Free Objectify Me: A Fireworks Novella (The Fireworks Novellas) by Bibi Rizer Page B

the wood for a moment before shrugging and following me upstairs. We find another door, this one steel, behind which we can really hear the music now. It’s mainstream dancy hip-hop of the most inauthentic kind. The bass is rattling the steel of the door.
    Levi knocks, and a second later the door swings in. I half expect Thaddeus to be guarding this door too, but it’s a big white guy who looks like he’s had his nose smashed with a hockey stick one too many times.
    “Delacour,” Levi says.
    Smash-nose steps back and lets us in to a kind of cloak room. Another bouncer tugs Levi aside and runs him up and down with a metal detector.
    “Open your bag,” says the first one. I unzip my tote bag and he shines a flashlight in, pawing around the contents a bit with his large hand. “Are you a cop?”
    “I’m a dancer at Objections , ” I say, and point at Levi who is now being frisked. “He’s a client of mine. In town looking for something a little extra.”
    The bouncer smiles a little too salaciously as he hands me back my bag. “He’s okay,” he says to his colleague. He lets Levi go.
    Another door is opened, and finally, we’re at the party. Levi squeezes my hand so tight it hurts.

Chapter Nine – Levi
     
    “Holy fuck.”
    Charlotte steps closer to me, pressing into my side. I put one arm around her and take her hand with the other.
    “This is a lot more….untidy…than I expected,” she says.
    Untidy is one word for what we see – a large open space, flashing with colored lights and shaking with music. Half-dressed servers of both sexes drift through crowds of mostly men with trays of drinks. Sofas and tables are arranged haphazardly around the space. In between those, completely naked women dance around poles on pedestals, lit up by bright-blue lights from underneath and above. They appear to be attached to their poles by jeweled chains. Above us, a haze of fragrant smoke hangs over everything, like an enchantment.
    And as I blink away the disorienting lights and smoke, I can see that quite a few guests are having sex right there in the room. A big guy is leaning on the wall, drink in hand, while a naked girl sucks his cock. Two guys are doing something with a girl on one of the sofas. With the dark and smoke and the way she’s twisted up, I can’t quite see what. There are lines of white powder laid out neatly on the table in front of them. Another girl is rough-riding a guy on a chair. His jeans are around his ankles, and he’s smoking a long curved pipe like Gandalf.
    “This is a bit too New Orleans, even for me,” Charlotte says.
    No one else seems concerned with what’s going on. While we stand there, dumbstruck, a server casually hands the blowjob guy another drink.
    “Let’s find the guys and get the hell out of here. This is demented.”
    Charlotte clings to me as we push through the crowd. I wave smoke from my eyes as we come upon a circle of men sharing a hookah pipe; each one of them has a drowsy girl in his lap.
    “They looked really young,” Charlotte says as we pass. I glance back to take a better look. One of the girls makes eye contact with me. She’s tiny, wasted, and can’t be more than fifteen, if that.
    “Drinks? Drinks?” The server is wearing nothing but green satin panties and nipple clamps with flashing LED lights hanging off them. Her pupils are so dilated, she looks possessed.
    “No, thank you.” I try to wave her away.
    “Wanna fuck me, mister?” she says.
    “No! No, thanks.”
    The girl props her tray on her hip and wipes her sweaty brow with the back of her hand. I notice the word “Virtue” tattooed on her wrist. Ironic. “Fuck your girl?” she says, her eyes unfocussed. “You can watch.”
    Charlotte drags me away before I can answer. “Okay, first…holy shit,” she says. “And second…holy shit. What is going on here?”
    “This isn’t normal?”
    “No! Jesus, what do you think we are?”
    We slither through the crowd, getting jostled by