Fallon and Flint: The Stripper and the Schoolteacher

Trigger Warning: This story contains descriptions of physical and s****l abuse that could be triggering to some people. Please exercise caution in reading if you are sensitive to such material.   Fallon   I forget things when I dance. It’s the closest I ever come to experiencing magic, and it’s why I do what I do. Every single bachelor, married man, hoodlum, gangster, mobster, and businessman—for ours is one of the few places in which they all come together—is a tool that helps trigger my mind into a state of ignorant ecstasy. When the hot, blinding lights flash down on me, I can forget about all the cruel things I’ve done to people and the cruel things people have done to me. The pounding, deafening music engulfs me, and I’m able to forget the death, despair, poverty, and abuse that I face every day—and will keep facing until the day I die. As my body moves, my mind doesn’t, and that is a beautiful thing. And then the music stops, and the lights go out, and I’m not just a dancer with no past and no present anymore; I’m Fallon Mercury, a girl with too much past, too much present, and much too little future. Flint First dates have always been easy for me to come by. It’s second dates that are the problem. It’s not that women don’t like me, necessarily; just as often, if not more, it’s the other way around. Still, I’ve come to accept the facts—I’m nice to look at and give a lovely first impression that tends to fade with time, especially to the women of Dodger. I’m a  nice guy,  an intellectual, a lowly schoolteacher with little ambition, little passion, and little going for me. In a town of drug pushing, theft, murder, prostitution, and violence, most women are simply looking for someone a little more dangerous than Flint Cooper, high school lit teacher. The funny thing is, as boring as they find me, I tend to find them even less interesting. Sure, they disguise themselves well enough. It’s easy for anyone to feign an intriguing—even mesmerizing persona at first. But conversation is fatal to those personas, and with one date, I can snap them apart. I don’t know her last name, and I’m not entirely sure about her first; it’s either Kate or Katie, but I can’t remember which. Like most of the women I date, I know her through work. I’ve gotten better about not dating my students’ parents; Kat(i)e is a fellow staff member at Dodger High School—the school nurse. I always thought her nurse outfit was sexy, and when I came in for the first aid kit and picked up on her attraction to me, I quite eagerly scooped up the chance to ask her on a date. Here, though, on the date, with her nurse outfit replaced by a dull, beige sweater coupled with somewhat manly black slacks, her s*x appeal is starting to fade. “It’s actually very frightening, how quickly the HIV virus has been spreading in Dodger as of late. Sharon Longhorn tells anyone who listens that it’s all because of the homosexuals, but I told her yesterday, with the rate it’s skyrocketing, that would mean a whole lot of secrets being kept by the men of Dodger!” She laughs hysterically at her own joke as I stare at her in annoyance. Her ignorance astounds me. Still, it’s a subject I’ve concerned myself with lately, for the sake of my students. “Do you have any statistics as far as the rate at the school?” Her forgettable, light brown eyes widen as if I’ve just made some sort of communist statement. “At  our  school? Why, none, I’m sure!” I’m starting to find her ignorance as amusing as it is repulsive. “None,” I repeat. “Out of the five hundred students at Dodger High, you don’t think a single one of them has contracted it?” “Certainly not! It’s an epidemic of a generation between ours and theirs—a generation of fools who don’t realize the dangers of unplanned and unsafe s*x. We teach our children better from day one. They are smart, capable—” “There isn’t a generation between our and theirs,” I interrupt. Her mouth hangs slightly open, an action that makes her look even more unintelligent than she already did. “Excuse me?” “How old are you? Twenty-five? I’m twenty-six. The kids we’re talking about are teenagers. Exactly what generation gap are you referring to, when they’re too old to be our children?” I find the resentment of reality in her expression to be delightfully metaphorical for that of society’s as a whole. For the first time since our date began, I’m actually starting to enjoy myself. Fallon Damon doesn’t come to watch me dance anymore. It’s not that he doesn’t find it attractive. Watching me dance is what made him desire me in the first place four years ago, and he never stopped hungering for it; he even had a pole installed in his own house for private shows. But seeing me on display for other men became harder and harder for him to handle, and eventually he stopped coming. If he thought he could get away with forbidding it altogether, he would. There are few things Damon can’t forbid me to do, but it’s one of them. He never comes to watch, but he always comes to pick me up afterwards. The streets of Dodger are dangerous at night, especially for the city’s most famous exotic dancer. I freeze in my tracks when I step outside, as I always do when I see him. I like to tell myself that my heart stops because of love, but I’d be fooling myself if I believed it. It stops from a mixture of fear and exhilaration—fear because he is one of the most dangerous men I’ve ever met, and exhilaration because he is also one of the most exciting. That part, I’m happy to feel. As long as there is some excitement, it’s somehow all worth it to me. At least, I can trick myself into believing it is. “Hey, sexy,” he says when he sees me. He doesn’t move, of course. I come to him in our relationship, not the other way around. He leans coolly against his matte black Range Rover as I approach him. His shiny, black hair falls into the eyelashes of his unnervingly pale, blue eyes as he watches me walk. His hands find my waist as soon as I reach him, sliding down to grab my ass so hard, I try not to wince. He smashes his lips against mine in the same overly staged fashion he always does at the club, even when we’re in the back like this. I’m his, he wants the patrons to know. All his. “Hi,” I whisper when he finally pulls away. He smirks, opening the passenger door and shoving me into it a little harder than I’d like. Most things he does are a little too forceful. As soon as he takes his seat next to me, he reaches for the glove box and pulls out a stash. “Party time, baby girl,” he says as he prepares two lines of coke on the mirror waiting between us on the armrest. “You first.” I do my best to conceal my sigh. I’m tired and sore, and I want to go home and get some rest, but I’ve tried opting out of getting high with him before, and it never goes well. Instead I ask carefully, “Wasn’t this the stash for your clients tonight?” “Cancellation,” he explains smugly. “Dig in.” Flint The argument and mutual disgust doesn’t die down by dessert; rather, it seems to grow deeper with each bite of fondue. We disagree on nearly everything, from politics to religion to music. I can’t bring myself to ask her what her favorite movie is; I have a hankering it involves vampires. I’m so utterly appalled by her that by the time the waiter brings the check, I’m about ready to ask him to split it in two and dart out of there. But, broke as I am, I’m not the type to let a woman pay for her meals, regardless of how bad a date she was, or even if she wasn’t my date at all. So, reluctantly, I pay. I also accept defeat in darting out of there, as I drove her to the restaurant and wouldn’t leave her high and dry like that. We spend most of the car drive in silence; it’s not until we’re a few minutes from her house that she finally speaks. When she does, I can sense the hostility in her voice instantly. “I just want you to know that I had an awful time. Sure, when I saw you, I hoped you’d ask me out. I mean, you’re cute; you’re a writer; I figured you’d be, you know, romantic.” I am, in fact, an incredibly romantic person; it’s why I sit through as many awful dates as I do. I desire nothing more than to fall in love; it’s simply a goal that, thus far, has proved impossible to achieve. “Anyway,” she says, “clearly I was wrong. You are an insufferable, rude, pretentious pig, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t stop by my office again.” I pull into her driveway and put the car in park before speaking. When I do, I turn to look her straight in the eyes. “It’s not an office. It’s a broom closet they call the infirmary.” She stares right back at me, and for several seconds we simply glare at each other, chests rising and falling with unresolved resentment. And then, whether because of a ridiculous amount of masochism or an extremely long period of celibacy, she dives on me. And, for similar reasons, I reciprocate. My car isn’t exactly a s*x machine; it’s a 1979 Trans Am that I brought back from death’s door. It barely runs, and it barely leaves me room to breathe, let alone bone.  But she doesn’t seem to care. The very woman who, two minutes earlier, accused me of being a pretentious pig now grinds against me with animalistic desperation as she rips my shirt off. She almost seems to be dancing, or at least attempting to, I realize with distaste as she shakes her mousy hair out and presses my hands against her still-covered t**s. Unfulfilled dreams of becoming a stripper, if I had to guess. How easy it is to get laid in Dodger, I muse as I grow bored with her padded, gray bra and rip it off.  If only finding love was so simple. Fallon We reach my house about twenty minutes later. It’s a fairly long commute for Dodger, especially on the way to work when I have to ride the bus, but the money is worth it. It’s a lot more than I used to make waitressing at the local pizza joint, and I don’t exactly have a college diploma. “Light’s on,” Damon notes when he parks his car. “That’s weird. Is he up?” I glance through the windshield toward my house. God, I hope not. Hugh and Damon don’t get along; it’s better for everyone if Hugh goes to bed at a reasonable time, as I’ve told him many times. But he rarely listens to his daughter; a lifetime of experience has taught me that. “I guess so,” I say, frowning. “But don’t worry about it, baby. I’ll just go in and see you tomorrow—” “Right,” he says, snorting, “and I don’t get laid for another day? Not how it works, babe. Now, unless you want to do it right here…” For a moment, I consider it; it might be worth the discomfort to avoid the drama with Hugh. But I’ve had more than enough car s*x for one lifetime, and my back has been killing me lately, at any rate. “Okay.” I open my door. “Let’s go.” Some small, way-in-denial part of me hopes that Hugh will be upstairs, having simply forgotten to turn the lights off. But deep down, I know that won’t be the case. Much more likely, he’s had an exceptionally bad day of sitting around the house all day doing nothing, and wants to take it out on me. Not that’s he’s abusive, exactly. For the most part, he hasn’t touched me in a very long time. It’s not out of any courtesy or love for me, mind you—although he did always treat me better than my older sister, Melissa—but rather, out of fear and respect for Damon, who happens to not only be one of the most dangerous men in Dodger, but also Hugh’s drug dealer. He’s sitting in his armchair in the living room when we enter. The house is one story and relatively small—a living room, a kitchen, two bedrooms, and two bathrooms. It’s the same house I grew up in, where I shared a bedroom with Mel until she ran away from home at fourteen. Three is the largest number of occupants I can recall living there, though at one point it must have also housed our mother. Mel claims to remember tidbits here and there about her, but I don’t. All I know is what Hugh told me: that she was murdered a long time ago. “Damon,”  Hugh greets when we enter. He often chooses to act as if I don’t exist when Damon is in the room. It’s for the best, really; things tend to go worse when he does pay attention to me. “Pleasant surprise.” Damon snorts at that; his presence at our home has long since surpassed being a surprise. “Disappointment, you mean. Wanted her all to yourself, did you?” It’s going to be one of those nights, I reckon with disappointment. Every once in a while, when Damon lays off the coke and booze, he’s able to resist giving Hugh a hard time.  But not this time. “Well, just in case you forgot,” Damon continues, taking a few steps toward Hugh, who glowers at him in disgust, “you’re not touching her. Not now; not ever. Not as long as I have a say in it.” On some level, I’m thankful for the defense. It’s needed from time to time. But not on the level that Damon presents it, and not for the reasons he has. It’s not even for my sake as much as his; he loves to pick a good fight, and a good victim to intimidate. My drunken, drug-addicted father is the perfect victim. “I know the rules, West,” Hugh growls at him, attempting to stand up and falling back down into his chair on the first try. “I’ve known them since the first time you pointed a gun to my head.” “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Damon asks, grinning crookedly. “Maybe I should remind you what it feels like.” “Damon,” I say, reaching out to stop him when he reaches for the inside of his jacket. “Come on. Let’s just go to my room.” “Right.” Hugh rolls his eyes. “Your room. Because he doesn’t have an entire mansion you two could easily go to.” Mansion  is an exaggeration, but Dom’s house is pretty enormous. “We could,” says Damon, “but where’s the fun in that?” “Seriously, Damon,” I say, a little more forcefully this time. But I know the instant he turns to look at me that it’s a mistake. “Have a little respect here,  baby.” His tone cuts like a knife. He grabs my arm a little too tightly. “Is that any way to treat someone who’s protecting you?” “Protecting  her!” Hugh repeats, laughing out loud. “You don’t stop me from doing what I do to her, West. You  replace  me.” Damon’s sharp, pointed jaw clenches. “Replace or stop—still means you can’t keep doing what you do best. And might I remind you, if I see so much as one freckle on her face out of place—” He punches Hugh in the face—hard. “Damon!” I shout, reaching out to stop him, but as I half expected, all that results in is him hitting me, too. Finally, my father and I both surrender, and I follow Damon to my room. As soon as he closes the door behind us, he rips off my tank top and bra, drinking in the sight of my naked torso as if he hasn’t seen it a million times before. He turns me around and presses me against the wall, hands squeezing my breasts so hard I cry out as he presses his throbbing erection against the curve of my still-clothed ass.  His hand finds my throat, and his lips find my ear. He uses his other hand to yank down my boxers. “Never,” he hisses at me, “argue with me in front of your father again.” I cry out again as he slams himself inside me, but it only serves to make him f**k me harder and faster. He loves hearing me scream. “Say you’re sorry,” he says as he rams into me over and over again, one hand on my throat, one hand pinching and pulling at my aching n*****s. He moves the throat hand to my hair and yanks it backwards. “Say it.” “I’m sorry!” I shriek, squeezing my eyes shut and telling myself, as I so often do, that I find this exciting, rather than painful. But I don’t. Not, now, at least. In this moment, I’m sorry for only one thing: that I ever met him.