Dance of Death

by Dale Hudson

  “But from now on,” Renee advised Agnes, “you need to call ahead before you make a surprise visit to my room.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The idea for Renee to become an exotic dancer probably originated with her friend April Eason. In the fall of 1995, April dropped by to visit Renee at her mom’s house. Renee was seven months pregnant at the time and she and Brent were sitting at the kitchen table talking with April when she started telling them about how much money she was making as a dancer in a topless club.

  Renee’s mouth dropped open. She found it strange having a friend in that type of business. She didn’t know a lot about what all went on at the clubs, but what she had heard sounded like some weird stuff. But it didn’t really affect her either way. She was just happy to hear April was doing well and making so much money.

  Brent, on the other hand, thought it was awesome. He looked at Renee and told her after she had the baby, she could start dancing and making big money like April.

  Renee couldn’t believe her husband had said that. Her mom was standing behind her and she couldn’t believe it, either. Marie kind of huffed and went on about her business, knowing that Renee would never do anything like that. But there was a lot going on in Renee’s life that she never had told her mother.

  From Renee and Brent’s earlier days in high school, they had always been sexually attracted to each other. But for some reason, after Katie was born, Brent didn’t want to have sexual relations with Renee. Renee was too ashamed to talk with anyone about it, but she believed the real reason their relationship had taken a nosedive was because Brent had gotten hooked on Internet porno sites. She said at first they would sit down and look through the sites together, hoping that it would add some spark to their spiraling sex life. But she soon got tired of that and wanted to do other things. She said she liked doing things with her daughter, like taking her to the park or visiting her or Brent’s parents. Brent worked second shift, so they didn’t see a lot of each other at night. And when he wasn’t working, he was either riding four-wheelers, hanging out with his friends or on the computer pulling up more porno sites.

  As long as Renee had known Brent, he had indulged in pornography. At home, he would hide his magazines in the drop-ceiling tiles of his room so his mom wouldn’t find them. When they were dating, she said, he kept his magazines stashed under the driver’s seat of his truck. And after they were married, he would hide them in their home under their water bed so that Katie wouldn’t find them accidentally. Brent also kept other magazines under the driver’s seat of his car and would look at them in the parking lot after he got off work.

  What Brent didn’t seem to understand was that Renee’s appetite for sex easily equaled his. She wanted him to know that all the while she, too, craved the same sexual attention and pleasure he wanted for himself. She tried initiating sex with him several times, but each time he turned her down flat. Yet, in the early-morning hours, she would watch him from her empty bed go into the next room and masturbate while watching porno films. She couldn’t understand Brent’s logic. She was more than willing to please him and instead he chose to do that. For a while, she tried to satisfy herself by masturbating with a vibrator, until he asked to borrow it to pleasure himself. She told him he could have it, that she didn’t want it anymore. After that incident, she vowed she would find herself someone who would spend time with her gladly.

  Renee guessed she may have had that in the back of her mind when she agreed with Brent to apply at the Silver Fox Gentleman’s Club in Winston-Salem. She had always been an attractive woman and had gotten her share of hits from men, but she was a little apprehensive about competing with professional dancers for attention.

  Brent was confident she could make as much money as any of those other dancers. One night, he had talked her into wearing a white patent-leather outfit. The costume consisted of a skirt and a jacket—all of twelve inches—that zipped up the front and only came down to the middle of her back, and she wore six-inch-heeled knee-high boots to match. Brent was standing behind the curtain, watching the delivery boy’s face when Renee answered the door in her skimpy outfit, and nearly fell through the window laughing so hard.

  Renee looked like a Playboy foldout. She had those large Bambi eyes and long, black-colored lashes that would mesmerize any man. As she prepared herself for her new career, she realized this was her strongest feature and would spend a lot of time searching for the perfect shades of eyeliner and mascara. She started experimenting with different brands of shadows, lipsticks and makeup. She had been wearing makeup since she was about fourteen, but she was going after a much different look and it took a different approach. Sultry, sweltering and sizzling was more the look she was now seeking.

  Renee found she didn’t need anything to highlight her lips. Just a little lipstick would always accent her pouting lips. She normally wore her hair pulled up in a ponytail or completely down. A bad hair day for her was any day when the humidity was high. Her hair was naturally curly and frizzed when there was moisture in the air. But now that she was making the transition from teenager to woman, she’d have to find a new hairdo. The big-hair thing was definitely out. She needed to let her hair grow to one length and straighten it a bit, start wearing barrettes and swing it across her face and shoulders.

  All of Renee’s old clothes would have to go, too. She told Brent she’d have to expand her closet and update the outfits she had. She started looking in fashion magazines and buying clothes with colors that would complement her hair, eyes, and skin tone. She tried different styles and wore things she had never thought of wearing before, like sandals, open-toed shoes and ankle-length dresses in reds, browns, slivers and greens. The more she worked at it, the more sophisticated she got. She knew she had finally arrived when total strangers would stop her in the street to tell her she looked like Ashley Judd, Jennifer Love Hewitt or Alyssa Milano.

  Renee got hired as a dancer and she went to work right away. She hadn’t ever taken any dance lessons, but she quickly picked up little moves from the other girls and incorporated them into her routine. She became more limber and, at times, even felt sexy. As she became less conscious of her nudity, it made things easier for her to adopt a sultry look and concentrate on making the customer feel as if he/she were the only person in the room. Before long, the money came in like it was falling from the sky.

  At first, Brent was more interested in Renee making money. But he, too, became infatuated with the new Renee and began to show her some attention. He liked it when the green in her eyes was more predominant than the brown. He liked it when she started wearing her hair down and across her face. And he liked for her to wear short skirts, tight dresses and low-rise, tight jeans that showed off her stomach. Belly-baring jeans was his particular favorite, but for some reason, he still wouldn’t allow her to wear them around his family. It didn’t matter to Renee, for she was more comfortable in T-shirts, tank tops or sweaters, and loose-fitting jeans. When she dressed in ankle-length dresses, Brent said, she looked more like a schoolteacher and he didn’t want her to wear them around him. She never protested to Brent about it, though, and did whatever he wanted just to avoid an argument.

  What Renee did enjoy was their lovemaking. Brent was probably turned on to the fact that she was now willing to do whatever he wanted her to and was as vocal as he was about sex. Working at the club had given her the confidence she was seeking and allowed her to be more experimental at home.

  Renee’s dancing at the Silver Fox had definitely livened up their sex life at home. Brent would ask her to dance for him as foreplay, and she’d dress up in one of her sexy outfits and perform. She always had been shy growing up, not real sure of herself, and had struggled with low self-esteem. She still wrestled with it, but all the attention she had gotten from men at the club, the many compliments they paid her, helped to boost her confidence and reconstruct her ego. How could she not think she was anything but lavishly gorgeous when she was repeatedly told she was too beautiful to
be working there. Deep down inside, she didn’t believe it was true. But it sure helped to hear it and at least pretend it was true.

  If Brent was intimidated by other men watching his wife dance naked and lusting after her, he didn’t show it. He never complained about her closet expanding with the many show time outfits Renee had purchased specially from stores in Greensboro and Charlotte. There was also a seamstress who made outfits and came to the club to sell them, and Renee was soon designing her own clothing.

  One of Renee’s favorite outfits was a man’s white, solid and button-down shirt, with a white satiny bra and thong underneath. The thigh-highs were white with lace at the tops of them. The shirt was oversize for Renee and was buttoned with one button about halfway down. She had bought the shirt after having seen one of the girls wear the button-down over a teddy and thought it’d look better with a simple bra and a standard thong.

  Brent found it hard to believe his wife was making as much money dancing two nights a week as he was for working forty hours per week. He started inviting all his friends to visit the club and encouraging them to ask his wife to do a table dance for them. Some found it a little bizarre to see him sitting in the club and watching his wife dance naked. They knew his family and that his parents were very religious. Now they only could wonder what his parents must be thinking.

  Renee admitted she had found it a little uncomfortable dancing naked at first, then didn’t see what all the fuss was about. None of what she wore was any more revealing than what had been seen at the beach, except for her cheeks hanging out from the thong. She didn’t have all the slick moves of the other dancers, but it was easy to close her eyes and get into the music. Fantasy names also weren’t one of her strong points, but she remembered April had once used the stage name “Carlee” at a club where she was dancing and it had seemed to work for her. Renee adopted “Carlee” as her stage name. April had also gotten a theatrical mask tattooed on her shoulder blade and had talked Renee into getting one tattooed on her thigh.

  One thing Renee hadn’t thought about before working at the club was the large number of women who came into the club, usually with their boyfriends or husbands, who would pay the dancers to perform for them. She would soon learn from performing in the club that two women being intimate wasn’t as big a deal as everyone made it out to be. There were ways women could pleasure other women that men knew absolutely nothing about and discovered from experience that women were much more patient and sensual than men. She realized women knew what felt good to a woman because they shared the same anatomy. Women took their time and did not focus on their own pleasure, as most men did.

  As far as she knew, Brent had never actually seen her being sexual with another woman—other than kissing. He may have been looking through the crack in the door at the club, assuming every man she had ever known had a fantasy of making love to two women. Brent had tons of magazines and movies at home portraying this same subject.

  Brent appreciated the fringe benefits that came with his wife’s new job as much as she did. He loved for Renee to bring women home with her after work. He would purse his lips, pout like a baby and get mad at her for days until she finally agreed to his requests. Because she hated Brent being mad at her, she would usually give in and promise she’d try to talk one of the girls into coming home with her.

  Two girls from the Silver Fox did come home with her on two separate occasions. It was late, around three or four in the morning, but Brent didn’t mind. He said he felt like he had died and gone to heaven. He cooked for everyone and they all sat around, watched television and talked for a while, then went to bed. They had a spare bedroom upstairs, but Renee saw to it that the girls slept in the bed with her. While Brent slept on the couch downstairs, she and her friends were upstairs having more than a pajama party. They were intimate in every way—kissing, touching, tasting and exploring—but all she allowed her husband to do was fantasize about it.

  Brent had always encouraged Renee to bring other women into their marriage. With his fetish for pornography, she believed he was one of those people that psychologists called “voyeurs.” But, he told her, it went deeper than that. He begged Renee to let him join in, but she just couldn’t bring herself to watch him be intimate with another woman. What he did away from her, she didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to sit back and watch him do it in her own home. He, on the other hand, wanted more than anything to watch Renee make love with another woman, but she just didn’t feel comfortable with that, either. The next day, he’d always ask for details, but she kept them to herself. He had told her that just the thought of his wife being with another woman turned him on, so she thought it best to leave this to his imagination.

  There was one certain waitress at the club who once spent the night with Renee that Brent had hoped he could turn into a threesome, but nothing ever transpired. She was very beautiful and Brent desperately wanted her, but she said she was not interested in any of his sex games. They all went out with her on a few occasions; then she quit the club and they never heard from her again.

  Renee started to enjoy her liaisons with the women she brought home, but she never told Brent that. She didn’t want him to feel inadequate as a lover. Renee knew a lot of people who preached that homosexual relationships were wrong, but since Brent had encouraged her to indulge and she had experimented with it, she didn’t feel there was anything more wrong with that than the porn films people watched, the magazines they masturbated to or the premarital sex they engaged in.

  Renee was particularly attracted to another dancer she had met at the club, Cynthia Hanson. They quickly became friends and after hours would go out dancing at regular clubs or she’d cook and they’d hang out at her apartment watching Walt Disney movies with Katie. When they went out to regular clubs, they’d dance together, feed each other and do all the things that “girlfriends” would do. They would even kiss, but that was about it. Cynthia had a boyfriend, so they never had sex. She had already told Renee she had never indulged before and Renee didn’t want to pressure her into it. Whenever she was ready, she said, she’d let Renee know.

  The two dancers were so close that when Renee wanted another tattoo, she asked to have Cynthia’s lip prints tattooed on her neck. She thought it would be sexy and different. She had chosen Cynthia’s impressions because her lips were always fuller than hers. From an outside appearance, it looked as if Renee and Cynthia had done a lot more than they actually had. Inside the Silver Fox, Cynthia would tip Renee while she was on stage dancing and Renee would return the favor and pay Cynthia extra attention. It always seemed to raise the customers’ curiosity and increase the numbers of dollars in their garters.

  Renee’s specialty at the Silver Fox was the shower dance, where she would shower behind a glass petition wearing only a thong. Using Pert shampoo—because it glowed under the black lights—and rinsing with a handheld nozzle, she did it alone, or with another girl behind the glass with her. She was a most desirable temptress, and received many offers for sex and private parties. Two deejays and another man, who always brought the dancers bouquets of flowers every night, had also propositioned her for sex. One of the dancers had also wanted Renee to join her and her girlfriend for a threesome. Other customers had offered to take her out to dinner, to vacation in Grand Cayman, and one even told her he would pay what she made in a week’s salary to come and clean his house naked. He was married, but said his wife wouldn’t mind her doing that.

  Renee had gotten real friendly with the other dancers and developed a special attraction with another girl in the club. Courtney Wolford was a real knockout with long brunette hair, brown eyes, and her cherub face. Renee had seen Courtney’s Web site featuring Courtney posing partially nude with adults toys for sale and the option to pay and see more. Her husband, Bruce, worked as a bartender in the club and said he was the one who had set the site up. He offered to do the same for any girl in the club. There were rumors circulating within the dancer’s dressing room that Courtne
y was having some problems. Renee could see Courtney was getting as thin as fishing line.

  Renee learned later that Bruce had a job working with computers in addition to his bartending at the club. Since Brent and Renee were now into computers, Bruce had promised to show them a few technical options. One night, they were all talking on the computer and Bruce hacked into their computer and pulled up everything they had on their hard drive. Suddenly all the Pooles information was staring at them from their monitor. Brent was amazed at the knowledge Bruce had acquired about computers and wanted to learn more.

  Eventually the Pooles had a camera installed on their computer and would use it to IM the Wolfords while on the Internet. The two couples talked about others who had used the camera for the purpose of Internet sex and suggested they might try it. Renee really liked Courtney and they had talked of being intimate, but it never took place. Brent was also chomping at the bit for a threesome with Courtney, but he wasn’t having much success, either. He was well-endowed and thought it would help their case if he e-mailed her a picture of himself nude and his shaven penis. But when she saw it, she e-mailed him back and said he was way too big for her.

  Renee knew all about her husband’s fantasies with Courtney. She wasn’t sure how Courtney felt about it, but Bruce had told her he dated others in the club and participated in extramarital affairs on a regular basis. So, she wasn’t surprised when he started making little sly remarks to her and making flirtatious advances toward her. She figured Brent and Bruce had secretly set up a “trade-off,” an agreement to switch partners. When Courtney told Renee that Bruce had the hotel room all set up and was just waiting for her, she went along with it. She remembered seeing a camera facing the bed while she and Bruce were having sex, but she never saw the little red light flashing. She had no idea that Bruce would be filming it until he showed her the remote control afterward.