Chapter 6

After Estella’s stripping shift ended on Friday, she headed to the man’s son’s rave. Michi, insisting, came with her, and as it turned out one of her Japanese friends, Yoshie, had a bit more money than her, and had leased a Grand Am of all cars. Perhaps a taste of All-American muscle car.

Yoshie, a slim beautiful young woman, lit up a joint as soon as the two slid into her car, passing it to Estella, taking shotgun at Michi’s insistence, as soon as she finished toking. “Address?” she asked, and Estella handed her the flier, which she recited at the dash, a GPS program obviously, and a female voice gave the directions.

Estella had been getting high since her secondary school days, though less than some she knew because it tended to distract from studies, which also had been what restricted her at University. Whatever group she ended up with afterwards would determine her smoking or lack of it, she never bought any herself. Both the soldiers she knew and the intellectuals smoked various amounts.

Joe didn’t and neither did Queenie, so it had been a while since she’d partaken, but she had no qualms about it. She’d heard about the potency of Hawaiian bud, and soon learned the truth of it.

“You must not have been among the friends who disapproved of Michi when my friend Queenie discovered her,” Estella asked.

“What happened?” Yoshie asked.

“The karaoke bar,” Michi reminded her.

“Oh yeah. That’s where we met, right? I came with that boy to show him the culture and you ended up with his friend.”

“He wasn’t your boyfriend?” Michi asked.

“Just someone I knew from school. I came into some money and was thinking about starting up some kind of theater here and was bouncing ideas off him. Maybe I thought about him that way, and I found out he thought the same, but decided it probably wouldn’t work out.”

“Him or the theater?” Estella asked.

“Both.”

“So you two just met then?”

“We exchanged numbers. How’d it go with what’s his name, Michi?”

“Cliff,” Michi answered. “Pretty good from what I remember, but I guess hangovers tend to sour things.”

“He seemed a little strange to me.”

“Yeah, me too,” Michi giggled. “Not psycho or anything, but ... So you and Nate never...?”

“Fucked? No.”

“He seemed kind of cute.”

“I guess it didn’t work out.”

“Did he disappoint you when he hit on you?” Estella asked.

“He’s in theater so I thought he was gay,” Yoshie admitted. “I thought maybe a friendship and he’d help with ideas.”

“So not your type then,” Estella challenged. “Because ... a beautiful woman like you...”

“I don’t know. Maybe I was looking for a guy friend, a collaborator, where sex wouldn’t get in the way.”

Estella nodded and they became quiet, listening to some electronic dance music, sounding pretty old school, with Japanese lyrics. Normally Estella didn’t like synthetic music, not looking forward to what would probably be hours of it at loud volume, but somehow she sort of liked it.

“What’s the music?” she finally asked.

“YMO. Ancient,” Yoshie laughed. “Pretty cool hunh?”

“Yeah.”

“Nick turned me onto it. He’s a DJ at KTUH.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah.”

KTUH was the college radio station at UH.

When they approached the location, they got into a line of cars entering a warehouse building, and heard music from across the street, the large windows pulsing with colors. At the entrance to the parking area, Estella spotted a sign, a stanchion with the flier and “Parking” written over it.

“Is that a cop?” Michi asked.

“Looks like,” Estella agreed, seeing the man standing a couple feet from the sign. Definitely greased palms.

They found a parking spot pretty deep into the warehouse. Laughter and conversation echoed in the space from new arrivals like them.

Crossing the street, they went to the entrance where a man as big as Chang gave them the once over and nodded them in. Just inside, a rudimentary desk sat and a man and a woman, the man looking older and a bit roughed up, like he’d spent a bit of time inside a bottle and maybe inside a prison. They took the money from Yoshie and Michi and accepted Estella’s pass, all three getting their hand stamped with a Chinese character in red ink.

Nothing about the place defied expectation, not the thumpa thumpa music nor the darkness interrupted by colorful flashing lights, nor the multiple sweaty bodies moving relentlessly to the music, nor the smell of that sweat mixed with marijuana and beer.

Both Michi and Yoshie danced themselves into the crowd. Estella yelled to each of them, “Want a drink?”

“Beer!” they both said, a huge sign for it posted at the back.

While Estella threaded through the crowd to reach the edge of it, she noticed a Chinese man move towards her new friends, dressed all in black, t shirt and pants, wearing a fanny pack and, incongruously, sunglasses. Estella wondered if he could see at all.

Sunny stood on the risers where the music and the lights were generated wearing a flashy tie-die shirt with the logo of the rave somehow incorporated. He must have been looking for her because he smiled and waved and headed off the stage, a pretty Chinese woman with bright red hair taking over the DJ spot.

“Getting beer for my friends!” Estella yelled.

“Let me take care of it!” he yelled back.

Black seemed to be the uniform since both Chinese men, neither looking old enough to drink, manning the kegs and another Chang type checking IDs with a tiny flashlight, wore all black. Stacks of red plastic cups sat on a small table, and whether they checked IDs or not, more than one of those grabbing them took more than one cup, handing off fives for each one. Sunny pulled her to the head of the line and received two fairly full cups of beer. “You?” he yelled.

“Water?” she asked, and he had another black clad youngster pull a plastic bottle from a vat of ice water. He himself pulled out a can of Redbull.

Somehow they tracked down her friends, and upon handing off the beers, one held by Sunny, Estella watched both ladies pop a pill before drinking. “You want some E?” Sunny asked.

“No thanks! You seen your sister?”

He took her hand and pulled her through the crowd towards the risers. She spotted Joe far before she reached him since he was a head taller than most. When she arrived she watched Mina writhe against him, her pussy pressed to his thigh.

“Thanks!” she yelled to Sunny who nodded and left.

Joe displayed his cruel smirk, one of the main feature of his mask, as if mostly amused at the antics of Mina and not the least embarrassed having it displayed in front of his girlfriend.

On mission, Estella began working her body as sexily as possible in the limited space available, enough of a distraction to have Mina notice Joe’s attention was no longer on her.

“You’re here!” Mina grinned, continuing the rub but managing to find her small purse and pulling out a flask sized bottle of cognac. “Want some?” she asked.

“No thanks!”

Shrugging, Mina tilted the bottle at her mouth and drank, putting it back in her purse.

“I bet you want some of this!” she smirked and rubbed her hand directly on Joe’s groin.

Looking disappointed when he removed it, she must have been less so when he leaned down and kissed her. Estella could tell tongues were involved. Since she no longer had his attention visually, she moved behind him and worked her body against his back. To even more emphasize her presence, she snuck a hand between his thighs and caressed his balls and his enlarging cock before reaching around and taking hold of Mina’s hand and bringing it there too.

Mina broke the kiss, giving Estella a brief look of pleasure before moving directly in front of Joe, keeping her hand where it was, hiding it, before dipping low and bringing her face against it for the most obvious tease, then standing and turning around and showing her backside.

Joe knelt and lifted her up so that genitals met genitals and rubbed. Estella decided to aid it, her hand moving to the meeting, knuckles against where she guessed Mina’s clit would be while fingers worked Joe’s cock.

They’d become pretty blatant, but Estella figured no one really cared. The rubbing intensified, and Joe added fingers squeezing nipples at Mina’s chest where his hand held her and nibbles at her ear until Mina orgasmed in his arms. Estella could feel the added dampness and even a bit of the quivering at the gusset of Mina’s panties. Mina had gone with a dress with a short hem.