Personal Protection

by Tracey Shellito

  During the second fight my stitches tore. That guy definitely got more than he bargained for. Even Craig’s best work has its limits. I had to borrow some tweezers to tighten things up and swathe my arm in crepe bandage.

  We had to evict one guy for spiking a girl’s drink with the date rape drug. The girl became inclined to do much more than just take her clothes off, and so friendly that she had to be sent home with an escort.

  One of the dancers broke her ankle when she slipped on a wet patch on the floor. She had to be taken to the hospital too. The remaining dancers had to do double shifts on stage to cover for her, just as we had to scramble to cover for the absent bouncer.

  When I thought things couldn’t get any worse I was called into a Star room to supervise a private dance with Liu and one of the only female members of the club’s clientele: the one who was not the ‘sweet and silent’ type Tori had described. She and her husband, both swingers, both bisexual, had been laughing loudly, getting very drunk, at a table near the front of the mezzanine, not far from the stage.

  The dance itself went well – until the woman tried to stick her fingers in Liu near the end. Of course I acted to stop her. That was when the trouble began.

  I grabbed her wrist and yanked her fingers back just short of actual penetration. “I’m sorry, ma’am, there’s no touching,” I told her politely.

  “Fuck you!” she snarled.

  Then she realised that I was a woman too. All her attention fixed on me. She pushed Liu off her lap, grabbed my other arm and pulled me forward in Liu’s place.

  The music stopped. Liu hurried to rearrange her hair and turn off the CD, leaving me to take care of the problem. And it might have become a problem too. The woman was much stronger than she looked and very determined to have somebody if she couldn’t have Liu.

  “Dance for me.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t dance. I’m a bouncer.”

  “I’ll pay you.”

  “Ma’am, I’m already being paid, to do my job.” I let go of her wrist and shifted my balance so that she wouldn’t pull me over.

  “I’ll pay you more.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t dance.”

  The hand I’d loosed stroked up the inside of my leg towards my crotch. I stepped back. The weight of her clinging on my arm wouldn’t allow me to go far enough to escape her.

  “Shall I get some help?” Liu asked.

  Shit! How would that look?

  “I’ll manage,” I told her with confidence I wasn’t sure I felt. The woman chuckled throatily and reached for me again.

  I decided I had to treat this like any other defence problem. Instead of pulling away, I moved into her space and reached down towards her. She was surprised I’d taken the initiative, and slackened her grip on my arm, not sure if she wanted to continue the game when she’d ceased to be the predator and become the prey. While she was emotionally off balance, I plucked her up, put her over my shoulder and started for the door. Liu applauded, then hurried to open it for me. The woman cursed me all the way back to her table.

  The paying customers thought it was all part of the show. Her husband gave me a huge tip, much to his wife’s chagrin.

  If that wasn’t bad enough I was told to sit in while the Chief Superintendent of Police sampled a private dance with my totally nude girlfriend.

  He’d been staring daggers at me all night. I know I’m not exactly popular with the boys in blue, but prior to last summer I’d never had any dealings with him at all. I couldn’t believe a couple of glasses of his favourite malt and the frenzy which seemed to be overtaking everyone had made me public enemy number one.

  I was on the point of calling Dean, asking him if he knew of any reason why I was getting the evils, when of the girls let it slip that the first of them had been interviewed by the Murder Squad in connection with Lisa Moran’s death earlier that day. Somebody had dropped the dime on our involvement. I was once again the spawn of Beelzebub in the Lancashire Constabulary’s eyes.

  Needless to say I was more than a little wary when I approached the door to Star 1. More so when I discovered he’d asked especially for me as well as Tori. Why? It was unheard of for a punter to request a specific minder; only the girls did that.

  I started running through ways this scene could play out. Maybe I could short circuit whatever he had planned? I didn’t get the chance. He had an unusual punishment for whatever my perceived misdemeanour was in mind.

  He chose the music she would dance to. And just like the last time I had sat in on a dance with Tori, her client was almost completely sober.

  The difference was, Tori knew about our problems with the authorities. She was also trying to show me that it was only me she was interested in, to lull my fears about this night of complete nudity.

  Every time she turned her back on him, grinding her beautiful behind into his crotch, or sliding up and down his body, lying back on him and rotating her hips in a slow swivel, or arched her back as she sat in his lap and blew in his ear, her hot eyes were upon me. I was ready to rip her off him when he suggested I take his place.

  “I c’n see she has the hots for you. I want to see what she does with you in this chair.”

  His voice was warm and friendly but there was ice in his eyes. Fuck! What was this all about?

  “I don’t…” I began. He cut me off.

  “It isn’t against any rules that I c’n remember.”

  He was facing me, not Tori. His voice was all Mr Congeniality, while his look said something else entirely. Shit. I tried again to persuade him not to do this. Whatever it was.

  “I can’t d…”

  “If you don’t, I’ll fuck yer girl in front of you.”

  And there is it was. Either he watched two women perform for his pleasure or he hurt the woman I loved. He’d just moved from irritating bastard to suspect.

  I didn’t want to do this but he gave me no choice. I stood up to confront him.

  “D’you ken who I am?” That was clearly for Tori’s benefit.

  “Of course I know who you are.”

  “And who d’you think they’ll believe when I tell them you attacked me unprovoked? After you shot those men not long since? After yer girlie didn’t tell the polis about her rape? Mebbe she liked it better than what you give her, eh?”

  I have never felt such incoherent incandescent fury. Nobody calls me a crap shag and gets away with it.

  Tori started towards me, but he caught her wrist. He reeled her in with ease. Her whimper of fear was a bucket of ice-water thrown over me.

  “It isn’t much I’m askin’, hardly an onerous task, letting yer own girlfriend do you.”

  Two women together. Voyeurism. A straight guy’s dream. A lesbian’s nightmare.

  He swept an inviting hand at the spotlit chair.

  “What’s it to be?”

  I started for the door to call his bluff, but a sound of pain from Tori told me that the bastard meant every word. He would hurt her. I couldn’t let her be hurt again. Not if it was only stupid pride standing in the way. Not if I could prevent it. Especially if he had something to do with hurting other women.

  I turned back. I would have hit him, but Tori’s pleading eyes caught mine. That was what stopped me: that and the thought of the charges he could fabricate against me if he really put his mind to it. He was hell bent upon this humiliation: a taste of what would happen if the dyke detective and her pansy partner didn’t keep their noses out of the big boys’ business. I walked stiff-legged to the chair and sat down.

  My eyes were on the carpet. I never saw him reset the CD, but the next thing I knew the music was back at the beginning and Tori was crouching over my lap. I looked up, tried to see around her. She caught my jaw and made me face her.

  “No,” she whispered. “Look at me, Randall, keep looking at me. He isn’t here, he doesn’t exist, we are the only two people in the room, you and I.”

  She started to move. I made a wordless noise of protest. She put a finger
to my lips, then leaned forward and kissed the tip of my nose, just as if we were at home, in bed.

  “We’ll give him a show he’ll never forget.” She pressed against me in a way I could not ignore. She made it easy to concentrate on her. She undulated her pelvis over mine. Licked the outer shell of my left ear. I closed my eyes.

  “If I so much as smell you near my murder enquiry, I’ll toss you and yer faggot friend in prison,” he growled in my ear. “Judging from what I’m seein’ that’d make yer girlie sad, though I’m no so sure about you. Prisons bein’ full of yer sort.”

  My eyes snapped open and I twisted about trying to see him, trying to stand, only to find my jaw gripped again. Tori moved on to my right ear.

  “Down, boy!” she ordered for our audience, then she whispered softly in my ear, “I won’t let you go to prison for me.”

  Her hands started doing things to me she’d never do with a client. I gasped.

  “You have to trust me, Randall.”

  She slowly began unfastening my tie. My jacket. My shirt. I could feel his breath on my neck and his eyes on the two of us.

  Shit! How far did she mean to go?

  She pressed her breasts against me and pumped herself against my right pant leg. A streak of gooey wetness appeared on the cotton/wool mix. Then her hand went down between us. The sound of my fly unzipping coincided with a lull in the music. I made a noise of denial and at the same time need. One of her hands cupped my skull. Pulled my mouth to her. Her other found its way through my underwear. I pulled away from her, cried out, closed my eyes, my fingernails carving crescent moons in the leather of the chair. She ground herself into my lap, squeezing her hand between us. Then the room was gone. I was in that other place as I came.

  The extreme arch of my body must have bucked her off. I came to myself to find her drying her fingers, sitting on the floor, the music gone, our audience too.

  I tried to get to my feet, determined to go after him and do… I don’t know, something! As so often happens my legs would not support me. I collapsed back into the chair helplessly with a curse of frustration. She climbed into my lap, zipping up my fly, running her no longer sticky fingers through my hair.

  “Let him go,” she urged me.

  “That bastard…”

  “I know, I was there, remember?”

  “Tori…”

  “No, Randall. It’s just what he wants. He’s just like Anderton two decades ago – God’s Cop, clearing the streets of the undesirables. You’ll be playing right into his hands. I meant what I said. I won’t see you go to prison for me. Not finding the sicko that raped me and not in revenge for this. If he’s as corrupt as he seems, fate will find a way of tripping him.”

  “Tori, what he did was blackmail! And with what’s going on here…”

  “I know! I’m asking you to drop it. Please? For me?”

  She tilted my face up, stroked her fingers up and down my throat. Tori is a whole lot of woman. I challenge anyone to deny someone when she asks you like that.

  “I mean, what did he get really? A few moments of humiliation from you. Seeing the woman he paid for masturbating someone else to climax. He got to see two women fucking! One of his grubby little fantasies fulfilled! He got to vent his anger about your involvement in his precious murder enquiry on both of us! He got to misuse his power and position! Neither of us are hurt. Far from it! It could have been worse.”

  “I wanted… I just wanted to…”

  “I know.”

  She kissed me again.

  “If it helps at all, he looked jealous to death when you came.”

  “He did? You’re not just saying that?”

  She shook her head. It did help. A bit. I still wanted to kill him, though.

  I ran a finger over the shiny patch on my pants. Tori had the grace to blush.

  “Looks like I got the full service.”

  “I don’t do that for the clients!” I looked at her questioningly.

  “I don’t!”

  “OK.”

  “OK! Just OK?”

  I smiled and she swatted me. “I wasn’t going to let you have all the fun.”

  “Sounds fair. That was what I was thinking, actually. I was wondering whether you’d like to finish what you started.”

  She blushed again, her coffee complexion pinking all the way down to her breasts.

  “Randall, we’re working.”

  “I have a reputation to restore.”

  “You don’t. Really. You know why I didn’t go to the police. It was nothing to do with how good or not you are in bed.”

  “Why don’t I prove that? Doesn’t seem like anybody’s in a rush to use the room.”

  I could see her resistance was weakening. I ran my hand slowly down her spine and stroked her coccyx in a slow circular motion. Blew gently across her suddenly erect nipples.

  “I’ll ruin your pants.”

  “Shit happens.” I kissed the pulse in her throat.

  “With you around it certainly d…” Breath went out of her in a rush at what my fingers were doing to her. She found something better for her mouth to do than talk.

  I had just come out of the Ladies, got myself together (it isn’t often I get to combine work and play), when Sammi cornered me.

  She pinned me easily between the wall and the phallic-shaped bar on the mezzanine. One of her blunt-fingered, taloned hands pressed my right shoulder into the glittery plaster work with deceptive strength. One long leg forced its way between mine before I could move to stop her, her knee caressing my very damp crotch. She smiled a predator’s smile.

  “Mmm… What a nice boi. Ready for me I see.”

  I couldn’t help it. I flinched with instinctive physical revulsion at her touch.

  She must have felt my tension, or seen something in my expression, because she let up and traced her other hand gently down the side of my face.

  “What’s the matter, baby? I’m only playing, I know you belong to Tori. Aren’t I attractive enough for you?”

  “It isn’t that.” I shuddered.

  “It’s because I’m a trans, isn’t it?”

  There was no point in denying it. “Yes.”

  She stepped back, game over, obviously hurt.

  “I never pegged you for a bigot.” She started to turn away. I needed to explain.

  “Wait. Please. I don’t mean to be insulting. I’m not! It’s just…” How to describe it?

  She gave me a look that said I had about one minute to say my piece before she either wiped the floor with me or walked away.

  “I find it hard to get my head round the idea of someone who already has everything to satisfy a woman, has it all taken away and still wants to have sex with them.”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t understand how it feels to be trapped in the wrong body, boi. I’ve seen how hard you try be a man.

  I couldn’t disagree. “Yes, I know how that feels.”

  “Then aren’t you just jealous, because I’ve done something you’re too afraid to?”

  “No. I looked into it. F to M gender reassignment isn’t too successful. I’m not prepared to lose feeling in love-making to look the part. It’s a poor exchange.”

  “If you’re not a bigot and you find me attractive, what’s the problem?”

  “You won’t believe it.”

  “Try me.”

  “They can do a lot of things with the knife and you can do more with clothes, make-up and hormones, but you can’t change body chemistry. You look like a million dollars! But you don’t smell, taste and feel like a woman. It’s as simple as that.”

  She didn’t try to stop me when I walked away.

  Negotiating that minefield was never going to win me friends. But it did make me think about another uncomfortable possibility. I’d cavalierly tossed off ‘isn’t anybody straight anymore?’ while contemplating my own lot. What if all of the women attacked here were lesbians? Tori was. Liu certainly was. To an outsider, Sammi was a woman. Even t
hough she had once been a he, not everyone was as quick to pick up on the tell tale signs. With her sexual preferences, that would make Sammi a lesbian in a stranger’s eyes. I wasn’t sure about Joy, Terri and Stace. And a bouncer’s throwaway gossip had already furnished me with the information about Lisa Moran. (In light of this, it would be in my interests to check his alibi for Lisa’s death.)

  Was this whole business a hate crime? I’d have to run this by Dean. Perhaps it was somebody associated with the club after all. He was going to be unbearable if he was right.

  It didn’t seem right to march up to Joy, Terri and Stace to check my theory, and it was some time before I could catch up with Tori again. Meanwhile I had other things to worry about. Something strange was going on. Every time I walked past the girls they stopped talking. At first I thought it was my admission to Sammi: that they had all decided to ostracise me because I’d hurt their Agony Aunt’s feelings.

  That didn’t pan out. Whenever they got me on their own, they either flirted with me, or were warmly polite, according to their gender preferences. What was going on?

  It wasn’t until the evening was nearly done that I overheard a snippet of conversation which made everything fall into place.

  “Who’d turn down Stringfellow’s? Pete might be a bit of a poseur, but think of the money you’d earn and the celebs you’d meet! You’d really be on your way then.”

  “I’d never have guessed there’d be talent scouts in this audience. Just goes to show. You never know who these clowns will bring as guests.”

  I know that old saw about eavesdroppers. I edged closer. I couldn’t help myself.

  “After what happened to her, it would be the best way to get a fresh start. It’s a pity about her affair. But looking the way she does, she won’t have a problem finding someone to warm her bed and take her mind off the break-up…

  Then they saw me, blushed red as beetroot and scuttled away.

  You know the feeling. As if someone has pulled the rug out from beneath you and substituted the banana skin.

  I had to get outside. I pushed through girls, customers, bouncers, with the same disregard, and fled up the steps to the outer doors. I couldn’t breathe until I was outside in the cold night air.