Neon Dragon – The Pole Dancer’s Tale

She didn’t do the whole tucking dollars into the g-string thing. That’s what started the trouble.

The guys who clattered into the club out of a wet city night weren’t too rich and weren’t too smart, but they were too much. Their entry strategy was well practised. The doorman just got overwhelmed and they went past him in a burst of barging, bling and banter, leaving just enough money to confuse.

These guys had money, flashing it around for all to see, but class? None present. Strictly new money, and strictly temporary. The new guys strutted right up to the front of the stage, the regulars melting away into the side booths where they could get a good view of whatever happened next. They knew the drill. Boots was on his break. Once he got back, the regulars would get an extra show and their seats back. Bargain.

Jess had left the stage soon as the noise started at the door. New girl. She didn’t know any better. The new guys arranged themselves, ringed hands cradling crotches stuffed with not much more than rolled socks and hope. They slumped in chairs, feet on tables, kicking the high-sided stage and demanding a show. The lights came up, the music started, and the new guys started shouting and hooting and throwing dollars up onto the stage. Then Nici came out.

Nici gave them one hell of a show but, as usual, she didn’t pay them much attention once she got started. Nici doesn’t dance for money the way the other dancers at that club do. No airs and graces, though, and she’s always there for the others. She doesn’t do the private dances, not for any money – and she’s been offered more than most, then more besides – and she doesn’t let the customers pass her greenbacks. She doesn’t notice the customers once she starts dancing.

Nici is better than wherever she dances. She has real class. She lifts the audience when she dances, and not just their dicks. Customers watching start off seeing how damn good she looks, but that gets forgotten somewhere. By the end, when Nici lets them go, folks walk away feeling good about themselves, mostly, not just feeling horny as all hell.

Trouble is, if there’s nothing about a person for them to feel good about, if they’re just bad to the bone, that sort of person can react badly. Maybe Nici shows them something they’re not ready to deal with. That’s what happened that night.

Some guys, some women too, get funny ideas about the dancers in places like the club. They figure that the girl is just there for them. They figure the girl has never danced like that for anyone else, especially if they’re getting a private dance in one of the booths. Sometimes the guy gets that feeling even if all that’s happened is they’ve tucked a fifty in the string the girl wears, or in their boots if that’s all they’ve got left. That’s what happens when the girl knows her stuff, when she’s good enough, talented enough and smart enough to know how to play her audience.

Some guys just figure they own the dancer. Some guys just figure that they own women, period. They’re broken, somewhere down inside. They’re all busted up where it matters, and they’re not men anymore. That had happened long before he came in here, but one of the new guys fitted that last type from the grease in his hair to the crap between his toes.

And Nici showed him. Let him see it. Held up that mirror and let him see that nothing worthwhile was staring back. Sure enough, true to type, he blamed Nici.

He was standing right up by the stage when Nici finished. His friends had gone quiet and sullen, like they were already regretting all they’d done. Whatever that was. Still, a few were smiling and Nici didn’t see them later on. When redemption finds you, you don’t question why it chooses the form it takes, you just grab hold. The guy by the stage was never going to find redemption. He knew he wasn’t the one needing it. In his broken mind, Nici did.

His friends had been throwing all sorts of money up onto the stage. The guy grabbed a fistful of it and held it out, smiling an alligator smile. Nici just walked away. He didn’t like that, so he jumped up onto the stage, shouting for the bitch to come back and that he had something for her. He grabbed at his crotch again, looking to his friends and laughing all the while. No humour there, just anger, hate and a promise of pain. Some of his friends joined in. Not many, but enough. Those were the ones Nici saw later.

The guy on the stage was all for following Nici, but he didn’t get the chance. Boots had finished his break, and he reached across and grabbed the guy aiming to follow Nici. Boots tossed him clear across to his friends without much effort. He didn’t even need to get on the stage. Boots is kinda big, big enough that he doesn’t have to say anything to those he has to deal with. He just gives them ‘the look’. It works every time, and it took the fight out of the new guys. At least they showed they were just smart enough not to tangle with Boots. Instead, they left trailing dull threats and empty bravado, but the glance Boots and Nici shared said it all. It wasn’t over.

Some, including Nici’s new fan, hadn’t shouted or tried to tough it out to save face. They just glared and they just left and they just waited. They covered all exits, so they saw Nici leave, the collar of her coat turned up against the chill of the night air. Quiet and full of dark purpose the men followed, with their broken leader up front. Six guys in all to deal with one little dancer.

The rain had stopped, and the city was dark. It’s never quiet, but the noise of the city night was muted. Dawn was coming, and the streets seemed to be holding their breath in anticipation of the renewed chaos of another day. One girl, however beautiful and gifted, and those following her, however bad and broken, didn’t really matter. They were just a part of the whole.

The six men saw that Nici had seen them. Her pace had quickened suddenly. Her steps were urgent, tapping out a swift rhythm on the sidewalks, splashing in the fast-flowing gutters, stuttering across the streets. She didn’t seem to know where to go, flitting left and right, shying away from lesser streets and alleys. The six men following spread out across the street, hooting and laughing, each feeding off the cruelty of the others.

Abruptly, Nici ducked down a side street. The men split into two groups, four following directly, and two running down an earlier avenue to cut off any possible escape. The first part of the dance was done, and the partners had performed to perfection. While the breathless city waited for the dawn, the dawn waited for its own cue.

The men met as two side streets converged, heading towards a dead end. They were silent now, but their vicious smiles were loud enough. Near the end of the narrow street, they could see Nici. The last dance was beginning.

Nici stood, framed to perfection by a flickering neon sign in the window of the restaurant behind her, the only light in the street. The red, gold and blue dragon coiled protectively around the dancer, while its reflected, shimmering sibling carried her slight weight effortlessly. The dancer carried herself proudly, and the sight of her, not cowed, not cowering, slowed the men down until they stopped.

The flickering of the dragons’ tongues pulsed a silent rhythm. Nici moved to that beat, strutting forward. Her long coat drifted out behind her, parting to show that she was dressed as the men had seen her in the club. There was nothing soft in her nakedness. She was as hard as the steel that suddenly flashed in her hand, as fluid and supple as her flowing hair.

Abruptly, Nici flipped into a tumbling cartwheel, though her hands stayed by her side. She came down in a crouch, hammering the steel tube in her hand into the broken street. Head bowed, legs wide around the steel, she paused for a moment. The silent dragons called to her. Her head snapped up, and she spared the men before her a lingering, sultry look.

The dancer drew her hand up the embedded pole, pausing half way up. She twisted hard, a gasp of brutal ecstasy on her face. The pole snapped up, taller than its mistress, and Nici rose with it. More slender than the one she danced with in the club, the steel flexed slightly as Nici strutted around it, one hand stroking the metal, all the time stepping to the dragons’ beat. She stopped, turning her back to the pole, smiling wickedly at the confused men.

Nici opened her eyes wide and teasing to one man. Suddenly feeling foolish, the man growled an incoherent curse and moved forward. Languorously, as though it were unimportant, Nici stretched her arms up, hands lingering over her shadowed curves. She grasped the pole above her head and, as her first suitor arrived, she held herself to the sanctuary of the pole and kicked out twice.

Landing, she twisted around the pole to peek out from behind it, cheekily smiling at the five men before her. The sixth lay still, arms and legs spread, inexpensive clothes soaking up the night’s rain. Their leader snarled, and four advanced quickly. Nici twisted fluidly around and drew the pole from the ground in a smooth motion, spinning it dizzyingly around her slender waist, wider out past her imperiously jutting breasts, and finally in a dazzling halo of reflected neon over her head. Obligingly, the men fanned out around her, their leader hanging back.

In a moment of stillness, the night was held in the music of a spinning staff, the puffing breath of four men, and the dancing of dragons. As if drawn to the dance, the four men moved as one. The dragons lent their form to the whipping staff, and a steel tail swept around once and was still.

The dancer stood in the circle of sprawled bodies. She held the staff upright before her in both hands. Seemingly without effort, she twisted her hands – one up, one down – and the staff shrank to its more concealable length. The dancer allowed herself to relax now, the staff held loosely in her hand.

Keeping eye contact with the last man standing, she drew her coat about her, buttoning it. Regarding the man for a moment, she flicked him a dismissive look and turned away, walking daintily toward the restaurant. Behind her, an ugly sound polluted the night. The man had drawn a gun, cocking it viciously. He never got to raise it. Boots stepped from the shadows, his meaty hands smothering all resistance.

There was another ugly sound.

In window and on the street, the dragons flicked off. Their colours gone, they became as grey as the light of the dawn that now coloured the sky. Standing in the last, shrinking patch of night, Nici accepted the warming embrace Boots offered. Huddling into him as closely as she could, she was a sliver of silver-blonde against his tower of black.

The door to the restaurant clicked open. A diminutive Chinese woman smiled a cat’s smile. Boots released his dancer with a sigh and, after a respectful bow, Nici ran to the woman and hugged her fiercely. Together, they followed the scent of breakfast. Boots, sparing no glance for the fallen, closed the door behind them.