Author's note: As always guys I love reading your comments and so far your response to this series has me so excited, it really makes me wanna keep going! Hope you continue to enjoy the story!
/BB
Ade and I planned to meet after school. As soon as I walked out of final class of the day I texted her and asked where she was at.
>at delight waiting for u<
>omw<
Delight was located in the bad part of town -- a stone's throw away from Ade's old apartment, in fact. Walking up to it it looked more like an old warehouse than a club except for the neon sign of a scantily clad woman clinging on to a pole. I took a quick look around and soon found Ade resting against the wall around the corner from the front door smoking a cigarette.
"Took you a while." Ade said when she noticed me.
"Sorry, had to dodge a couple of your old neighbours trying to sell me crack." Ade didn't respond, she just stubbed out her cigarette and looked around the corner.
"Alright, so I'm gonna head in -- you wait out here for five minutes before going inside."
"Why?"
"Duh, idiot -- so they don't see us coming in together, right?"
"Oh. Right."
"Hang out in the strip club for a bit, then head to the backrooms. I'll be in booth four, okay?"
"Okay." I said, trying to take it all in. "Booth four, got it."
"You got money?"
"Huh? Yeah, a little."
"Cool -- the cover charge to the back is eighty bucks."
"EIGHTY BUCKS?"
"What?"
"Could have fucking told me that before, Ade."
"I'm telling you now."
"Goddammit, Ade..." Ade just shrugged her shoulders and asked me to make sure I wasn't too quick to follow her before she disappeared around the corner. I got my phone out and texted mom to say we were about to start our little 'mission'.
>good luck honey and have fun ;)< mom sent back. Five minutes came and went and just to be sure I gave it a few extra minutes before heading in.
A serious-looking bouncer checked my ID in the door and grudgingly let me inside after telling me there was a two-drink minimum, another point Ade forgot to mention.
I pointed out I wasn't of drinking age and the bouncer gave me an exasperated look and told me to order two cokes, as if he cared
The front of the place seemed like a normal strip club -- not that I'd been to one before; a center stage where two beautiful but slightly bored-looking ladies were wrapping themselves around poles, both with their tops off to a crowd of maybe twenty or so. A bar at one end of the room had a few, mostly middle-aged men parked on stools watching the dancers. There were booths where more girls in lingerie danced for private parties. At one end of the bar a simple door labelled 'Video booths' caught my eye -- Ade had told me that was the euphemism for the club's back rooms.
I glanced over at the front door and caught the bouncer casting a look at me so I went over to the bar and asked for a coke. The bartender gave me a glass with ice in and a can and charged me a stupid amount. I sat down and took a few sips while looking at the girls. After a few minutes of staring at the beautiful, half-naked bodies up on stage I downed my coke and headed over to the door.
I stepped in and stepped into a small, crowded shop -- rows and rows of dusty porn DVDs and somewhat less dusty shelves of sex toys, lingerie, lube and other accessories. A bored guy roughly my age didn't even glance up from his phone.
Opposite the door I walked through a doorframe with a black velvet cloth instead of an actual door lead to the booths. I hurried through the shop and walked through the curtain.
The curtain lead to a tiny room with another, heavy door and a man behind a Plexiglas booth.
"ID." He said and I showed him my driver's license. "Phone." I looked at him questioningly and he tapped a sign on the glass that said 'Hand in your phone'. I fished my phone out of my pocket and he passed me a little envelope and asked me to write my name on it and place my phone in it. I did, slid it to him and he put it somewhere.
"Eighty dollars." He said next.
"Do you take cards?" I asked, pathetically. The man just tapped another sign with various accepted cards and I paid, he hit a buzzer and the door unlocked.
Finally I entered the back rooms. As soon as I stepped inside the sound of both the muted music from the strip club and the mixed sounds of sex -- some real, a lot of it sounding like it came from videos played on cheap sound systems -- filled the air. I was in some kind of anteroom and from here I could see several corridors. Signs pointed to bathrooms, booths and rooms. I peaked into the corridor leading to the rooms but another bouncer there glared at me and I quickly ducked out. I glanced around and spotted several cameras in the ceiling: I'd seen the man behind the Plexiglas with a computer monitor with several live feeds. No way I could take a closer look at them without rousing suspicion though.
To the booths I went. There were eight in total and as I walked down the row, one of them opened and a middle-aged man hurried out, avoiding my eyes and I his. I walked past booths one, two, three and four and glanced at the door. Each door had simple locks showing either red or green for busy or free and booth four which was the one Ade had told me she'd be in showed red. From inside the door I heard a man's voice moaning. I looked up and down the hallway, unsure what to do. Should I wait?
Then I noticed booth five had a green lock. It was the booth the man had just left. I stared at it for a while.
Well...
I thought.
I guess it would seem weird to just be standing here... I'm not supposed to know who's behind the other side, right?
Sure, that sounded convincing. I opened the door and looked inside.
