Page 137 of Spiced!

“He’ll be back for it,” Chase managed, wheezing. “He made a commitment. They might’ve bonded.”

Tyler, having made his position on the pole clear, returned to center spotlight and transitioned into what could only be described as a go-go-adjacent sequence. His arms flew above his head, while his hips moved in a circular gyration.

Then “It’s Raining Men” began, and the last semblance of order devolved.

“He’s doing me . . . to ‘It’s Raining Men’ . . . and he’s straight!” Adrian said, watching with the fascinated horror of someone encountering their reflection in a funhouse mirror.

“He’s doing his version of you,” Benji said.

“He’s doing what he thinks I look like from the audience,” Adrian said, his horror growing.

“Is that what you think you look like from the audience?” I said.

Adrian turned to look at me, his mouth agape. “Of course not.”

Tyler had added what appeared to be a hair toss to the routine, which was complicated by the fact that Tyler’s hair was approximately half an inch long, which meant the toss was more of a neck commitment than a hair event. Still, he deployed his toss with the full conviction of a man who had longer hair in his imagination.

“ADRIAN,” Tyler called, pointing. “I LEARNED THIS FROM YOU.”

“YOU DID NOT,” Adrian called back.

“THE ARMS LIKE THIS—” Tyler demonstrated the arms, looking more like one of those blow-up creatures car lots used to attract attention than a dancer.

“THOSE ARE NOT MY ARMS.”

“THESE ARE SO YOUR ARMS.”

Tyler pivoted into what appeared to be the emotional climax of the performance. The disco track dipped into a dance remix of “Let’s Get it On,” causing Tyler to produce a single long-stemmed plastic rose.

Where it had been was unclear. How it had survived the Speedo situation was also unclear.

He held the rose between his teeth and did a slow turn. The room saw the back of the Speedo again and screamed again, harder, because somehow they had forgotten about FIVE HOLE and its reappearance was a fresh event.

Finn made the whale sound again.

“Still fine,” he said to Chase, preemptively.

“You’re really not,” Chase managed through gasps.

Tyler, rose between his teeth, executed a slow, dramatic dip toward the floor that got approximately three-quarters of the way down. He stopped, hung there in the comedic pose of a man whose body had opinions about this idea, and then began the return journey.

“He’s not coming back up,” Jacks said.

“He’s coming back up,” Skyler said.

Indeed, Tyler came back up.

Slowly.

With effort.

And with the rose still in his teeth and GOAL glittering in the spotlight.

Then he took the rose out of his mouth and ran it up his leg, across his GOAL, up his happy trail to his right nipple, then offered it to Skyler.

Skyler looked at the rose, looked at Tyler, then looked at the room.

“I hate you,” Skyler said as he took the rose.