When I'm with You (Hope Town #3)(9)
Once through the door separating the two, you hit the sanctuary. In the center of the room is a large square bar with a thick wooden finish built to withhold the heavy bodies spotlighted throughout the night.
When I first decided to play off Coyote Ugly, Shane was the first to jump on board. All I told him was that we would have dudes dancing and not chicks. That was enough for him. When I told Cohen about it, his first assumption was that Shane was gay, but he couldn’t be further from the truth.
It’s simple really. Girls flock to clubs. Girls love seeing men who know how to work their bodies. When the girls get one look at the talent at Dirty, it won’t be long until they’re going to be rushing us. Any man with a brain would be able to look past anything when you basically guarantee massive amounts of horny women. Which, if everything goes as planned, will be the reason that we don’t just succeed in having a successful club but we fly through the top of all the popular ones around.
I shouldn’t have been shocked with Cohen’s concerns about Dirty. Unlike my dad, he didn’t voice them because he doubted me; he just couldn’t see the big picture like I could. To him, he thought we would turn into a gay club with little success because we aren’t exactly a town with a need for one. I wasn’t going to let him know the reason why I was so sure we had this.
The idea for this place came to me back in college when it became crystal clear that sex, men dancing, and booze were all you needed to build an empire on a party life. No one knows about the six months I worked at a strip club out of pure boredom and a sex drive that was borderline sex addiction levels bad. * just fell in my lap when I danced at the club in Athens.
Since Shane had spent the last five years stripping, continuing well after I left town, he knew more than anyone the untapped market I was about to break into. Women loved men. Plain and simple. They went stupid over half-naked ones, and when you threw in some carefully placed hip thrusts, well … you might as well be a f*cking god.
And that’s where Dirty Dog turned from just a small, fleeting dream to what is already turning out to be the next best thing to hit the South.
I pull up behind the bar and park next to Shane’s BMW. The smile on my face grows as I walk from my truck and through the back of the building. I really should stop calling it a bar because this place is a monster too big for such a small word. We’re so much more than just a bar. We’re a nightclub formed with the bar atmosphere in mind. I guess the reason I always fall back on calling it ‘the bar’ is because each of the five bars that fill up the vast space work to form the whole basis to our appeal.
The old converted warehouse used to be on its last leg, but almost a year after buying it, the transformation is like night and day. The hallway that the back door feeds into leads to our storage units, coolers, and locker rooms for staff, as well as the large break room for some downtime between shifts. I even went as far as to add a gym so that the guys wouldn’t have to keep paying for memberships elsewhere. After all, our bodies are the main attraction here.
The center of the main room for Dirty holds the central and biggest bar. Each side of the building has two smaller, but no less impressive, ones with a huge open area between all of them for dancing. One back corner holds the DJ booth, stage, and electrical area for all the music. Then you have the second-level VIP area that runs the whole length above the holding area. Two staircases lead to that level with ten separate VIP areas.
My office takes up the other side building, running half the length, and the other half houses the gym. The only thing you can see from where I’m standing in the main room is a wall of black windows that runs from each side flanked by stairs like on the VIP end. Under that area, we have one more bar in the center surrounded by multiple booths and such.
After taking in all that is Dirty Dog, I walk farther into the main room to find Shane talking to six of the bartenders I had hired. I give a nod to Travis and Garrett, the Hanks brothers who used to dance with Shane. Brent, Logan, and Matt are standing behind them, and I get the same greeting back from them.
Denton, the sixth to round out our main bartenders, is already on top of the bar with his shirt off, showing them what he wants them to do. He’s taken on the role of resident dance coordinator, a job both Shane and myself were happy to pass on to him.
We lucked out picking up Denton. Not only does he have the look that will guarantee him being a crowd favorite with his background in modeling, but he also recently tried out for the show So You Think You Can Dance. He didn’t make it to the very end, but he got far enough to be our own little celebrity here at Dirty.
“You plan on just standing there, Dent? Or are you going to show us how it’s done?” I deadpan, only to laugh when he flips me off.
“Have you decided how you want the first showcase to go?” Shane asks when I drop down onto one of the barstools he had pulled over from one of the tables scattered around the room. I look the few feet that separate us from where Denton is now standing with his hands on his hips.
“Fuck yeah, I did,” I say with a smile. Just thinking about the ingenious idea I had around not only the first spotlight, but also what will be the signature drink. “How do you feel about lollipops, gentlemen?” I ask.
“What the hell are you talking about, Nate?” Denton calls down before bending at the waist and sitting on the edge of the wooden bar top.
“Lollipops, how do you like them?” I ask, again.