I nodded, offering no reply, and made a move to the steps that led down to my seat.
“Enjoy,” she murmured to my back.
“Thank you,” I returned, not glancing at her when I did.
I moved to my seat, stowed my clutch, took a sip of my drink and then pulled out my phone to check email and otherwise kill time while the women finished their scene.
The club, obviously, was a sex club. Intensely private and relatively secret (“relatively” because they had to be known to attract members), it was independently owned.
All players in all scenes were freelance, auditioned and paid well.
There was a member section which had an entry from the street, but, like VIPs, all members needed to pass a vetting process, pay a yearly membership fee but also pay an hourly or nightly viewing fee. Non-VIPs could show when they wished without a booking, paid for their drinks at the bar and sat in a common viewing area with their brethren.
The scenes were played out on the upper floor. The lower floor for non-VIPs was simply a nightclub. There was music, liquor, dancing and men and women behind screens performing dances that hinted at the real thing, that real thing being something that could be found beyond security up a set of hidden stairs.
Obviously, there was also the VIP section, which had its own entry and a higher level of service, providing much more discretion and vastly superior accommodation.
The owners paid Benito Valenzuela for protection and assistance in making certain the club was not discovered by law enforcement.
This protection was at one time paid to Marcus Sloan. Seven years ago, in the days when Sloan was still acknowledging my father’s existence, he’d sold that protection to us. This was why I knew of the club.
In a brutal takeover that meant we lost one man and two more were injured, three years ago, Valenzuela had taken over.
After that, I continued my membership because it continued services I appreciated at a caliber that was more than acceptable. I did this even if the club was under Valenzuela’s umbrella.
Benito Valenzuela was not the most couth individual on the planet. In fact, he was one of the foulest people I’d ever met. He reminded me of my grandfather, including the fact he’d convinced himself he was the opposite of vile when he was not.
My father and my sister didn’t know I continued to belong. Neither would be pleased, though it would be Dad, as usual, whose displeasure would be communicated in a way that I would have no choice but to desist doing something he did not like.
But in my life where I had very little I enjoyed and absolutely nothing I looked forward to, the club served a variety of purposes.
It was a secret defiance to my father, and even my mother, the former who would be furious if he knew I went there, the latter would be horrified.
It was also mine.
Mine.
Georgie didn’t go there. Dad didn’t. None of our men went for fear of Dad’s (or Georgie’s) displeasure. And certainly none of my legitimate colleagues or acquaintances went there.
So I could go and not run into anyone who encroached in my life.
A life that was less of a life and more of a world.
I understood there was a real world. I knew it existed beyond the bounds of the world in which I lived. But the boundaries of my world, or more aptly put, the bonds, meant it seemed alien to me. There but not there. On the cusp of my existence but as unattainable as Mars.
This meant the club—what I did there, what I saw, what it made me feel, the time I spent, everything there—was mine. Just mine.
I didn’t have that. Not in any other part of my life. In truth, my father had only just four years ago stopped approving every clothing and accessory item I bought to wear in the pursuit of Shade business. Although I was now free to clothe myself, that freedom was significantly lacking in every other aspect of my life.
Further, I liked watching. There were some scenes that did nothing for me, like the current one playing out. There were other times nothing caught my attention.
And there were times when a scene or a player did catch my attention.
But the bottom line was that the club still was a place I could be that was my own. I could enjoy a drink, relax, and for a few hours be away from everything and just be…me.
And if there was a scene I liked, it would set me up for much more pleasurable things later.
Of course, I was giving myself these pleasurable things. But pleasure was pleasure and I didn’t have a lot of that either so I was happy to take what I could get.
As the cunnilingus was unfortunately reciprocated, making the scene last longer than expected, I discovered I didn’t have much email and therefore enjoyed the mindlessness of several games of solitaire on my phone when the dimness of the window and the lack of sounds caught my notice.
I looked to the window to see they’d darkened it in preparation for the next scene just as I heard the door behind me open.