A Helping Hand

There's not much I find sexier in a woman than desperation. And Candi was one of the most desperate I've ever met.

I first met her in a little strip club in New Jersey one Friday night. It was located pretty close to Princeton University, and more than a few of its dancers were students trying to earn some extra cash. Broadly speaking there are two ways a gig like that can work out. Some girls find they enjoy the attention, maybe get a thrill from being naughty now that Mommy and Daddy can't tell them what to do.

And then there are girls like Candi.

Don't get me wrong, she was a real beauty. A blonde ray of sunshine with a pretty face, long legs, and big soft tits, the kind just begging to be slapped and pinched. If she'd had a knack for dancing, she might have become one of the club’s star attractions. But she took to exotic dancing like a cat to a swimming pool. Awkward, self conscious, and painfully shy, that was Candi. She barely even showed any skin, flashing those nice tits for only a brief moment before covering them up. Her routine lasted maybe five minutes, and the audience’s only reaction as she tottered off the stage was boos and catcalls.

I did neither. I was too busy looking up her real name.

The internet can be a wonderful tool for someone like me, and it didn't disappoint. In minutes, an image search of the pictures I'd surreptitiously taken led me to an online yearbook for a high school a few hundred miles away, where I found sweet Candi giving the world a shy smile. From there, I went on to find her address on campus, phone number, and more.  By the time I left the club, I'd made substantial progress on my new project.

Candi - I won’t bother sharing her actual name, I don’t even remember it anymore and I doubt she does either - was what some people would consider the embodiment of the American dream. She’d grown up in some rural shithole out west to parents who were dirt poor; her father was a coal miner who’d been unemployed for the last seven years, and her mother worked part time as a cashier in between raising three other children. Normally, someone like that couldn’t get into a school like Princeton in a million years.

But like I said, Candi was special. Intelligent, hard working, and kind, she’d been the driving force behind several local projects to try and help her community, like kickstarting an annual food drive. When she’d applied to Princeton, the town had returned the favor by organizing a letter writing campaign to the college praising her accomplishments. Between that and her excellent grades and character, she’d earned herself a full scholarship. According to the puff piece I’d found about her, the entire town had thrown her a going away party to celebrate her “making it”. And she certainly had. She was a bright girl with a bright future ahead of her.

So why would someone like that be taking her clothes off at some crappy strip club? Because she needed the money that badly, of course. Full scholarship or not, I found some school pictures that she showed up in, and she stood out like a sore thumb among all the rich yuppy kids. All of her clothes were ratty garbage that had obviously been restitched and resized repeatedly over the years. There was a gauntness to her features that told me she’d missed more than a couple meals lately, and probably pulled a few all nighters too. She might be destined for greatness once she graduated, but she was getting ground into the dirt in the process.

And unfortunately for my darling Candi, the worst was yet to come.

I found her waiting at the nearby bus stop after her show. It was close to one in the morning, and we were the only ones there. She gave me a wary glance, ready to defend herself if I tried something, but said nothing.

“That was a really good performance out there,” I said, and received a withering look in response. Candi was shy, not stupid; she knew exactly how bad she'd been. “No, really,” I insisted. “Not the typical style, but I think you've got potential. In fact, I've got a job offer for you.”

“I'm not a whore,” she said flatly. There was a fierceness to her that hadn’t come across in her photos, and I could see now why her entire town had gone to bat for her. It’s not that she was mean or cruel, just… forceful. Vibrant. There aren’t many people in the world who can see something that they want and work hard to get it, instead of just letting life pass them by. I like to think I’m one of them. I knew right away that Candi was.

“’Whore’ is a bit of a loaded word,” I said cheerfully. “And meaning no disrespect, there's not much daylight between that kind of work and your current profession. Pays quite a lot better, and plenty of women do both.”

“This isn't my profession.” Her tone was bitter. “Just a bad idea that I already knew wasn't going to work.” As she spoke, the bus arrived, and she wasted no time walking towards it. “Save your job offer for someone else.”

I watched her step onto the bus, admiring the slight sway of her hips and imagining how those long legs were going to feel when they were wrapped around me someday. Then I drove home and got to work.