“Just don’t touch me!” I said again.

He stumbled toward me and I took a few steps back.

“Here,” he said and shoved a crumbled five dollar bill toward me. “Here’s something for you, cutie,” he continued before stumbling into the club.

I turned my attention back to the bouncer.

“That’s just Eddie. He don’t mean no harm,” he said. “But you definitely got to get used to muthafuckas grabbin’ at you. We try to keep that shit down, but it’s gonna happen. If you don’t want to be touched like that, you gotta figure out how you gonna keep niggas off you without it costin’ you money.”

“I will.”

“Come on. Why don’t you go in and walk through that first door to your right. That way you can get straight to the dressing room and bypass the crowd,” he offered.

Although I was tempted to follow the bouncer’s instructions, a part of me was curious about what it was like inside the club. So I stepped past him, bypassed the door and followed the sound of the music.

The room was a pretty good size, but the mirrored walls made the place seem twice as big. The tables and chairs were lined up in sections that surrounded the stage. There were also two dark doorways toward the back of the room. The soft lighting gave off a dark enough hue over the entire room, and the place smelled like a mixture of cigarette smoke, crisp new money, and just a hint of weed. Several men stood huddled in a group surrounding a couple of dancers. They were both naked and dancin’ their asses off. There were other men posted up at the bar. A few of them had woman dancin’ in front of them.

I stopped and looked around the room. A lot of the men that were sitting at the tables had women dancin’ for them too. Up until that moment, I was under the mistaken dilution that I would be doin’ a couple of sets onstage and that’s it. But as I continued to watch, I saw the men givin’ the dancers money when the song ended. The dancer would get the money, get dressed in what little outfit they were wearing, and move on to the next man.