leather jacket. “I didn’t hear any positive feedback about it. Just girls who were surprised or put off.”
One by one, the rest of them gave their opinions. There was universal agreement that the customers had not appreciated seeing their dicks.
“I don’t know how it can be,” Cooper said. “Who wouldn’t like dick?”
“Not everyone likes dick,” Owen said, working his shirttails into his waistband.