Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (23 page)

“Yeah, let me get the hell out of here,” he grumbled as he headed toward the exit. “Perverted motherfuckers.”

Since he was not being thrown out this time, he couldn’t ask for his money back. He climbed back inside his car and thought about his next destination. He remained unsatisfied with his night. In fact, after being in the private room with Cindy, he felt more anxious to take a stripper back home or to a hotel room that evening.

“Shit, I know I don’t want to go down there,” he contemplated out loud. “But if I really wanna take somebody’s ass home tonight…then that’s the place to do it.”

Georgie headed on Interstate 85 for Southeast Atlanta, the opposite side of town from where he lived and liked to play.

“A bunch of got’ damn
crazies
are down here,” he grumbled to himself as he drove. He was referring to the multitude of drug addicts, homosexual prostitutes, muggers, car thieves, homeless derelicts, and the many other anti-social delinquents who called the Southeast Atlanta region home.

As Georgie made it to Interstate 20, and headed east toward the suburb of Decatur, he continued to mull over his plans.

Do I really wanna be down here tonight ?
he asked himself as he approached his exit. He traveled up the exit ramp and turned right, heading further south before supplying himself with an answer.

“Fuck it! I’m gonna go up in here, find myself a girl, see what she wants to do, and get the hell back out of here.”

With his plan of execution set, Georgie pulled past the Red Light club to see how it looked from the outside first. The small, seedy club didn’t have an official parking lot, just abandoned property that surrounded it, where undaunted customers parked their cars and prayed to return to them safely.

Georgie eyed the front door of the club as he drove by, spotting the usual suspects of hardcore bouncers and their convict associates posted outside. Judging from the pack of cars that were parked there that night, he suspected a pretty lively crowd inside. He found an empty parking spot and whipped his car for a U-turn to grab it. As soon as he finished parking his car and climbed out, a man approached him from the sidewalk.

“I’ll make sure it stays put for you.”

The man looked younger than Georgie in the face, but he was far older in the spirit. He had been beaten down by a hard life of circumstances.

Georgie passed him by. “You do that.”

He quickly headed to the front door of the small club before he hesitated with his decision again.

“What’s the cover tonight?” he asked the menacing bouncers at the door. He surely didn’t want to be kicked out of the club by those guys. They looked like they would do much more than escort a man out.

“Twenty dollars,” one of them muttered.

“
Twenty
dollars?” Georgie repeated. “You went up on the price? What, is a stripper club inflation going on down here?”

One of the bystanders chuckled. The second bouncer answered, “We got some girls down here from Virginia Beach tonight. So we got upgraded clientele.”

Georgie looked and spotted a colorful tour bus that was parked in a space behind the club. “I see.” And he was curious to see what “upgraded clientele” looked like.

He nodded. “All right, I’m game. Do they look good in here from Virginia?”

One of the bystanders laughed again. “Now, what do you expect them to say, ‘no’? They gon’ bring some ugly bitches down here from Virginia and then charge us more for ’em. Come on, man, think about it.”

Georgie looked over the young, bodacious man. “Well, why are you still standing out here?”

“Man, my dick needed a
break.
I couldn’t
take it.
Watch, you’ll see.”

Georgie thought it over, wondering if the young man was working with the club staff to entice wavering customers to spend the extra ten dollars. But it didn’t make a difference to him. He had already made up his mind; he pulled out a twenty-dollar bill.

One of the bouncers patted his body up and down for weapons. The other one scanned him with a handheld metal detector. Then they waved him to enter.

“Hey, pops, have a good time in there,” the young bystander commented.

As Georgie slid into the club, he overheard a second bystander joking. “That old-ass man still out here trying to get his freak on.” They laughed
at him, but Georgie was undaunted. A hard dick was a hard dick, no matter what age it was.

When he walked into the crowded club, T.I.’s brand-new hit song was pumping through the speakers, “
You can have whatever you l-i-i-i-ke.
” And the hot Virginia Beach girls were having their way all up inside the club.

Georgie thought,
Shit, this place looks PACKED tonight!.

He didn’t remember it being as spacious inside either. But maybe the packed crowd made it appear larger. They had two L-shaped stages of busy women, and four poles, with two on each stage. That was new as well.

They must have done some remodeling in here.
Georgie was impressed by their efforts. Then he studied the Virginia Beach strippers up on stage and around the club. The majority of them were yellow-skinned black women.

“I see what they’re going for tonight,” he mumbled. “Just push the chocolate mommas to the side, hunh?”

Georgie began a search for the darker-brown, local girls, who were sprinkled throughout the club between the invasion of redbones.

“Excuse me,” an ill-tempered man stated as he pushed his way past Georgie through the crowd. The problem with the extra customers that night was that they had all run out of elbow room. Dozens of impetuous men were forced to stand up against the back walls and bulldoze their way through the dense crowd.

Georgie figured he had to make his move as fast as he could. It was all, or nothing. Once he had locked in on a chocolate dancer to his right, who searched through the crowded room unattended, he quickly made his move.

She don’t look happy enough to be visiting from Virginia,
he assessed of her serious grill.
She looks like somebody had trampled mud through her living room.

He immediately approached the chocolate stripper through the crowded club.

“It’s more crowded than usual in here tonight, hunh?” he commented.

She turned to face him and grumbled, “Yeah, unfortunately.”

“You don’t like the extra crowd? It’s more money to make in here now, ain’t it?”

“Not really,” she uttered. “I guess it is for the
new
people. But I could have stayed the hell home tonight, for all this.”

Just as she was ready to step away, Georgie asked, “Well, what do you need to make your night worthwhile?”

She looked at him again and paused. Then she shook it off and grinned. “You don’t even wanna know.”

“Talk to me about it. I got a few dollars.”

She paused and considered it in the middle of the lively strip club. There were more than a dozen guest performers from Virginia, who were sucking up all of the attention and money.

Finally, the stripper answered, “Look, man, I’m in here trying to pay my rent for the week. That’s the only reason I came tonight.”

Jackpot!
Georgie didn’t expect to hear that much honesty from a stripper in a jampacked room. But pressure caused people to tell you the truth sometimes.

“Well, I don’t know if you’re gonna make that money in here tonight. But there’s always money to be made outside the club.”

Another patron bumped into Georgie hard on his way past. And it became the perfect prop for him to nail home his pitch to the stripper.

“You see that? It’s a little too crowded in here for my usual taste, too. But I came out here tonight for companionship. But if I could have that somewhere in private…”

He stopped and allowed his words to linger on her mind. She could fill in the blanks on her own.

“What do you have in mind?”

Georgie answered immediately, “Stripping.”

She looked him in the eyes. “For how much?”

“I got three bills left to spend for the night.”

The chocolate stripper shook it off. “That ain’t enough for me to leave, baby. I can make
eight
in here. Come at me better than that.”

Georgie didn’t know what to say at that point. Maybe he had played his cards too honestly. He should have haggled with her more instead of giving her a solid figure. He shrugged. “Well…every man has his breaking point. But I’ll still be here for a minute, if you change your mind. What’s your name anyway?”

“Sugar.”

“Brown Sugar?”

She nodded and grinned. “No, just Sugar.”

“I’m Georgie. And you think about that rent tonight, all right?”

She nodded. “All right.”

As she faded into the crowd, Georgie gave her another look. She had incredibly long legs in her heels.

Damn! I wonder if she has deep pussy with those long legs,
he mused. He started to watch her to see if she would perform any lap dances to earn her rent money, but he was quickly distracted by the stage performances of the Virginia Beach girls. Li’l Wayne’s “Lollipop” song was on again.

The guys started hooting and hollering, enjoying the show while the big-money hustler types rained dollar bills onto the stage.

“Ay, you motherfuckers are gonna have to find a seat or move back to the fucking wall!” someone shouted. His forceful demand included Georgie. He was standing right in the middle of the view. Georgie began to move back toward the wall, while still eyeing the Virginia girls who were doing their thing..

“Well, at least they got the best show here tonight,” Georgie mumbled and then grinned.

“I hear they gon’ have different girls here once a month,” someone commented.

Georgie was interested in seeing that himself. He then watched as the girls entertained only the highest bidders in the club, with the bigger bills in hand.

Yeah, these girls are getting their money’s worth in here tonight,
he mused. He figured there was no sense in even taking his money out. He stood to lose it all in ten minutes. So he decided to watch from the sidelines.

“You ordering anything?” a waitress dressed in all black asked him. She was somehow able to make it through all of the busy traffic in the room.

Georgie shook his head and waved her off. He didn’t feel like drinking.

“It’s a two-drink minimum tonight.”

Georgie looked into her eyes to see if she were serious. “A two-drink minimum to stand up against the damn wall?”

“I can find you a table.”

He looked around the room. “Where?” Unless she was planning on bringing out a new table from the back bar room, her offer seemed implausible.

“We have VIP seating all around the room.”

“Well, I’m not VIP, and I’m not here to pay for that. Now, if I need to buy two drinks to stay in here, then at least give me a few minutes to decide on what I want. Is that all right with you?”

The waitress nodded. “I’ll come back.”

Georgie grumbled, “Shit, they’re trying to shake you down in here, too; after I paid twenty dollars to get in, just to get bumped around and shit, and then to stand up against the damn wall. They must be
crazy.
”

A younger man beside him chuckled, with a half-finished drink in his hand. He shrugged. “Hey, man, either it’s worth it to you, or it’s not. What’s forty dollars for this kind of live entertainment?”

Georgie heard the younger man out and frowned. “Forty dollars just to watch, hunh?” It sounded like a waste of money to him.

Simultaneously, the chocolate stripper, Sugar, glanced over at him, even while she performed a lap dance.

Georgie caught her eye and told himself,
Yeah, she don’t wanna be here tonight. She only wanna make enough to leave.
So he plotted on asking her again if she was ready to head out with him before the pesky waitress could return for his drink orders.

As soon as Sugar collected her dance money and moved on, Georgie made his move in her direction. She spotted him on the move toward her and slowed down to allow him to catch up. Georgie noticed and became excited again.

Yeah, she’s ready! Time to go for it hard.

“Hey, ah, Sugar, you staying all night, or cutting out early?”

She searched around the room as if she had failed to hear him. “You give me four, and I’ll let you meet me out back in thirty minutes.”

Georgie had no time to haggle. It was her deal for a hundred dollars more. Take it, or leave it. “I’m in a silver Jetta,” he told her, agreeing to her price.

She nodded and continued on her way toward the dressing rooms.

Georgie kept his cool and struggled to head back to his position on the
wall. Like clockwork, as soon as he made it back to his earlier spot and began to relax for a minute, the pesky waitress headed back in his direction for the drink orders.

Okay, time to start acting,
Georgie told himself.

“You make up your mind on those drinks?”

The patron beside him began to laugh.

Georgie shook his head and grimaced. He took a deep breath. “You mean to tell me you gon’ harass me to order another twenty dollars’ worth of drinks, with all these people you have in here tonight? I’m just one little, old man.”