Catch a Falling Knife

world was too—sad? Judging from some of the expressions on their faces, the fantasy worlds couldn’t be much better.
    All the men were well behaved, almost docile. Even when the dancer had been on stage I hadn’t seen anything approaching rowdy behavior. It wouldn’t do me any good to watch Albert’s reaction; he wouldn’t lift an eyebrow with me there. The place must get a lot livelier later on. But between the brass rail on the stage and the doorman, who probably doubled as a bouncer, I suspected management was prepared to handle anybody who misbehaved.
    I happened to see the dancer reenter the room through a doorway on one side of the stage. In addition to her G-string she now wore a skimpy top. She swaggered directly over to one of the tables, took a middle-aged man by the hand and led him back through the same doorway. I quickly nudged Albert to get him to look in her direction and said, “Where is she taking him?”
    Albert looked over in time to see them together, thought about what to tell me for a bit, then said, “She’s probably going to do a private lap-dance for him.”
    “Is that what it sounds like?”
    “Yes, but there are specific rules. The dancer can touch the customer, but the customer can’t touch the dancer.”
    “Or he’ll get his arm broken.”
    “At least he’ll get kicked out.”
    “So it’s completely under her control.”
    “Yes.”
    Just as men were becoming more and more under the control of women in all phases of life. As exemplified by the sexual harassment policy at Crescent Heights College.
    The ticket-taker picked up a microphone and announced the next dancer. As dissonant music reverberated around the room a clone of the first dancer popped out through the curtain and started to gyrate. Her blond wig wasn’t as blond, but if anything, her breasts were larger. Did the customers become bored watching different versions of the same girl?
    As eight o’clock approached more customers arrived. The tables around us filled up. I began to wonder what I could learn by watching the girl called the Shooting Star. If I had dragged Albert all the way here for no reason, he would be upset. He was upset about having to bring me here, anyway, although I had a hunch he secretly enjoyed the dancers.
    The clock over the bar showed two minutes after eight when the ticket-taker picked up the microphone and announced in a loud voice, “And now, what you’ve all been waiting for. Club Cavalier proudly presents the Shooting Star.”
    I guess I was expecting another big blond Barbie-doll, but the girl who came through the curtain was petite, with bright-red hair—and she wore a mask. My next surprise was that she was dancing to a song I recognized: an old Perry Como tune from the fifties called “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes.”
    Even though the laid-back barber sang it in an upbeat tempo, it was as out of place here after the music of the other dancers as a hotrod would have been in the parking lot, but she made it work. She glided effortlessly around the stage, barefoot, and then did a series of gymnastic maneuvers, ending in an aerial back-flip. I noticed that when she unhooked her bra, shrugged it off and tossed it back toward the curtain, all eyes were on her, including Albert’s.
    Her breasts were smaller than those of the other girls. They were obviously her own. They were the breasts of the girl next door, but these days the girl next door had probably eaten too many Big Macs to have the body definition she had. She reminded me of when I had been in school and almost all the girls were thin.
    The Shooting Star got on the pole, twisting around it like a snake while flashing colored lights painted her body. At one point she did an upside-down split while hanging onto the pole, completely off the stage. Then she did the same thing facing the other way. She mesmerized the audience. These moves revealed most of the mysteries of being a woman, in spite of her scanty G-string.
    I studied her red hair, which was probably the only false thing about her, and wondered how it stayed on. Then I looked at her mask, which covered not only her eyes but also her forehead and the upper part of her cheeks. Was that just for show, to add to the intrigue, or was she really trying to hide her identity?
    She finished her act with another gymnastic run and another back-flip. I held my breath, fearing that she would either hit the pole or catapult herself into the audience, but she had