Wherever the Dandelion Falls (27 page)

Or so I thought.

One night, after a particularly heavy make-out session where I had pushed her deep into the cushion of the couch before pulling back, she sat up, smoothing her hair and shirt before taking a deep breath and looking at me with uncertainty.

"Are you comfortable dating me?" she asked.

It was not the question I expected, but I answered with certainty. "I
love
dating you.”

Faye still looked confused. "And the making out and stuff... that's okay?"

Still feeling all aflutter from the ghosts of her kisses on my neck, I nodded.

She gave me an uncertain, fleeting smile. "I was just wondering how you felt about going further."

That heavy feeling settled onto me again and I felt like I had to be the bearer of bad news.

"Sex is awesome..." I said, sounding uncertain.

She gave me a more genuine smile and
waited for me to continue
.

I took a breath, trying to figure out how to explain to her why I was so hesitant to jump into bed. It wasn't about her. I was hesitant to jump into bed with
anyone
.

"I guess, I just... I like getting to know you without bringing in all the pressure of having sex," I said, shrugging to try to keep the conversation light.

Faye nodded, her brow furrowing as she tried to listen between my words. "Sex does add pressure," she said. "But so does not having it."

I bit my lips and tilted my head in acknowledgment. I was certainly feeling the pressure of not having sex at that moment.

"Are you attracted to me?" she asked, unable to hide the apprehension she felt as she prepared for my answer.

My eyes went wide and I almost laughed at the question. “Uh,
yeah
," I said. "I'm
insanely
attracted to you. You couldn't tell?" I asked.

She gave an embarrassed shrug. "I don't know what's going through your mind."

I put my hand on her knee to reassure her. "You are probably the most attractive person I've ever met."

Faye smiled and tucked her hair behind her ears as she looked down. She was flattered, but confused. I knew I had to give her more of an explanation.

"I feel like the way most people date is strange. Two strangers try to get to know each other through a series of weird customs where they have to navigate unknown histories and sensitivities while figuring out who pays for things and consuming tons of alcohol, all the while keeping their hopes and expectations in check. In addition to all that, they are expected to get naked and do something that is sometimes fun but can also make them feel crappy and vulnerable. It's just... it's too much for people who don't have a lot of history. Well, it is for me."

Faye looked at me in deep thought, brow creasing. "I never thought about it that way."

There was a moment of quiet and I desperately wished she would tell me what she was thinking. I bit my lip, nervous that I was verbalizing the resolution I'd made. I hoped she wouldn't roll her eyes or sigh in frustration.

But she looked contemplative. After a moment, the expression lifted as she raised her eyes to me.

"Okay," she said. She took my hand and squeezed. "We'll wait."

I gave her a hesitant, grateful smile.

"And for the record," she said, smile growing playful, "I'm insanely attracted to you too.”

After eight months of stripping, my life felt very well-rounded. I danced at Jez for money four times a week, spun around poles fully clothed at Swivel under Anya's tutelage five times a week, drank wine and watched movies with Justine when she wasn't at Avery's, hung out with Faye and Schro, paid bills, did laundry, bought groceries, and had sex with Dr. Turner for pay. I felt great, inside and out. I could honestly say that I loved my life. The fact that I'd recently purchased a new BMW didn't hurt either.

After eight months of our arrangement, I trusted Dr. Turner. Not with my real name or anything personal, but I trusted him to not fuck up the good thing we had.

It wasn't a winning sexual arrangement in terms of my own pleasure, since he had yet to make me come. A few times he'd paid extra to watch me masturbate to orgasm. It had been surprisingly difficult, and I'd left more tired than usual. It required a lot of energy to let go around him.

Every weekend when I arrived, we'd chat for ten or fifteen minutes. At first I felt it was blurring the lines between our no-strings sex arrangement and dating, but I realized that it probably assuaged his guilt about the whole situation. That made me feel a bit tender for him, seeing the hints of guilt that crept up.

His guilt showed up in the way he asked if I'd be around the week of Christmas, and if our arrangement was working out for me. He would rub his palms against the fabric of his slacks as he sucked in air before asking. He looked like a high school boy for just a moment before he slipped back into his rehearsed role with me. I always maintained a smile, assuring him I would give him notice if I left town or wanted to make changes to our arrangement.

When Christmas rolled around, he gave me my usual pay plus a mishmash of gift certificates to local clothing shops. Considering I didn't wear clothing for most of the time I was around him, it seemed ironic. But he had probably absorbed a bit of the rescuer complex I'd experienced a few times in the Private Pleasures Booth: men who paid me to talk but never asked me to touch myself or role play with them, who chatted until they felt they had enough buy-in to try to talk the me out of stripping and save my soul. The other girls at Jez sometimes laughed at these men, calling them suckers, and sometimes were relieved to find one simply because they made shifts more interesting and less scary. Personally, I liked them. They were well-meaning and often smart. Rescuers never tried to negotiate illegal extras. They just talked and hoped their money wasn't going to drugs.

Only once did I ever use my stripping money to buy drugs. I bought Justine a bag of pot for her birthday and we made pot brownies together. I made sure to let her know the pot had been purchased with stripping money, and she shook with pot-infused laughter, saying that we were literally getting high off my ass. I cackled and fell forward onto her, repeated again and again, "High off my ass! High off my ass!"

When I got to Dr. Turner's one night about eight months into our arrangement, I could tell he'd already had a few drinks. His smile was slightly uneven, but he had his wits about him, and he wasn't stumbling. At the first sign of him being unruly, I would have left. But I trusted him. He wasn't the type to get out of line after a few drinks.

He ushered me into the living room and sat on the couch, adolescent smirk in place as he lifted his beer bottle to his lips.

"How you feelin' tonight, Vi?" he asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

I smiled my Violet-smile and perched next to him, resting one hand on his shoulder, tracing his muscle. "Pretty good. Glad to be here," I lied.

"Good," Dr. Turner said. "Me too." He grinned and took another sip. "Whataya say you give me a little show?" he asked, grin growing wicked.

"You want me to strip?" I asked, my voice airy and coquettish.

"And make yourself come," he said, low and excited.

I plastered on a smile I hoped was tinged with eagerness, while inside I grimaced and steeled myself for the hard work he was asking me to do.

"You know my price," I said, leaning in to run my tongue up the crest of his ear.

Dr. Turner's ears were especially sensitive. He loved when I was vocal, he loved when I talked dirty, and he loved when I licked and nipped at them. He was always willing to pay me for extras when I stimulated his ears.

He shuddered. "Two-hundred on top of your hourly.”

I tucked my tongue back into my mouth and smiled. I loved the power I had over him in negotiation.

I hummed and stood, taking his hand to lead him to his bedroom, but he held me back.

"I want to do it out here tonight." He looked up at me with a wicked smile.

"Why Anthony, you naughty boy," I said, knowing I was walking a thin line between flirtation and mocking. "Sex in the living room?"

I straddled him and his hands immediately gripped my ass.

"With a whore," he said, taunting me.

I let out a playful gasp and rocked my pelvis into him. "You
are
dirty, aren't you?"

"Not as dirty as you, baby," he mumbled, settling back into the couch with a grin as he gave my ass a firm swat.

I rose off his lap slowly, stretching out the time he'd bought. I walked over to the stereo and turned on some music, hoping it would be suitable for stripping.

After a few minutes, I was naked except for my lingerie, and Dr. Turner had slipped into his familiar loose-jawed stare. As I'd gotten better at stripping, he'd asked me to do it more and more often. I wasn't complaining. It decreased the time we actually had sex, and I was making on average eight hundred dollars every time I saw him.

Not bad for sixty minutes of work.

When I was down to my panties, I swiveled my hips toward the floor in a move Anya called "sexy down.” Then, quirking my eyebrow as I stared at Dr. Turner, I slid my hand down over my breasts, down my stomach, and into my panties.

And then I had to shut my eyes or I'd be there the whole night while nothing happened. Call it artistic integrity or something, but I didn't want to fake it.

I pretended Dr. Turner wasn't there as I lay on my back, legs spread with my panties around my knees. I rubbed myself, grateful for the lube I'd applied before arriving.

Tonight my thoughts drifted to a girl who had worked at Jez for only two months before disappearing. I only spoke to her a few times, but what had captivated me was how she seemed to seal herself in her own world as she danced. She rarely talked to customers, and I couldn't remember her ever working the Private Pleasures Booth. I thought about the smoothness of her skin and the silkiness of her hair as it draped over her shoulders and breasts. I imagined her hair sliding down my stomach as she hovered above me, about to go down on me. As I dipped my fingers into myself and began circling my clit, I left Dr. Turner's living room and was transported to a fantasy land where only that girl and I existed.

Before I started stripping, I would have thought it improper to think about coworkers while I was masturbating. But when you work with beautiful, naked women all day, it's kind of hard not to. Our locker room climate invited free positive and overtly sexual commentary on each other's bodies. I couldn't think of any other job where it was acceptable to compliment a coworker on the toning work she'd done on her ass or admire a new clit piercing, but at Jez I didn't think twice about it. When you can recognize your coworkers by the smell of their pussies, all bets are off.

I felt myself nearing the edge, and had the presence of mind to tell my fantasy woman I was close so that Dr. Turner could hear. I tipped over, feeling the girl draw me out as she sucked my nipples, and then floated back down onto the carpet in reality.

I took a few breaths before opening my eyes and smiling at Dr. Turner. He was stroking himself on the sofa, mesmerized by the show I'd just given him. He grunted his appreciation and worked himself tighter before tilting his chin up in a wordless request for me to rise. I allowed myself a moment to recover as I moved to my purse and took out a condom.

Condoms had become one of the most important things in my arrangement with Dr. Turner. In addition to obvious health protections, they also created a psychological barrier. A few times Dr. Turner had asked about barebacking, offering me hundreds of extra dollars, swearing on his life that he wasn't sleeping with anyone else and would get whatever tests I wanted him to get. I immediately turned him down. That was something I wasn't willing to negotiate. I never went down on the girls at Jez in the Private Pleasures Booth without a dental dam. I needed something, no matter how thin, to separate me from other people.

Dr. Turner was especially vocal that night, grunting and thrusting up into me as I moved up and down in his lap. He was talking more than usual, asking how I was feeling. I knew that meant he wanted dirty talk. I panted a lot, playacting the same way I did in the Private Pleasures Booth.