*A troubled teacher is surprised to encounter his former student in a strip club*
What was I doing?
Ashamed to look the barman in the eye, I mumbled for a straight Talisker. Peaty, dry and smoky with a bitter hit on the lips, it always seemed to suit nights like this.
‘Thanks,’ I murmured, taking my whisky without raising my eyes from the bar. I lifted the glass to my mouth and found my thoughts wandering, as they always did.
I was married, happy, loved; I had everything, I didn’t need this. And yet I was still young, thirty-seven, and in the best shape of my life, years of running chiseling my body like coastal winds erode a cliff. I still craved the excitement of the new and the forbidden. My wife was everything; but everything wasn’t enough. In this same tired way, my better angels wrestled with my baser instincts; they always lost.
So here I was, again, sitting alone in a backstreet lap dancing bar, in a city just far enough away to limit the chances of my being recognised. I had planned every detail, even down to the thin, smart trousers, with no underwear for extra feel. Fuck me, I was pathetic.