Concrete Underground by Moxie Mezcal (most important books of all time txt) 📕

sat back down on my lap, grinding her ass against the hard bulge straining through my pants, she simultaneously grabbed both of my hands and lifted them up to cup her breasts, which somehow managed to feel even less natural than her dye-job looked. I gave it a fifty-fifty shot, however, that the Marilyn-esque mole on her left cheek was actually for real.

Anthony leaned back with a satisfied smirk, checked his watch, and then flagged down a passing cocktail waitress to order another round.

This place Anthony had brought me to used to be a Chinese restaurant about a half-mile away from the city's main airport, tucked away among the over-priced business hotels. The restaurant itself was shut down due to repeated health code violations, and the building had stayed boarded up with no new tenants ever since. At least that was how it looked on paper.

However, if you went around to the back after a certain time of night and knocked on what used to be the kitchen delivery door with a specific pattern of knocks, you'd find out that it had in fact been turned into some unholy triangulation of a strip club, a speakeasy, and a brothel.

Apparently, Max got the idea to take over the vacant space when the city council voted to ban alcohol from being served at all the legit strip clubs. This resulted in the twin atrocities of dry strip clubs and "bikini bars". Those in turn drove any self-respecting business traveler, stag party, or standard-issue pervert into Max's unregulated underground club. The fact that an anti-vice statute inspired him to create a place where a lap dance can end in full emission satisfied his twisted sense of humor to no end, I'm sure.

What I wasn't so sure about was why Anthony dragged me here in the first place, since all he'd done since we arrived was pound shots, call me gay, and pontificate inanely about his personal philosophy.

"You see, the thing about me, I like to keep it simple," Anthony declared between sips of his fresh drink. "Guys like you are always running around, asking questions, trying to make things more complicated than they need to be. And where does it get you in the end? Are you any happier for it?"

I rolled my head over and saw him look at his watch again. "Me, it takes very little to make me happy," he continued. "A good drink, a rare steak, a sweet piece of pussy. That's what life's all about."

The stripper cupped my chin in her hand and jerked my head back so I was facing her.

"If you don't stop staring at him, I'm going to get jealous," she cooed teasingly and then proceeded to bury my face in her fake plastic tits and paw at my rapidly deflating hard-on through my slacks. "Do you want to go back into a private room where you'll be less distracted?"

She gave me a playful wink.

Anthony shook his head and tapped the face of his watch. "Nah, we've got some place to be." He dug a couple crumpled bills out of his jeans and slipped them under the stripper's garter, then added, "Besides, I'm pretty sure he's a fag."

She shrugged and climbed off me. "Figures."

Anthony yanked me to my feet and steered me across the dimly-lit club to one of the three long, oval stages on the main floor. We planted ourselves on two stools right at the edge of the stage, and Anthony pulled out a thick wad of bills.

"So, can I ask what the hell we're doing here, or is that a dumb question?" I ventured.

"I'm proving a point," he replied obliquely. "So stop being such a limp-dick fairy and enjoy the fucking show."

Just then the sound system fired up Peaches' "Fuck the Pain Away", and two women took the stage, one at each end. The one on our end wore a purple lace-up corset, black hot pants, fishnet stockings, and knee-high leather boots. She also had long purple hair and a black domino mask.

Anthony slapped the back of his hand into my chest like we were old pals. "Looks like that got your attention."

I suddenly was extremely uncomfortable.

He laid out five twenty-dollar bills in front of us on the stage, which got the stripper's attention, and she looked startled to see us sitting there.

But then I realized that she wasn't Violet. She didn't have any scars along the left side of her body.

Reluctantly, she danced over to us, and Anthony kept laying out enough currency for her to stay there for the rest of the song, despite the obvious uncertainty in her face.

Writhing on the stage, spreading her knees and thrusting her pelvis up at us, she slowly peeled off her clothes one piece at a time until only the domino mask was left. She glided her hands sensually along her smooth, ghostly pallid flesh and slipped two fingers between her glistening pink labia.

Anthony grinned in satisfaction and clamped his hand down on my shoulder while leering hungrily at her. I started to feel a knot of guilt twisting in my gut, but I couldn't take my eyes off the immaculate beauty on stage.

The song died down, and the stripper reached to scoop up the bills Anthony had laid out. As she extended her hand, Anthony quickly grabbed her wrist and gave her a good, startling jerk.

"So how about a private dance, honey?"

An unmistakable look of fear flashed in her eyes, but she slowly nodded in agreement.

Anthony insisted on dragging me along, and she led us to a small cubby hole in back of the club about the size of a department store dressing room. As Anthony and I sat down, she pulled a red velvet curtain across the entrance to give us privacy.

"Do you want me to dance for both of you together or one at a time?"

"Just me," Anthony answered. "He's only here to learn something."

The stripper climbed onto him and started her lap dance, still naked but for the domino mask. She did her best to act sexy and aroused, but she was nearly trembling with fear, like she was rubbing up against a ticking time bomb.

"You know what makes guys like me different from guys like you?"

I shook my head, at a loss and trying not to watch this poor terrified girl grinding her pussy against the unsettlingly large log in Anthony's jeans.

"Faith."

Even the stripper paused for a second and did a double-take, trying to process whether he actually just said what she thought she heard.

"I have faith in a higher power, faith in a grand design that's larger than I could ever hope to comprehend. And this knowledge gives me freedom because I don't have to worry about questioning how I fit into the big picture, all I have to do is play the role that's been laid out for me."

The stripper resumed her gyrations, although at this point the fear in her eyes was mostly replaced with a confusion that closely matched my own.

"Wait, hold on, I'm having trouble seeing the connection between being Dylan Maxwell's violent thug and God's divine plan."

"Take it out."

"Excuse me?"

Anthony rolled his eyes. "Not you, her."

The stripper fumbled with the buttons on his fly. I quickly turned to look away.

"Jesus fucking Christ!"

Anthony slapped me upside the head. "Don't blaspheme!"

"What the fuck?" For a second I involuntarily jerked my head back to face him and caught a glimpse of the stripper straddling his left thigh while kissing his neck and pumping her hand back and forth between his legs. I quickly whipped my head away again.

He let out a low chuckle and then continued, "You see, I'm like an existential hitman. When people get too abstract, start questioning the natural order of things, looking under rocks that shouldn't be turned over, losing sight of what really matters, that's when I step in to put everything back into perspective. I make sure shit turns real real_, _ real fast."

He let out a series of low, gravelly grunts, and I could hear the stripper pumping her hand faster, hear the friction of dry skin on skin, until finally Anthony let out an extended groan and I felt his body shift and tense up on the seat next to me.

"Fucking hell," I muttered, still turned away.

The stripper stood up and began to dress.

"Let me give you an example," he said, giving my thigh a few hearty pats. "Say you're a stripper, and you come into a place day-in, day-out, taking your clothes off for fat, ugly slobs and giving handjobs in some dark little closet. And you start asking questions about things like why is the rich asshole who owns this place taking such a big cut off all these poor working-class girls who are the ones stuck washing clumps of jizz out of their hair every night?

"And that's a dangerous question to ask because it leads to others - questions about fairness, about your station in life, about the exploitation of women. Heady stuff. It's easy to get so wrapped up in these questions that you forget that at the end of the day, what it really boils down to is survival. But when you lose sight of that, you start making bad decisions.

"Decisions like, say, skimming off the top before giving your rich asshole owner his cut."

The stripper suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, her fingers frozen in mid-action while lacing up her corset.

"Now to me, that's just plain dumb," he continued. "Imagine, throwing away your most basic biological imperative, survival itself, over some petty abstract notion of fairness or _justice. _ But that's what happens when you make things more complicated than they need to be."

Anthony lunged forward like a panther, springing from his seat with blinding speed and slamming the stripper up against the wall, his massive, powerful hands tightening around her throat in a crushing grip.

I watched in stunned silence as he choked the life out of her, then let her collapse into a heap, her cheek landing in the small puddle of his white goo on the floor, the domino mask still affixed to her face.

Anthony meanwhile was left holding her purple wig, which had come off while she struggled. He tossed it onto my lap.

"Here's a souvenir. Something to rub against your face on those long lonely nights when you're jacking off and imagining what I'm doing to the real deal."

I looked down at the disembodied wig and ran my fingers through its synthetic locks.

"Fag," Anthony snorted.

We walked out through club unmolested. Either no one realized what happened, or they all knew better than to let on that they did.

As we approached the Porsche, he tossed the keys to me.

"You can drive your fucking self home," he said.

I didn't actually agree, seeing as how I still couldn't keep my eyes open and even when they were, I was seeing at least triple. But I was still too shell-shocked to even attempt to protest.

He continued on to a black Escalade parked nearby. I shook my head and wondered just how stage managed the night had been.

"You know, for someone who claims to like to keep it simple, you sure have a round-about way of making a point. This whole setup smacks of your boss. You should