Merry Random Christmas (3 page)

Think. Imagine...my mom walking Mavis on a leash.

Ah. Sweet flaccidity. Limp as
an overcooked Ramen noodle.
 

“Why would you blame
Sam and Liam
for this?” I asked
Trevor
as I danced closer to him. The throng of ten or so women clinging to me moved like we were a pillar holding up the world. “It’s
your
fault
they got food poisoning this afternoon
,” I said through gritted teeth.

“How the fuck was I supposed to know the eel at that sushi place was bad? I don’t eat eel,”
T
revor growled back. His growl turned upward two octaves as someone decided to reach down and give his jingle bells a little squeeze.

“You convinced us to try that place,” I said with a wince at the memory. “We warned you a restaurant called ‘Sushi Salvage’ was nothing but trouble.”

“It’s cheap. Sam and Liam are on a budget and
we haven’t gotten our advance yet for—
” His tone was defensive. We were both talking through fake smiles plastered on our faces. Most of the women were so drunk we could have recited the Gettysburg Address and they’d have cheered for us.

“The Yelp reviews were horrible.”

“Yelp is
biased and you never can trust those reviews—
”
H
e
yelped as someone added a stroke of his candy cane
to the light bounce of his jingle bells
.

W
e were dancing to some ‘80s song by Billy Idol. It wound down, followed by
Nine Inch Nails’
Closer
.
 

Oh, shit.

Trevor and I shared a look of twinned horror as a hundred women at this party all screamed out the main line from the song. You know. Of course you know it. You’ve seen “Magic Mike XXL,” right?

Every fucking woman at this party looked at us like we were Joe Man
gan
iello and they were an extra in the film.

My jingle bells started tingling as the groping increased, the song pounding loud and hard, the technobeat impossible to not respond to.

Chickens in diapers. I had to think about chickens wearing diapers to—

Limp.

Whew.

As I gyrated and pretended I was a stripper in a movie, I watched Trevor leap in the air like the floor was electrified,
dodging fingers and hands
. We were the only entertainment at this Christmas Eve party. A long time ago, Sam and Liam had said yes to this singular gig. The money was spectacular, and their girlfriends had agreed i
t
was fine.

Then Trevor convinced us to go to Sushi Puke-
o-rama
and Sam and Liam happen to love eel.

Bad eel, it turns out.

They’d been
barf
ing their guts out a few hours ago, and the woman who ran the stripping entertainment company couldn’t find substitutes.

T
revor, in his infinite guilt, had offered
us
up as tribute.

You think
tribute
is hyperbole?
This is
The Hunger Games
, all right. These women are starving for our flesh.
Look at that cougar over there, her palms clenching Trevor’s ass like she’s auditioning his cheeks for a porn movie.

T
he surprised look on his face makes me think she slipped him a little something while doing her eval.

And I don’t mean a twenty in his g-string.

Flash!

A blinding white light made my brain hurt for a microsecond, then someone pinched my right nipple. Hard. So hard I gasped,
then felt ten thousands hands crawl up and down my body, palms lubed up with the oil Sam and Liam had insisted we use.
 

Peppermint scented, in honor of the holiday.

Ho ho ho. A hundred of them, all looking at us like they wanted to touch Santa’s sac.

I left off the K for a reason.

I looked down, the song’s lyrics infused in me, and saw the crown of a blonde head, unruly curls falling over her shoulders.

Darla?

I reached down, driven by pure instinct, and tipped the woman’s chin up to meet my eyes.

No. Not Darla. A woman somewhere between my age and my mother’s, wearing heavy eye makeup and glitter across her eyelids,
eyes brown and swimming with the unfocused look of someone who’d had more than a few drinks
. She took my gesture as an invitation and slid her hands up the backs of my calves, trapping me in place.

A cold line of dread started at the base of my cock and traveled up my spine, settling into my teeth, making me ache for freedom.

This was a bad, bad idea.

Fuck Trevor and his discount sushi.

The blonde’s hands circled around and up between my knees, her actions gaining the attention of the other women.

Flash!

Another picture taken. None of these cougars knew anything about social media, right? I didn’t have to worry about these pics on YouTube or Instagram or Snapchat. They might post it on Facebook, but who cared? No one under forty was on Facebook anymore.

I was safe.

“
You owe me big time for this,” I snapped as Trevor floated by, a woman in his arms, ten more doing a conga line behind him. A conga line to the song “Closer.”
 

I
stilled, freezing in place, and not because the blonde at my knees had her nose in
my
crotch like she was doing her best golden retriever imitation.

I just stared at Trevor and blinked.

After that week on the island of Eden, I thought I’d
really
seen it all. Nope. This was new.

Because the woman Trevor was carrying had slipped a dog collar on his neck, and the woman behind him had attached a leash.

Candy cane patterned, of course.

“Closer” ended, and then...

“Here Comes Santa Claus” came on, making the women clap and cheer as Trevor took little bouncy steps. He played up to the crowd and reached into his g-string. How he managed to keep anything in there was a mystery to me, but hey—

Mine
was stuffed full. Enough said. No room at the inn for anything more.

He pulled out a tiny set of actual little jingle bells
with red ribbons attached to them,
and slid them over his balls,
on the outside of the g-string
.

Then
he
jumped.

Money floated in the air over his head as the chicks lost it. Just
lost
it.
Mayhem reigned for the next five minutes and I felt like I was in a collagen and estrogen-filled mosh pit.
 

Which perfectly described this party.

We weren’t allowed to drink.
Strippers had to be sober.
No drugs. Pure, unadulterated sensuality and plenty of skin was what we were being paid
to provide
. No escapism.
We were making a solid four figures each, plus tips, to wiggle asses, touch the women (without crossing any major lines), and give them their escapism.
 

Not ours.

I loosened up and laughed at Trevor’s antics. Then I remembered something I’d tucked into the Santa hat I wore. Sam and Liam had suggested we hide personal items in there, because we wouldn’t have access to our clothes or coats for most of the
ninety minute
gig, so I had wisely attached the Rudolph the Red-Nosed reindeer nipple clamps to the inside of my hat.

I was a Boy Scot. You know the motto.

“
Santa Claus is coming!” someone screamed, and then a friendly hand—way, way too friendly—stroked my shaft over my candy-cane g-string. I rose like Santa up the chimney, driven by basic biology and blood flow rather than Christmas magic.
 

Ho fucking ho,
no
.

I grabbed the offending hand and lifted her up in my arms, the crowd separating as if I were Moses parting the red sea.

Without thinking, I held up the nipple clamp and turned it on.

“Oooooh,” the crowd said in unison. Even Trevor’s conga line stopped.

I set the woman down, a lithe, tiny
lady
who reminded me of my mother just enough to make my half-hard self soften beautifully.

Pretending to touch her boob, I reached instead for my
own
nipple and attached the clamp.

And instantly felt a wave of appreciation for Darla, who was wearing a full set of these right now at my insistence. I felt like a rat was gnawing my nip off from the inside out.

Catcalls, hoots, and a spray of money greeted my little stunt.

And flashes. So many flashes.

The song changed to “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and that’s the last time I saw Trevor for thirty minutes. I’m pretty sure that was the last full breath I took, too. So many flavors of lipstick. So many colors.

Colors I tasted.

Until the world faded into nothing but lipstick, wine, and my favorite scent:

Money.

* * *

Time lost its meaning for a while there.

You would think that my dick had magically transformed itself into the North Star, because nearly every woman at this Christmas Eve party was using it as a beacon for navigating the room, touching it at least once as if it were a landmark along the journey to the bar.

At Harvard, on campus, there’s this statue of one of the founders of the college. During exam weeks, students rub his shoe for good luck. The shoe is shiny, while the rest of the statue has a darkened patina.

My cock
wa
s getting rubbed so much
was shining
like that foot.

You could even say it
glow
ed
.

A tap on my shoulder ma
de
me jump. In the hour we’
d
been stripping, no one
had
touched me
there
.
Such a benign spot. I should have felt self-conscious wearing only a g-string in this crowded room with all these women, but oddly enough, I didn’t.
 

I s
aw
the appeal of stripping, and unders
tood
a little better why Liam got into it, and why Sam joined him. It
was
all fun and games, right?

I shift
ed
slightly and pull
ed
at the butt floss. That one chick, though, who decided to give me a little extra tip...that wasn’t the kind of tip I was looking for, if you know what I mean.

Trevor’s deep voice was music to my ears in a room full of horny, drunk sopranos.
“Dude, the hostess says we can take a break. She spread some towels on her bed and has drinks and snacks for us in there.”

“Why? To fatten us up before the slaughter?” We
we
re being eyed and sized. Money
wa
s changing hands between various women and it
was
clear there
was
some sort of wager being negotiated.

He chuckle
d
. “No. But we get a ten minute breather and then we have twenty more minutes of this hellhole.”

“A hellhole you dug for us with your turned eel.”

“Drop it, okay? It’s not like I went into that Japanese restaurant and personally planted tainted
fish
. We’re doing our best to make up for it.”

“That’s the problem,” I gr
ound
out as we walk
ed
down the hallway to the bedroom the hostess set up for us. My ears
we
re ringing, Trevor’s argument buried under the shrill sounds that fade
d
into a high-pitched whine that wo
uldn’t
leave my head for two days.

“What’s the problem?”

“We. This
we
shit.
Y
ou dragged me into this. I didn’t do anything wrong!”
My thighs slid against each other like pistons.
 

“Would it kill you to help out friends in need?”
Trevor rummaged in his coat and pulled out his smartphone, then snatched up a bottled water from a silver tray. The room was decorated in lavish purples and deep adobes, mosaic tiles covering the ceiling, but with a giant, human-sized mirror embedded right over the bed.
 

T
he hair on the back of my neck—the parts that weren’t cover
e
d in oil—began to stand up.

I pointed
to the ceiling
and swallowed half a bottle of water. Trevor tipped his chin up, drank, and then sprayed me
as his eyes tracked what I was noting.
 

“Jesus Christ, Trev? What the hell?” I grabbed a towel and began wiping myself. The water just beaded on my naked skin. Damn. I had more oil on me than my grandma’s Thanksgiving turkey.

“
Are we being set up for a reality television show, Joe? I mean, for real.” Trevor gestured at his g-string. I followed his hands, looking at his limp little ball of striped sadness.
 

Between the two of us, he might have been taller, more tan, and
he
headline
d
the band, but I had the bigger package.

“Quit comparing my junk with yours,” he said, as if he read my mind.

“I don’t do that, dude,” I lied.

He ignored me and returned his attention to his phone. “Damn. Seventy-three notifications. What the...oh, God!”

“What?”

“Grab your phone.”

I searched my jacket. No phone.

“It’s gone!”

“Oh, no,” he groaned. “Darla’s in jail!”

“JAIL?”

“She’s been texting us for hours!” Trevor has always been a pretty mellow guy. Sometimes too mellow, unless he’s stealing peyote and chickens.
H
e ran a shaking hand through his hair, those bright eyes widening with the dawning realization of his own words.

“Why is she in jail?” I asked, patting down all my clothes. No phone. I came here with it. Where the fuck was my phone?

Trevor fingered his glass screen. His face soured, like he smelled something bad, and then he thrust his screen in my face.

“Why are you taking pictures of yourself on Instagram?”

I opened my mouth to argue with him, but the evidence made me shut my mouth. He was right. My ass, covered in hanging paper money, was on display in the photo.