With a yawn and a stretch, Mary arose to greet her second day of work at the Foxxy Laydee. She noticed that she felt a bit more tired and sore than usual. All that dancing must have been harder physical work than it had seemed at the time.
After her peach and glass of skim milk for breakfast, she hopped into the shower.
"Oh my word!"
As Mary inspected her newly waxed bikini area, she nearly began to cry. The entire area was covered with pink, irritated bumps.
"How could this have happened? I used the lotion last night!"
Mary hurriedly showered then slathered another layer of lotion onto the affected area, wishing that somehow, during the short drive to work, the irritated bumps would magically disappear. She wasted another bit of time selecting clothes she wouldn't wear for more than a few minutes inside the club, and then headed out for the morning.
***
"Good morning!" Jewell greeted Mary cheerfully in the locker room.
"Hi, Jewell," Mary said, forcing a smile.
"So, how did it go at the salon last night?"
Mary hesitated for a minute, then began to remove her pants. "I don't know, Jewell. Is this normal?"
Jewell looked at Mary's bikini area for a second then said, "Yeah, that can happen."
Mary looked at Jewell with panic in her eyes. "Can I really dance like this? I mean, guys won't tip me if I look like this, will they?"
Jewell rolled her eyes. "Honey, please. With those tits, trust me, they'll keep tipping you plenty. But if you feel embarrassed about it, then just do most of your nude dancing with your back to the crowd. Work that ass."
She slapped Mary's behind playfully, and Mary let out a relieved giggle. "Thanks for the advice. So, do you think I should get a new outfit today?"
Jewell perked up at the thought of re-entering the wardrobe closet. "Sure! Let's get Belinda to let us in."
As Mary walked, pants-free, from the locker room to the wardrobe closet, she felt a growing sense of liberation, as opposed to the gut-wrenching fear of being naked that she had felt for most of the day yesterday. She smiled to herself as she thought, "This is the new me, wild and free!"
"Mary, I need to see you in my office after you pick out your costume," Clive said to her in passing.
"Clive? What's he doing in here? Hide! HIDE!" Mary rushed to put her hands over her private area.
Clive chuckled. "Relax, Mary. I saw everything yesterday. It's no big deal. By the way, nice bikini wax."
Mary nodded appreciatively, but did not remove her hands.
***
Mary satisfied herself with a sparkly blue sequined bikini. After she and Jewell had dressed and proceeded backstage to await their first assignments of the day, Mary decided to give her lender a financial update.
"I spent forty-five dollars on the wax, plus seven-fifty on the lotion, and about five dollars on dinner. So that's…um, let's see…fifty-seven-fifty."
"What about the tip?"
Mary stared at her blankly.
"You did tip the girl at the salon, didn't you?"
Mary's jaw dropped. "Oh my gosh. That's why Debi was looking at me so funny when I left."
Jewell put her hand to her forehead. "Dear, sweet, Virgin Mary. What are we going to do with you?"
"Do you think I could just tip her extra next time to make up for it?"
"I'd be very surprised if Debi ever booked you as a client again after a faux pas like that. Shame, too. She's one of the best they've got."
"I feel so stupid!"
Jewell patted her on the shoulder. "It's OK. Next time I go I'll try to catch up with her and explain that it was an honest mistake."
"Would you? Oh, thanks so much."
"No problem. Now, don't forget to see Clive. He wanted to see you in his office, remember?"
"Oh, right! Thanks again. Gosh, Jewell, what would I do without you?"
As Mary ran toward the hallway that led to Clive's office, Jewell began to wonder how a naive bumbler like Mary really had made it this far on her own.
***
"Mary, sit down, please." Clive motioned to one of his comfortable office chairs. "I just wanted to review your technique with you and make a few suggestions. Now overall, I thought you did a good job for your first day, but there are some things I think you could improve."
"Such as?"
Clive walked around to the front of his desk and sat on the corner, facing Mary. He thought for a minute, inhaled, and said, "Your dancing yesterday was nice and rhythmic, but it wasn't overly sexy. What I mean by that is, yes, you moved your hips and ass and breasts to the beat and everything, but it wasn't quite strip-club quality dancing."
Mary swallowed nervously. "OK. What could I do differently?"
Clive paused for another moment and then said, "Be sexier. One thing that might help is to imagine you're having good sex while you're dancing." Clive noticed that Mary's eyes bugged out ever so slightly, so he added, "Remember, this is exotic dancing. We're here to sell the illusion of sex to the customers. Just dancing around naked by itself isn't going to cut it."
"Gosh, this is harder than I thought it would be. There's so much to remember."
"Mary? Are you with me?" Clive waved a hand in front of her face.
"What? Oh, yes."
"Good. Now go on out there and make some more money."
***
Belinda paired Jewell and Mary up on stage for the first set of the morning, and Jewell noticed a marked change in the girl's dancing. What had been a series of graceful if not exceptionally sexy movements yesterday had become an odd mish-mash of arrhythmic pelvic thrusts and chest jiggling today.
"Mary, what are you doing?"
"I'm trying to sex up my dancing. Clive told me I wasn't dancing sexy enough yesterday."
"Hmm. OK, listen, I'm not trying to make fun of you, but what you're doing right now is not sexy at all."
"It isn't?"
Jewell shook her head back and forth.
"But Clive said it would help to imagine myself having good sex while I was dancing."
"Well, unless you were having sex with a camel, I doubt that's what you'd look like while you were doing it. Here, watch me."
Jewell began undulating her hips to the beat of the song, and Mary noticed that her breasts jiggled effortlessly as she did. The two movements were not mutually exclusive. Then, on each side, Jewell stuck her thumbs between her g-string bikini and her hips and began to work them around as if she really wanted to pull the thing off, but she never did.
Mary grinned. "You're teasing them, aren't you?"
"Yeah, baby! Guys love to be teased. Not too much though, you know. You saw what happened yesterday when Babs overdid it with the teasing."
Mary recalled Babs walking offstage without a single dollar in tip money. "Yeah."
"You know what else helps your dancing? I know it sounds kinda creepy, but put a mirror over your bed and watch your movements the next time you get busy. Clive and I have one and…oops, that was probably too much information." Jewell's cheeks turned the slightest shade of pink.
Despite being slightly skeeved by all the sex talk, Mary couldn't help but be a bit curious. "No way! You guys have a mirror on the ceiling in your bedroom?"
"Not our bedroom. It's kind of a love-nest sort of room. I don't know how to describe it exactly. But hey, if you want to swing by and use it sometime, you'd be more than welcome."
Mary balked. "Oh, thanks, but I'm not really into casual sex."
Belinda, looking muscular and powerful in a form-fitting silky red dress, passed between the two of them onstage and rhetorically asked, "Is this social hour or are we here to make tips?"
"Right," Mary muttered, and tried to resume dancing in a manner halfway between the one she had used that morning and the one from the day before.
Jewell looked over at her and shook her head. "Mary, just go back the way you danced yesterday. There was nothing wrong with it. You should just trust your instincts."
"Oh, but I can't. Because my instincts are telling me I should be about three thousand miles away from this place right now."
But Mary nodded and smiled, and went back to dancing the way that came naturally.