Excerpt: To Fall Asleep Smoking

Black and pink curls flowed around the contours of the woman’s body as she spun around the slick pole. Her body moved automatically, her hands and wrists twisting over and on top of one another, spinning her round and round the pole. Then, with a transition so fluid that her body never broke the rhythm of the music, she locked her ankle about a foot from the bottom of the pole, and flipped her other leg into a pole-length split. Her momentum on the spinning pole kept her whirling as she broke the split and wound her lower leg up to the top of the pole. Hanging upside down, legs locked around the cold steel, she snaked her body back and forth to the music, her hands sensually running across her every curve, and then winding through her voluminous hair. The strobe light that flashed from the back of the stage made the woman’s movements look even more surreal and magical as she ever so slowly lowered to the stage, her seductive movements never losing even one second of precise sexuality.

Just as her long curls brushed the stage, there was a change in octave and the music began to crescendo as the woman lifted her torso, her muscles rippling and shining with a sexy sheath of sweat. Her hands grabbed the pole above her feet, and she released her legs, throwing them in a semi-circle around the pole and spiraling down from the top of the pole holding on with only her hands as the music’s vocals burst with emotion. Once low enough, the woman set one stiletto on the stage, and the friction immediately caught her, stopping the pole’s momentum just as the vocalist halted her song with a brief inhalation. The woman seductively fell back, her elbow catching on the pole, and she lowered to the floor in a high backward arch. Her firm ass touched the stage last, and just as it touched, her legs flew into the air and opened into a spread-eagle. She raised her back, and arched her head back as she moved her hands teasingly under her g-string.

The men by the stage rained money over her perfectly undulating body, and the woman flashed a wide, appreciative smile as the music ended and she gracefully gathered the bills and strutted to her clutch in the back corner of the stage. Without bending her knees, she leaned over and plucked it up, arching her back as she stood up, giving the men one final view as she put the money into her clutch and glided to the stage stairs, where she daintily offered her hand to the help the next dancer onto the stage. Then she stepped down and disappeared around the corner.