Cat In An Aqua Storm

“No. I’m doing public relations for the competition. If ET wants to do a competition segment, or if I can talk them into one, then maybe you guys’ll get lucky and meet Lisa Hartman. But probably not,” she warned. “She doesn’t do every segment in person.”

“Shucks. What’s your name?” asked another.

“Temple Barr.”

“Temple’s a neat name.”

“Would sound great onstage,” another put in.

“Any relation to Candy Barr?” teased the third, citing a famous stripper.

“Only in our apparent addiction to... chocolate. Really, if you guys wouldn’t mind talking about your work, I’d be able to put together a press release.”

“Yeah, let us do release the press!”

“All right!” the others agreed, slapping the heels of their hands together while Temple blinked at such enthusiastic physical force.

Maybe she had become subconsciously leery of big men since... no! She couldn’t get paranoid. For all their muscular presence, not one of these guys was more than twenty-four, and they all exuded a wholesome, careless energy that was rather engaging. If only they’d been around when the bad guys had decided to do a drum riff of “Night and Day” on her torso...

So she asked questions, they answered, and she soon could put names—stage names—to individuals rather than clones.

Kirk wore his hair wild-man-long. It brushed his well-developed shoulders and gave him a wicked, rock-star look. He would ride a motorcycle (probably a Hesketh Vampire, without a helmet), although a woman of any experience at all would realize that underneath he was a moody, Marlon Brando kind of guy. “You “know... sensitive.” Umm-hmm.

Stetson’s sun-streaked blond hair was long only in back. His tanned, muscled body radiated an outdoorsy, oil-rig-working, skin-cancer-defying, construction-crew kind of macho. The Last American He-man. Performing was putting him through pre-med.

The crew cut was Butch, of course. Butch was all man, and all muscle, and one day he hoped to be Mr. Universe. And maybe be in movies, like Arnold. Saint Arnold.

And Cheyenne, lean, rangy Cheyenne: dark-eyed, dark-haired, racially and sexually ambiguous, a dangerous trait in the Age of AIDS, but attractive, perhaps for that reason. Cheyenne was truly the strong, silent type, and finally admitted after repeated questions that he was an actor, kind of. He had auditioned for a soap recently. Temple could picture him in seminaked, steamy close-ups, getting tons of fan mail from ladies who would never think beyond the obvious.

Finally, Temple got around to her eternal “Why?”

“The money’s great!” said Butch.

“And it’s fun,” Kirk added.

“The chicks are really into it. You should see ’em,” Stetson said. “Here at the competition doesn’t count. It’s an audience of your peers. You should come to a club and watch us.”

“Yeah,” said Temple, “the women perform solo, but you guys usually go onstage in a group. Why? Chicken?” It felt good to pass on Electra’s challenge. The question also loosened whatever inhibitions they had left.

“Naw,” Kirk said. “But it’s true that guys are a new wrinkle in the club game. We’re not supposed to package it and sling it around unless we’re gay.”

“Is that why you emphasize the muscles and the macho poses?” she asked.

Butch shook his virtually hairless head. “We’re body builders, first and foremost. That’s what you gotta understand. We’re used to performing at bodybuilding competitions in no more than a posing pouch. Stripping isn’t much different.”

“Except we get paid for it,” Stetson put in.

“Man, those tips...” Cheyenne’s smile was slow and sensual.

“You don’t feel it’s undignified—?”

“Hell, yes!” Kirk burst out. “But they don’t ask at the bank how dignified your money is. Besides, it’s a kick to watch women act like raving animals for a change.”

“They know it’s not real,” Temple pointed out.

“Yeah.” Kirk was definite. “It’s not real, and that’s okay. Too much of life is real.”

“Like the murder of those female strippers,” she suggested.

The young men’s faces grew sober for the first time.

“Bummer,” Kirk murmured.

Stetson shook his blond head. “It almost makes you feel guilty. We guys get all the hoopla and the good clean fun, and the girl strippers get the sick.”

“You think a psycho did it?” Temple asked.

“Who else?” Cheyenne asked angrily. “Look. We’re doing this and no one will think we’re trash because of it. But women—they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Maybe none of us said it, but it’s healthy to be up-front about your sexuality. But when they do it, women always get a bad rap.”

She was surprised by their angry-young-men passion, by their guilt on behalf of their own gender. “I was going to ask if stripping is exploitive.”

They nodded in concert.

“We exploit our audiences, you know?” Kirk said. “They exploit us. But we both know it.”