As I reclined against Andre’s chest, his arms encircled me and I felt all my misgivings fade away. I’d forgotten how it felt to be held by him, but memories started flooding back, and I sank into him further and sighed.
“Tell me something that would surprise me,” he challenged, “something that I wouldn’t believe.”
I thought for a moment and then recalled where I was and what I was doing not five months earlier and I began to tell him a story…
Little did I know, slipping on my glittery silver heels, where the evening would take us. I was thirty years old and in Brisvegas celebrating another thirtieth birthday of a friend, with friends, and friends of friends.
The mid-February night was balmy. Dinner was eaten - I cannot remember where but it was near the water - and then we ventured to an Eagle Street bar where I ordered a cocktail with lychee liqueur and drank it with enthusiasm.
There were about eight of us, all dressed up but not quite sure where to go. We talked amongst ourselves, brainstorming what we might do next in a city I’d never been out in before. Stay here? Nightclub? Dancing? A different bar? I threw in an unorthodox suggestion - “sex show” - and shrugged my shoulders. I had heard from a colleague back home that such things existed: places you could go to watch people have sexual intercourse on a stage in front of you. My idea seemed to capture everyone’s attention, so we asked a passing waiter. He was taken aback, of course, but dutifully went to seek out information for us, returning a short time later to let us know that there was an adult shop a bit further down the road that might have something for us.
We finished our drinks and trotted off, in our heels and evening wear, makeup, hairstyles, and carefully chosen accessories, down the road and found that long and narrow adult shop. A flyer thumbtacked to a noticeboard down the back alerted us to the existence of Mike’s Place. Saturday nights were for couples and women only. If we had wanted to mingle with couples, men and other women, we had missed the chance by twenty-four hours. It was a swingers’ club.
Having been nominated to phone the venue (we had to call ahead), I dialled the number on the flyer and explained to the receptionist that we were eight women looking for a new and different experience in the city. She gave me the address and we squeezed into a couple of cabs and made our way to the warehouse with excited trepidation. We paid our $20 cover charge (men pay four times as much and have the added expense of a $100 annual membership fee) and were given a tour of the premises by a short young woman with long blonde hair. Let’s call her Courtney.
Courtney led us around the converted warehouse, from the reception area into a bar area with billiard tables on one side and tables and chairs on the other. Large screen televisions dotted around this open-plan space proffered erotica of all persuasions: writhing bodies, sex toys, solo, couples, threesomes, orgies, billowing white curtains, and crystalline pools. Then it was through a doorway and up a narrow staircase to the - ahem - exhibitionist room, where wall-to-wall beds gave a fairly clear indication of how the night would evolve in this part of the club. Back downstairs we were shown through to the spa room, which smelt strongly of chlorine, while a corridor to the right lead to a series of more private rooms for non-exhibitionists.
I had never called myself a voyeur, but I found myself spending most of my time in the exhibitionist room once the evening got into full - pardon the pun - swing. I could smell the sex in the air as I sat on a sofa watching the scene unfold. At least four couples stripped to nakedness and positioned themselves across the beds. The young and the middle-aged, the overweight and the thin, the tanned and the pale, the plain and the beautiful, blonde, brunette, redheads, man-woman, woman-man-man, woman-woman-man, woman-woman, but no man-on-man action. Perhaps there was a different not-Mike’s-Place for that somewhere else in the city.
“No, thank you, I’m here to observe tonight,” I politely told one couple who approached me as I sat in otherwise silent observation and reflection. They were a younger couple, perhaps a little older than me. She was beautiful with a narrow face and wide hips, he was handsome with crooked teeth and blue eyes. They took a few minutes to tell me their experience with swinging. (Later, one of the women who made up our party of eight would disappear into a private room with this younger couple to do things to each other that I could only imagine.) The woman retrieved a vibrating sex toy that flickered with integrated lighting - red, purple, green, blue - and positioned herself at the far end of the vast bed, where she reclined and started to pleasure herself. Not one of the other swingers could maintain their concentration - oh, look, shiny thing! - and they eventually migrated to her side, surrounding her and contributing to her pleasure in other ways.
Our night eventually drew to an end and the three of us who remained made our way downstairs and to a nearby taxi rank, first having to navigate a group of young men who were clearly trying their luck at closing time. But it was breakfast the following morning which proved most enlightening, as we discussed the improvements we would make if we were to run a swingers’ club, all while eating scrambled eggs. We’d certainly do away with the over-chlorinated spa and instead have a series of shower rooms complete with handrails and seats and other support structures to keep things interesting, and the exhibitionist room would have a central bed with 360-degree viewing.
Oh, and the carpet would definitely have to go.
When I had finished my story, Andre’s expression gave away his shock. It seems that not only had I temporarily forgotten how it felt to be embraced by him, but I had also forgotten his conservative upbringing.
He cleared his throat and offered his version of a surprising tale, “I haven’t seen any of the Harry Potter films.”
