Chapter 8: The Club

Brimming with righteous fury, Angela stormed down the staircase, out of the building and halfway down the street, too mad to even pay attention to where she was going. There was no-one around, but even if there had been, she might not have noticed. The sun was setting and she had wasted her whole afternoon for a hair-tie.

Which was still around her hair. She had endured all that for something that actually made her feel more naked. Anger dissipated and was replaced with embarrassment, keen awareness that she was standing naked in the middle of a public sidewalk, and wasn’t even covering herself with her arms. Angela undid the hair-tie, sliding it onto her wrist and let her hair fall back over her front.

Just then, someone stepped out of a nearby fire exit. It was a naked woman. No, almost naked—topless with a g-string and heels. Her hair was platinum blonde and her makeup was almost comically overdone. She was a good six inches taller than Angela, and her figure was a perfect hourglass.

“Got a light?” she asked Angela, a cigarette between her fingers.

“No, sorry,” Angela replied.

The woman frowned, then said, “I’ll go get one from the dressing room,” and turned around to go back in. She glanced over her shoulder at Angela and looked her up and down. “You wearing a merkin?”

Angela blushed, too embarrassed to answer.

“Brave choice. Lots of guys, they don’t like that. But some do, I hear.”

Angela glanced down at her bush. She’d never shaved it. And after its heroic pussy-covering service today, she never would.

The stripper disappeared back through the fire exit. The phrase “dressing room” stuck in Angela’s mind. A dressing room in a strip club. What better place for a naked girl to get something to wear? This was the one place where no-one would bat an eye at seeing a naked woman walk past them, where she could actually blend in. She just needed to find the dressing room, get a gown or something and then...

Then she would be lost in the middle of town, without a phone or any money. But she would be dressed. And then anything would be possible. She could probably borrow one of the stripper’s phones and call ... Rachel, maybe? If she’d just called her actual best friend in the first place, she could have gotten dressed in the strip mall bathroom, rather than running around town naked all day.

Go inside. Find the dressing room. Get dressed. Phone Rachel. A simple plan.

But if she was going to go into a strip club looking like one of the strippers, she would need to act the part. That meant no more crouching, no more covering and no more hiding behind things. She would need to walk casually, even slowly, and pretend to be completely comfortable in the nude. Around lots of horny men.

Angela straightened her back and put her hands at her sides. Now she was stiff, so she wiggled around a bit, shaking her arms and legs and body to get loose. Casual. At ease. Comfortable.

Taking a deep breath in and out, Angela stepped through the fire escape. A winding flight of metal stairs greeted her. The steps were cold against her bare feet.

At the top, she had to use her elbow to open the heavy fire door a crack and slip through. Now she was in the club. It was mercifully dark, but she could see strippers walking about, and men of all descriptions sitting around tables. She bit her lip, fighting the urge to pull her arms around herself.

Casual, easy, she told herself. Sensual, even. Gotta look the part. And so Angela, who cried the first time she wore a bikini at the beach, strutted naked through a strip club. Every sense screamed at her to run, or at least power-walk, but she forced herself to keep it slow, and even made a few feeble attempts to sway her hips.

One thing that made her stand out from the other strippers was that she was barefoot. The other girls towered over in their heels, and many of them were tall and slender, making Angela feel like a squat dwarf. For all the compliments and lustful looks she’d received today, she still sometimes felt like her body was too short and too fat, especially in the presence of such willowy beauties.

But she could still feel eyes on her. She was turning heads. That made her feel better. But also worse. Angela, the good girl, the straight-A student, who never wore tops with cleavage, was now Angela the stripper, at least for the moment.

Where was the dressing room? Probably near the stage. Angela walked towards the stage, where a woman with green hair was swinging around a pole to the cheers and shouts of a crowd of men.

“Excuse me,” she whispered in the ear of the shortest stripper she had seen so far, “I’m new here. Where’s the dressing room?”

“Behind the stage, door to your left. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you.”

Angela found the dressing room. It was empty except for an older, foreign-looking woman, who was fiddling with something by one of the mirrors. She had a bit of a stoop and was far too well-covered to be one of the strippers.

Not wishing to having to talk to this woman and possibly give herself away, Angela tip-toed into the room, scanning for something to wear. Bingo, there was a coat-rack of hanging gowns right by the door. All Angela had to do was reach out and take one. With a pang of guilt, she noted that this was technically stealing, and she might be leaving one of these girls without a gown. But they had their street clothes here, and she did not. This was no different from the destitute stealing food to feed their families.

Thus resolved, Angela clutched a puffy crimson dressing gown, but was interrupted by a sudden stream of chatter in another language. The older woman had noticed her. And she seemed angry.

Angela released the gown, but the woman continued to shout and gesticulate. “English, English, only,” said Angela, but the woman paid her no mind, grabbing her forcefully by the upper arm while continuing to jabber incomprehensibly.

The woman pulled her to the other side of the room and gestured feverishly at a full-length mirror. Angela looked at her reflection. Seeing herself head to toe under the dressing room’s harsh lights, she understood what the woman had been freaking out about. She was a mess.

Angela’s hair was frizzed up and all over the place. The light coat of makeup she’d put on that morning was mostly gone, except from some crying-smudged eye-shadow. Streaks of dried dust and dirt peppered her body, and her feet were filthy.

“Muddy little piggy,” said the woman through a heavy accent. These appeared to be her only three English words. Then she pulled out a phone and snapped a picture of Angela in the mirror.

With surprising force, the woman grabbed Angela’s shoulders and forced her down in a chair. She disappeared for a moment and then reappeared carrying a large bowl of soapy water and a brush, which she sat down on the table in front of Angela. Then she began to scrub.

The scrubbing was fast, rough, and thorough. With surprising quickness, the woman attacked every individual spot of dirt on Angela’s body, scrubbing her clean. She then set to work on Angela’s feet. Two new bowls of soapy water were required before those were cleaned to the woman’s satisfaction.

“Th-thank you,” Angela stammered, though feeling raw from the harsh brush bristles. She wiggled her pink toes and then started to get up, but the woman shoved her back down. She then wheeled a portable hairdresser’s sink from corner of the room, ran it, and started washing Angela’s hair, gently massaging conditioner and then shampoo into her scalp. This felt relaxing, even luxurious after the harsh body brushing.

Once her hair was washed, the woman brushed and combed it, smoothing out all the tangles. She sprayed some more product on it, and then got out a blow-drier and blasted Angela’s hair into a bouncy blow-out. This strange, angry foreign stylist had done a far better job with her hair than Sharon had managed. This was a style worth undressing for.

The stylist started immediately on Angela’s makeup. Thinking of the clownish look of the stripper at the fire escape, Angela tried to protest, but the stylist was having none of it. Fortunately, she did a nice job, applying product judiciously to enhance Angela’s natural features. She smoothed Angela’s skin, darkened and fulled out her lashes and reddened her lips. Angela focused intensely all the while, hoping to replicate some of this brilliant woman’s techniques on her own.

Once her face was done, the stylist made Angela stand up and applied some oils and foundation to her body, smoothing out her skin tone and obscuring some of the redness from where she’d scrubbed earlier. She worked quickly and with a light touch, even taking out a tiny brush to neaten Angela’s pubic hair.

Finally, the stylist sprinkled a light smattering of glitter on Angela’s face and body, focusing on areas normally covered. Then she led her back to the mirror, and held another mirror behind her.

Angela’s jaw dropped. She looked like she’d stepped off the cover of a magazine. Or rather, given her state of undress, a Playboy centerfold. She was almost unrecognizably hot. The stylist smiled proudly and took a photo with her phone. Now she had a before and after.

“Ms. Shenkovich sure works miracles, doesn’t she?” said a voice behind them. It was the stripper from the fire escape. “And just in time too. We’ve got a vacant spot in the stage schedule. New girl, you’re going to have to fill in.”

“Oh, no, I—” Angela’s words caught in her throat. What was she going to say? That she, a stripper who had just received a full beauty treatment, was going to decline an empty dance spot, an extra opportunity to make money at the one part of her job that didn’t involve getting up close and personal with businessmen’s hard-ons? “I”—she glanced around the room—”still need to get dressed. You know, so I have something to strip out of.”

Clothes, glorious clothes! But once again, clothes that she would only wear for a few minutes.

“No time,” insisted the stripper, grabbing Angela’s arm. “The last bitch didn’t even take off her top, so the guys are all blue-balled now. They’ll appreciate you dispensing with the foreplay and just dancing au naturel. Especially the rug lovers and foot fuckers.”

As she was saying this, the stripper was pulling Angela out of the dressing room, away from any chance of clothes, and towards a stage where she would need to gyrate in front of a rowdy audience of horny men. On further reflection, she appreciated not having to dress in clothes she would have to slowly remove for an audience. She imagined herself trying to unhook a bra on stage and just breaking down crying. To stay naked was better. But it still wasn’t good.

“Come on, you’ll do fine. You’re gorgeous, they’ll love you.” They were behind the stage now. “What’s your name, by the way?”

“Candy,” said Angela.

The stripper raised an eyebrow. “I’m Star. But you’ll need to choose something else. We’ve already got a Candy. And it doesn’t really suit your whole sweet, earthy girl-next-door vibe anyway. What about Candice?”