CHAPTER 2
Sonya followed Kelly into the dressing room. There were six or seven girls in there now, in various stages of undress, though most were already in high heels.
Some of them were putting little round pasties over their nipples. Others were sticking their butts up and looking over their shoulders into the mirror as they adjusted their thongs.
“Come on, take it off,” Kelly said, tugging on Sonya’s dress. She sounded annoyed now.
Sonya didn’t want to seem like a dumb kid, but she wasn’t comfortable being naked in front of other people. Even when she tried on clothes with a friend, she turned her body away.
Her blood began to race through her veins again, though this time the nervousness wasn’t exactly like before. It wasn’t a matter of being worried, but of doing something she just didn’t want to do. She wanted to be invisible.
She couldn’t ask for privacy, not there, not when she’d already seen so many of the other girls nude or close to it, that would make her seem like she thought she was special, and she didn't think that at all - though right then she realized for the first time that Halim had said she was a special girl.
When he said it, she'd been too shaken up to process the words he spoke, but now they came flooding back. Yet she didn't have time to contemplate why he would say such a thing.
Sonya tried to act calm as she reached behind her back to unzip her dress. She could barely get her sweaty fingers to grip the zipper, especially since she had been trying to grow out her fingernails for a few weeks. It was stuck, she couldn’t budge it.
Kelly stepped behind Sonya and helped her.
No more excuses, Sonya told herself.
She let the dress slide over her shoulders, past her breasts, past her stomach, past her hips, to the floor.
Sonya wasn’t wearing a bra. She didn’t like the strap showing in her backless dress, and her boobs were small and perky enough that she didn’t need one. The dark, loose fabric of the dress hid her nipples well.
But now they weren’t hidden at all. They tingled in the cold air-conditioned room. And they were hard, another reason to be embarrassed. She wanted to cover herself with her hands, but she knew that would just make her look even more childish in front of all these carefree, confident women.
As Sonya stepped out of the dress, she heard murmuring, whispering, then soft giggles from around the room.
She looked down at her panties. She’d forgotten to do laundry that week, so she’d worn an old pair. They were white cotton and had teddy bears on them.
I wasn't planning to show them off at work or anyplace else, she thought as she blushed deeply, but didn’t bother trying to explain.
“Those aren’t gonna fly with your new outfit, sweetheart,” Kelly said, trying not to laugh too. “They’ll stick right out the bottom.”
“The cops will think we’re running a pedophile ring if they see those undies,” a black girl with a big glittery wig said, making everyone laugh.
Well, everyone but Sonya.
She looked at Kelly and pulled slightly on the waistband of her panties, as if to say, So these too?
Kelly nodded her head and rolled her eyes with exasperation at this timid new girl.
Sonya shrugged and slid her panties off in one quick movement, like pulling off a bandaid.
Oh well, we’ve all got the same thing down there, she told herself.
But she wasn’t quite right about that.
Giggles erupted into full-on chortling when the dancers saw Sonya’s thick black bush.
“It’s 1999, honey. You’ve gotta mow your yard once in a while. Or at least trim the hedges.”
“Yeah, kiddo, no guy wants to suffocate with his nose buried in that muff.”
The jokes kept coming as Sonya covered her privates with both hands. She didn’t even know who was saying what.
Her cheeks burned red and she might have run away if she hadn’t been naked. Gilad might be in the hallway. It was like a horrible locker room scene in an 80’s high school comedy.
“All right, ladies, that’s enough. She’s just working the door,” Kelly said in a voice like a teacher trying to settle down a rowdy class.
She motioned for Sonya to step into a thong that she held at the embarrassed girl’s feet. Kelly was sliding the tiny panties up Sonya’s lean legs when another stripper interrupted.
“Whoa, let’s take care of that beast now before it bites somebody. Even working the door, you never know...”
A redheaded girl knelt down beside Sonya and started to chop through her thick black pubic hair without even asking. The scissors snapped and sent clumps of hair drifting to the floor.
“Careful, Anna, that thing looks angry.”
“It probably hasn’t eaten for days.”
“…or been eaten for years.”
The girls joked and laughed again as they continued to get ready for the stage.
Anna shook her head with disapproval but couldn't keep from smiling. She grabbed shaving cream off the counter and wiped it across Sonya’s mound, then rubbed the blue gel into a white lather over the ragged clumps of hair still left.
Sonya was looking straight down. For a moment, she had closed her eyes, wishing she could just disappear. Now she was squinting, her eyes opened only enough to see what was happening to her pubic hair.
But she also noticed how long Anna’s fingernails were. They must have been an inch and a half each, and they were painted the same deep orangish-red as her hair.
It was amazing she could even hold a razor, let alone use it so precisely with claws like those.
Sonya moved her gaze up to Anna’s face. She could tell that without the heavy makeup and fake eyelashes this girl was stunning in a supermodel way, like Elle Macpherson or Cindy Crawford.
Anna could have been on a runway instead of a stripper stage. And yet here she was at Sultan’s.
Everybody’s got a story, I guess, Sonya thought.
Within seconds, she was shaved clean.
“Next time, we’ll wax you. Then you won’t have to worry about it for a few weeks,” Anna said with a wink as she stood up.
Kelly dressed Sonya in a tiny, thin white satin skirt and a matching halter top made from about half as much fabric as the ones she owned - and she thought those were revealing enough.
Sonya felt exposed, with her nipples poking through the satin and her whole back and belly bared for all to see.
She tried to glance in the mirror behind her to tell if her butt cheeks were popping out the bottom of the skirt, but she didn’t want the girls to see her worrying about it.
The skirt was not only short but hung low, revealing the tops of her hips. So low, she thought her pubic hair would show — if she’d had any left.