Confusion pulls you deeper in to the VIP Parlour.

"I'll just look around some," you tell Polly, and step around the wall into the lounge proper. Confusion is the closest thing a selfish, vapid asshole like you gets to curiosity. Attempting to dispel it, you can sometimes be driven to investigate a thing.

There are no less than a dozen kinds of chairs in the large, carpeted lounge room behind the dividing wall. Some of the chairs have USB ports and others have cup holders. Some are recliners, and some are wing chairs. None of the chairs have knee indents on the floor in front of them, though, which you have been getting used to in the nicer parts of the BJU.

You see clients of the VIP Parlour sitting all around the lounge. A middle-aged woman in a pants suit watches the news from a bar stool and sips a latte while another attendant in a shapeless smock of a blazer wipes the bar. There is a voluptuous woman with fake lashes and a bright yellow track suit talking on her cell phone in a massage chair in the corner. Then, a sleepy-eyed woman in pyjamas, with a paper cup of tea comes walking out of a sleeper room, and an attendant in grey hurries in after her to clean the room.

It's a lounge full of women, all of them very good looking, and all of them here to get away from blowjobs. You thought that was what it was but now you are sure. That's what it really is.

Fuck this. You turn around to run in terror from this anti-oasis, and you almost trip over one of the VIP Parlour attendants.

"Excuse me, sir! So sorry!" It's Mila, the tan girl from earlier.

"Um," is all you say. It's like saying "I should look where I'm going!" or "No, excuse me!" but it's dumber and it's easier to say while struggling to peer down into an impossibly unrevealingly dark neckline.

"Sir, are you f... finding everything okay?" Most of the women in the BJU who stutter or stumble over words, in your experience, are concerned, worried, or actually in shock. This one is holding back a snicker. "Would you like me to..." she bites her lip, "give you a tour?" You're not imagining this shit. She's making a joke for her own amusement and you aren't getting the punch line.

"No, you know what, Mila? I don't need any of this. What I need is a fucking blowjob. A wet, sloppy, hot, dripping, gakking blowjob! A blowjob Mila! A blowjob!"

"SIR!" she says, and then snorts and covers her face with her hand to hide her laughter. "Sir! We don't allow that kind of language in the Parlour, sir!" She squints and swallows some laughter, and then regains her posture and composure, and pulls a small glossy postcard from her pocket. She holds it out for you, you take it, and then she hurries away.

! VIETATTO ! VERBOTEN ! 禁じられた ! PROIBIDO !
NO blowjobs, fellatio, head, hoovers, brain, hummers, knob-gobbling...

The pamphlet goes on and on but you only recognize about half of the words. You are pretty sure it just means No BJs, though.

"What kind of fucking bullshit is this place?!" You toss the pamphlet on the floor. Moments later, an attendant in grey cleans it up.

You hear a woman's voice from a massage chair nearby. "Sir, could you lower your voice, please? I'm trying to relax," she says, saying the last few words really slowly, the way people do when you make them angry and they want to point out that they can tell you are severely dumb.

Looking back at the rest of the room, you see all eyes are on you now. The phone conversations, news watching, snacking, and everything have all stopped, and everyone is glaring at you. Everyone except the bartender, anyway, who is wiping the machines down and smiling to herself.

Seriously, fuck this. You look around for the woman who deigned to tell you to use your indoor voice. She's a smoking hot business woman in a flowing cream-coloured blouse tucked into a tight black pencil skirt. Her thick wavy brown hair is down around her shoulders and she is laid back in a massage chair with her feet up, her body jiggling a little here and there from the chair's vibrations. She is peering at you over her glasses and her eyebrows are raised as if she is waiting for your answer.