“You know,” I told Maya, leaning drunkenly into her side. “I read that strippers are like really smart.”
Equally as drunk as I was, seeing as how we’d been competing to see who could down their pitcher first, then we’d timed what was quicker – two straws or three - then we’d done something else, and now I was sloppy. Sloppy, I loved that word, it should be used more.
“My name’s sloppy,” I snickered, holding my hand out to her.
“Mine’s blottola,” she giggled back.
“We need a lady up on the stage,” the MC said this time. Maude had been up, she’d ripped the dudes pants off and screamed, then he’d rubbed all over her and got her to run a soapy sponge over his chest and back… After that I’d started drinking more because I was still feeling pain, so I missed out on what happened, but whatever it was the crowd screamed louder than they had all night. Now, they needed another poor, sloppy chump. “Is there a Katarianne Crew in the crowd tonight?”
Nudging me with her elbow harder than was necessary, Maya pointed to the stage. “That’s you he’s calling.”
“No, it’s not. My name’s sloppy!”
“Katarianne Crew, we know you’re out there gorgeous, and we also know you’re as beautiful as your name. Now get up on the stage.”
Maya shot up out of her seat and started pointing at me. “She’s here, she’s here.”
There was no way you could miss her doing it, but there was definitely no way you could miss it when everyone else at the table stood up and yelled it too.
At the same time, three men jumped off the stage and jogged across the floor to me.
“Hey, babe,” a guy with black hair said as he got to me. “Time to make you soar.”
Through the drunkenness, I heard the word ‘sore’ not ‘soar’, easy mistake but totally different meaning. So, I did what any sane woman would do when a stranger said he was going to make her sore.
“I’m not into the red room of pain,” I yelled, trying to back away from him and hitting a hard lumpy surface that grunted. Pointing at Maude I added, “Pick her, she’ll let you do anything to her.”
“Aiyeeeee,” Maude screamed, jumping up and down. “Hell yeah I will.”
Shaking his head and grinning, the guy picked me up and carried me up to the stage.
“I don’t like pain,” I told him. “I’m a gamer. That means I like my laptop, my Xbox, games with weird characters in them, cheese balls, Cheetos, and food that you can eat that doesn’t make a mess.”
“Cool,” one of the other guys who’d jumped off the stage said as he walked beside us. “What games do you play?”
So I listed them. In a room where women were paying money to see the guys strip, and those guys were carrying me to the stage to whip the bejesus out of me, I listed all the games that I loved to play – and bonus, I ended up getting one of their gamer tags to add on Xbox because he played one of the games, too.
After they got me settled on the stage, I was trying to figure out which way I could run and my chances of getting to a door while I was seriously intoxicated, when the door I was staring at opened and in walked a bunch of pissed off Townsend men, Montgomerys, a sheriff, a tattoo artist, a deputy sheriff, a Jarrod, and three Klines who tripped over their feet and burst out laughing when they saw me sitting on the stage.
I was just about to point at them, scream, and run to the girls at the table when I remembered how they’d all stood up and fed me to the lions only minutes earlier. Instead, I crossed my arms over my chest and grinned at them.
The girls mistakenly thought I was having fun and started grinning back at me until the men arrived at the table. Even with the bright lights shining in my eyes, I could see their faces drop when they realized they were busted. This meant, though, that I also saw the expression on Jarrod’s face when he saw me sitting on stage. He wasn’t pissed – at least, not that you could see on the outside – he was what I’d guess was vaguely amused by my predicament. Then, his mouth slowly broke into a grin which confused me until two men wearing towels walked in front of me and cut my line of sight to the table off.
“Are you ready, gorgeous?” One of the soapy wet guys asked me, closing what little distance there was between us.
“No,” I answered honestly, because I really wasn’t.
“We’ll be gentle,” soapy number two assured me, but this just made my blood pressure go up even more.