Smoking really doesn't count if you do it when you're drinking. Really. At least that's what I tell myself when I'm sitting with a screwdriver in one hand and my third cigarette in 15 minutes in the other. Plus, it wasn't even my fault that I was here, at this club. Not that it wasn't enjoyable on some level; watching buff, manly men at the height of their manhood bumping, grinding and removing their clothes does have its own sort of quaint charm. But when your girlfriends all think that the way for you to get over your ex- is to take you to an establishment like this, it may be a good idea to get yourself a new set of girlfriends.

Ah, amateur night at The Sugar Shack. What rapture!

The emcee of the evening, an ingratiating guy with a close cropped haircut who went by the name of Scott, got up to announce the next "dancer".

"Ladies, and… well, Ladies!" Oh, he was so droll. He had a stack of 3x5 cards to read from, and it was obvious. "It is my pleasure to introduce the magnificent Dylan St. Michael! This is Dylan's first time dancing, so please give him a warm Sugar Shack welcome!" General squealing ensued. "Dylan comes to us all the way from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin! And ladies - he's single!!"

I smiled at De as she lit my fourth cigarette.

"So, isn't this great?!" Sally asked, with a little too much enthusiasm. "I mean look at him!" She pointed towards the stage at the blonde guy rising out of a prop coffin. He had a vaguely ruffly shirt that he was beginning to tear off, while the music of Bon Jovi swelled in the background.

"So, do you think he's gay?" I queried.

"Why do you always say that?" asked Nicole, exasperated.

"Why should he be straight?" I countered. Emboldened by the vodka, I delivered a play-by-play. "You'll see as he removes his shirt, he has no chest hair! And there he goes with the pelvic thrusts! Right on schedule!" De giggled and Sally rolled her eyes.

"Come on, you just need to learn how to have fun!" Sally instructed me.

"I have fun," I said defensively, "but not in front of lots of other people, and not with men who have to be paid to disrobe, who will show their goods to anyone who has a dollar, and not with men who obviously spend more time in the gym than they do reading books, and expanding their minds!"

"Oh, you can't tell me you wouldn't have a severe attraction to a guy based on his raw sexual magnetism and nothing else!"

I shook my head. "Of course I wouldn't! How can you commodify and objectify the body of a person you don't even know. I have to know something about a guy before I can desire him! We have to have conversations, debates - even arguments. I need intellectual stimulation before I can even look at a guy's body. Physical prowess does not impress me at all!" I insisted.

De cleared her throat loudly, and then quickly took another sip of her scotch. "I'm gonna lay you down, on a bed of roses," Mr. Bon Jovi sang thoughtfully.

"Oh, he's hooking his fingers in his waistband." I added, noticing Sally and Nicole's rapt attention to Dylan's movements.

"He's just teasing - he won't take off his pants until later on in the song." I drained my glass.

"How do you know?" teased Nicole, "How many of these strip shows have you seen?" I "accidentally" blew smoke in her face.

"Oh, come on - you've seen the last four guys do almost exactly the same routine - get up, pull off shirt, pull down pants, parade around the catwalk, have dollar bills stuffed in the crotch, go back. All the same.

"Watch," I intoned morbidly. But Nicole stayed enraptured as he took full advantage of the catwalks that surrounded us at eye level. Oh God. I noticed Sally making signals over my head, and the Fabio-wannabe lurched over to our table - on his hands and knees. He looked at me with all the subtlety of, well, an amateur male stripper (and the seductiveness of a wet sock, I might add) and started to pull his pants down, revealing a neon-colored butt-thong. I took that as my cue to stuff a couple of dollar bills into it, and hoped he'd flee. He did, but not fast enough as far as I was concerned.

"Ohmigod!" yelped Nicole "You could totally see his package. Did you touch it?! When you gave him the money?!" she giggled. I had no patience, and the music was getting louder.

"What, you mean his PENIS?!" Nicole had no problems with watching carbon copy smooth strangers taking off their clothes and waving their doodles at her, but oddly enough, had a hard time hearing the word "penis" in this setting. My volume must have shut her up, so I turned to De and continued talking.

"His boots were fake. You could tell close up. They were just regular shoes with extenders on them to make them look like knee boots. I saw the same thing with the cast of Les Miz." De nodded in agreement.

"I remember Doug wore them at Bristol that one year," she said, "but that was different - on the tilt-yard, women don't get as close a look at your footwear as in a strip joint."

"You and your boot fetish! Too much time at the Renaissance Faire, methinks." Nicole tried to ignore us, as she was too busy watching Stripping Vampire Man with his pants fully off, gyrating his tackle to and fro, to be concerned with my alleged boot fetish.

My next drink came, and I sipped it through the swizzle-stick. Finally, Mr. BonJovi stopped singing, and Dylan climbed dramatically back into his coffin.

"Really, those boots were totally fake."

Sally spoke up, "A guy that hot and that naked is inches away from you and all you can think about is his boots? You need to loosen up!"

"I am loose!" I insisted, forgetting that since the music had stopped, I no longer had to speak quite so loudly.

Nicole rolled her eyes and the emcee got up to announce the last stripper. Thank god. There are only so many times you can see the same body go up, sway seductively to A Very Specially Chosen Power Ballad, slowly unbutton his shirt, pull off his pants, and than bump and grind his way around the room.

"And our last amateur of the evening hails all the way from…" the emcee trailed off. Obviously someone hadn't filled out his 3x5 card completely, "Arcadia, it looks like!" Must have been amateur emcee night as well. "Ladies, give it up for… uh, the Dark Man!!"

The lights went down, and the curtains parted. There was silence, punctuated by the occasional awkward giggle. Damn, someone must have forgotten to cue up this guy's music. I looked around for some sign of a stage-hand to rectify the problem, but as I turned my head toward the stage, I thought I could see a figure standing with his back towards the audience. He didn't appear to be moving a muscle.

"Lights!" arose a drunken voice from the other end of the room. Still no lights. But I heard a faint crack, and as my eyes adjusted to the light, I could just start to make the figure of him out. My eyes strained and I saw he was clad head to toe in black, wearing a heavy black cloak and leather gauntlets. I'm a sucker for leather gauntlets. I leaned forward in my seat, intrigued.

I couldn't say how long he stood there, motionless, I don't think I blinked once though. Someone coughed, and in a simple and elegant movement, the man was suddenly facing the audience. From this angle, I could see he was clutching a smooth metal cylinder in one of his leather-clad hands. He held it close to his body and kept his shoulders hunched ever so slightly inward. I drew a sharp intake of breath, audible in the silent room, and though his body did not unfold, his eyes darted to mine. They were glowing and yellow and terrifying, but I could not look away.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Scott rise and advance toward the stage. But with a deft gesture of the Dark Man's hand, Scott's stool slammed sharply into the back of his knees, seemingly obeying the raw power emanating from this man.

The room gasped but went silent quickly as the Dark Man turned his red-rimmed eyes on them. I watched his shoulders move back as he evidently ceased to regard the emcee as a threat, but could notice no relaxation in his posture. He was hunched slightly forward as if to prepare for attack, his legs bent gently at the knees. They were hard to make out - his knees - as in addition to his long, hooded cloak, he was wearing voluminous pants, tucked just below the knee into leather boots.

My heart skipped a beat. They were real boots.

Against my better instincts, I sighed, and without moving his body, this Dark Man turned his face to me. This time I saw more than the yellow eyes. His face was red with black markings - or was that black with red markings - ophidian and menacing. He quickly alighted the catwalk and slowly began stalking my way. His hood dropped away from his head, and I counted six horns. No there were more. I tried to count them, but God help me, my bosom heaved as he got closer. When at last he stood in front of me, I was light-headed with lust.

His eyes bid me stand up, so I did. You just don't argue with eyes that look like fire. His hands leapt up to the collar of his cloak and with an economical movement, he undid the closure, and his cloak pooled about his boots on the catwalk.

I was having a very difficult time breathing, and I thought my knees would liquefy and I would be reduced to a quivering pile of organic compounds. He pressed a button on the cylinder, and a glowing red shaft exploded from one end, humming softly in a low pulse. To my prejudiced eye, it appeared to be a kind of sword, but the near-blinding red light reminded me of no weapon I have ever seen. It made the air around us crackle with electricity as his gaze penetrated mine in invitation. As gracefully as I could, I hopped onto the catwalk. He grasped my hand firmly as I wobbled up, and I told myself to breathe. He let go, and continued boring a hole through my soul with his eyes. I glanced down as the noise from the sword increased, and a second shaft of light shot from the other side of his sword. I took a step back, and he spun the sword above his head, turning, twirling, and spinning it, splitting our table neatly in half - but leaving it standing - with its impact.

Nicole squealed - in fear this time - and with another snap of his wrist, my glass flew to the edge of the table, spilling only a few drops of its contents. Before I could see what he was doing, he was somersaulting in mid-air, twisting his body so that he would land on his feet behind Sally, who promptly passed out. For De, sitting awed and quiet in her seat, he efficiently placed a napkin on the spilled vodka, caressing her cheek in the same gesture.

A smile played on my lips as he joined me on the catwalk. My eyes moved from his sword to his eyes, and I heard a low growl escape his lips, as he bared his teeth at me in a smile that held both threat and temptation. With his outstretched arms he offered me the sword, but even as I touched the cylinder, its powerful current warned me that this was one challenge I might not survive. I dropped my hands, and in a glance of understanding, he shut off the sword. It only took him one leap to clear the stage, and he was gone in an instant.

We don't really talk about that night. I can't remember the name of the ex- I was there to get over. Nicole's wandered out of our lives, Sally has a family. De and I can't recall what happened after the Dark Man left, only that we got home, and that he left his cloak. I keep it in the back of my closet, on a wooden hanger. I look at it sometimes - the hood is worn in the places where his horns were, and slightly frayed at the hem. I've tried it on a few times, but for some reason I can't explain, I always fear that I'm tempting the fates in that cloak. When I start to feel superior to my fellow human beings - that I am attracted to men strictly based on intellectual merits, I go back there and take a sniff of his cloak. It smells of sweat and leather. It smells of the ozone disturbed by his sword. And it smells a bit of vodka.

DISCLAIMER: This story is a work of fiction written in appreciation of Star Wars; to promote the franchise and to keep it alive. All characters and settings are copyright to Lucasfilm, Ltd. The rest is copyright to the author.