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

One night, the couple I used to babysit for came into the club. I'd always suspected the Hensons were swingers. When I worked for them as a dead-eyed high school senior, they would come home around dawn and compulsively flirt with me, chatting until the coke burned off. I'd be scraping myself off the sectional where I'd fallen asleep watching TiVo, and they'd be blocking the doorway with big, flashy grins. They held each other in the way of prom couples: the man behind the woman with his arms around her waist.

Did you have fun with the twins tonight? they would ask me. I'd say the twins were asleep. Good, they'd say, but did you have FUN? We want you to have FUN! They wouldn't let me leave until I said that I did. Then they would walk me to my car and rub my shoulders while I tried to find my keys. Mr. Henson wore those running shoes that outline your toes. Loosen up, they'd say in eerie unison. Life's short, yanno?

When I saw them at the club, there was none of that friendliness. They locked eyes with me from across the room and froze. The woman wore a gold lamé dress so tight I could see the egg-sized bulge of her pubic bone. After a beat, I waved; they waved back. They were being led into a VIP room with Veronique. She waved too, a bit aggressively. Have fun, I mouthed to the trio, then kept bouncing to mashups.

Did I feel a flash of jealousy that they had chosen Veronique over me? I'd always thought they had a thing for me, a teeny crush born of convenience. Still, I couldn't blame them. I'd pick Veronique for a private dance too. She had cushy breasts like those teddy bears you win at the fair. She smelled like crème brûlée.

* * *

I called Simon the following afternoon. I'd slept late, then dragged myself to 7-Eleven for a jumbo iced coffee and a pack of white powdered donuts, which I ate in bed with chopsticks (a trick I'd learned from a Korean YouTuber to avoid sticky fingers) until I couldn't procrastinate any longer.

He picked up after the first ring. Howdy, he said.

Howdy.

Long night?

I feigned a laugh. Yup.

I have certain tastes, he said. I had to hand it to him: he got right to the point. You might call them kinky.

That's good, I said dumbly.

Is this something you cater to?

Sure. I felt like I was being honest. At that point in my life, most things seemed kinky, kinky here meaning specific, hushed, and charged with weird light. I'd already had my fair share of foot dudes at the club. They were well regarded by most dancers, paying for VIP rooms just to rub our feet; we got to take off our Pleasers and shoot the shit for an hour. The ones I'd encountered had been mousy, demure, cowed by the weight of desire. They wore their fantasies like girdles, an everyday secret. It must have felt good to finally exhale, alone in a room with a beautiful girl. That was our job at the club, or so it seemed to me then: to make men feel OK about whatever moved them. Big nipples, knee socks, monkeyish toes—if it makes you feel good, I'm your girl. Take a load off, settle in. What could Simon possibly want, I reasoned, that would shock me?

* * *

When things were slow on the floor, I liked to duck into the locker room and study the clipboard. To me it was like poetry, this ever-changing list of all the girls on that night, including those who had flaked. Angelina, Kitty, Buttercup. I tried to memorize them all. When I was a child at playdates and we saw a pretty girl on TV, we would shout, I'm her! It was a race to claim the best girl for yourself, your future ghost, your big-tittied analogue. Picking a name felt similar to me, an act of intrapersonal voodoo, earnest and raw. Who could make the whole world bend to her? Scarlet, Candy, Foxy, Grace?

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.