The machine asked if I needed more time. I pressed no and returned to the table. Jake was with a woman. The sight of her, swaying in front of him where I belonged, made me swallow hard over a choke. I sat and she swayed in my direction, too. Jake said, “You can touch her,” and then, “I want to see you touch her.” The woman came close and I touched her with only my fingertips.

“You’re fine, baby,” she said and straddled my chair. I put my hands on her waist.

Jake passed me the vial and I snorted. He passed me a wad of dollar bills and I fed them to the dancer’s G-string with care, and then, with less of it. She put her nose in my neck like she was kissing me there. A simulated gesture, but it did something for Jake. He leaned to my other ear, fit it in his teeth. The song wound down.

“Thirty for another,” the dancer said.

“We’re good, baby,” I said and she dismounted. Jake tipped her, a new song began, mean and big-beated. He said, “Fuck that was hot,” and took more coke, dipped the spoon again for me. “Now I want to see you with other guys,” he said as I bumped. “I want to see you fuck the whole world.”

IN THE MORNING Jake called for a late checkout. I woke to the sound of him, thanking the front desk clerk, hanging up the phone.

“Morning, baby,” he said to me and stood, started moving around, packing up.

“Hey,” I managed through the anger darting around inside me, a fighting fish in its miniscule bowl. I felt dramatic about it and searched my mind for its source. After the club, Jake had fucked me sweetly, like he knew he should reassure me I was enough for the time being, no others needed. But that was it, the anger was on behalf of the others, the babies, the women from the club. Pointless, I thought, to feel anything on their behalf, condescending. The strippers were just doing their jobs; sex work was a choice and should be decriminalized, normalized. This was the feminism that empowered me, too.

On the drive back to Los Angeles, we passed Jake’s vape back and forth.

“Just stoned,” I said when he asked what I was thinking. But I was still thinking about the club, what Jake had said in the drunk dark—now I want to see you with other guys. Sex positivity meant I shouldn’t judge his polyamory either. But I had planned to use him, and to use him I needed him to want only me, only for himself, an object of his own to show the world, but never let them have. Somewhere in this game, I had already fucked up.