It draws the kind of crowd willing to spend obscene amounts of money to go where no man has gone before.
That’s not me.
I don’t want untouched. I don’t want trembling. I don’t want tears.
I want control, yes, but control over the mess, over the narrative. Control over the damage this kind of thing causes when it spills out into daylight.
If a girl connected to my world should end up on that stage, it becomes a story. Stories become rumors. Rumors become leverage.
And leverage gets used.
Not always by enemies. Sometimes by idiots who want to feel important.
I stare at the stage as the first introduction begins.
A brunette. Tall. Confident enough to smile. Beautiful and sensuous, every curve on display. The crowd reacts. Bidders press the button on their device like the hungry animals they are. The host talks about her like she’s a car—features, mileage, performance. It’s vulgar without needing to be graphic.
I can feel the man at my table watching the stage with hungry focus. He shifts in his seat like this excites him.
He catches my gaze and grins. “Not bad, huh?”
I take a slow sip of whiskey. “Sure.”
He chuckles again, misunderstanding everything about me. “I like ’em quiet,” he says. “I like ’em when you can tell they haven’t fucked before.”
I don’t respond.
The first introduction ends, and the girl is led away through a side door. The host fills the space with chatter and charm, resetting the room like he’s wiping a counter clean between customers.
Second introduction.
Another woman, another reason for the crowd to go wild. But not as many bids as a woman like her would get any other night. The lions are waiting for the real prey.
I barely see her.
It goes on and on. A parade of women across the stage, a couple of men, too. Instead of getting quieter and tamer as the crowd thins with purchase, it only gets worse the closer we get to the end.
The host clears his throat into the microphone, smiling like he’s about to give them a gift.
“All right,” he says, and the room hushes in that charged, eager way. “This is the moment some of you have been waiting for.” A ripple of laughter and low, ugly sounds answers him. “Our special guest this evening is… a rare opportunity.”
The host’s voice lifts again, the cadence changing the way it always does when the room senses something better is coming. He doesn’t say her name. It doesn’t matter to this crowd what her name is.
He lets anticipation do the work, drawing it out, feeding the crowd the way you feed dogs—slow enough to keep them hungry, fast enough to keep them from turning on each other.
The man at my table leans forward, elbows on his knees, eyes fixed on the curtain as if he can will it open. I watch him out of the corner of my eye and catalog the type without effort. Money, boredom, entitlement. The kind of guy who says he likes them quiet because he likes them unable to argue or fight. The kind of guy who thinks anonymity is permission.
The curtain stirs.
For a second, it’s nothing—just fabric moving, a shadow passing behind it. Then the edge parts, and a sliver of light slices into the darkness at the side of the stage. The room makes a sound that’s almost a single organism inhaling. Heads tilt. Bodies lean. Drinks stop halfway to mouths.
She steps through.
For a second, my brain refuses to match the image to what I know to be real. Because she looks like she doesn’t belong here. Like she took a wrong turn and ended up in the kind of room you only enter when you’ve run out of options.
Then the light hits her properly.
The dress is champagne-colored, and it barely exists, all shimmer and suggestion, clinging to her like it was designed to remind every man in the room exactly what he’s paying for.
