After the funeral, Jack finally began to put some distance between Preacher and himself. He quit the tattoo shop and decided to open one of his own, along with a rival biker club, with Matt. As for investors, they found one: me. I had saved tens of thousands of dollars from stripping. There were only so many pairs of shoes I could buy. So not only did I give him my money, but I learned to lay tile, drywall, and solder. I was in the shop every waking hour, and there were lots of them because of the meth I was doing to numb myself after Vanessa’s death.

In January, we finally finished the tattoo parlor. It was set to open on February 1. That morning, we arrived at the shop and it was gone. The roof was blown off, the windows were shattered, and the tiles I had worked so hard on were dust and debris. Three fire engines and a police car were parked outside.

Someone, it seemed, had fire-bombed the shop. And Jack and I both knew who that someone was.

One of the worst things you can do in the biker community is start a competing club. Preacher had connections with organized crime, I was told, and if I wanted to live, I should stay away from anything to do with tattoo parlors and biker clubs while Jack rebuilt his.

So I buried myself in work, stripping for thirteen hours a day, making ridiculous bank. It was depressing without Vanessa there to support and distract me. Now, as soon as I walked into the club each afternoon, I could see the competition, envy, and petty hatred in the eyes of the other girls.

People often say that the world would be so much better if it were run by women. But women have as many faults as men. Their faults are just different. So the truth is that the world would not be better if it were run by a woman, it would be better if it were run by the right woman. When men race or fight, they are only striving to prove their masculinity or protect their sense of pride. But women do not compartmentalize in the same way. Our actions are a reflection of our complete selves, worthiness, and deservedness. For the worst of our species, any other attractive female is seen as competition and a threat.

Thus, without Vanessa, I had no friends at the club. One afternoon, though, I noticed a girl I hadn’t seen before. She was sitting on the side of a small stage in the back of the room. A single spotlight shone down on her, casting her in an angelic glow. While most of the strippers at the club wore cheesy neon-green tube tops or American-flag bikinis, she was wearing an expensive-looking black French lace bra with matching panties. A lace shawl was wrapped around her shoulders, and a soft, perfectly straight, raven-black cascade of hair fell over them; she had a tiny waist, a plump round butt, and boobs like cupcakes with beautiful little cherries on top. But what really made her stand out was her posture: so perfect, like a Japanese geisha, as if she belonged to a gentler, more refined world. When she noticed me looking at her, she didn’t flash a look of hatred or territorialism like most girls in the club would. She just looked down demurely. I could not figure out what this sweet, classy girl was doing here.

By the end of the night, I had worked up the courage to talk to her. She was sitting in a booth in the corner of the club, where I joined her. “You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life,” I told her.

“Tell the men that,” she sighed. “Everyone wants to marry me, but no one wants a dance.” She grabbed a handful of twenty-dollar bills out of her purse, and put them down on the table. I estimated that there were five of them. And at this point in my stripper days, I was very good at estimating these things.

“That’s all I made tonight,” she said. “And it was a good night.”

I had made almost four thousand dollars from my regulars.

“With your looks, you could be one of the top girls in the club,” I told her.

“That’s just not me,” she said. “I feel totally out of place doing this.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

She was even more beautiful up close.

“I’m doing it,” she said, and paused, “because it pays my bills.”

I decided that it was my duty to teach her the ropes, as Vanessa had done for me. “I was just like you when I came here,” I said. “I was the shyest girl you ever met. And do you know how I succeeded? Do you know the cliche, fake it until you make it? Well, it’s true. If you act like the prize stripper who charges fifty dollars for a dance, eventually the guys are going to start paying you fifty dollars for a dance. And then one hundred dollars. And then two hundred dollars.”

I talked to her for fifteen minutes, schooling her on the ins and outs, the dos and don’ts, the shouldn’ts that you shouldn’t and the shouldn’ts that you should. “It’s not real life in here. It’s a game, one big game of mind fucking. If you’re somewhat in tune with other people and can pick up on what they are thinking and who they are by talking to them, then you can win. You may not be a manipulative person deep inside, but in here you must manipulate. And you will learn that you can get anything you want by maneuvering correctly.”

I felt proud of myself, like I was the seasoned professional dispensing wisdom and advice to a new girl who needed it. As I was talking, she suddenly reached across the table, put her hand under my chin, pulled my face into hers, and kissed me.

It wasn’t a peck on the lips, or one of those fake sexy kisses that girls do with other girls to turn men on. It was a full-on tongue-exploring-mouth soul kiss. My breath quickened, and my mind raced. I was in shock. But, at the same time, I wasn’t. This was why I had really come up to her. I didn’t want to help her become a better stripper at all. I wanted to run my hands through her hair, feel her cheek against mine, and hold her in my arms. I had to make a split-second decision. And that decision was yes. Yes, I wanted to throw down with this girl.

She released my mouth and looked softly into my eyes. I wrapped my right hand behind her head, and she pressed her lips once more against mine. She kissed with the confidence and passion of a man. She slid her hand along my thigh, under my short white skirt, and let it rest in the waistband of my panties. I responded by sinking my fingers into the depths of the hair at the back of her neck, closing my hand into a fist, and pulling her head back. She moaned with such animal desire that I instantly let go. I couldn’t believe that this demure girl had such a fierceness inside her. As it came to the surface, I could feel my panties moisten. The best sex takes place in the mind first.

“Do you want to continue this someplace more private,” she whispered, her eyes moist, her breath rising in time with mine. We were in our own world now, and I wanted to stay there.

As she unlocked the door to her house, I wondered if I was doing the right thing. I’d never been with a girl before, and never thought I would be. Sure, I’d entertain Jack by making out with a girl in front of him, but this was different. This was just me and another girl, alone, one on one, for no one else’s pleasure but our own.

As soon as we walked in the door, she put her hands around my neck, threw me up against the wall, and rammed her tongue down my throat. If a man had done this, I would have been terrified. But coming from her, it was such a turn-on. She lifted my shirt over my shoulders and began to lick slowly around my breasts, circling closer and closer to my nipples, as she ran her hands along the curve of my back. Her tongue and touch felt so much different than a man’s. She was just as confident and strong, yet underneath was a gentle, nurturing touch that sent shivers through my body. I was hooked, and because it was a woman, the thought that I was cheating on Jack never crossed my mind.

She led me to the bedroom and pulled my skirt off. My panties were so damp that I was embarrassed. Sitting over me, she pulled off her top, unhooked her bra, and pressed herself against me. I could feel heat emanating from every pore of her body. It had been so long since I had felt this kind of intimacy.

The cover of my movie Pure

She kissed me for what seemed like forever before working her way down my skin, kissing every inch. She reached my thighs, then stopped and cupped her hand over my pussy. Just feeling the sheer warmth of it —after so much teasing— made me want to explode. When she finally went down on me, I was practically crawling up the walls. She put one finger inside, working my g-spot, as she licked my clit. She looked up at me, her chin damp with my wetness, and asked whether I minded if she used a toy. I said no, imagining that she had some sort of thin red vibrator that she wanted to rub against my clit. But instead she reached under the bed and whipped out a cream-colored back massager with a long, thick handle and a top that looked like a showerhead. Involuntarily, my whole body tensed. I was petrified.

She placed a blanket over my pussy so that the vibrations wouldn’t be too intense and direct, and I began to relax. Clearly, I was in the hands of a qualified professional. She turned her monstrous apparatus on, and just touched it to the blanket over my clit. My body started to twitch and shudder uncontrollably, forcing me to arch my back until it happened. I exploded, over and over again. I couldn’t stop. It felt like wave after wave of color was running through me. Every time I thought it was over, my body would rock with another set of spasms and I’d dig my fingers deeper into her neck and yell every curse word in the dictionary, in addition to some I invented on the spot.

When it was over, I collapsed and started laughing, and then crying, and then laughing and crying at the same time. It was as if my body were recovering from a traumatic shock. She crawled up and hugged me, stroked my hair, and then licked the tears off my face. I had never had an orgasm that intense in my life.

We rolled around together for hours that night, alternating moments of tender caresses with hair-ripping lust. She had a full arsenal of toys under her bed —none of which I’d ever experimented with before— and seemed to know everything that was possible for one woman to do to another. When I went down on her, she screamed so loudly and thrashed around so violently that she actually broke her bedside lamp. The neighbors must have thought she was being murdered.

When I left her house the next afternoon, I felt an emotion I’d forgotten ever having experienced. I felt loved. I was smitten with this woman, and I wanted to be with her again. She gave me a sense of security that I never had with Jack. We were so in tune emotionally that we hardly even needed to speak. I was confused. Was I gay? Was I straight? Did I love her? Did I love Jack? Or was this all just some kind of afterglow from the sexual release? So many questions were spinning through my mind. But overall I was happy. I felt safe. And in my life, that was a rare thing.

Now, if only I knew her name.