The Dancer

The flashing red signs beckoned David and punctuated his return to West Texas. After hours of driving across the charred desert, he approached El Paso from the east. Blinded by the sun as it slipped below the deep red western horizon, the darkening sky and lights brought him back from long miles of reminiscence of his recent African service.
The assignment in West Africa was welcome after Virginia amputated his dreams. In fact, time and the Dark Continent had helped bridge and heal the pain of her rejection. But now, approaching the city of their goodbye, his two years of solitude seemed crushing. Dreading the inevitable encounter with her, he drove the car under the bright lights and parked near a sign which said “Dancers - Nude.”
In the narrow, dimly lit entrance, a poster read, “Personal, Intimate Dancing - $30.00. Absolutely NO touching.” In the back of the room were ceiling to floor red velvet drapes. David took a cushioned chair near the drapes. Bump and grind music vibrated and pulsated the room. Through the heavy smoke and reek of cigars, mirrors reflected a woman gyrating with a smudged brass pole near the edge of a stage. A patron put his face between the woman’s legs and howled. His two companions moaned and brayed. She clutched one, five and ten dollar bills in her fist. The patrons draped three fives over the g-string that secured a silver patch of cloth between her legs. She moved across the stage to perform for a man in paint-stained denim overalls.
In the stench of spilled beer and cheap perfume, a Latina stepped through the haze and approached David. She wore skimpy, lace-fringed lingerie, black like her shiny hair and dark eyes. Tinted a shade of purple, her eyelids matched her finger and toe nails. Wearing open-toed black patent high heels, she swayed like a Mende tribeswoman walking to market and balancing a heavy pot or log on her head. In Africa, the tribeswomen wore only wrap around cloths from the waist down as they walked on the tarmac roads.
Barely audible above the ear-splitting music, the Latina asked, “Would you like a table dance?”
David was silent and the dancer began a slow dance at half beat. She turned her back to him and indicated that he undo the lingerie’s clasp at the nape of her neck. He did so and in a fluid motion, she draped the garment around David’s neck. Picking up the pace, her dance matched the pounding rhythm as she undulated and contorted. In time, the woman, now nude invited David to return her subtle, private touch. He noticed that around the room, patrons grasped women’s buttocks. Every sexual gesture and movement was performed except for the act of sex.
The touch of the dancer’s silken skin aroused David’s desire. From the pores of her skin, the lingering, pungent smell of her garlic diet overpowered her strong lavender perfume. David’s excitement flagged. He remembered that Mende tribeswomen also glided to market, oblivious to rotting fruit and the smoke from roasting monkeys.
David laughed. Near tears she snarled, “Look, asshole. I got two kids, right?” His fifty-dollar bill mollified her. Continuing to dance to the music, with a single movement, she snatched her garment from David’s neck and stepped through the red-velvet drapery.
David remembered the poster and reflected that, save for undoing the clasp at her neck, he was in total compliance.
Alone, he drove to the distant lights of El Paso.