Chapter 2
1766 Words
JACK
I stayed outside the house for a bit, settling at a shadowy corner near the driveway. I could still hear the girls screaming their lungs out. They were having fun. I felt a semblance of pride for jumpstarting their enjoyment. My performance was shorter than usual, but I believed I gave them enough to make a lasting impact.
Impact was important for repeat business. The girls there would be good vehicles for some old fashioned word-of-mouth marketing.
I lit up a cigarette to celebrate the completion of another job.
I was halfway through the stick when I heard the door open. Someone came rushing out of the house, dashing towards where I was. He was already tapping on a pack of Marlboros and was already lighting it up by the time he reached my spot.
He was so much in a hurry for a puff that he didn’t even notice I was there.
He savored the first drag, keeping the smoke deep in his lungs for a good number of seconds. Then he began to slowly breathe out, the white fog leisurely escaping his mouth.
“Bet you’ve been needing that for quite some time now, eh?” I greeted him.
That caught the poor guy by surprise. He inadvertently swallowed up the smoke and began coughing incessantly.
“Hey, easy now, bud,” I tried to comfort him as I patted his slender back. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You *cough*cough*... you’re the... *cough*... the stripper... *cough*,” he struggled to respond.
“Yep. And you must be the groom.” I recognized the willowy shape of his body but I never got to see his face. We only spent a few minutes inside that closet and it was dark back there.
So I studied him while he was busy clearing this throat. Neatly-combed light brown hair, blue eyes, nicely angled nose, lips redder than most geezers, hollow cheeks... there was nothing remarkable about his features, but collectively, they did give him a certain kind of charm that some chicks might find fascinating.
Hey, the bride-to-be inside the house must’ve found him attractive as she agreed to marry him, right?
“Yes...” he remarked as soon as he recovered. “Jaxter, right?”
“It’s Jack, actually,” I corrected him. “Jaxter’s my... professional... name. I’m off duty now, so you can call me Jack. You?”
“I’m Luke,” he answered as he extended his hand which I readily met with mine. “Luke Galloway. Pleasure to meet you... I mean... formally, that is. And yes, I’m the groom.”
“Pleasure’s all mine, Luke,” I returned the courtesy. “I’m happy you recognized me with my clothes on,” I jested.
I didn’t think he got the joke, though. He tensed up all of a sudden and he gulped some air.
Another round of cheers blared from inside the house, interrupting our chat for a second or two. That allowed him to change the subject.
“They’re still having fun,” he mentioned what was quite obvious.
“Yeah,” I played along. “You seemed to have been in a hurry to get out of there, though.”
“It’s a bridal shower. I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. But Cynthia... the Asian girl who hired you... she had this idea that my presence would surprise my fiancee.”
“Was she surprised?” I genuinely wanted to know. “I don’t know what happened after I left. I wasn’t there anymore when you came out of the closet...”
Again, my words stressed him out once more, causing me to pause for a while as I wondered if I said something wrong. What’s the matter with this dude?
“Yes, she was surprised,” he eventually answered to break the silence that was swiftly becoming awkward. “Well, I would love to believe she was,” he added.
“Yeah. The setup’s kinda weird. Usually, the bride gets to see me dancin’ and prancin’ and doin’ my thing. I think this is the first time that the bride didn’t get to see me perform.”
“I guess that was for the better,” he remarked.
“Eh? How come?”
“She would’ve been more disappointed if she got to see you before she saw me,” he answered, biting his lips immediately afterwards as if he realized that he just said something that he shouldn’t have.
It didn’t take a genius to know that there was something troubling this would-be union.
“You’ve been together long?” I asked him, partly because I wanted to keep the small talk going and partly because I was curious about their story.
“Five years and a few months,” he replied as he pulled another puff.
“Jesus Christ! That’s longer than most marriages!”
He laughed. “It does seem longer, though. I guess that’s a normal feeling when you get to see each other everyday.”
“Everyday? You guys living together?”
“Nah. We can’t, even if we wanted to. His dad’s a little too... conservative.”
“I see.”
“We work together though. Same company. Same building.”
“Hey, at least you get to earn while being with her, right?” I quipped. “Me? I end up spending way too much whenever I hook up with some chick.”
“Married?” he asked.
“Nah. That ain’t for me, man.”
“Girlfriend?” His questions were beginning to sound more involved than just polite chatter.
“Not at the moment, no,” I told him. “Anyway,” it was my turn to change the topic, “you work with your fiancee, huh? Who’s higher up the totem pole, man?”
“Oh, she is,” he chuckled. “She’s way, way, way up there. Her dad owns the company.”
“No s**t?” I blurted. “Wow! How’s that like for you, bro?”
Luke grunted before responding. “Just as terrible as you can imagine it to be, I suppose.”
“I bet it is!” I agreed with a laugh. “A wise man once said, marriage makes a woman a nagger. But it seems like you’ve been getting loads of practice is she’s been your boss for quite some time now, eh?”
“I suppose so,” he sniggered. “But to be fair, she’s not my direct superior. Her dad is, though.”
“And how is he?”
“Terrifying.”
We both laughed at his blunt reply.
“A slave driver who thinks that you’re stealing his baby girl, huh?” I commented.
“Exactly!” he concurred.
“Man... your situation makes stripping seem like a dream job!” I cracked.
“Speaking of which, how long have you been a stripper?” he inquired.
“Oh... two or three years, I think. I’m not so sure though. I never really kept track.”
“And why do you do this?” he followed up on his previous query. “I mean... if you don’t mind me asking...”
“Nah, I don’t mind,” I assured him. “I get that question a lot, believe it or not. Mostly from lady clients, though.”
“Do you enjoy it? Stripping?”
“Wouldn’t say I don’t. It’s alright. It pays the bills, and then some. Which is good, really. I got lots of bills to pay.”
“And... uhm... that’s all you do?” His voice began to tremble. He knew it was a rather inappropriate question, but he seemed desperate to know the answer.
“You want to know if I also f**k my clients?” I tried to clarify as I gave him a knowing smile.
“Uhm... errrr...” He didn’t expect my response. That caused him to flounder with his words.
“Only if I’m interested with them,” I went on to reply, saving him from the discomfort that was causing him much anxiety. “I don’t sleep with anyone for money.”
“So... you have to be... attracted to them?” he pressed on to know. He was really curious about the matter.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“That happens a lot?”
“Nah,” I snickered. “Rarely. And none of them ever worked out.”
“Why not?”
I fell silent for a while, wondering if I should share with him something that I never really told other people before. Eventually, I decided to answer. “None of them really dug my preference.”
“P-Preference?” he repeated, perplexed. I knew what he was going to ask next, but he was interrupted by a woman’s voice calling his name.
“Luke!” the lady yelled. I recognized her as the one who secured my services. Luke mentioned earlier that her name’s Cynthia. “Come back here! We ran out of wine and we don’t know how to use the corkscrew!”
“Coming!” he replied before looking at me. “Hey, I gotta split, man. It was fun chatting with you, though.”
“As I’ve said, pleasure’s all mine, bro,” I replied before reaching for my wallet. I drew out a calling card. “Hey, if by some chance you know someone who needs a stripper... I mean colleagues from work or acquaintances from college, peeps like that... can you give them my contact details? My job’s built on referrals, you see, so any help you can extend will go a long way.”
He smiled back at me as he received my business card. “Yeah, sure,” he said before running back to the house.
I stared at him until he was gone from my sight.
Luke Galloway.
What a character!
Simple but intriguing. And strangely charming too, in some inexplicable way.
But those aren’t the reasons why he lingered in my head even after he left, no.
It was because, somehow, I pitied him.
It’s not because of his situation at work or the obvious issues plaguing his relationship or the doubts he was harboring about his upcoming marriage - doubts which he didn’t have to reveal but were very much apparent.
No, it wasn’t because of any of those.
Rather, I pitied him because he’s gay. That’s not a bad thing, of course.
I pitied him because he’s gay... and he didn’t know it yet.
- Writer
