Excerpt: Thicker Than Water

Esther Finkle was a schoolteacher. Five days a week she taught math and science to fifth graders at Woodbirch Elementary School. She had won the Teacher of the Year award in Compton county four years in a row and got a gift from her students every Christmas. Right now she was stuffing a dollar bill into the g-string of a well muscled and well oiled man who went by the name of Happy McGee.

One of her students, Billy Warden, had done a science fair project about money and its relative cleanliness. According his report, there were more germs on a dollar bill than there was on the seat of a toilet. Nonetheless Esther had clenched a George Washington between her teeth and was beckoning Happy McGee towards her with a wrinkled, arthritic finger. As Happy McGee thrust his yellow, smiley face thronged crotch at her, she squealed with delight.

If Billy Warden had done a science fair project on the relative cleanliness of a male stripper’s g-string, the results would have been sobering. He may have found that there were more crabs on a male stripper’s g-string than there are in some seafood restaurants. This may have kept her from slipping a finger - the one on which she wore her wedding ring - into Happy McGee’s g-string and then letting it go with a snap. But probably not.