This story was longlisted in the #shortys2024 competition.

Content advisory: This story takes place in a nude dance bar. There is no explicit sex, but it's not exactly a wholesome environment. Sex work is mentioned. Sex gets talked about a lot.

Length: 1,365 words.

First published on Wattpad on September 20, 2024

The music throbbed and groaned; it begged for release, but no end was in sight. Just when it looked like the day might finally reach a climax and there would be some rest, somebody came in through the door five dollars lighter than they'd been previously; and it was time to put another dollar in the jukebox and get up on stage again. No rest for the wicked, no end in sight.

The day had been a busy one. One of the newer girls, Wildfire (and no, she did not fit her name, aside from the red hair – she ought to have picked something sensible like Sheila or Kelly) seemed to have picked up a regular clientele, and she was making a fortune. Without turning tricks, no less. Only four hours into her shift and she'd already amassed a little over six hundred dollars.

At one of the bigger bars, like the Mustang, you could see it – but here, in the Red Garter? Unheard of! The Red Garter was one of those cheap downtown sleaze-buckets that basically offered little more than a warm spot for the streetwalkers to hang their coats and sit for a while. More tricks got turned out of that kind of bar than went on in a David Copperfield show. The owners were too cheap to pay off the police, so the bar and the adjoining bookstore got raided by the vice squad about once per month. If the owners had paid any taxes on the Red Garter at all, it must have been a write-off, because the bar never made any money. When a place is closed down regularly for health violations or solicitation, how could it be possible to make money pulling in horny businessmen off the street? If they came to this place at all, they came after they got their fifty-dollar box lunches at the Mustang, which were served to them by topless waitresses; they came after they tipped Bunny Glamazon (68GGG – 22 – 38) two hundred and fifty bucks; they came to try and spend their remaining twenty dollars on a quick private show and some efficient chimpanzee spanking. If they came at all.

But here was Wildfire pulling in the bucks. A week ago, she wasn't making jack. But now...Miss Shake-Your-Little-Money-Maker, in the flesh.

She liked to claim that it was all in the garter she wore: a little gold thing, looked like it was sewn together out of doubloons and jewels, straight from the set of Treasure Island. Quite tacky. It would have gone great with some Las Vegas ostrich feathers and a matching gold collar, but showgirl plumes would have scraped the low ceiling, especially since Wildfire tended to wear six inch stilettos. In gold. At least those matched. Her outfits generally didn't – they varied from a black business suit to a Victorian corset – but since the Red Garter was a nude bar, it didn't matter; they'd come off anyway.

An hour later, and she'd grossed a thousand. Five-o-clock rush. Where was she getting it from?

*

After a month of this money making, the Red Garter decided to make Wildfire the Girl Of The Week in the local dribble sheets. When they brought the photographer in, she smiled. "I've got a new name," she said.

About time!

"Oh, yeah? What is it, pretty lady?"

"Aphrodite."

"It'll never work. Guys don't like names with more than two syllables. Takes too much thought."

"They'll remember me."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. Just watch. You'll see."

*

New girls are always needed in this profession. No matter how good you are, how much they love you, the management always finds an excuse to fire you. They say it's because you're too fat, too thin, too flat, too big-busted, too tall, too short, or too obvious about being a hooker; but the real reason is that the managers get bored of you and want you to make your money somewhere else. If any girl lasts longer than a few months, she's probably between the sheets with one of the owners.

At about three o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, during the slowest part of the day, a new girl knocked on the door of the Red Garter. She had a boy with her, very pretty – too pretty to be her boyfriend, so he had to be her pimp. She wanted an audition. Whatever. Why not. They let her in.

When she got up onto the stage, she was not the best dancer in the world – but she had beautiful long golden-blonde hair that went nearly down to her knees; and eyes to match. She was gold and white and rosy and very, very curvy in all the right places. She could have been a porn star, with that body. People have sketched bodies like that and used the curves to construct the perfect blow-up doll. Most importantly of all, though, her hair was natural, and so were her various feminine parts.

She got hired.

"What name do you want?" the manager asked her.

"Aphrodite," she said with a heart-wrenching smile.

"Sorry. It's been taken."

She frowned. A look of confusion glided across her face. "Taken?"

"By one of the other dancers. You'll have to pick a new one."

"I will settle for Peleia, perhaps."

The manager rolled his eyes. "Oh God. Not another girl with a thing for weird names. How do you spell that?"

*

One night Aphrodite (nee Wildfire) got approached backstage by the new dancer, who wanted to know the secret of her dancing.

"You pick it up after a few days. After a month or two you'll be really good. Just watch what the other girls do, and do it. Do you like girls?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"That's a lovely accent you have. Italian? Strange, you don't look Italian. Right. Anyway. It helps if you have some lesbian tendencies, because then you can pick up the moves that turn you on. What turns you on might turn on the customers, and that gives you a bit of an advantage. Otherwise, just watch for what looks kind of neat, and watch the way the men react to it." The song stopped. "Time for me to go on. See 'ya."

She ran out of the cramped dressing room – which wasn't really a dressing room at all, just a large closet that had been converted into a women's bathroom and given a few milk crates in the back to store bags of costumes – and started her set. The sounds of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" filled the air (because today she was wearing a bridal veil and a white dress with her gold shoes and garter). But halfway through the song, the music stopped. Jukebox failure? And where did the lights go? Was it already time for another power failure? When was the fuse box going to get replaced?...

A golden fire, as if from some fierce sun, seemed to emanate from the dressing room. The door slammed open, and a bright light silhouetted the figure of a goddess. For once, Aphrodite (who was once Wildfire) got no attention.

"You have stolen my girdle, and now you steal my name?" the figure called out. Her voice, unlike the nimbus surrounding her, was cold. "I command you to return them."

When a goddess commands you, you don't argue with her. Seconds elapsed. Nobody breathed. Then Aphrodite was gone in a puff of dawn-vapor and scent, leaving Wildfire (now Wildfire) naked on the dance floor.

The men tipped her well, out of sympathy.

*

Two weeks later, there was another opening at the Red Garter, since Wildfire had been fired for being "too much." A round girl appeared. She danced well, if a bit self-consciously. She was hired. When the management heard about her taking a job as a dancer so that she could catch her husband in the act of cheating on her, they had a good laugh.

"So what's your dance name going to be?" they asked.

"Hera."

Those girls. Couldn't they ever pick something normal?