Wow, I thought, this is like a proper date.
Aside from my four-hour lunch with Christopher, it was rare that any of my dates involved food. I'd learned, after placing a few ads on Swinging Heaven specifying 'adult fun and dinner', that although I might see some meat on those dates, I should not expect a meal.
But at least when I had an appetite I did something to sate it. The businessmen at the next table looked starved; they kept glancing over at me, or rather at my cleavage. Were breasts so rarely displayed in Raleigh? Tom was a gentleman. He tried not to look at my breasts too often.
'So, do you find dates on Craigslist often?' I asked. I knew it wasn't the greatest conversation prompt, but it was about the only thing I knew we had in common.
'No, not often,' he said. 'But I'm living with my sister at the moment, until I buy a place, so it's a bit difficult to take women home anyway. If you know what I mean.'
I knew what he meant. And I found it odd that a man in his late thirties didn't have his own place. Odd, too, that a man who didn't have his own place would want to take an equally homeless visitor out for dinner.
'Too bad I'm staying at my brother's,' I said. 'That place is out of the question, too.'
Tom bit on his lip. I wondered how we'd get to the pudding.
After leaving the restaurant we drove straight to the Blue Martini, but we arrived just as the band was packing up for the night. It was only 9.30.
'Sorry, hon,' Tom said. 'Looks like we got ourselves here just in time to be too late.' He asked if there was anything else I wanted to do.
'What about a strip club?' I was half joking, but at least those places could be counted on to stay open late and keep the liquor flowing. 'I've never been to an American strip club before, but most of the American movies I've seen lately, and every episode of The Sopranos, seems to feature one. I'd feel deprived if I left without experiencing this bit of Americana.'
Tom tried not to look surprised by my request – or too knowledgeable.
'Well . . .' he began.
'Well?'
He hesitated before speaking. 'There's the Golden Rose.'
'OK.'
Silence for a moment. 'That's the mid-range place,' he continued. 'The Dollhouse is more downmarket. And then there's the Foxy Lady.'
'Which one is the closest?'
'Golden Rose.'
'Done.'
We jumped in the SUV and drove to the Golden Rose. I was excited. I was also nervous. I assumed there would be no girls there, aside from the working girls.
The Golden Rose was in a lonely one-storey building in the middle of a car park, set opposite a shopping mall and a furniture salesroom. All the spaces were taken, so Tom drove over to the furniture store and parked.
I stepped out of the car and into a puddle. 'Shit,' I muttered.
'What?'
'It's all muddy here. Great parking space, Tom.'
'Sorry, Suzanne, honey. I'll make it up to ya.'
I hobbled over to the club. We walked through the door and into a small reception area. A middle-aged Southern woman was sitting behind a window. She looked at me and my tits, then at Tom.
'Are you a member?' she asked him.
'No, ma'am.'
'Then it's twenty dollars for you. She gets in free,' she said, pushing a piece of paper towards Tom. 'Fill in this form.'
While he bought a 'temporary membership' that somehow satisfied North Carolina's no-sin laws, I checked out a poster on a wall announcing the special appearance that night by a Playboy Playmate named Tiffany or Angel or Kylie. I could hear whoops and hollers coming from inside the club. It sounded like an American Western, and a busy night.
Now an official member of the Golden Rose, Tom took my arm and escorted me into a cavernous room filled with small round tables and black-and-white cushioned chairs. It was very dark in there, as the main illumination came from the small spotlights that directed everyone's focus to the stage. From what I could see, which was not much, I was the only female punter there, although my eyes caught the sparkles on the outfits of about a dozen strippers scattered about the room. They were in various stages of undress, wandering to and fro, sitting on customers' laps or giving 'private dances' in the rear. The men in the room were as young as 25 and no older than 50, many of them wearing baseball caps. No suits. These guys all looked as if they'd have been home cracking a Bud and watching the Sports Network had they not dropped in for a peek at Tiffany/Angel/Kylie.
I giggled nervously.
Tom and I sat at a table in the back. Immediately a very cute, very slim waitress wobbled over in super-high fuck-me heels to take our order. She was wearing an incredibly short red skirt and a matching crop top, and had to scream to be heard above Missy Elliott's 'Get Ur Freak On'.
'What?' she said. 'Excuse me?'
No wonder the focus was on the stage. Who could talk? Guess I wasn't going to hear Tom's autobiography.
I was grinning like the Cheshire Cat. I just couldn't stop smiling, partly thanks to nerves and feeling so outnumbered and partly because I found the whole environment so amusing. It was something of a cliché, just like it's depicted in the movies and on TV, just as I'd imagined it would be – the off-duty blue-collar workers, slouching in their chairs, drinking beer, watching the girls, whooping it up.
I like looking at beautiful girls, especially girls who have curves, big breasts and long slim legs and who want to be watched. I'd tried the girl-on-girl action during college and, though it doesn't really turn me on any more, I still get vicarious thrills from looking at sexy women. And so did Tom. He was happy to look at the display models, cute or not, and perhaps just as happy not to have to talk. The music pounded, the girls wiggled, Tom and I laughed.
I was happy about the way the night was turning out. A visit to a strip club ranked high on my list of tourist experiences. As for Tom, it must have been his lucky day, too. I doubted many girls asked the local boys to take them to a place full of gorgeous girls, at least not on the first date.
We watched dancers writhe in mock ecstasy as they made love to the poles fixed to the stage. Some looked like they might actually be enjoying their job, but on the whole I sensed an utter lack of interest, as if, given the choice and the same amount of money, the girls would just as soon work behind the till at Sainsbury's.
About twenty minutes after we ordered them, our drinks arrived: a bloody Mary for me, a Budweiser for Tom. We'd so enjoyed the action, we hadn't even noticed our drinks hadn't come.
The girls were a real mixed bag. Some were very thin and looked like they'd surpassed mere anorexia and bottomed out with a bad drug habit. Others had big hips and round bottoms and looked like Amazons in comparison. A tiny black girl in a microscopic bikini walked around the room serving shots from a holster. She had the body of a ten-year-old boy, but the world-weary look of a veteran streetwalker, indifferent to the lecherous stares of the guys in the room.
Then I spotted a small brown-haired woman wearing a black hot-pants jumpsuit, with a neckline that plunged down to her navel. She was very petite and looked as wholesome as a college student – cute in an all-American-girl kind of way, a go-go version of Sandra Bullock, but with perkier tits and about fifteen years younger.
Tom noticed me noticing her. 'Do you want a lap dance, honey?'
'Why not?' I said. 'That would be fun, wouldn't it? For both of us.'
'You pick one, then,' he said. It was interesting that he referred to the women in such generic terms. Pick one. To me, there was so much variety on display.
I picked the all-American girl. Tom raised his hand and pointed at her until he got her attention. He waved her over to our table.
'Hi,' I said as she approached.
'Hi,' she replied in a cute Southern accent. Without pausing for breath, she launched a rocket. 'My name is Austin but my real name is Amy and I should tell you that I'm gay and I have a girlfriend but she's really pissed at me at the moment because I keep coming home drunk at three in the m
orning and she says to me, "Is there a reason why every time you come home from work, you're drunk?" and I say to her, "Honey, you try doing this job when you're sober!" '
The monologue was completely unprovoked, totally out of the blue. I wondered if my being the only woman there gave Amy/Austin a sense of sisterly solidarity. Or maybe it was the drugs. In any case – boom! – the girl was off.
Tom turned to me and whispered, 'Wouldn't you just love to be this woman, just for five minutes, to see what it's like?'
It was a tempting prospect. Being a size-eight lap dancer with perky tits, a drug problem and a pissed-off girlfriend did sound like some kind of fantastic life. For five minutes.
'So, anyway,' Amy/Austin continued, 'she threw me out and said she didn't want to see me any more but I think she'll cool off in a day or two. I really love her but we have different working hours and she's a professional businesswoman and I'm doing this, although I'm just doing this until I get my real estate licence. I've got my exam in a couple weeks' time and then I want to be an appraiser and get the hell out of here, although, you know, the pay is pretty good so I can't complain.'
Tom waited for Amy/Austin to catch her breath and then said, 'Hey, my friend here would like a lap dance. Would you do that?'
'You know I'm gay?'
'Yes,' I said. 'I know you're gay. You told us somewhere along the way. It's fine. I'm liberal.'
'Great!' she said, suddenly very excited. 'Follow me.'
She led us through the club and up the stairs, to a dark narrow room which had a series of partitioned sections, each furnished with a two-seater sofa. Tom and I sat down and looked over at a man sitting opposite. He was getting a lap dance from a curvy dark-skinned woman who was naked and writhing inches away from his crotch. I wondered what Amy would do to me.
We could hear the music coming from the speakers downstairs. 'Get Ur Freak On' was playing again. The tight music rotation seemed the ultimate evidence that the focus of the club was looking, not listening.
Amy/Austin stood in front of me, rotating her hips and thrusting her little tits in the direction of my mouth, teasing me. Then she straddled my legs, facing me, and moved her lips inches from my own. Her hands moved under my dress and inched up my thigh.
'Wow,' she said when she finally touched my labia. 'No panties. Y'all are very naughty!'
I said nothing. Amy/Austin stood up and lifted my skirt. She looked at me and smiled. Then she got down on her knees and put her head between my legs and started licking my pussy. I didn't stop her.
This is a lot for twenty bucks, I thought; Tom's getting some good value here.
'Now, that's Southern hospitality,' I whispered to Tom. He said nothing, just continued watching, as did the man getting the lap dance opposite me.
I had not been with a woman since university, two decades earlier. Back at my New England college, I was known for popping straight girls' cherries. My bi phase lasted about three years and, until I realised I preferred the taste of penis, I served as the campus guinea pig for straight girls who wanted to experiment. They'd go out to a bar in the hope of scoring a stud, have too much to drink, and then, if unsuccessful, instead of stumbling back to their dorm, would knock on my door and spend the night eating my pussy.
Now here I was in Raleigh, North Carolina, in a lap-dancing club, with a stud of my own and a drunken stripper licking me out. Life had come full circle.
After five minutes or so, well past our allotted time, Amy/Austin came up for air and put her hand on my breast and her tongue down my throat. I was sure that too was against club regulations.
'Honey,' she said, 'if you're not gay, then you should be.'
I thought she was a sweet girl. Tom, meanwhile, was speechless.
Amy/Austin wasn't. She got right back to business and pumped us for another drink. 'Y'all wouldn't mind getting me another tequila, would ya?'
After that performance, I'd have bought her a whole bottle.
'She really liked you,' Tom said as we walked out the door.
'Yeah, she was cute,' I said. 'I haven't had a girl go down on me in years.'
'Well, you two really looked great together.'
'Thanks. For everything. That was fun.'
It was 1.30 in the morning. Tom drove me back to the car park and stopped his SUV next to the rental I'd hired for the week.
I leaned over to kiss my fireman as a precursor to sucking his hose. At last, he was going to get his dessert course. While we kissed, Tom pushed my dress up my waist, then bent over and put his mouth on my pussy.
'Let's move to the back seat,' I whispered after a few minutes. I didn't wait for an answer. I climbed over the front seat and into the bench in the back.
Tom followed and resumed his position between my legs. He grabbed my ankles and pushed them into the air. My legs hit the roof. It was not very comfortable, so after a few minutes I sat up and moved towards his cock. I grabbed my handbag, whipped out a condom that I'd brought along, as they say, just in case, and stretched it over his hard eight inches.
Tom drove straight into me and came in three minutes. That told me my own orgasm was out of the question.
He didn't apologise or seem bothered that I wasn't going to come, and that was OK. Tom had treated me to a nice dinner and many rounds of drinks, and he'd taken me to my first American strip club and graciously watched as a perky-titted lesbo junkie ate me out. At this point, car sex was just a bonus. To me, atmosphere and excitement carry as much weight as the fireworks.
I got back into my car, drove home to my brother's house and crept into bed. I set my alarm early, so I could make pancakes for my boys.
'So,' said Lisa the next morning, 'how was your date?'
'Oh, it was OK.'
17. THE CONTENDER
When I returned from America, I got an email from Flirtnik announcing that it had gone back online. I had been a member about a year earlier, before the site went down, and aside from my brief correspondence with Honest Jim, I hadn't logged on since. I hadn't even realised it had closed. Dating websites come and go so frequently, I can't keep track of where I'm listed. At any one time, I'm probably active on as many as five sites; and like the number of men I've slept with, I've lost count. Swinging Heaven was my mainstay, anyway.
Still, when Flirtnik informed me that, as an inaugural member, I was 'live' again, I logged in, updated my details and uploaded a fresh picture, a happy smiley jpeg featuring my new 1950s bouncy 'do and just enough cleavage not to get kicked off a trad site. I searched for men in the 38 to 55 age range, didn't see a single guy I fancied, and thought: There's a reason Swinging Heaven is so popular.
Then the next day I received an email from Honest Jim. 'You still on here?' he asked. Apparently he'd received the same 'Welcome Back' from Flirtnik. He wanted to know if I was still single. I wanted to know who he was. I just couldn't recall. A year in my romantic life is the equivalent of ten in most other women's. I receive plenty of winks from guys named Jim.
I had to dig through 63 pages of emails from hopefuls to find our ancient correspondence and his pic. Then I remembered – he was the cute guy with the crooked teeth who, after our brief online flirtation a year earlier, had gone back to his old girlfriend. I'd liked him – he'd seemed funny and smart and interested, and he'd once worked as a music buyer for a major record chain, which I thought was cool – but we'd never hooked up.
'Yes, I'm still here, Jim,' I wrote back. 'Still doing the same old things. What about you?'
He said he wasn't with his girlfriend any more and asked if I wanted to meet up. He also mentioned that he'd recently enrolled as a mature student at a London university to get his BA in English lit. I thought his desire to get a degree in his forties showed real courage. And that was a change from most of the men I met, who typically were happy to give their mind a rest and let their cock do all the thinking.
Just as I was about to update Honest Jim on my news, that I'd published the book I'd been working on a year earlier,
just as I was about to say, yes, I was interested in meeting up with him, Pat called with her own news. She said that while I was in North Carolina, she'd acquired a boyfriend. They met via a bland dating site similar to Flirtnik.
'This guy really feels like The One,' she said, then began offering me a few tips on meeting guys. I thought it was funny, the amateur coaching the pro.
I let Pat dispense advice for a while, then told her about my holiday fling with the fireman. Then I mentioned I'd come home to emails from Flirtnik and had just received one from a guy I'd fancied a year earlier, who was suddenly free.
Pat suggested that, if I was going to meet him, I omit certain details of my life. 'You don't want to tell men about your book,' she said.
'Why not?'
'Well, guys on normal sites might be put off.' The word 'normal' irked me, reminding me that Pat never did quite seem to get the hook-up sites.
'But they're bound to find out, sooner or later,' I said.
'Yes, that's true, but better for them to find out on date four or five.'
'Why?' I asked. 'Just so I can postpone getting dumped?'
'No! It just gives them a chance to find out about the real you.'
'But the book is the real me. What's the point in their discovering that later, rather than sooner?'
Pat was convinced honesty would scare off a Flirtnik man.
'If it does, then he's not right for me,' I said.
'Trust me,' she said. 'Don't tell him. Don't!'
I thought I had nothing to lose by putting Pat's words into practice.
Despite my golden rule about avoiding conventional guys, especially after my disappointing fling-ette with Paul, I agreed to a real date date. On one condition. I told Honest Jim he had to dress a little better. In the updated pic he'd sent me, he was wearing khaki cargo shorts and a T-shirt that looked like something from Old Navy. It lacked originality and style. I go for men who have both.
I didn't hold out much hope for Jim. He looked too straight. Yet I liked the sound of his voice – he had a soothing tone and an unpretentious middle-class accent – and he seemed nice and interested in the world. He asked me to a Hogarth exhibition at the Tate, which made a change from asking which hotel I wanted to go to for a couple of hours. When I told him I didn't know much about Hogarth, secretly not knowing a damned thing, he gave me a charming ten-minute precis on the artist that almost made me come. I love smart guys, especially smart guys with nice voices. And I love them even more if they have a huge cock. But since we hadn't met on a swinging site, I'd have to wait to find out if Jim did.
The Not So Invisible Woman Page 19