Dancing In The Light

By Nat Barkes

Sid is a student who is paying for his tuition by dancing in a nightclub.

He hates it; hates his co-workers, hates the punters.

But luckily he won’t have to do it for much longer – tonight is his last night and he can’t wait to leave.

He has no intention of putting on a good performance – the punters don’t know it’s his last night and he has no intention of letting them know, has no intentions of looking back at all once he leaves.

But then he makes the mistake of going to the bar for one final drink before his set – and meets a guy who makes him want to make the dance special.

He finds himself losing his cool, allowing the customary, protective numbness to fall away.

Just how badly will he end up regretting this?

• Language: English
• Publisher: D.A.T Publishing
• Release date: Sep 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386436690

Book preview

15,200 words

Chapter One1

Chapter Two17

Chapter Three21

Chapter Four26

Chapter Five33

Chapter One

It's his last night .

With yesterday's tips added to what he'll make tonight – Fridays are always the best for big tippers – he'll have enough money to pay off the loan.

And then he'll finally be shot of the place.

He'd like to say he'd miss his co-workers, but they are all either sad-eyed energetic vampires or bitchy little queens with ideas way above their situations, all of them dreaming of that one punter who'll turn out to be some mega rich business mogul who'll see them and just fall head first at their feet.

Yeah, right.

Not only will it never happen, Sid has to question the sense – or lack – of even wanting to get with anyone who comes to this dive on a regular basis.

He's far, far from home (well, several hundred miles to be precise) and it hasn't been easy this path he's chosen, but he hasn't so completely lost touch with reality that he looks at any of the predators who come here on a regular basis with anything but extreme jaundice.

They're here for a purpose and no part of that purpose owes anything at all to looking for a long term partner...

But not his business to pep talk the other guys here. They wouldn't listen to him anyway. They look down on him, ironically mostly because he's a student, doing this to make ends meet while he's completing his degree, but also because it would seem that being gay and Asian simply doesn't compute and there's always been a certain amount of suspicion noticeable in their interactions with him.

The bosses treat him the way they treat everyone else – fine so long as you do what you're supposed to and don't make waves. If you're a particular favourite with the punters you get your bonuses, but they don't play favourites themselves.

Sid doesn't particularly like them, Maggie especially, but he can't deny that they pay well, and in the two years since he's been there they've always done what they promised to do – reward him financially for being popular.

He's the only Asian dancer there and he is popular.

It used to make him feel pretty uncomfortable when he learned that there were customers who came there specifically to see him, but he has never been asked nor expected to get any more friendly with them than good manners and professionalism dictate so, in time, just accepted that his popularity was currency and that if he wanted to pay off those loans and thus get shot of this place for good then he needed to just keep doing what he was doing.

He hasn't had any training as a dancer, but was always pretty good at gymnastics and is fairly flexible – even if he does say so himself – and he's picked it up as he went along.

He can't fault the other guys – they've been pretty generous when it comes to sharing tips about the performance and how best to get through them, make them more professional, more polished. Well, they were generous to start with – now they see him as a rival and would sooner shove broken glass into their own eyeballs than share anything with him.

He doesn't mind: prefers to be left to himself as it happens.

He isn't prejudiced, but they really aren't his sort of people, and to be spared the chore of pretending otherwise is a boon.

He's still got an hour before he's due on and there are several of his least favourite co-workers marking time in the dressing room, so he does what he rarely does decides to go out into the bar, watch the show from the floor.

He dresses down – baseball cap, hoody and jeans (if he could wear dark glasses he would, but that would only attract the attention he's keen to avoid). He'd prefer to help the 'disguise' with a beard growth, but none of the guys are allowed through the door with any hint of facial or body hair, so he has to make do with his beardless face.

He gets on well enough with the bar staff and says a friendly hello to Tom, who's not gay, and is notably patient and long-suffering with both staff and punters' desire to test that out for themselves.

Tom isn't particularly attractive, but there's always a certain type of gay man who finds the aroma of heterosexuality pretty much akin to a poor man's aphrodisiac and nigh