by Hawkwind
(05/07/03)

Another Friday night at Paddles, the "friendly S&M Club", and I find myself watching rather than playing.

A short man and a tall, willowy woman stand on the stage, the track-lighting showing oval on her skin. First he wraps ropes around her torso. Another layer pulls her arms behind her, which then anchors the third layer which compresses her tits. I look away to talk to the man behind the ice cream-bar counter -- his hat says DISTURBED in a jagged font -- and when I look back she's got rope attached from the overhead winch to rope around her ankles, waist, and the point between her tits. They only get more compressed as she's ratcheted into the air. Set to spinning slowly, the cocobolo wood paddle comes out and, smack...smack...smack -- as she turns, her ass slowly reddens to match her breasts. Clamps on her nipples, and then vampire gloves, and she's swinging, four feet off the floor.

Yes -- it's another Friday night at Paddles. Why is it that there's always someone standing between me and the action when something interesting is happening?

Looking in the side room, the one under the balcony. A large woman -- both tall and big -- sits next to the bondage bed, arranging the straps on a naked man standing next to her. She's dressed in "the uniform" -- black top, black pants. The difference is that these are soft, flowing cloth -- practical, not fetish. Unless, of course, that is your fetish. He's more elaborately "dressed" -- a harness sits over his face, subtly shaped so he looks like a pig. His arms are strapped behind him. He catches me looking and grins widely under the leather snout as she wraps yet another strap around him at the waist.

She's made a sort of barrier out of a pair of chairs that hold equipment. It holds the onlookers, as if at bay, unable to look away as he's tipped helplessly back onto the bed and slowly, ritualistically, strapped immobile to the eye bolts set at six inch intervals around the sides. The last thing she ties is his already engorged cock: three loops high on the scrotum, one from back to front and looped under the others, drawing down and separating the balls. Then comes a slow wrap up the length of shaft, over a loop already laid along it. The end is tucked under this loop and drawn down under the wrapping. The result is that his cock looks like a rope-end tied off -- "whipped" is the technical term. Only the head of his cock remains visible, drooling slightly.

Only now do the implements come out. Fur. Feathers. Sandpaper. A knife. He seems to quiver and squirm the same for all of it, his body constantly arching against the ropes.

So much is invisible here in the public space where so much is disallowed. Perhaps the girl in the air was having orgasm after orgasm each time the whip struck her back with such a soft slap. My insides certainly reacted each time the singletail cracked, those dangerous motions carefully placed into the air to either side of her. I can see her back as she walks past me now, getting two bottles of water at the counter and striding back to present one to him, quite prettily indeed. Her back is unmarked, with not even the faint rippled lines of the rope showing in the subdued light.

I sit in this corner, writing, while another couple sits across the main room, animatedly conversing despite the speaker pumping out the loud rhythm directly over their heads. Her blond hair, plaited into cornrows and then gathered into a long braid, is still long enough to reach her hips, gleaming golden against her black dress. He's a NYC clone: short-short hair, dressed in black, his teeth flashing in the black-light as he laughs. Between the pair, all that's visible are heads and hands.

I come here, partnerless, because I can do nothing else; my partner no longer wishes to join me in these sexual escapades. But these needs, once aroused, haven't gone away for me -- like a subliminal thirst, it colors my perception of everything, and the Topping I do doesn't feed the desire for the experience of submission

I dream of approaching someone, but "Do you top or bottom?" is as lame as "What's your sign?" Every man who looks interesting has a woman in tow. Others walk around with a lock around their necks, nervously jingling the key in their hand. I'm as forlorn as they are -- I just have the camouflage of shyness and the invisibility of weight.

There's a video running all the time. Some of them are pretty funny -- what is erotic about two scrawny, unhappy-looking women doing calisthenics? Their tits are so small they don't even bounce. Others are just odd: a woman dresses herself in one to five layers of rubber clothing -- it varies in each segment on the tape -- and lies on a bed looking at a catalog of rubber clothing. Or she sits on a chaise lounge on a beach, smoothing some sort of lotion on over the rubber.

In another, the girl kneels and leans back so a pair of hands -- unassociated with a person -- can run a silver vibrator over her crotch. Her tits -- clearly a D cup -- stick straight up from her chest like two grapefruits glued in place. They don't jiggle no matter what the rest of her body does. Another hand comes into view and squeezes them in turn; they resemble nothing so much as water balloons. If she reacted like a human being rather than a robot it might be interesting -- even hot.

This is turning out to be one night I'm glad that women don't have to pay to get in.

So maybe I look too busy, too standoffish. Or maybe too much like a tourist, in my light blue pants and blue-spectrum striped sweater. But no one's even said hello to me tonight except the owner and the social-club leaders.

Despite his lack of hair or beard -- two of my major fetish points -- the guy in head-to-toe black leather (including flat-brimmed hat and fingerless gloves) looks intriguing. But again, every time I look over toward him, he's deep in conversation with someone. I tried smiling at him as he walked past, but all I got was a stare. Obviously I'm doing something wrong.

Maybe if I walked around progressively undressed something might happen. But then, it doesn't seem to be working for that one cute guy -- his vest is gone, and now his silky white shirt is unbuttoned. Soon it will be gone altogether, and he'll still be pacing his route through the club, just as I've seen him do on other nights when I'm actually busy with someone.

It's a good thing I'm going out to dinner with someone, later. This is as good a place as any to spend the hours till midnight and her end-of-shift. And while she's not up for playing this time, it's nice to have the memories of her skin under my whips to set against my complete invisibility tonight.

Maybe I should have gone to Hellfire tonight.

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