Being Amber Rhea

The two major events of last night involved me scraping up my leg while pole dancing at a sex club, and the police coming out to our apartment building at 2:00 a.m. These two things are not related.

We decided to go to a sex club to (here comes the big surprise) watch people fuck. I didn’t exactly have high expectations, as I had been to a sex club about 6 years ago and was underwhelmed to say the least. But, I thought, that was one night at one place; why not give it another shot? It might be fun and hot; and if not, well, at least we went, and we could laugh about it.

I did get my hopes up a little after talking to a friend who had been to a club called Trapeze about 3 years ago, and reported that it didn’t suck. And, according to their 1999-esque web site, they had a pole. (Side note: I do not recall the name or location of the club I went to ~6 years ago. It was somewhere in/around Atlanta, but that’s all I remember. It might not even exist anymore.)

So we went out there, and plopped down the $115 to get in ($50 membership + $65 door fee - they don’t waive the door fee on the night you buy your membership). They had a full buffet, and I’d heard that the food was really good, so the first thing we did was go get some food. And indeed, the food was awesome. Honestly, it was the highlight of the night. (Close second was a furtive blowjob we witnessed near the dance floor, but really, the mashed potatoes and broccoli still win in my mind.)

We sat at a table near the dance floor. There was really bad porn on two TVs, but fortunately the sound was muted. After we finished eating, I sat there waiting for the DJ to play a song that didn’t suck, and for annoying people to get their asses away from the pole so I could go up there and show them what’s up. Finally, I just decided to go up anyway even though I didn’t really like the song and this one couple would not move. So we went up there, Rusty stood on the “sidelines” so to speak, and I wiped the pole down with a napkin. This obviously wasn’t good enough, but I thought it might be better than nothing. Well, I ended up not being able to do a whole hell of a lot, because the pole was really slippery and dangerous. I tried a few spins and such, but for the most part I couldn’t get enough grip to do anything 100%. When I tried the fireball spin (Darcey will know what I’m talking about) I damn near fell off. Discouraged, out of breath, and bruised, I sat back down. Rusty said I did a great job but he could tell the pole was holding me back. Later, I noticed that I’d not only bruised the crap out of my legs, but they’re peppered with scrapes and cuts, too.

After I caught my breath, we decided we might as well go to the back area and try to see if we could watch people fucking. So far the clientele hadn’t exactly blown our skirts up, but we thought we should at least see what’s up.

The club was pretty clearly segregated into a “naked” and “non-naked” area, which annoyed me. And to go back to the part with the beds and stuff, you had to get naked or mostly naked. They had lockers, but they didn’t actually lock. That annoyed me too. Look, I don’t have a problem getting naked, but I don’t know these people; I’m not going to trust a bunch of strangers just because we all happen to be naked. But, still, we put our clothes in a nasty little locker, in a cramped locker room with a leaky shower (and some woman spilled her drink all over the floor right next to us), and wrapped threadbare towels around our waists. I kept my purse with me.

We walked through the double doors to the designated fucking area to find… not much fucking. Really, not any fucking. We walked around the whole place, and there was no fucking to be seen. A few old people had gone into one of the semi-private rooms and were groping each other, but I didn’t want to watch them fuck anyway. Mostly, people were just sitting around naked. WTF. Why do you go all that way and pay all that money just to sit around naked? You can do that at home. (Yes, you can have orgies at home too, but that’s a digression for later.) And most of the people were significantly older than us. I have nothing against people having awesome sex at any age, and indeed I intend to be having awesome sex until I’m seriously geriatric; it’s just that at this point in my life, if I had my druthers, those aren’t the type of people I’d like to watch fuck.

So, we stood in the corner for a minute or two, nonplussed. Some older men leered creepily. Finally we decided to just leave. So we got our clothes back from the nasty little locker and left.

I guess I’m a little disappointed, but not exactly surprised. However, we’ve decided to do a little more “research” and do a podcast about it, hopefully within the next few weeks. Since we have the three-month Trapeze membership (we didn’t have a choice), we decided we’ll go back on a Saturday night, and see if it’s any different. For one thing, single men aren’t allowed on Saturday nights. That might help create a less lecherous dynamic.

We also want to check out Club Venus (why do these places always have web sites that look like a bad mid-90s Geocities home page?) and see what it’s like. That might be the club I went to before, but I can’t remember. I don’t know of any other clubs that are still open (Velvet Heaven and 2Risqué closed; shame about the latter, they had an under-40 rule) and aren’t BDSM-themed or something. If you know of any others, let us know; but our podcast research may remain fairly limited in scope anyway, ’cause this shit costs money.

Later I want to write about why the whole “swinger” concept annoys me; but I’ll do that in a separate post, because this is already really long, and I have to talk about the person on the roof.

So, after coming home, we were lying in bed at around 2:00 a.m. or so. The lamp on the bedside table was on. Naturally, we were lying there naked. I was lying on my side, facing Rusty… we were relaxing and talking, and then all of a sudden he says, “Holy shit, there’s a person outside the window.” (When he was at the “there’s a…” part, I thought he was going to say something like “a ginormous insect on the bed.”)

I dove under the covers; I didn’t even look up to see the person. Rusty yelled, “What the fuck??” and apparently the guy ran off. I was scared and stayed under the covers. Rusty got up and called 911. He told the operator that there had been someone on the roof peeking into the window, and it looked like the guy was fiddling with the window as if he was trying to get in. (He wouldn’t have gotten very far… it’s like a 20-foot drop inside those windows.) So about 10 minutes later, a cop came out, and looked around the building and the roof, but didn’t see anyone. So that was that. We didn’t file a police report or anything. Oh and apparently the cop said something to Rusty about, “Most people have drapes.” (This was over the phone.) Excuse me?? For the most part, I was happy Rusty was dealing with cop and such, but I wish I had been on the phone at that moment. I would have pointedly asked exactly how us having drapes on those 20-foot high windows would have made it okay for someone to be creeping around on the roof at 2:00 a.m. A million other questions about this stupid non-sequitur spring to mind as well. I mean, also, I shouldn’t have been wearing that short skirt. And what was I thinking, walking through that part of town alone?

So anyway. That was our night. My leg is still sore from the shitty pole dancing. I’m pretty much over the “dude on the roof” incident now, and am just pissed more than anything. (Yes, we told our landlord; but you know how things have generally been with her. Strained, to say the least.) We’re thinking it would be nice to have drapes up on those windows, but we’ll definitely have to hire a professional to install them, because there’s no way in hell either of us is getting up there.

Stay tuned for, eventually, a podcast about our experiences with Atlanta sex clubs. And I’ll also write a post about the whole “swinger” thing, and the concept of sex clubs in general.