The Hurricane

The first time I saw her was about two months after Molly left me. Molly had been the only girl I’d ever been with; we had married two years after high school and stayed married for three years before she left me. I guess I can’t blame her a whole lot. Marriage was supposed to fix our relationship, but it must’ve finally sank in for her that I was gonna be working this dead-end fast food management job forever. She was tired of the stinky uniforms all the time and we really hadn’t been affectionate with each other for months by the time she left. What could I do, though? I hardly knew her anymore…she had her life and I really didn’t feel like a big part of it. We’d take turns making dinner and watch TV or movies in the evening, but she’d end up getting on the phone or meeting up with some of her friends. Sorry, no, I’m not gonna go with you to hang out with a bunch of your high school friends. Whatever.

So she left me like a month before the high school reunion. Five years already? I wouldn’t have even gone, but John wouldn’t leave me alone about it. He started at the Burger Barn about a month after I did, and so we’ve been pretty close ever since. We’d partied together on graduation night, and we got totally shit-faced on my wedding night. He’s been one of the only guys that I hang out with, and Molly couldn’t stand him, so we only hung out once or twice a week when she was still around. Anyway, he kept bugging me about that stupid reunion after she left.

“It’s gonna be great, man. We’ll get to hang out with some of our old friends. Molly won’t be there…Central’s reunion isn’t even until next month.” Molly had graduated from Central, but we went to Main West. “We’ll get all liquored up and hit on some of the old cheerleaders…maybe get to sleep with some girl we always wanted in high school, huh?”

“Right,” I said, “they’re gonna be in such awe that we kept the same Burger Barn jobs for half a decade that we’ll be fighting ‘em off with sticks. Whatever, man, I don’t even think I wanna see the people from high school that did like us, not to mention the people that thought we were jerk-offs. What do you want to do? Prove to ‘em that they were right about what losers we were?”

He laughed it off at the time, and a few days before the reunion managed to convince me to go. He explained that Billy and Sean would be there, and I hadn’t seen them in quite a while. Before getting married, I used to hang out with the three of them quite a bit. They’d both moved out of town for school, though, and now they had jobs somewhere else. I didn’t even know what they were doing, and I thought it’d be nice to see them again, so I agreed to go to the reunion.

The reunion was about as horrible and humiliating as I’d expected it to be. I’d thought most of the people at our school were cold back then, but they were even worse now. John, Billy, Sean and I stood around the punchbowl for what seemed like an eternity, talking only to each other. Even some of the people who’d been friendly with us in high school weren’t talking to us, and I realized that any friendliness they’d shown in high school was a joke. They had no choice back then, we saw them everyday. They wouldn’t be able to be downright rude and feel okay with it. I probably won’t see most of them again until the ten-year reunion; what use would it be for them to pretend to be nice for one evening? Sean and Billy actually did wander off for a bit and seemed to get along okay with some people. They came back to where John and I were standing, though, and I let them know that I was ready to leave.
“I’ve had about enough of these phony motherfuckers,” I think is how I said it. Sean and Billy seemed a bit taken aback, but I didn’t really give a shit. I was ready to leave. “Let’s go find something to do, huh?” I added a bit more calmly.

“Hey man, let’s go down to ‘Guys’ Night Out,’” John suggested. “I don’t think I’ve been down there since sourpuss here got married,” he nudged me with his elbow. I shot him a dirty look and thought back to my bachelor party. It had been the same four of us that night, along with Molly’s brother and a few of his friends. We went to the strip club, “Guys’ Night Out,” and got so drunk that none of us could drive home, so we all walked, and we didn’t make it back home until four or five in the morning. Molly and some of the guys’ girlfriends were pissed because they had to go pick up the three cars we’d taken over there. Molly made me sleep on the couch and I puked all over the carpet. It was a great night. I’d been a bit uptight about the dancers though, seeing as how I was getting ready to get married and my fiancée’s brother was with me. He seemed like just the type that would really bust my chops if I got too into the girls.

I looked at John as he was trying to talk Billy and Sean into going again, and I told him I was all for it. I wasn’t married anymore, and I sure could use a little pick-me-up after that lame-ass reunion.

“Well, I suppose I’ve talked to just about all of the people I’m going to here,” Billy conceded. “I didn’t bring a whole lot of money with me, though,” he went on.

“Oh, come on, man, we work in fast food and we can handle it. You college graduates ought to be able to manage,” John chided. And that was that, we made our way across town to the seedy little club on the edge of the “bad” neighborhoods. The parking lot was about half full and Billy’s car was probably worth about as much as any three of the other cars in the lot. We found a spot to park and made our way into the place.
After showing our IDs at the door and paying the cover charge, we made our way to an open table towards the back of the place, not too far from the main stage. There were six or eight girls wandering around the place in skimpy outfits, chattering flirtatiously with the guys at the various tables. On the main stage, a nude girl danced about, showing off her finer attributes to the guys seated around the stage with dollar bills in their hands and mouths. As I sat down I watched the girl on the main stage get on her knees and push her small breasts together to extract a dollar bill from one of the guys’ mouths. She was tall and incredibly skinny with long brown hair. I turned to the table I was sitting at and saw a big grin on John’s face.

“You guys pick out a girl to get your lap dances from yet?” he asked eagerly. “I kinda like that one on the main stage myself; she’s really cute!”

Billy laughed and glanced around the room as Sean placed an order with the waitress who’d walked up to our table. The waitress had to be at least a few years older than we were, while most of the dancers I’d seen so far looked as though they were at least a couple of years younger. She had a frumpy sort of build and wore glasses. She wore her frizzy hair down in a really plain manner and I couldn’t help but wonder what would possess such an unattractive woman to find a job serving drinks in a strip club. I ordered a beer and began to scan the room again for a pretty girl to take my mind off things. I couldn’t stop thinking about my bachelor party, though, and how I’d been pretty convinced at the time that when groups of guys like us came into the strip club it must’ve been a bit of a relief for the girls. None of us were unattractive guys, and I think that Sean and I could actually be considered pretty attractive. I’m slightly taller than average and have short black hair and brown eyes. I have a somewhat athletic build and what I’ve been told are “rugged good-looks.” Sean is a bit of a pretty-boy, and the girls usually describe him as “cute” or “adorable.” John is a bit overweight and seems to have some sort of aversion to shaving in spite of the fact that his facial hair grows in patches, and Sean wears thick glasses and has a pretty bad unibrow the sort of mustache that makes him look as though he’s trying to be a 1986 cop or porn-star. In spite of all of that, even those two don’t look quite as backwoods as a lot of the guys that I see in these places. They’ve both managed to date a few very attractive women, so I don’t think that they must be repulsive, anyway.

I was looking at Sean’s unibrow and thinking about that when she approached the table. She really caught me off-guard, as I’d not seen her when I’d been looking around the place before, and I would’ve noticed. She had shoulder length natural-looking blonde hair and soft, pleasant facial features brought to life by her bright blue eyes. She looked right at me for a moment as she asked if any of us would like a dance. I was dumbfounded and couldn’t think of anything to say as I gazed at her beautiful face. I heard John talking in the confident, worldly tone he sometimes took on when we were in public.

“Ahhh...well, we’re just getting here, doll. I think we’re gonna wait for our drinks and relax for a bit before we’re ready for that. Thanks, though, and don’t be a stranger,” he said, looking back to the rest of us at the table like a sort of diplomat. “What did I say, guys, is this it or what?” he said when she’d gone. I followed her with my eyes as she made her way to other tables. She wasn’t too tall, perhaps only an inch or two shorter than I am, and she was built like a model. She had lovely, ample breasts and well-proportioned hips. I’ve always been the kind of guy who appreciates breasts, but I’ve noticed that a lot of women who are well-endowed also seem to be somewhat fat or big-boned. And the girls who are petite often seem sickly or hardly have breasts at all. This girl was the perfect in-between, not too thick or too thin, but with pleasant curves and an incredibly pretty face. Of course, I don’t mean to sound superficial or shallow, and I know that there’s a lot more to a person than the way they look, but I’m not ashamed to admit that I have a deep appreciation for the female form and find certain types to be more esthetically pleasing than others. And, of course, I was in a strip club, where business is supposed to be entirely about the surface appearance of things. Anyway, I thought she was very attractive, so I decided that when I was good and ready, I’d get my lap dance from her.

When our drinks came we sat and talked for a bit, chatting about work and life and people we’d known from school and that sort of thing. We admired the girls making their rounds and doing their dances on the main stage as conversation waned. Eventually the girl I’d been enamored with came back in my direction, so I stood and met her as she approached. I felt a bit silly being the first to partake, but it didn’t matter that much.

“I guess you’re ready for me, huh?” she asked, smiling. She had a beautiful smile and a very kind look to her face. I looked down for a moment and heard her laugh gently. “You’re kind of shy, aren’t you,” she asked, laughing again as I looked back at her affectionate face. I could hear the guys chuckling as I blushed, following her towards the “champagne room.” I felt like a sap, but something about her made me feel okay about that. “I’m Hurricane,” she said as I took a seat. I didn’t know if I was supposed to tell her my name or not, so I just looked at her, still blushing, and held out my twenty-dollar bill. “We’ll get to that, dear. For right now, just sit back and relax. Enjoy yourself.”

I was nearly light-headed as I walked back to the table and plopped down on my seat. John was sitting back with his hands together in his lap and grinned as he watched me sit. “That good, eh?” he laughed. “I suppose it’s about time I got in on some of this, too,” he said. He waved down the girl who’d been dancing on the main stage when we walked in and headed back to the champagne room with her. I drank a couple more beers, and by the end of the night I’d had three or four dances with Hurricane, at least. I couldn’t get her eyes out of my head, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to see her warm smile as she moved so gracefully, body next to mine. Her smile and laughter and eyes all conveyed such perfect acceptance and affection. The guys gave me a hard time about getting so many dances with her, and John even said something rude about falling in love with strippers, so I tried to keep to myself for the rest of the night. We eventually left, and I stopped and said good-night to Hurricane as we made our way to the door. “Good Night, I love you!” John mocked when we’d walked out the door. Sean and Billy laughed and I told them to go to hell.

“She was a nice girl, that’s all,” I said. “Besides, I haven’t gotten drunk like this in a while. I’m not used to it anymore.”

“Well, whatever, you had it bad for that girl and you know it. You need to go home and get some sleep and wake up and remember that you work at Burger Barn,” he laughed again, suddenly sounding a bit morose. They dropped me off at home first and I lied in bed for a long time before I finally fell asleep.

In the next few weeks, I couldn’t help but go back to Guys’ Night Out to see Hurricane. I went out there seven times in two weeks, which might seem like a bit much, but there were a couple of nights that she wasn’t working, so I left right away. I didn’t tell John that I was going, ‘cause I knew that he wouldn’t understand. Sure, she was a stripper and she was getting paid to be there, but I could see something in her eyes and her demeanor that was special.

Things really changed, though, on the night that I finally started to talk to her. Before that, I hadn’t even told her my name yet, and that was really all that I wanted to tell her.

“I was beginning to wonder if you even had a name,” she laughed, probably surprised that I’d said anything at all. I usually didn’t say much of anything except to say hello and ask how she was when I first came in or to say good-bye when I left at the end of the night. I knew that I wouldn’t have much money to keep spending there, though, and I wasn’t getting nearly as much sleep as usual. I wanted to be sure to tell her my name before I was broke. I thought about her everyday at work and just wished she could know how important she was to me. “So are you from around here?” she asked. Now I was surprised. I hadn’t counted on having to manage a conversation with her.

“Um...yeah. I grew up here,” I sputtered, no longer able to look into her precious eyes.

“That’s nice,” she said. “It seems like a pretty nice place,” she went on as she continued dancing. “What do you do?” she asked as I watched the grace and charm leave her soft face.

“I’m sorry...” I said, becoming frustrated. “I didn’t really want to start a conversation. I just wanted you to know my name. You’re really special...and I don’t think anyone else can appreciate you the way I do,” I added, noticing that she’d slowed down to the point that she was hardly dancing at all.

“Well thanks,” she started, her expression completely devoid of all of that acceptance and affection that I loved.

“Goddammit,” I stopped her. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything.” I pushed her off of me, a bit disgusted, and she let out a little shriek as she landed on her behind on the floor in front of my chair. Some of the other couples in the room looked over as the girls stopped dancing. In seconds, a beefy security guard had rushed in the door and had a vice-grip on my arm. “Nothing happened, asshole, get your hands off me,” I yelled, now beyond frustration. He tightened his grip on my upper arm as he looked to her for an explanation.

“He got creepy all of a sudden,” she pouted, “he started to scare me.”

“You want me to get him out of here?” She looked at me and I tried to hide my irritation. She looked down at the floor with a frown and slowly nodded at the ogre who held my arm. I screamed obscenities at her as he dragged me to the door and threw me out.