Free Death Money by Henry Chang Page B

there.
    Billy made his way to the area where the old men sat, at the other end of the runway. He ingratiated himself by buying them a round of the joint’s watered-down beer with the cash they’d helped him win. He ordered a Jack Daniel’s for himself, also probably watered down.
    “Gangsta’s Paradise” played over the loudspeakers, and the girls on the runway—two white, one black—continued dancing. They wore dangerously high heels, G-strings, and barely there bikini tops. They stole glances at themselves in the wall mirror that was angled to reflect full-body views as they swayed and gyrated under the stage lights. They knew their poses well, letting their breasts dangle just right, perfect , with their lower parts beckoning whenever they bent over.
    The men nearest to the runway got their dollar bills ready. More, gimme more. Yeah, right there, baby girl, culo, clika .
    Flesh trade , Jack thought, they got that terminology right .
    The girls worked through their simulated pornographic poses. One of the white girls humped the end pole while sucking on a long red blow job lollipop.
    “ Hom lun ,” one of the old men chortled in Cantonese. Suck cock .
    The second girl, a bootylicious black princess, played with a pink dildo as she spread her legs open to a bow-and-arrow pose, pretending to jam herself.
    “ Eww hei ,” another of the old men said in Toishanese. Fucking pussy .
    The other white dancer, near the first pole, went from a pile-driver pose, which exposed her bottom, to crawling on all fours, which brought a chorus of wooo s from the crowd.
    The music pounded on.
    The men seated farther back folded their dollar bills into little airplanes and hurled them like darts toward the stage. As if on cue, the three dancers pulled aside their G-strings, momentarily revealing shaved and waxed labia and anuses to the delight of the men. The music amped up even more, and a crew of pink-wigged waitresses made their rounds.
    The old men nursed their beers and waited for the Korean girl.
    The dancers gathered up their dollar bills and changed places on the runway to give the other customers an equal-opportunity viewing. And to suck up more money. After another ten minutes, the song changed to “Waterfalls,” and the dancers gleefully squirted each other’s privates with water pistols shaped like phalluses. There was another set of lewd poses—standing doggie, reverse cowgirl, missionary spread—as the girls on the ends spun around, rubbing their crotches and butts against the long, hard poles, wearing only their G-strings now.
    Jack figured they’d been there almost half an hour.
    A new rotation began as an Asian girl stepped to the front end of the runway and started her routine at the first pole, farthest from Billy and the old men. Jack could see they were eager for her to dance her way to their section.
    The pop/rap beats changed to a rendition of “Sukiyaki.” Jack frowned at the racial overtones playing out butcouldn’t take his eyes off her. The Korean girl named Soomi sexy-strolled around the pole amid a chorus of low moans from the men nearest her. Soomi was a knockout, drop-dead sexy gorgeous, a perfect voluptuous body on a Victoria’s Secret frame, almost six feet tall, strutting atop sequined fuck-me high heels. She wore a tiny glittering G-string and a transparent brassiere that showcased her large budding nipples.
    Someone yelled “Kimchi!” and she giggled.
    She had a pretty Asian face framed by long black hair, an exotic-fantasy look that captivated the mostly non-Asian audience of lechers and perverts. Jack didn’t count himself among them but couldn’t help admiring her beauty, and even though he’d expected it to be this way in places like this, he was still turned off by the bestial behavior of the men in this so-called gentlemen ’s club.
    Soomi continued her routine by bending over and adjusting her platform heels. There were more hoots as Billy came over to Jack, licking his lips