"They really sit there and jack off while you dance?" I asked, genuinely surprised. "Well, if you get the right girl and you pay enough, you sort of get your bare dick rubbed. You get a tit in your mouth. Some of the girls give head. "I'm not going to touch anybody's bare dick though," Lyca added, making it clear this principle was important to her. I imagined her struggling with the dilemma nightly -- the line between table dance and trick, between erotic dancer and whore (a line I assumed to be about the thickness of a $20 bill). "I'm not gonna do that. I sort of give as much as I wanna give, you know? If somebody pays me for a dance and they start grabbing, I back off. They're not gonna get that. But if they just take what I give them, I'll give them more." "So you're in total control of what happens?" "I'd like to think so. But then I wonder, if I was really in control, would I be doing it at all?" "Why don't you quit?" I asked. "Or at least start making other plans. You could wait tables. Go to college." "I'm starting at the community college in the fall. But only because of the money I've made dancing. What else am I going to do that pays as well? Besides, it's more than that. It's the sexual energy. When I'm dancing -- not table dancing, but dancing on stage -- you might not understand but it's my favorite thing in life. There's no grabbing, just me and the music. It's beautiful, really. Sometimes I forget I'm naked." "So you'll keep dancing for a while, pay your own way through school?" "That seems like the idea," Lyca said, then looked at the ground. "But I'm afraid if I don't quit dancing soon, I'll never be able to. There are some lines, you know, once you cross them things are never the same."
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