Excerpt from Soft Core by Brittany Newell, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

A man materialized by the bar, nursing a seltzer. It was 11:45 p.m., neither early nor late by club time. He wore a rust-colored sweatshirt and baggy pants, which didn't mean he wasn't rich. Rich men lived by different rules. He waved me over, scooped me up, and put me on his knee. He looked like my middle school math teacher.

Hey, baby, he said. He sounded unconvincing.

Funny, I said, because that's my name.

He acted like he hadn't heard me. I'm Simon. How'd ya like to make some money?

Up close, he was clean. Clean as a baby. His clothing was ratty, but the squares of skin I could see—his wrists, his throat—gleamed. His body reminded me of a bar of Dove soap. He needed a haircut. I smiled in a way I hoped was beguiling. Money is nice.

He gave me his card, which was actually an envelope on which he'd written a phone number. I folded it up and tried to fit it in the strap of my shoe. I'd seen seasoned strippers keep their money there, but mine always seemed to fall out (chuckling businessmen helped me gather it up, patting me on the rump and calling me klutzy; once I dropped my money bag and a drunk dad called me butterface until the bartender gently corrected him: I think you mean butterfingers…).

Call me, Simon said, emptying his glass. I've got a gig for you. He sounded congested. I felt disappointed until I noticed the hundred he'd slipped under his glass.

* * *

My sleep schedule was totally fucked by the club. It had never been consistent, but now it was doomed. I would get home at 4:00 a.m., fizzy and erect as a trick birthday candle. Since the breakup I'd been staying in Dino's guest bedroom. It had an en suite bathroom and Murphy bed. Counting my ones hopped me up even more. I would empty my money bag and make stacks of bills, big fat beautiful stacks like sub sandwiches. I did the thing from the movies where I covered my bed in dollars and fell backward into them like autumn leaves. I got a bill in my mouth and it tasted like ass, reminding me of something the house mom, Cookie, had said on my first night at the club: There's nothing in this world more dirty than money. She was eating Cup O' Noodles, sitting on her exercise ball in a somehow magisterial way. While we changed in and out of neon bikinis, she always wore the same Juicy Couture sweatsuit and butt-toning sneakers. She had a little desk in the corner covered with inspirational quotes she'd printed off the internet.

Name one thing, she'd said, more dirty than money.

Men? joked Dallas. She had infamous black hair that fell to her knees, longer even than mine. When she went upside down on the pole, her hair unfurled beneath her and pooled on the stage. I didn't feel envy; I felt, as we all did, a soft awe.

Cookie didn't laugh. She slurped up her noodles with grave, weathered eyes. No, she said. Wrong answer.

* * *

It was a trip to be constantly surrounded by beautiful women. I'd had many jobs before stripping: bartender, waitress, overpaid babysitter, Red Bull promoter, test subject at UCSF (they filmed me while I slept for a month and I still don't know why). None had required me to be in the company of innumerable babes—quite the opposite, really. I felt lucky each time I walked into the locker room, shy and alert as a foreign exchange student. It wasn't that I felt attracted to the other dancers—that would have been easier to process—but that I felt unworthy. I had no illusions about my status with men: I was fresh meat, a 7/10 at my finest, the friend of a friend of a friend. The most marketable thing about me was that I was new and white. Our club had a bleak reputation for keeping the roster of dancers 75 percent white. That's why I've never been there before, Dino chuckled. I was hired immediately and given good shifts because the manager owed Dino a favor.

Excerpted from Soft Core by Brittany Newell. Copyright © 2025 by Brittany Newell. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.