The ranger’s mouth was full and he made an attempt to speak, but before he could swallow his Oreo and say anything, Treston had opened the door and stepped out. As Treston closed the door, he sent the ranger a backward glance and said, “You will see that Mr. Boon gets this? I left a small gift for him inside.” He was talking about the chocolates. After he saw the way the ranger was eating the Oreos, he wanted to make sure the chocolates would be safe.
The ranger swallowed and cleared his throat. “I’ll see he gets it. He’s out on horseback right now checking a few back trails. But when he comes back I’ll tell him you stopped by.”
“Thanks,” he said, and closed the door. Treston didn’t know the rangers rode horses in the trails. On the way to the cab, he had a wicked thought that made him smile. What if Cooper Boon had found him yesterday and Cooper had been on horseback instead of in his park ranger’s truck? Treston would have had to ride naked on the back of the horse all the way to the park ranger’s station.
When he arrived at the club he paid the driver, climbed out of the backseat, and ran to the back door where the strippers usually entered so they wouldn’t have to walk through the main bar to get to the dressing rooms. He was carrying a backpack that evening because he was doing a special show that night that he only did once a week. The backpack contained his costume and a few props he needed. Treston and the other strippers didn’t always dance in cages above the bar. That was only part of his job. On certain nights they were required to actually perform real dance routines, sometimes in a group and sometimes alone. And Treston had come up with an original striptease act all his own that no one else in town did or had ever thought of doing before him. As far as he knew, no other male stripper in the universe did this. He’d only seen it done once in an old movie, and even then, it had been done by a woman.
Although he wasn’t best friends with all of the other guys who worked there, he was friendly with them in a way he could never quite pigeonhole. He didn’t believe in getting too friendly with the other male strippers because some of them were too competitive, some of them could be arrogant, and some were just passing through to make a quick buck until something else better came along. At least, that’s what they claimed. The friendship Treston shared with most of them stemmed more from a mutual unspoken understanding than anything else—even with the most arrogant, who claimed they were only stripping until something better came along. They all understood their circumstances, they knew the rest of the world judged them without thinking twice, and they seemed to all find a certain amount of solace in this unusual brotherhood because only they knew what it was like to take off their clothes for men—or do more—to make a living. And even though they would stab each other in the back at any given time, they rarely ever judged each other.
A guy everyone called J.D. was putting on a g-string when Treston set his backpack down in one of the dressing room counters. He was one of the few whom Treston had grown closer to. J.D. stood over six feet tall, had short dark hair, and spoke with a New York accent. Although his nose was a little too large, his chin a little too weak, and his hair way too short for his large ears, he had the kind of tightly defined body and long smooth legs, that brought in more than a few customers. And when J.D. put on a g-string a size too small, the junk he packed into the small pouch between his legs was so ample it took a while to make sure it would all stay in place.
Treston glanced at J.D.’s crotch and smiled. “You’d better duct tape that thing down, bud. It might fall out and knock a customer’s eye out.” All the male strippers at Chickey’s club were well endowed. No one paid to see male strippers with little dicks. But J.D. was so well endowed they always joked about it.
J.D.’s dick was hanging from the right side of the g-string and he was packing his balls into the pouch. “Very funny. But if I don’t get this thing in fast Chickey’s going to kill me.” Chickey would not allow the strippers to show their penises. He drew the line there; for him it was a matter of decorum and good taste—in his own words. They could strip to the most revealing g-string money could buy as long as they kept their private parts hidden at all times. And they were never allowed to converse, touch, or deal with customers in the bar on a one-on-one basis.
Though Treston was still upset about what had happened with Harlan Rocks, he’d started to feel better about it. He even thought he might hear from Harlan again. And he found J.D’s g-string dilemma so amusing he couldn’t stop smiling. “If you’d wear a decent-sized thong like I wear you wouldn’t be having those problems.”
Another stripper, a guy who went by the name Lyon Denton, passed by in his jock strap, glanced at J.D’s dick, and said, “That’s just vulgar. You’d better pack that thing up tight or Chickey’s going to fire your ass. If your fucking pork sword falls out while you’re dancing he’ll come after you with a baseball bat.” Lyon was a straight guy working his way through nursing school. He claimed it was better than working at Walmart for “fucking pennies.” He was Treston’s closest friend at the club. They often referred to each other as brothers.
J.D. tended to push things to the limit, and Chickey constantly warned him about exposing his genitals on stage. “Fuck you, dude. I’m doing my best.” J.D. spread his legs and glanced down at his dick. “It’s not easy when you’re working with something like this.” He shook his flaccid dick in Lyon Denton’s direction and laughed. “But then you wouldn’t know about things like that with your little dick.”
Lyon stood in front of a full-length mirror, next to two other male strippers who had arrived and had just begun to take off their clothes. He flung J.D. a sideways glance and said, “Fuck you. I do just fine with what I have and I don’t get no complaints from anyone. I can’t help it if I’m not a mutant like you. That fucking thing should be in The Guinness Book of World Records.”
If Treston ever stopped working in the strip club he knew the one thing he would miss the most would be the vicious banter between the guys before a show started. When you are in a situation where you’re forced to be this naked and this exposed, you say things you normally wouldn’t say under any other circumstances.
J.D. smiled and said, “That’s not what your wife said the other night when I fucked her brains out.”
Treston pulled down his pants and stepped out of them.