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8. New Tricks
She reads the blurb. BodyMatch is one more benefit of the community, by the community, for the community, it says. The app has been designed by an enthusiast, somewhere out there in the cloud, but whoever it is neither needs nor asks for credit. It is simply there, on the apps page, and best of all it’s free. Kira’s relieved; her poor Visa card has finally been cancelled.
BodyClockers. Find your perfect match!
BodyClockers are special people. Beautiful people. Better people. And beautiful people deserve better people, right?
BodyMatch is more than just another dating app. If you’re part of the community, your vitals have been logged and analyzed in detail. And somewhere in the community is the perfect partner for YOU! BodyMatch does what it says; if there is a match, it will find them, based on your respective biometric profiles.
Who’d want to be with a civilian when you can be with one of your own kind?
And did we mention? Best of all, it’s FREE.
Keep on improving!
Kira doesn’t hesitate for a second.
Even better than free, it doesn’t take long. Seconds, in fact. Sifting through whatever mountains of data the cloud has amassed about every member of the community, the BodyMatch algorithms present her with a few choices. The first is an absolutely gorgeous guy, and 100% matched, according to the programme, but his profile says he’s in San Francisco. She follows ManOfTheWorld anyway, and adds him to her follower list. Who knows what the future might bring, after college? She filters the list by location and she is thrilled to find there are two seemingly suitable BodyClockers right here in town. She chooses the one with dark hair, like Jack’s. His profile fills her screen. His screenname is FastTracker.
FastTracker’s been a BodyClocker for three years, it says, and was one of the first early adopters. In his personal statement he’s particularly proud of this. He’s a runner; he does both distance and sprint. His profile says he’s competed at national levels, but now he does something in finance. Money again, goddammit, she thinks ruefully. She doesn’t want to think about that right now.
BodyMatch has synched to her activity feed already. It has its own community, she sees, numbering several thousand, and she has new followers at once. Messages are popping up already.
Hi. So glad you’ve signed up. BodyMatch needs all the members we can get… the pool of perfection is growing every day. Keep on improving!
Welcome HOME, lovely Miss Magic!
Had enough of civilians, eh? Me too. You’ve come to the right place. All the best BodyClockers are right here waiting for you.
You know what? I thought love would just come naturally when the time was right. Yeah, right, with my schedule! BodyMatch opened my eyes. Hope it does the same for you!
Look forward to more, Miss M. Share some pics!
She is warmed by their welcome. What a great app, thinks Kira, as she messages FastTracker, offering to meet, if he would like to.
Of course he would. Who wouldn’t? He has a window in his schedule next Friday evening.
So much is easy now. The days fly by, every exercise perfect, every class a doddle. She dutifully lists her achievements to mom and dad, and they seem to listen, although in honesty they can barely get a word in as she recites every single score Coach Jeffries has delivered since they last spoke. Kira thrums with anticipation of her Friday evening BodyMatch date, and she scrolls her messages obsessively. Only one thing disturbs her BodyClocked harmony.
Kira’d never thought money would be an issue. She always thought she could worry about all that in a few years’ time. For now, she has the freedom of college and youth. But her Visa card is dead, and the one thing she hadn’t anticipated is the sheer drain on her smartphone’s data plan. It’s sucking her checking account dry, and her precious college fund is running low. With all the new functions, BodyClock has become ravenously bandwidth-hungry. The thought of being cut off from it sends shivers down her spine. It would be like being crippled, she thinks. She would surely die. She needs to find a job, and fast.
Kira asks around college, but nobody knows of anything going. She trawls the coffee shops and restaurants, but this is a college town, and the economy is weak, and nobody is short of cheap labor right now. There is a waiting list for waiting jobs. They don’t even need skivvies for the kitchens. There is only one thing she can think of, and it’s risky.
In her seedy, shameful forays across town, endlessly tasting in search of that elusive biochemical match, she’s noticed a small bar just off Main Street, discreetly signposted. She has never been in there; instinct tells her it’s a certain kind of place, and not the kind of place a sweet Midwestern Kira ought to be, but she needs the money and her choices are few.
She arranges an appointment with the thickly accented owner/manager for six o’clock that evening. She can squeeze it in between practice sessions if she’s fast.
The owner’s name is Petra Something-ova. She’s a tall and striking eastern European, late thirties or early forties, thinks Kira, as she shakes the woman’s hand. Her grip is firm. The bar doesn’t open until midnight, Petra says, as she ushers her to a table. Glancing around, Kira sees the place is smaller than she’d expected. There are no more than twenty tables. The room is dominated by a low stage, artfully lit, and on the stage stand a series of floor to ceiling steel poles.
Petra lights a cigarette, and Kira reflexively raises her eyebrows at that. Petra notices, and laughs. “It’s my place, honey. I can do what I want. So, please, what do you want here, miss?”
Kira tries not to inhale. “I need a job, Miss, ah —.”
“Petra, please.”
“Petra. I’m at college, and—“ Petra holds up her hand, silencing her.
“No need for details. No need at all. You can dance the pole?”
Kira looks at the poles. They look nothing like the gym. This can’t be right.
“Yes,” says Kira. “I can dance the pole, I—I think.”
“Show, please.”
Kira slips out of her sweats and leotard, and approaches the stage wearing only her panties. She pauses and trembles for a second. What can BodyClock do with these poles?
“Go, now, girl, or get out,” Petra’s gravelly voice orders. Then she realizes: these are just balance bars on end. Twist her perspective like this and it will be easy peasy.
She struts forward, flipping into a cartwheel and springs, grabbing the pole with both hands, stretching out her legs to the horizontal, holding the position for a moment. She snakes one leg up, wraps it round the pole, and dangles there, smiling. With a sinuous twist, she’s the right way up again, and she wiggles her pert ass at the non-existent audience in the way she imagines they will like. She is up the pole again in an instant, climbing only with her hands, her legs are out at right angles; she flips, spins, and is upside down again, gently rotating on the pole. She’s enjoying herself. For a final flourish she leaps from one pole to the other like a monkey bridging trees, dismounts, and lands gracefully on her hands, flipping effortlessly upright. A perfect routine, she thinks. Thumbs up. BodyClock rocks.
Petra is impressed, and claps lightly in acknowledgement. “Yes, very good, miss. Certainly I can offer you some shifts, no problem. The pay is good, all cash of course. Do you have a stage name?”
Kira stumbles for a second, confused, completely unable to think of a name. “Call me, ah, Kir- ah, no, no, just call me Miss Magic.” Phew, she thinks.
Petra is amused. “You wouldn’t prefer something more, how do you say, exotic? Very well then, Miss Magic it will be. You can be here at eleven thirty this evening? Two thirty minute routines, with a thirty minute break, and it is one hundred dollars from me. You will get tips, too. I can tell. After that you can stay around and talk to the guests, if you wish. Many of the girls do.”
One hundred dollars plus tips? Wow. She checks her BodyClock schedule. With a few small adjustments, this could work. She feels a weight lifting from her mind. “Yes. Yes, I can be here.”
Petra eyes her. “I imagine you know that some of the girls are not only dancers here. Sometimes they may offer extra services. For a small fee there are rooms for such activities,” and Petra waves vaguely at the ceiling, “up there.”
She thinks of her adventures in testing, tasting, questing for the one. Would it be such a bad thing, wonders Kira, if they are attractive? If she is the one doing the choosing? A small Midwestern part of her wags its finger disapprovingly. Let’s take that as it comes, she thinks.
She grins at Petra. “We’ll see how it goes. I prefer to keep business and pleasure separate.”
“Very well.” Petra holds out her hand. “I see you at eleven thirty—Miss Magic.”
“Thanks. And, um, one more thing,” says Kira. A thought has crossed her mind. “I don’t ever want to be, ah, recognized here, if you know what I mean?”
“This is also no problem,” says Petra. “We have a number of girls with such concerns. Also some are married.” She rummages in her bag. She pulls out a small mask, a red domino style affair, and a dark cropped wig. “Try these on. I think they will suit you.”
Back in the gym, Kira is distracted and nervous, and she works out with renewed frenzy. ‘Dancing the pole’… does she really know what she’s getting into here? Routines without BodyClock? But a hundred bucks a night, plus tips, times three nights a week (she figures that can work with her schedule, though she’ll have to reorganize some of her sleep patterns) is a lot of money. But… what if? What if she messes up? What if the pole dancing screws up the near-perfect reflexes she’s developed? What if it affects her ratings? Thumbs down for sure.
Stretching on the mat, she has an inspiration, and subvocally scans the BodyClock library of routines. She is reassured to find that ‘pole exercise’ is remarkably mainstream. Women everywhere are doing it. There is even a small BodyClock sub-community dedicated to it.
She clocks into that interest group and fires off a quick question:
Hi BodyClockers!
I hear pole exercise is good for your—
What? Your boyfriend? Your wallet?
— core strength. Any routines to share?
Love, Miss Magic
There is a small pause before the messages start to come in. There are housewives, models, athletes, fitness enthusiasts, all sorts here. Remarkable, thinks Kira. The BodyClock community is so wonderful, she thinks; so beautiful; so diverse; so dedicated.
Hi Miss Magic! Nice to see you. In answer to your question, yes, it’s a fantastic exercise, great fun, and will keep you toned and flexible too. I do it three times a week now. Here’s a link to some starter routines. If you have BodyCon and HeadsUP—and I bet you do!—you’ll be an expert in no time at all! Love, FlexiChick.
She thanks FlexiChick and downloads the routines. There is always a way to improve.
In the wings, she stretches and bends, and runs through FlexiChick’s routines. She adds a few new tricks of her own to the programme. The little bar is full of men, all of whom have paid the fifty dollar cover charge, and all of whom are now showering money on vastly expensive drinks. She sees where the money is coming from, now, and she’s glad Petra’s place has class; there is no way anyone from college would be able to afford even to walk in the door.
She watches, evaluating, as one of the other girls writhes sinuously on a pole. The little screen by the stage says her name is Brandii—with two ‘i’s, a spelling that makes no kind of sense at all to Kira—that is, she corrects herself, to Miss Magic. Is the girl perhaps illiterate?
Brandii is a peroxide blonde, and quite toned, sees Kira, although nowhere near her own standard. Brandii’s main feature is her huge breasts, which stick out unnaturally, defying logic and gravity. Kira can see the tiny scars from surgery, there. Kira promises herself she will never do such a thing to her precious body. The men enjoy Brandii, though, and Kira can see she’s pretty flexible—she’s obviously done this a lot—and for a moment she even wonders if Brandii might be FlexiChick herself. She bats that thought away. A BodyClocker doesn’t pry into another’s secrets. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
The crowd are still clapping as Brandii leaves the stage. She grins at Kira—Miss Magic—triumphantly. There is a dangerous edge to Brandii, she thinks, and she scents a new type of competition. The thought makes Kira straighten her back, a new sense of purpose rising. Competition is the water in which she swims. She decides to key up BodyCon to record and share her routine with the BodyClock pole exercise community. They might have some suggestions for improvements, later.
“Follow that!” says Brandii triumphantly, patting her on the bottom as she passes.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” is what Kira doesn’t say, as Miss Magic steps onto the stage.