by Thomas Henry
I found a parking place on the street. Karen took my arm as we walked a couple of blocks to the bar. This time, there were no stairs and no tuxedo-clad bouncer to open the door, which already was propped open. A black curtain shielded the bar interior from street view. I pulled it aside and followed Karen through the doorway.
The looks we got when we walked into the bar ranged from surprise to amusement. Unlike the Waikiki “gentlemen’s club” that catered largely to tourists, this hostess bar was patronized mostly by local guys. Aside from bargirls, women rarely ventured inside. Bringing a woman to a hostess bar is a bit like taking sand to the beach. I mean, the whole purpose of coming to a place like this is to be entertained by the women who work here.
This particular bar had a French-Vietnamese owner, and most of the women who worked here were Vietnamese, so Karen seemed decidedly out of place. But given Karen’s good looks and stunning figure, the bargirls probably assumed she was just a stripper looking for a job.
The interior of the bar was a rectangle. Pretty much everything that wasn’t covered with mirrors was painted black. Most of the ambient light was provided by black lights in the ceiling. Music pounded out of speakers in all four corners.
The near end of the room was taken up by a typical bar with barstools, mirrored wall, and muted, wall-mounted televisions. A single bartendress was uncapping beer bottles and placing them on a tray with short glasses full of ice. An elderly man sat on one of the barstools and gazed at a closed-captioned television. A couple of unoccupied hostesses leaned against the bar. They eyed us for a few moments and then went back to watching the front door.
The middle of the bar was filled with vinyl booths like you would find in a coffee shop. Typically, one or two men and an equal number of hostesses occupied each booth. The men sat on the inside, away from the aisles. The hostesses sat on the outside to make it easier for them to get up to fetch drinks and food.
At the far end of the room was a stage with doorways on either side. The stage was about table-height. Men were sitting in chairs around the perimeter, with their drinks sitting on a shelf just below stage level. The wall behind the stage was covered with mirrors that made the place feel a lot bigger than it really was. A single ceiling-mounted spotlight above the stage was the only bright light in the bar. And as luck would have it, the stripper for whom I was looking happened to be lying on the stage, writhing suggestively on a sheepskin. She was well into her set and already had shed everything except her bikini bottom and her high-heel shoes.
I guided Karen to an empty booth that had an unobstructed view of the stage. She sat down on the bench and slid over so I could sit next to her. One of the hostesses drifted over to us. She dropped a couple of napkins on the table and regarded us with weary, heavily-made-up eyes as she asked what we wanted to drink.
“Two gin-and-tonics,” I said.
“Two gin tonic.” She turned and trudged to the bar.
“What happened to Tanqueray?” Karen asked.
“Sometimes it’s best just to keep things simple.”
The hostess returned with our drinks. I handed her a twenty. She counted out my change in singles and placed them on the table. I picked them up and handed them back to her.
“You looking somebody?” she asked.
I nodded toward the dancer on the stage. The hostess wrinkled her nose and walked away.
“What was that all about?” Karen asked.
“She was hoping that we would buy her a drink, and she was miffed when I told her we were here to see the dancer on the stage.”
“I don’t get it. Why would she expect us to buy her a drink?”
“This is a hostess bar, and she is a hostess. She makes her money by serving customers and eating and drinking with them.”
By now, the dancer had abandoned her sheepskin. She was squatting at the edge of the stage, directly in front of a customer. She was naked, except for her high-heel shoes and garter. Unlike Baby, this dancer was squatting with her legs wide open, fully exposing her bald pussy.
The customer pressed his nose against her bare chest as she rubbed her breasts up and down his cheeks with her hands. After a few moments, he slipped a folded bill into a forest of others in her garter. She hugged his face to her chest and used her arms to squeeze it between her breasts.
As she released him and moved over to the next customer, she spotted me. She started to smile, but caught herself when she saw Karen. I raised my hand for a moment. She nodded and went back to work on the next guy at the stage.
“You know her?” Karen asked.
I nodded. “She’s the one I was hoping to find to help with the bachelor party.”
“You think she will be willing to…uh…perform there?”
“I hope so. And I hope she’ll help me find a couple of other dancers.”
“Why do you need more than one?”
“Couple of reasons. One is that they usually don’t like to go to private parties alone.”
“Safety in numbers?”
I nodded.
“What’s the other reason?”
“Well…” I wondered just how much I should tell Karen about what likely would go on at the party. “Um…one dancer wouldn’t be able to pay enough attention to all of the guys.”
Karen gave me a puzzled look.
“There’ll be maybe fifteen or twenty guys at the party, and they’ll expect the dancers to give each of them some personal attention.”
“You mean like she is doing on stage right now?”
I nodded. “And maybe some lap dances…and other stuff.”
“I thought you said lap dancing was illegal.”
I shrugged my shoulders and took a sip of my drink, idly wondering what made a gin-and-tonic glow in the black light. We sat there quietly while the dancer finished her set. She gathered up her clothing and money and hustled through a door next to the stage.
A few minutes later, she came back out wearing a short diaphanous wrap over a bikini. She hesitated at the doorway and looked in my direction. I motioned to her. She smiled and waved and headed directly to our booth. She slid onto the bench across the table from us. Her eyes flickered back and forth between me and Karen as she said in a voice made husky by too many late nights and too much smoke, “Hi! Long time no see.”
“Thuy, this is Karen. Karen, Thuy.” Thuy reached across the table and shook Karen’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” Karen said. “I didn’t quite catch your name.”
“My name Thuy.”
I could see that Karen still didn’t quite get it.
“It sounds kinda like a little kid saying tree,” I said. “If you pronounce it Twee, you’ll be pretty close.”
“Twee?” Karen asked.
Thuy smiled and bobbed her head. Her eyes traveled up and down Karen’s body, pausing at her breasts. “So, you dancer? You looking job?”
“No, no,” I said. “I’m looking for some dancers for a bachelor party, and Karen just came along for fun.”
“Fun, huh?” Thuy said with a twinkle in her eyes.
“Yeah, her husband is out of town and she was bored.”
“Oh, her husband gone, huh? And you lonely, too?”
I nodded. “Mai is out of town.”
Karen leaned over and whispered, “She knows Mai?”
I nodded again. “It seems to be a law of nature. All Vietnamese women know each other.”
Thuy looked at me and winked. I winked back. I had a rough idea what she was thinking. She probably assumed I was secretly fooling around with Karen while Mai was gone.
In fact, she had good cause for thinking that way. There had been quite a few times in my pre-Karen days when Thuy had gone out on “dates” with me when Mai was gone. Typically, she would take the night off from work. I would take her out to dinner at a nice restaurant, and then she would take me to bed. She wasn’t comfortable going to my house because she considered it Mai’s territory, and I didn’t want to take her to my secret man-c
ave, so we’d go to a hotel for a few hours. At about bar-closing-time, I’d give her a “tip” to make up for the income she lost by skipping work. She’d get dressed and go home to the husband she thought I didn’t know about.
Unlike many bargirls, Thuy was always pleasant, always cheerful. She never complained or brought any drama. She and I had become casual friends, but there was no romance in our relationship. I think she just preferred to make money by having dinner and sex with me rather than by working in the bar.
And for me, she was, as Dr. Laura used to say, a “warm place to put it” when Mai was gone. She always was impeccably clean and well-groomed. She didn’t have Baby’s body, but she was in good shape for a woman pushing forty. She was slim and still had smooth skin and a firm butt. Her silicone-enhanced breasts were unnaturally firm from the scar tissue that had formed around the implants, but they still turned heads. And when it came to sex, she was game for anything I wanted to do.
Thuy was the only woman I had ever known who seemed to prefer anal sex. The first time I had sex with her was in a private room in another bar. The room was just a curtained-off cubicle with a single chair in it. I sat in the chair while Thuy gave me a lap dance. I was a little surprised when she undid my pants and pulled them down to my boots and gave me a thorough sucking. I was very surprised when she dropped her panties, turned around, and impaled her ass on me. She rode my cock and massaged my balls until I came inside her.
That was the only time we did it in the bar. After that, I started taking her out on “dates” when I wanted to have her.
When we went to the hotel on a date, we’d start by bathing together. While I was drying off, she would drop to her knees and suck my cock. Then she would lie back on the bed and let me go down on her freshly-washed pussy. I assume she genuinely enjoyed that because by the time I was done, she would be very wet. She then would let me fuck her pussy however I wanted, for as long as I wanted, but when I was ready to cum, she always rolled over on her stomach and gave me her ass. I often wondered if she really preferred it that way, or if it was because she was married. Maybe she simply figured her husband would be a lot less likely to discover my semen in her ass than in her pussy.
“You need dancer for bachelor party?” Thuy asked. “When?”
I told her.
“How many guy?”
“Maybe fifteen or twenty.”
“You friends?”
I nodded. They weren’t really my friends. The best man was a thirty-something lawyer who had helped me with a couple of business acquisitions, and I had met the groom a couple of times through him. The guys who would be attending the party were their friends, not mine. In fact, the only reason I was going was because the best man had asked me to help him arrange for the entertainment. But I didn’t want to explain all that to Thuy. All she really cared about was that the guys at the party weren’t vice cops or psychopaths.
“How many dancer you need?” she asked.
“Maybe you and a couple of your friends?”
“How much you pay?”
“Five hundred each to dance for one hour. Plus whatever tips you get.”
“It okay for me. I have one frien’ for sure. Maybe I find ‘nother one.” Then she winked at Karen. “Maybe you should try…if you bored while husband gone.”
To my surprise, Karen didn’t demur. She just raised her eyebrows and shrugged a bit.
“Are you thirsty?” I asked Thuy.
“Of course!”
I tossed a twenty on the table. She picked it up and went to the bar.
“So,” Karen said, nudging me with her elbow. “Do you use her for arm candy, too?”
“Um…I guess you could say that she has served a slightly different purpose. But that’s in the past.”
Karen bumped her shoulder against mine. “Don’t worry about it.”
Thuy returned with her drink. She took a sip and said, “Excuse. Be right back.” She set down her glass and slipped out of the booth and disappeared around the corner.
“Probably has another regular customer,” I said. “Needs to pay some attention to him or he’ll get pissed off and start buying drinks for one of the other girls.”
“Oh, I see. Um, you know, she didn’t give you any change when you bought her drink.”
“There isn’t any. That’s how it is when you buy one of these women a drink. You buy them a twenty-dollar glass of tea. They pay the bar a few dollars and keep the rest.”
“Tea? So it’s not even a real drink?”
“Sometimes it is, but usually not. Otherwise, they’d get pretty drunk.”
“So they charge you for a drink, but they don’t even drink alcohol?
“Usually not…unless it’s champagne.”
“They sell champagne here?”
“If you want to call it that.”
“Not very good?”
“Probably the cheapest stuff you can buy at the supermarket. But you wouldn’t know if from the price they charge. Usually starts at about $300 and goes up from there.”
“That’s crazy. Who would pay that much for cheap champagne?”
“A horny guy.”
I could see Karen didn’t quite understand.
“These women make their money by persuading the customers to buy drinks for them. As you might imagine, much of that persuasion isn’t verbal…although some of it might be oral.”
“You mean they do sexual stuff to get you to buy drinks for them?”
“Usually they just hug and kiss you. Maybe rub their boobs against your arm. Maybe fondle your balls or squeeze your cock. That’s what happens for the regular drinks. But buying champagne for a bargirl is a special deal. It’s outrageously expensive, but it serves a purpose. The bargirl splits the money with the house, and she and the owner make sure you have a good time.”
“Sex?”
“Depends on what your definition of ‘sex’ is, I suppose.”
Karen looked around. “But where?”
“They have a private room. See the mirrored wall behind the stage?” Karen looked and nodded.
“Back there.”
“Sooo…tell me…how do you know about all this?”
“Oh, you know. A guy hears things.”
She tugged on my earlobe. “You must have pretty good ears.” She rested her hand on my thigh. We sat quietly, watching a new dancer for a little while until Thuy returned.
Thuy sat down and drained her drink. “So, how you two doing?”
“I was just telling Karen about champagne and the private room.”
“Oh, yeah?” Thuy flashed a big smile.
“Yeah. She says she wants to buy you champagne.” Karen slapped my thigh under the table.
Thuy winked at Karen. “You like buy me champagne? I give you special price!”
“Will you take us to the private room?” I asked.
“Of course!”
I fished my money out of my pocket and peeled off three one-hundred-dollar bills. Thuy reached across the table and pulled them out of my fingers. She called out to a passing hostess and spoke to her in Vietnamese. The hostess stole glances at Karen as they exchanged comments.
I put my lips next to Karen’s ear and whispered, “They’re talking about you. They’re trying to figure out why you came here with me.”
“How do you know? Do you speak their language?”
“Just enough to get my face slapped. But I understand quite a few words.”
The hostess left, and Thuy stood up and motioned to us.
“Come. We go private room. She bring champagne.”
We got quite a few curious looks from the bargirls and their customers as we followed Thuy across the bar and around the stage. She led us through an open doorway into what passed for a kitchen. It was hot and smoky. A very sweaty, elderly Vietnamese woman was busily grilling some meat. She did a double-take when she saw us.
Thuy rounded the corner and opened a door. She ushered us into a narrow, unlighted room that had a
padded bench along one long wall. The opposite long wall was floor-to-ceiling one-way glass. It was the “mirror” that lined the wall behind the stage. We had a clear view of the stripper on the stage and the bar beyond. The little bit of light that made it through the glass provided the only illumination inside the room.
“Wow!” Karen said as she looked out at the bar. “That’s really some view! But this room doesn’t seem very private.”
“Don’t worry. It’s one-way glass. As long as we don’t turn on any lights in here, people out there can’t see a thing. It just looks like a mirror to them.”
“Oh, like one of those police interrogation rooms on TV?”
“Exactly.”
Karen and I sat down on the bench. Thuy stood by the door. We watched the stripper for a couple of minutes. She was a young hapa woman with a great body. I figured she probably had a haole father and a Vietnamese mother. She seemed unaware of our presence, but she did occasionally rub her tits or ass against the glass. Once, she bent over with her butt against the glass and gave us a close-up look at her pussy.
There was a loud rap on the door. Thuy pulled it open and the bar owner came in with a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice and three glasses. She was a once-pretty French-Vietnamese woman who had tried vainly to stave off the effects of age and years in the bar with tattooed eyeliner and huge silicone implants. I wondered if the dancer was her daughter.
I was surprised that the owner had brought the champagne herself, but I guessed she was being cautious about who she let into the private room. I knew she had gotten in trouble in the past and had done some time for trying to bribe a liquor inspector, so I supposed she wasn’t taking any chances.
She paused and looked at me for a moment. She glanced at Karen and then back at me. I was pretty sure she had seen me with Thuy before. Fortunately, she seemed to recognize me. She nodded and murmured something in Vietnamese as she set the champagne and glasses on the end of the bench. She let herself out and closed the door. Thuy worked the slide bolt to lock it.
Thuy pulled the bottle out of the ice and popped the cork. Tepid champagne spewed all over the floor.
