Bullet Balasubrahmaniam heaved a sigh of relief as the plane touched down at Washington DC. They cannot take this away from me now, he said to himself. This was Bullet’s first foreign trip, a junket that he managed by deftly manipulating his connections in the UN and his influence with the ministry. He always wanted to visit the US, particularly on Indian government dime. “Keen to go to the States,” as he put it. The momentous occasion was a conference on Population Control hosted by a UN agency in Washington DC.
These have been lean months for Bullet with him falling out of favor with the Minister and getting moved to a backwater function as the Undersecretary of Population Management. Most of the day, he sat in his backroom office playing with paperweights of various shapes and colors until the idea to set up a foreign junket popped into his head. There was no stopping him from accomplishing his true mission, population problems of India be damned.
After much maneuverings around the red-ribbon weighted halls of officialdom and one or two close calls that almost smelled like responsible governance, Bullet finally made it to the plane bound for London and then on to Washington DC. He barely paid any attention to the topic of the conference, spending much more of his time making lists of things he wanted to see. Is it possible to visit New York City from Washington DC over the weekend, he asked his fellow travelers? Is the white house open to visitors? Can I get away with wearing a safari suit at this time of the year? He kept the last question however to himself. Bullet was going to see America the way she deserved to be seen.
The meeting was typical of such pointless conferences he had seen organized in Vigyan Bhavan before. Self-important suits with dark glasses sat behind massive nameplates announcing their eminence and mouthed unintelligible nothings that went on for hours without accomplishing much. There was a dinner, where old cliques renewed their circular closeness while new members circles the periphery looking for an opening to get in. Bullet was neither in nor out. He walked from on circle to another spotting an occasional Stephenite who weaseled a plum posting outside and thus managed to get his hand shaken by a few. He felt hot under his new synthetic suit and the tightly knotted tie. He was already bored.
He regretted his decision to come to America. This was not what he had signed up for when he ran from pillar to post trying to get his trip approved. There was nothing there for an inquisitive creature like him. Nothing at all.
So, on the second day of the meeting when he decided to skip the afternoon session and walk around town, he did so without guilt. He had seen an establishment curiously titled “The Frog pond” on the way to his hotel the night before. He was not sure what exactly went on in there but it seemed to him that the business involved naked women and sex. It was a windowless place with bright blue neon lights outside and a blinking lime green neon silhouette of a naked woman sitting inside a martini glass. There were cars parked outside and a rather unhappy looking woman and a bored yet tough bouncer kept the door tidy and organized.
As he came upon the club, on a whim, Bullet decided to go in. It was four in the afternoon and it lacked the intimidating external ambience of the night before. Inside, it was quite dark and creepy with the hall curving and hiding spaces. The wall was either or black or very dark red but without enough lighting in the room he could tell. In the middle of the room, there was an elliptical stage with pole in the front and chairs were arranged around the stage. There were a couple of bored customers sitting quietly on the chairs and the club staff paid very little attention to them.
He had been told plenty of times by those experienced in these matters that sitting near the stage involved loss of single dollar bills at an alarmingly rapid rate. Being a prudent Indian that he was, he picked himself an unobtrusive corner chair with an unobstructed view and sat down with his conference bag on his lap. Bullet ordered a coke and made himself comfortable as much as anyone could be in those circumstances.
Then he looked at the girl who was dancing naked on the stage and fell in love.
Coco!
Coco was quite a striking looking woman. She had the chocolate skin of a Jamaican and features of a Moroccan Goddess. She was tall and slender with appreciable breasts and thick kissable lips. Her shoulder length blackish brown hair fell about her lazily as she danced. She laughed easily when she was not working. When she was not working, she was Bettina, a quite comely young woman in a confident understated way; quite a determined young woman who was shouldering the responsibility of a large family back home in the islands and a low appetite for game-playing.
But work was entirely a different matter. At work at the Frog Pond, all the understatement disappeared into Coco the African goddess. She strutted her stuff vivaciously in larger-than-life movements. Her well-timed gyrations and artificially throaty laugh were designed for effect. She knew that the slow ripples of her breasts and the flash of her clean-shaven public area as she bent over them were irresistible to her customers. Frog Pond was right next to the UN agency offices in Washington DC. Most of her customers were middle-aged contractors and young interns circling the beltway in search of some diversion from the boredom of their lives. It was her job to make them feel better about their lives and do it better than the other girls at club. She took this very seriously and was rewarded handsomely for it.
In one phrase, pure sex!
But that is so far from love. And Bullet was no fool, especially to fall in love in a strip club. He didn’t ever remember falling in love. Ever! He barely tolerated his wife and sex mostly was a matter of routine business that was transacted without urgency or ceremony in the darkness of the bedroom. That did not mean there was no fondness in him for his wife; there was certain warmth with which he considered her jasmine-scented hair oil and the way she trembled when touched in unfamiliar parts.
Butterflies in his stomach!
He was not accustomed to feeling this way.
He must have blushed. He moved forward and pulled a chair closer to the stage to look at the dancer. It didn’t register to him that she was naked and her body was there on display for anyone with a buck to spare. He stared at her eyes and melted.
Coco saw another opportunity for tips as she saw Bullet pulling the chair closer to the stage. She has seen this a million times before, men moving closer to get a closer look of her body in semi-arousal and open lust. She has seen their letchy smiles and the self-important offerings of money. But he was different. He looked at her eyes and there was a naive freshness of a schoolboy in his battle-hardened face.
Coco liked the Indian man almost instantly then against all rules and practice. She was in this business to make money and not to care for the men who came day in aroused by the attraction to naked flesh. None of it, even the theatrics of performance, mattered to her much anymore; it was like driving or brushing teeth. On autopilot, she let her body do those things without feeling. But for reasons unknown to her conscious self, he aroused a primordial sympathy in her. She glanced at him and saw that he still wore a nametag of some conference over his ill-fitting polyester jacket. He was dark and short and had the demeanor of someone very uncomfortable with sex and all matters pertaining to sex.
She went through the gyrating motions for her other customers until her song was over and when done, parted company with them gracefully gathering up the loose dollar bills from the stage. Next dancer came on stage and the emcee tried to rev up interest by shouting out all the great things she was capable of.
Coco descended the stage and went straight to Bullet.
-- Want a dance, honey? She asked smiling sweetly. Almost condescendingly.
There was no other way she could approach him. In this world of transactions and trade-offs, every shy approach was an offering for touch, a promise of more touch, selling dreams packaged as desire.
He nodded like a child and followed her to a corner. She started with all the normal moves of writhing and moaning and then inexplicably something happened inside her. She felt a mother-like sympathy for this diminutive man much older than her. Her touch became tender and her sounds more muted, genuine and sincere. Her nipples became harder and her thighs moist.
There in the fake-coital position, an unlikely pair, an Indian administrative officer and an uneducated stripper fell in love while sharing an intimacy that was predestined and commercial.
