I feel like an imposter.
I’m still very drunk. Will he notice? Will he care? What if he doesn’t let me in? I don’t know anyone except Angel and Cassie, and I have no clue where the heckle-schmeckle we are or how to get home.
I’m up next, Angel is ahead of me futzing with her bracelet. The blond behemoth towers over me, and I’m a tall girl, five-nine in my bare feet. He smells like cologne and radiates heat. His fingers are hard and rough as he expertly fixes the bracelet onto me with a minimum of contact.
I look up at his face, into the mirrored sunglasses. “Thank you.”
His head moves back, as if in surprise. “Welcome.” Then behind me. “Next.”
Dismissed, just like that.
Angel grabs my wrist and yanks me forward. I stumble after her, through the curtains, and into a wall of sound and a crush of humanity.
What I see in the interior of the club tells me I was right in asking if I had any clue what I was getting myself into.
The answer is a resounding no.
We make it a few steps inside, music pounding so loud that I feel it in my bones, in my belly. The rhythm is all-pervasive, it’s everywhere, it’s everything. It’s an ever-shifting thing, almost alive, wrapping itself around me and worming into my brain.
A man appears in front of Angel and me. He’s wearing a pair of black underwear wrapped tight around his groin, and nothing else. His body is a work of art, shredded to single-digit body fat, each muscle defined. And to add to it, he’s painted, lines in garish, bright, glowing colors highlighting the grooves of his abs, his pectorals, the v-taper delving under his underwear. He wears a Zorro-type mask, and his hair is in a long black ponytail.
“WELCOME…” he bellows, leaning into my personal space, lips at my ear, “TO SIN!”
He presses a shot glass into my hands, the liquid within a neon orange. Before I know what’s happening, he’s got it to my lips and he’s helping me tip it back. It burns on the way down, settles in my stomach like a hot brick.
Beyond him, the other girls are clustered in groups, getting the lay of the land.
The DJ is performing on a platform suspended over the crowd, his body outlined in glowing light strips, his equipment bathed in scarlet light.
The club is two levels, but the main level is a warren of individual dance floors separated by long bars where bartenders serve alcohol. The bars themselves form a maze for the employees to make their way through the club to the various bars without having to navigate the crush of people. There are pillars underneath the balcony running the perimeter of the club, and beyond the pillars, I can see more rooms, more lights, more people.
Angel pulls me into a walk, toward the nearest bar. I squeeze past a man gyrating and grinding on a woman who’s wearing a mini skirt, six-inch heels, and X’s of black tape over her nipples. Another woman I pass hasn’t bothered with the tape, and the man she’s dancing with is behind her, hands wrapped around her breast and hip, pulling her into him, doing very dirty, inappropriate things to her. I see a flash of flesh between them and realize they’re not justdancing.
We reach the bar, and a young man with a violently blue, two-foot tall spiked mohawk leans over the bar. Angel leans over to shout in his ear, shows him her bracelet. A moment later, she’s putting a clear plastic cup in my hands, a small black straw in it and a lime wedge floating in it. I take a sip—tequila and Sprite, and more tequila than Sprite.Waymore.
“I didn’t see you pay,” I shout into Angel’s ear.
She lifts her arm and shakes her wrist, indicating the bracelet. “This baby right here. All-access, open bar. Don’t even have to tip.” She sips, tugs me into a walk, yanking me through the crowd—I bump into people, my skin sliding past sweat-slick arms and backs and breasts and shoulders, hair whipping at me. “Told you, Isaiah’sloaded.” All this is yelled directly into my ear.
“Now what?” I yell back.
She raises both arms over her head, cup somehow held level, pivots to face me, and gets in my space. “Now what?” She grins at me. “Now we dance our asses off, bitch!”
So, we dance.
Time doesn’t pass. Not fast, not slow. It’s just…stopped. The lights flash, strobe, shine, sweep. The music pounds, endless and twisting. Bodies move around me. I drink cup after cup, and I think at some point one of them is just soda water, but I barely notice.
I’m dripping sweat.
I’ve been in this club forever.
North Caro-where? There’s only here, only now.
Hands grip my waist, and a body slides up behind me, hot and sweaty and male. Moves my hips. I twist, look up at him—a beautiful Black man. I feel like I recognize him, but my awareness is limited to here, now, this, alcohol, sweat, music.
I dance with him. His hands take no liberties beyond holding my hips and guiding our movements.
I revel in it.
