Page 3 of XX Love Affair

Their meetup wasn’t meant to last another thirty minutes. Tiffani had an early flight and wanted to be in bed before midnight. Delia thought about staying up in the VIP loft but agreed to walk her friend down the stairs and toward the front bar where the normies and older people who weren’t in the mood for breasts in their faces and human pets crawling on the floor hung out for drinks. Tiffani lamented that she didn’t catch any of the shows that night. When Delia pointed out that every show had at least one guy in it that night, Tiffani shrugged and said, “I’ve learned that beggars can’t be choosers.”

Did that make Delia a beggar? Or a chooser?

“Promise me something, huh?” They stopped at the coat check where Tiffani scanned a QR code outside the door. The clerk behind the counter searched for the leopard print coat that Tiffani had entered with. “Get laid tonight. I bet you haven’t gotten any since your birthday.”

“Before that, even.” It had been a hot minute of nothing hot at all. Coldest winter ever. Delia didn’t mean the light dusting of snow outside.

“Please, for my sake…” Tiffani shrugged into her coat and tipped the woman behind the counter. “Next time we meet, I want to hear that someone screamed your name.”

“Who would do that, huh?”

“Well, there was the waitress working the VIP area.” Tiffani pulled up the hood on her coat. “I also recognized a couple of the regular escorts they let in here at the bar. Bet they’ll give you a discount if you promise to make them come.”

“Both of them?”

“Girl, I don’t know how freaky you are at the moment.” Tiffani twiddled her fingers. “See you! I’ll text you from London.”

Delia waved her off. She also considered getting her own coat and heading home a few blocks away, but it was freezing outside, and the night still felt advantageously young.

Oh, who was she kidding? She wanted a moment to herself, nothing more.

She picked up some seltzer from the bar and wandered toward the back, bypassing window-shopping tourists and first-time swingers. The main stage was between shows, but people still lurked in the main audience, talking to acquaintances and grabbing a good seat for the next performance. Delia kept walking. At one point she passed the waitress who had a crush on her but kept her eyes forward. I tipped her quite well. She’ll live. If it wasn’t sex other women wanted from her, it was money. There were days when she could do one but not the other. And she never ran out of money.

One of her favorite corners was The Silver Room, a dimly lit abode furnished with strategically arranged couches and chairs that allowed both intimate conversations and the kind of public (fore)play that encouraged people to get a private room for more. It was one of the only rooms with specific rules outside of the front bar where nothing more than kissing was allowed. Topless frivolity and foreplay are fine, but if you want to be watched, you go elsewhere. Delia liked it because it meant she could be titillated without seeing something she’d rather not. And tonight, the room was sparsely populated with well-to-do people talking, some of them in fetish gear but most of them in suits and cocktail dresses. She bypassed an industry acquaintance with a slight knowing nod before taking up one of the leather armchairs on the far side of the room. She placed her white napkin and seltzer on the table beside her and leaned back in her chair, wishing she had the balls to whip out her phone in a place where it was strictly forbidden. Then again… A very gender-nonconforming woman had entered with her scantily clad date, the two of them immediately going at it the moment they were on a couch only a few yards away.

Maybe I should get myself a butch girlfriend. It was certainly appealing to a lesbian who had dabbled in more masculine fashion expressions before. In the end, she didn’t like rules. Or many labels people bandied about those days, be they butch, non-binary, femme… she knew what she liked at the moment. Maybe. It had been a while since she could pinpoint what got her going. Delia Benoist was in a funk, and not only the professional kind.

Then again, a butch submissive girlfriend could be fun…

“Like what you see over there?”

Delia didn’t leap out of her skin because she had already noticed the young woman supine on a couch. Yet in the muted lighting, all she saw were the lean limbs and curly dark hair of someone who may have been a regular to The Dark Hour… or someone who may have been brand new. Who was Delia to say? She spent more time with the waitresses.

“You’re probably more interested than I am.” Delia might regret striking up a conversation with a stranger, but it never stopped her before. “I’d rather do than watch.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Oh.”

The young woman catching her interest sat up, revealing that her hair did most of the covering – for all she wore beneath her curly locks was a sheer black dress with two black Xs taped over her nipples and a thong under her short skirt. Her shoes were inconspicuously comfortable ballet flats. The bare minimum for getting into the club. I hope she has a coat up front. Otherwise, her nipples would get so cold out in the New England winter that they’d pierce right through that black tape.

Not that the tape did much to cover her nipples. The stranger had the kind of smaller breasts that mostly stayed in place as she moved, but gravity was gravity, and gravity didn’t give a shit when a woman had a letter to go with her bra size.

“Why don’t you join me over here?”

Delia feigned a lack of interest. Until now, she hadn’t thought of finding companionship for the night. Until then, she thought she might enjoy some time to herself with a fizzy drink. Maybe watch this other couple go to third base before they took it somewhere else. Maybe follow them if they keep it public… Delia didn’t consider herself much of a voyeur, but she knew a good show when she saw it.

She had promised Tiffani nothing. She definitely wasn’t taking someone home that night.

“I wouldn’t want to intrude upon your plans,” Delia said. For all she knew, this woman was attached. Furthermore… “Besides, I’m not interested in parting with my money tonight.”

“Everything you see is free.”

“Is that so?” That would be a novelty for a Sunday night. Usually, the flirty unicorns were searching for paying clients. When Delia was much younger, that was how she got duped out of hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars before she learned the tells of a woman looking for her payday. Sugar mama hunters are one thing. She didn’t care for the escorts who buried the lede, though. If she was paying for sex, Delia wanted all of that laid out upfront. It changes the whole dynamic, you know. Much less seduction involved with sex workers.

Which meant she probably didn’t have the energy for this young woman who promised it was all “free.” And if she also didn’t want to part with her money… well, Delia was going home to her showerhead and vibrator… and she was fine with that.

“I could come over there,” the young woman offered.

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