Hot Girl's Club

         I’d been a teacher for thirty-three years. I loved children, but my nerves were frazzled. That last year I yelled. A good teacher never raises her voice. I knew it was time to retire.

         But I was still young. My figure was as spry as a twenty-year-old’s and I had great teeth and a youngish face. I wasn’t ready for retiring. I looked around at my options and there frankly weren’t many -- sales clerk at Sears or WalMart, waitress, receptionist in someone’s office. Then I saw the ad: Wild girls needed.

         I cracked a smile and went on purveying the ads, but my eyes kept going back to Wild girls. The local strip joint – I wondered what went on there. Table dancing I knew about. I’d read an article about how terrible it was that young girls would sit on a man’s lap and wiggle him into ecstasy. And I guess the girls took part of their clothes off. Our city ordinance didn’t agree with total nudity. I wondered how much the girls did take off. I was frankly curious what really went on inside.

         Frank, my husband, used to be quite honest with me about some of the places he’d been before I came along. I knew he’d visited whores in his Navy stint. I laughed remembering how red his face had gotten when I’d probed too hard for details.

         How I missed Frank and my daughter! Seven years now they’d been gone, killed by a drunken driver. So many years without their laughter and the way they’d filled a room with joy. But seven years is a long time to mourn. I was tired of wearing symbolic black.

         Could a woman still be sexy at 56? Would a place like Hot Girls even look at me? Or would they laugh in my face?

         I’ve never been a coward. I stripped down, pulled on my secret red silk underwear, slithered into a slinky black dress – the one with the buttons down the front -- and with shaking hands, dolled up my face. I put on a little extra blush to make up for how pale I’d suddenly become, doubled the layer of mascara, and headed out the door.

         Then I stopped. Something was nibbling at my mind. Halloween – my daughter’s feather Mardi Gras mask. I found it. A couple of the feathers were falling out. I plucked them and preened the plumage. The longest feather I kept in my hand. A smile of delight crossed my face as I thought about what I was attempting to do. I glanced in the mirror over the chest of drawers and turned the smile sexy.

         A five minute drive and the pink building with the Hot Girl’s neon light loomed before me. Did I have the courage? With my thought, a streak of anger rammed me. Me -- lacking courage? Frank would have laughed. He’d always called me his tiger.

         I stretched my long, slender legs out the door. I caressed the shiny nylons. My years of tap dancing and ballet had kept them young. They could still compete with a twenty-year-old’s.

         I jammed my chin in the air and marched forward, daring the hot pink door to intimidate me. The door was unlocked; I squeezed the lever and entered. I thought someone might rush forward and bar my way, but no one even noticed me. I headed for the bar.

         “I’d like to see the manager,” I said in a voice as clear and crisp as any good classroom teacher’s voice.

         The young man, good-looking with hair slicked back like a juvenile vampire, shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am. He doesn’t talk with church ladies. Or are you from the paper?”

         “I want to talk to him about a job.”

         The man started to snicker, but he curbed it well. Silently, I praised his mother’s tutelage.

         With a yell from the bartender, Boss man strode out of his office and towards us. Then he halted and stood there staring at me.

         “What the…”

         I held out my hand. “Hi, I’m interested in applying for a job. I read your ad in the Silverton Daily.”

         Boss man wasn’t as polite as the bartender. He guffawed. “You gotta be kiddin’ lady. You know what kinda place this is?”

         “I believe that I could do the job as well as anyone, Mr……”

         He ignored my request for a name and flung himself down in a chair. No invitation to join him was given, but I sat down across from him anyway.

         “I will be happy to fill out your application. I think you will find my…”

         “Listen lady, this ain't the place for you. It's a strip joint. Ya ever done strip?”

         His face was bulging with aggravation and he was glowering at me. He’s just like an angry parent, I thought to myself. Be calm and persistent in what you want.

         “No,” I admitted. “But I’m sure I can do whatever the others do. I’m a very quick learner.”

         Boss man took out a piece of cinnamon gum, unwrapped it, and stuck it into his mouth. His jaws moved without any rhythm, grinding and mixing the new piece into the big wad he’d already had in his mouth.

         “Listen, I hate ta be the one to break this to ya, but you ain’t no spring chicken. No man’s gonna pay to see you bare your all. Know what I mean?”

         I sat up straighter. Had he been Frank he would have seen my chin lock into argument position. “Are you saying you won’t hire me because of my age? I believe there are laws about that.”

         “Oh, God,” he said, and then he cursed a string of profanity that I won’t repeat. “Spare me.”

         His nostrils were flaring as he glowered. Then he surveyed me like a horse he was thinking of buying. I wasn't about to be quelled by anything so simplistic. Teachers have seen it all.

         “All right," he said with a huge sigh and a shake of his head. "Get up there and show me what ya got.”

         I’d won, but it was like that first time I’d had to stand before a class of thirty-five sixth graders -- their faces cocked with ready jeers, my knees trembling, my throat dry as a parched bone.

         “Can’t I watch someone first?” I asked, amazed that my voice still carried as sure and even as if I were just having a normal day in the classroom.

         His smile turned evil. I could see he was gloating over my discomfort.

         I reached into my purse, pulled out the feather and my daughter’s mask. Then I walked up onto the stage. I didn’t have any music. The bartender turned on a tape. The song was one I’d heard my daughter play years ago. She and I had danced to it, giggling like two teenagers instead of one.

         I donned the mask and slipped into the music. Perhaps I looked like a 56 year-old woman trying to emulate a twenty-year-old, but I didn’t feel like it. I felt young and limber. I shimmied my red silk slip, revealing my shapely legs and thighs. I unbuttoned the top button of my slinky black dress. I turned my back to the men and wiggled my hips. I took off my mask, and covered up the places they’d most like to see, teasing them into yearning groans.

         “Oooh momma,” someone called out.

         I turned and gave him the look that had once turned Frank into a raging, sex-starved bull. It worked for the aging suit. He stood up and tossed a ten.

         “Is that all you want?” I cooed, and came closer. The buttons on my black dress were slowly coming loose. The man was drawn closer, as if my fingers were the wand of his capture.

         He couldn’t take his eyes from my red brassiere. I smiled and feathered his face. His hands moved out to envelope me. I stepped away and back towards the others.

         I was swimming with power. The feeling was a wildness inside me. I needed the interest of the men. I wanted their eyes on my body, their tongues drooling their lust. I stepped forward, closer to the others, dancing among them, rocking and moving in waves of gyrations, teasing them, taunting them, loving it.

         One young man moaned. His pants were filled with desire. I stroked them with my feather.

         “Sit on me,” he begged.

         I laughed gently and moved beyond his outstretched hands. There were others to conquer, other desires to ignite. My body needed no directions. With the men’s eyes on me, it writhed with the dance every woman is born to share.

         The music came to a close, and another song began. I continued. I did not want to stop. I never wished to end this dance. My bra was lined with twenties and my aging suit was once again corralling me with his need. I sat in his lap and jiggled his hard one. He kissed my neck and I groaned.

         They hired me, of course. I was called the Dancing Teacher. Quite a name I built for myself, correcting grammar and giving those school marm looks when the language declined into coarseness.

         Last year I bought the Hot Girl's Club. It's a classier place now with pale blue carpet, and well-framed copies of Renoir on the walls. Our sets on the stage often use classical music, and modern dance numbers rotate with gyrations. The clientelle is stronger than ever, although suits and ties are now required.


         The aging suit I met that first night became my truest fan. He followed me home one day and moved in by the end of that year. I dance solo for him now with my feather, stroking his chest, his thighs, and the pulsing lance in between. My favorite red silk panties slide across his face -- teasingly suggestive of what it had formerly covered. Like Frank used to be, Charles is a raging bull when he sees that look in my eye, the sight of silk and the luminous green peacock feather. And our nights are everything I dreamed of.


         But still I dance in the Hot Girls Club, and I’ve never once heard of any teacher's retirement being quite as sweet as mine.