Episode 04: A Stripper's Fare, Doubled

All characters are 18 or older. Fiction.

Episode 04 has the best cold open in the season and the guide knows it: a dancer in a dressing room with one sock on, counting tip notes into a shoe, telling the camera that the fare is eighty and it is eighty because he is tired. Then the man with the briefcase says the camera is coming out, and the fare doubles, and the boy says yes so fast he surprises himself. The Angel of Bogota episodes are full of boys who take their time. This one does not.

Julian is twenty-five and dances four nights a week at a club off Calle 85, which is not the club the tourists think it is, and he will tell you so. He is tall and lean and has a laugh that carries, and he talks the entire time he dances because the talking is half the act: asking your name, forgetting it, asking again, telling you about his mother, about his ex, about the cost of a taxi at three in the morning.

Watch the uncut tape of this scene → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

The man comes in on a Tuesday, which is the worst night, and sits at the end of the bar with a glass of rum and no ice and watches without pretending not to. He does not clap. He does not call anyone over. When Julian finally comes to him at half past two, he says, "You are tired."

"I am very tired," Julian says. "I have been tired since 2019."

"Sit down."

See what the camera actually caught → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"I am not allowed to sit with customers."

"You are not sitting with a customer. You are sitting with a man who is about to pay for a taxi."

So Julian sits. Up close the man is stocky and calm and smells of cardamom and cheap rum, and there is a black briefcase at his feet and a phone on a small gimbal on the bar, and he does not once look at the stage.

Open the full Angel of Bogota episode → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"My shift is over in ten minutes," Julian says. "I have eighty pesos for the taxi and the driver always wants a hundred at this hour because of the roadworks."

"Then I will take you."

"You have a car?"

Stream the uncut version (18+) → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"I have a car."

Julian looks at him for a second, and then he laughs, because he has been doing this long enough to know what a ride home costs and what it does not.

The car is a dark sedan, clean, with a faint smell of cardamom and something older underneath it. Julian talks the whole way. He talks about the club, the manager who takes a cut of the tips, the man on Sundays who cries. The driver listens and says almost nothing, and Julian finds that restful in a way he would not have predicted. At the door of his building in Teusaquillo he says, "This is me. Thank you. I can give you the eighty."

The video behind this story → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"Keep the eighty." The man turns off the engine. "Two hundred thousand for the rest of the night."

"The rest of the night," Julian repeats.

"You, and the camera. My face stays out of it. You say stop, I stop, the money is still yours. That is the whole arrangement."

See the hour the camera kept → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

Julian leans on the car door and looks at the phone on the gimbal and then at the man, and he feels the old calculation run through him, quick as a card trick. Two hundred thousand is four nights of tips. Two hundred thousand is the electricity and the phone and the rest of the month.

"Double it," he says, "if the camera is out."

The man's eyebrows go up a fraction. It is the most expression Julian has seen him make all night. "Double."

Watch the uncut tape of this scene → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"I do not do film for free." Julian's chin is up. "Eighty is the fare. A hundred and sixty if you want the door open and the light on. That is how it works."

The man looks at him for a long moment, and then he opens the briefcase on the passenger seat, and Julian sees the money inside it, and something in his stomach turns over and settles.

"Four hundred," the man says. "For the camera. And I want the light on."

See what the camera actually caught → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

Julian's flat is on the fourth floor and has one room, a kitchen in an alcove, and a bed that he makes, which is unusual for him, and a mirror on the wardrobe door. He turns on the lamp and the overhead light both, and the room goes bright and hard-edged, and he feels the old stage feeling come back, the good one, the one where being looked at is the whole point.

"Where do you want me," he says.

"On the bed. Take your time. You are good at being watched."

Open the full Angel of Bogota episode → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"I am excellent at being watched."

He is. He strips like he is being paid by the minute, which he is, and he does it with commentary, because silence has never been his friend. He tells the camera his name, his age, the neighbourhood, the price of the taxi. The man stands by the wardrobe with the gimbal in his hand and follows him, and does not laugh at the jokes, but his mouth is doing something that is almost a smile.

"Now you," Julian says, and the man sets the phone on the dresser, angled at the bed, and takes off his clothes without ceremony, and Julian stops talking.

Stream the uncut version (18+) → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

The man is thick and heavy and curved up against his belly, and he is in no hurry at all, and Julian, who is used to being the one in control of a room, finds the ground shifting under him. The man comes to the bed and puts one hand on Julian's chest and pushes him back, and Julian goes back.

"You talk," the man says, "until you cannot."

"That might be a while."

The video behind this story → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"We will see."

It is a while. The man uses his mouth first, and he is thorough and unhurried and does not stop when Julian's hips jerk, just pins them with one forearm across his stomach and keeps going until Julian's talking has narrowed to a stream of half words and then to nothing. Then the lubricant, and two fingers, and the man's other hand in Julian's hair, not pulling, just holding.

"Ask," the man says.

See the hour the camera kept → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"Please."

"Ask properly."

"Please. I want it. I want you to."

Watch the uncut tape of this scene → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

He is slow about it, and the curve of him is a thing Julian feels in his throat. Julian's legs go around him and his heels dig into the man's back and the rhythm never changes, never hurries, and the room is very bright and very quiet except for the two of them. The mirror on the wardrobe shows Julian's own face and he watches it for a second and then has to look away.

Afterwards the man lies still for exactly as long as it takes to breathe twice, and then he is up. He dresses with the same unhurried competence. He counts four hundred thousand pesos onto the dresser beside the phone and then, after a moment, adds another hundred.

"The extra is for the light," he says. "You were right. It is worth more."

See what the camera actually caught → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

Julian laughs, flat on his back, one arm over his eyes. "You are a strange man."

"Yes."

"Will you be at the club on Tuesday?"

Open the full Angel of Bogota episode → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

The man picks up the briefcase. "Maybe," he says, and he is at the door, and then he is on the stairs, and Julian listens to him go all the way down before he gets up to lock it. He does not come back on Tuesday. The Angel of Bogota never does.

The trailer stops here. The episode does not.