Wednesday 11 March 2015

Erotic Flash Fiction, March 2015: At a gay strip joint in Miami

It was Sunday night at TWIST, prime gay complex in Miami beach. After ordering a caipirinha at the courtyard bar, I headed to the strippers’ shed. The place was busy. Semi-naked muscled boys in skimpy underwear mingled among punters of mixed ages. Only a handful of the customers were women. Apart from the spotlights on the podiums where the strippers danced, the room was dimly lit. On the microphone, a drag queen from Colombia described in English the sensual virtues of the go-go boys. In the shadier corners, one could spot the odd semi-naked dancer rubbing his buttocks against the crotch of some fully clothed older customer. As part of the “private dance”, it looked like the punter was allowed to stroke the boy’s muscley chest and nipples, his flat stomach, his tight belly, his strong thighs… but hands always stopped at the crotch. I never saw a punter feeling a dancer’s genitals, not even over the briefs. And the briefs never slipped down...

During a break, the Colombian drag queen made her way to the bar and stood next to me to order a bottle of water. She got talking. Apparently that night they were hosting an amateur stripper competition. Needless to say, nothing indicated in the way she addressed me that she thought of me as a potential contestant. From what I gathered, the competition was really a public audition to recruit new dancers for the venue. I asked casually if the competitors would have to get completely naked. She turned all thoughtful and weary, as though she was about to make a shameful confession. ‘Oh, no. Unfortunately, not. You can’t show cock here, sadly. We don’t have the right license. This venue doesn’t want to charge at the door. And only venues with a cover charge are allowed to show full nudity.’ Or something along the line. This explanation would have sufficed as far as I was concerned, but apparently she felt obliged to go on and on about the ins and outs of venue licensing, cock showing and male go-going in Miami. ‘I wish, I wish!’ she stressed, ‘I wish we could show cock!’ When she found out where I was from, she switched to Spanish. She told me about her experience performing in Gran Canaria, getting lost in the dunes of Maspalomas and how much she liked Serrano ham. ‘That’s the salty stuff, isn’t it? I love it!’

She returned to her hosting duties: ‘This is Eduardo, 26 years old. He arrived from Caracas just a couple of weeks ago. He likes playing football. Look at his huge strong thighs.’ On the podium, Eduardo lowered slightly the top of his red briefs, revealing his trimmed pubic hair and the top of his limp penis, which he covered up again almost immediately while teasingly shaking his hips. He dedicated a wide, frank smile to his potential dollar-bill-shoving admirers.