Phoenyx: Flesh & Fire

by Morgana Blackrose

  At the other end of the scale were the young couple whom Gloria had christened Hansel and Gretel. They generally sat near the front and before the end of the evening, she would generally have her hand inside his fly zip and his hand would similarly find its way under her skirt. They always shared a couple of bottles of red wine and were the only regulars that I would ever find myself consciously playing up to, knowing for sure that I would be generating a real and positive reaction in them. Once or twice I’d even make eye contact, and get a wink or a smile or even a wave in reply. It was those little moments of human connection which we all aimed at, in our own way, to remind ourselves that we weren’t just animated objects on a stage but real people, having an effect upon other, equally real, people.

  And while the Klub continued to flourish, I remained firmly entrenched on Wilhelmsgasse, like the Kaiser’s army on the Western Front. I’d always expected to be out of that apartment within the first few months for whatever reason, or at least once I’d saved up enough to move myself up the housing scale, but when the time came I realized I’d actually become quite used to the old place. It wasn’t so bad, if, as the others had told me, you were careful – and being a couple of years older now, and very much wiser, I knew on which side of the road I stood, so to speak. I even grew to like a few of the regular streetwalkers, with whom I shared the occasional chat, or bar of chocolate, on my way to the Klub; and before too long I had established a little network of whistling, strutting miniskirted allies who had sworn to look out for my safety whenever possible. They were led by the oldest of their gang, a formidable Swedish Valkyrie named Christina whose specialty was taking five men at once (“I’ve got three holes and two hands, so why not?” she explained to me with a laugh; “Saves time, and makes more money!”). And despite what some of the others had once thought of me, if Christina thought I was okay, then I officially was. I soon learned handy tricks of personal safety, like how to turn a can of hairspray and a cigarette lighter into a blowtorch, and Christina herself went nowhere without a switchblade down one boot and a set of brass knuckles inside her coat. I had never felt the need to go out armed myself, not even in my earliest and poorest days of walking to work, but it was reassuring to know that I had the Old Berlin First Ladies’ Infantry Brigade watching my back. I was making contacts and friends in the dark, dirty underworld of the big city, and my mother would have filled the whole bath with tears (and then drowned herself in it) if she knew even the half of it.

  And so it was, so far, so good.

  Until we met Honey.

  Bruno once referred to her as ‘the human equivalent of a hand grenade thrown into a chicken coop’ – a metaphor that was not so far from the truth. Explosive, fiery and devastating were three words that I would certainly have used to describe her.

  Among many others, as it turned out.

  It must have been sometime in springtime, ‘85 or thereabouts when she arrived one afternoon unannounced, walking straight through the main door as if she owned the place. I knew there was something strange about her from the fact she stood nearly six and a half feet tall in her leather knee-boots. However, the first thing I noticed about her was that every fingernail was painted a different shade of the same color – making me wonder just how much varnish she actually owned. I always seemed to note little details like that, somehow, even at the expense of the bigger, more obvious, picture.

  “What can I do for you?” Bruno asked, moving out to meet her from behind the bar while I sat there, sipping Pernod with Petra.

  “I think it’s more what I can do for you. Give you the most awesome fucking display this place has ever seen. Interested?”

  Bruno chewed on his cigarette, refusing to look skeptical.

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. Really. Need a demonstration?”

  Bruno shrugged. The look said ‘go ahead’.

  She bit her lip as she whipped open her shiny PVC raincoat to show an incredibly-defined naked body, with smallish, perky breasts, a gold ring through her right nipple – and a pair of balls and a cock that would have looked good on a hardcore muscleman.

  Petra exploded into her glass as she turned around and clocked this unexpected and completely incongruous sight, spraying drink all over the bar. Her hands shot up to cover her face.

  “Jesus fuck me over a barrel,” she snuffled into her palms. “Is that a…”

  I just stared, not knowing what to say. I didn’t want to sit there gawking at that big dangling dick, but I couldn’t help myself, and there really wasn’t anywhere else to look: the visitor had made sure of that, filling pretty much the whole space in front of us with her overwhelming presence and personality.

  “No, baby,” she soothed, “it’s a sauerkraut. Want a taste?”

  “Oh. My...” Petra burbled, now blowing bubbles of Pernod down her nose. “...God.” Her eyes bulged out beyond their lids, as if being pushed through their sockets from the back of her head. Bruno’s look had changed from one of quiet apathy to barely-suppressed bewilderment.

  “Ah,” he said, trying hard not to look as if he wasn’t struck speechless. Our shameless she-male just stood there, her coat pushed back, smirking up one side of her face as the silence continued to stew.

  “So, wanna try me out?” she pressed, pushing her weight on to the other foot. “Or will we just stand and admire each other all night?”

  Bruno shrugged deep inside his jacket, as if trying to disappear from view completely.

  “Uhh. Well...” He was trying hard, but the sight in front of him seemed to have disabled most of his IQ. His jaw flapped silently, but the words just didn’t come out. He scratched his woolly head, rubbed the back of his collar. I could almost smell the sweat seeping out of him at ten paces, and it was the first time I’d ever seen him look even remotely uncomfortable. “To be honest, I could say that...your...assets are perhaps not quite what the Kitty Klub is all about. We’re a traditional kind of establishment here, y’know. Some would even say ‘old-fashioned’, as we don’t do hardcore, live sex, or anything like that which is big these days. But, I’m always saying that we are happy to embrace new and exciting acts. So, uh. Yes. Let’s have an audition some time.”

  She belted her coat again and slid a pair of gleaming sunglasses on, as if the sun had just come out inside the half-lit bar-room. “Cool. Let me get my stuff from the car, and I’ll be right back.”

  She skipped out of the Klub and Bruno gawked at the pair of us.

  “I didn’t actually mean right now,” he mumbled, knowing he’d already lost the first round.

  “I am not going on stage with that,” Petra warned him, waving a finger in the stranger’s wake. “No. I have limits, dammit, and that’s just plain wrong. Against all the laws of nature and God’s will, and all that.”

  “Don’t worry,” Bruno told her, “unless she’s equally gifted in the performance department, you won’t ever have to. I don’t want to scare the shit out of our regulars, after all.”

  “Good. I don’t do freaks and I don’t work in a fucking circus.”

  “But maybe she – he? - God, what do you call that – might bring in new customers,” I countered. “She’s certainly got...er, balls. In every sense.”

  Bruno growled. “I don’t need complications like this. Guys who dress as women, and vice versa, is fine. That’s an honorable tradition going back to the earliest days of this establishment.”

  “Yeah, I remember Trixie,” Petra said dreamily. “She was such a sweetheart.” She added to me, “She was our MC before Mel. She used to do an amazing turn as Marlene Dietrich.”

  I was more interested in Bruno’s attitude to the present rather than the past. I pulled him close. “Don’t be prejudiced. I always say I’d try anything once. What about you? I’m sure you could get to like her.”

  He looked past me with an alarmed stare as the doors crashed open again and the controversial individual in question re-appeared, carrying a sports bag over her shoulder.


  “Got a changing room?” she asked as she brushed right past us.

  Bruno pointed to the Ladies at the other end of the bar. “Try in there.”

  She stomped off with a swinging gait and her two-tone blonde and platinum hair bouncing like the crest of a surf wave behind her. Bruno leant heavily over the bar and blew a long, heavy and exasperated breath out from his puffed cheeks, and then it was my turn to laugh into my drink.

  Bruno sent us both packing to the backstage area and told us firmly ‘no peeking’. Petra and I sat in silence, looking at each other while the audition was carried out in the theatre next door to the tune of Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The next thing we knew, our brash visitor came breezing through the swing door, dressed only in blue leather knee boots and G-string, which barely held her lower assets from public view. The huge smug grin covering her face told us both that she had somehow – against all odds, and perhaps even all sense – managed to persuade Bruno to give her a go.

  She dumped her bag on the floor, dropped herself onto a stool and spun around to face us, legs crossed, as though waiting for us to welcome her with a song and a dance.

  “Well, I’m in,” she grinned. “Guess I’d better get to know you chicks now.”

  “My mother wasn’t a fucking hen,” Petra sniffed, refusing to budge.

  I held out my hand, quick to douse any sparks of potential conflict. “Phoenyx,” I said. “I was once the new girl around here, but I guess I just handed that paper crown to you.”

  “Don’t worry, dear. I’ll turn that paper into diamond-studded gold before long.” She grabbed my hand and smeared a lemon-shaped outline of dark red lipstick over the back of it. “Care to show me around?”

  “This is pretty much it,” I said, indicating the long, narrow changing room. “You’ve already seen the bar and used the toilets and the stage. There’s not much more to see, to be honest.”

  She plucked at the laces which held the front of my bodice together. “I think there’s a great deal more to see.”

  “Well, I’m on tonight,” I said, “You can have a good look at me then, if you like?”

  She then proceeded to grab both my tits in her hands, weigh them up and ask me if they were natural.

  “One hundred percent,” I said.

  “Bitch,” she snapped back, and then with what would soon become her trademark dirty grin, pushed her shoulders back to exhibit her own B-cup and surgically-modified breasts. “Well, when I grow up, I wanna be you.”

  “So what do you do, exactly?” Petra asked cautiously, still unable to shift the lingering shadow of distaste from her face.

  “Hmm, more like, what don’t I do.” She spread her arms and slid off the stool. “I’ve been around. Made a couple of movies and videos that you can buy in any store here or in Amsterdam or New York. And am pretty damn fearless when it comes to public exhibition.”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” Petra retorted.

  Our newest arrival bent over Petra, causing her to draw back. “Don’t believe I’ve yet had the pleasure,” she said, taking Petra’s hand. Petra just peered at her, either not accepting or not understanding that she was being invited to introduce herself.

  “This is Petra,” I said, trying to be diplomatic before things went awry. “Our resident retro queen. Loves the old ‘flapper’ look.”

  “Devastating. Well, I’m not old enough yet to be a queen, so I guess I must be just a princess. Anyway, you can call me Honey.”

  “Like hell I will,” Petra growled. “You’re not my type. I like my men to have flat, hairy chests, thanks all the same.”

  At that, Honey demonstrated her hoarse, loud and very infectious laugh. She gripped Petra tightly and pulled her off the bench to her feet, showing also that she had lost none of her original masculine strength.

  “I love it,” she beamed. “You’re trying so hard to be nice, but you know what?” She leant in close between us, as though about to welcome us into a dark and secret conspiracy. “Just say what you think. Really. I have this thing about honesty. So don’t hold back.”

  “Okay,” Petra said, with a sigh of relief. “You’re a fuckin’ freak.”

  “I know,” Honey said, stepping back. “That’s the whole point. Any other concerns you want to raise?”

  That shut Petra up. Finally, sounding rather subdued, she muttered, “No. And don’t ever call me a ‘chick’ again.”

  “I shan’t ever, duckie,” Honey smiled. She grabbed me by one wrist and Petra by the hand. “C’mon, let’s get drinks and we can get to know each other properly. I’m buying.”

  As Honey led us both back out into the main bar, Petra stared at me behind her back with a look of lingering horror. I just grinned in reply. This was definitely going to be interesting.

  As it turned out, Honey proved herself to be a wonderful character to be around – disarmingly frank, ferociously intelligent, if opinionated, and with a loud and utterly filthy sense of humor. I loved her straight away, although it took me a few days to realize the fact.

  I guess I was still recovering from the aftershock of that hand grenade.

  Honey didn’t lower herself to walk anywhere – she pranced, or strutted, depending upon her footwear at the time, although I never saw her in anything less than a four-inch heel. Her problem – if I can call it that – was that she was a natural exhibitionist, and got off greatly on being stared at – the more naked she was at the time, the better. Not necessarily a big drawback for an erotic dancer but it meant that well before the end of her set, her cock would be rock solid with excitement and she made no attempt at all to disguise this.

  On her first night the following weekend, she went out with a bulge the size of my fist in her G-string and spent her last three minutes stroking herself to within half an inch of a cataclysmic orgasm.

  The regulars in the audience sat open-mouthed at this and so did we, sitting in the wings studying and commentating upon the ‘new girl’ as was the habit, so I was told (I’d have loved to know what was said about me on my first night, but everyone was too polite – or embarrassed – to say). On Honey’s début night, there was no discussion, no jokes, no sarcastic yet grudgingly admiring commentary. Me, Melissa, Petra and Bruno just gaped with increasingly heavy jaws at one of the most unbridled displays of self-loving I’ve ever seen. She loved herself, she loved to do so, and the crowd loved her right back for it. Perhaps because they’d seen nothing like it before – or perhaps because they’d had a taste of it somewhere else, somewhere more exotic, and Honey raised the bar on what was expected, or even legal, within the walls of the Kitty Klub.

  For her second appearance, the place was absolutely heaving, barely even SRO. When she hit the stage the release of expectation on the part of the crowd was nothing short of orgasmic, and it pushed her along to even greater and more outrageous behavior.

  It all got Bruno into a sweat, and not in a good way either. After that night in which she spent half the set rubbing herself up against patrons like some kind of oversexed dog in heat, he pulled her aside and told her straight to ‘tie a knot in it next time’. When the predicted howls of objections started, he went on by making it plain that he didn’t possess a live sex show license – and wasn’t likely to be paying for one any time soon either, which meant that her erect erotic antics risked crossing the line into unlicensed territory, especially if she decided to go all the way.

  “I don’t want to be getting visits from the cops, or having any of you gorgeous people losing your jobs,” he concluded.

  But Honey wouldn’t be easily appeased. “I’m not shaking a flaccid little dick around out there,” she objected. “I give those bastards my full eight inches – anything else is just a cock tease on my part and makes me look impotent.”

  “Well, that is what this Klub is about,” Bruno reminded her. “Tease, not sex. No hardcore, no erections.”

  “But they love it. And it adds such an edge to my show.”

  “I’ll be honest, shall I? I love it
too. But – I’m just saying. Tone it down. Okay?”

  But Honey didn’t tone it down. She ramped it right up, as far as she could possibly go. And that was just several steps too far for Bruno, steps which took her right off the deep end.

  Her next spot was a week later, and she was sandwiched between Gloria and me on the bill. The bar was even busier than on the night of her last appearance, and Petra was still unhappy. She had point-blank refused to accept Honey as one of us, and was growing increasingly agitated at what she saw as her hogging of the limelight, as if Petra was feeling the push to intensify her own coquettish routines to keep pace with the rampant she-male glory-seeker.

  “Are you trying to say we’re only stuffed to overflowing now because of her?” she snarled as we hung out backstage before Honey’s set.

  “She does seem to pack them in,” I said. “Got to admit, I haven’t seen an empty seat since she arrived.”

  “Fuckin’ perverts,” she hissed. “Whatever happened to good old tits ‘n ass?”

  “We’ve all got them in abundance, baby,” I laughed, and slapped her playfully on the bottom just to remind her. “And so does she. She just happens to have something extra, as well.”

  “Yeah, well it’s something extra too much for my taste.”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t force you to taste it.”

  “If she did, I’d bite the bastard off. Then at least she’d be a real woman, although I’d still say she was a cunt.”

  I sucked my lips as I tried hard not to laugh aloud. Petra could be so delightful when she was angry. I made do by giving her a big hug, and that at least brought the ghost of a smile back to her usually sweet little features.

  “Ladies, gentlemen, perverts, and inter-sexual hermaphrodites,” Melissa announced to the bar once she’d finished her latest musical parody, California Creamin’ , with it’s genuinely inspired line ‘I got down on my knees and I began to play...’