My Sadomasochistic Seder By Mark Jordan If I was an ethnographer, my inventory of the items at my first Seder might have gone something like this: one piece of romaine lettuce, a roasted shank bone, two celery sticks, one ten inch long pink dildo (two inches thick), an egg, a small metal testical vice, a sweet, lumpy paste, that looked and tasted like concrete, one ten foot long black whip, grated horseradish, a large ripe California orange, and four leather restraint straps. Of course all of these things didn’t appear of the Seder Plate, but they were all there on the day of my first Jewish holiday experience. But first, let’s back things up a bit. For all you non-Jews (including myself), what exactly is a Seder? Based on the list mentioned, you might think that this is some sick, twisted Jewish holiday in which you get to pour matzo ball soup on naked bodies while cavorting around in a relentless orgy. Unfortunately it’s not. Not usually. Hopefully. The Passover Seder is a Jewish holiday in which family and friends come together to remember the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. During the meal the guests eat six different food items symbolizing this story, pausing to say prayers before each item is eaten. The Passover “Seder” is the plate on which these items are arranged. Because I’m not Jewish (despite popular belief) I’d never been to one of these events, so when my friend Amber invited me to her friend’s Seder, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to gain some insight into an important cultural celebration. “The girl who’s throwing it is really sweet, plus there’s going to be lots of interesting people there. And afterwards we might go to a club,” Amber told me. “A club? For the Seder?” I asked. “Not exactly for the Seder, but I have some friends that are coming that might want to go to a place for fun afterwards.” It seemed a little unusual to me but I agreed, and we met at her friend’s apartment in Santa Monica. When I arrived a small group of guests were watching “Moses” on TV. “Let my people go!” he shouted and the group laughed and clinked glasses of wine. “My friend’s a ‘Reformed Jew,’” Amber explained, noting my glance. “A reformed Jew? Does that mean she’s a Christian?” “No.” Amber rolled her eyes. “It just means that they are more liberal with some of the Jewish traditions. They just have a more modern interpretation of Judaism.” “Ah, got ya.” I’m not really familiar with how most Seders go, but I guess one of the more Reformed practices at our dinner was the fact that our host, who was female, led the meal and the prayers. To start, each of us got a glass of wine, some matzo ball soup. Then, as our host explained the significance of each of the food items on the Seder plate we would say a prayer and pass the tray containing the items around the table for a small portion. For instance, my host passed around a purple paste, explaining that it signified the bitterness and hardship of the Jewish people in Egypt. Failing to notice that the item’s metaphoric significance directly corresponded to its taste, I took a large scoopful of the purply paste and dumped it in my mouth, gagging almost instantly. It took me a second to realize that this purplish crap was actually horseradish, and I discreetly “wiped” my mouth, spitting out into my napkin. Overall food at a Seder is a pretty bland (or bitter) affair. Which I guess is really the point. You don’t want to be eating foie gras while you are remembering the hardship of your ancestors! I suppose it’s just the lot of religious food in general to be unappetizing. The Eucharist in the Catholic Church of my youth always seemed to taste like paper to me (why can’t the body of our Savior be sweet and savory?). However, our host’s position as a Reformed Jew was somewhat advantageous for my enteric nervous system because I did receive one sweet California orange. “This,” our host said “is particularly important. Years ago a young woman asked a rabbi why women could not lead the prayers during Seder. ‘Because,’ he responded, a women leading the prayers would be as unacceptable and strange as an orange on a Seder plate.’ So,” our host held out the only appetizing looking thing I had seen thus far, “acknowledging women and their progress in spiritual and secular life, we now include an orange on the Seder plate.” Excellent, I thought, ignoring the greater sociological implications of the orange and taking several slices from a tray. Finally, something that I know will taste good! In all fairness though the wine was great and the matzo ball soup was pretty nifty. In fact, I almost went back for a third helping of the matzo ball when my friend stopped me. “Don’t do it. That stuff sticks like concrete in your stomach. You’ll have a bad time later if you eat more.” I felt a rumble as my stomach went to work making a slurry matzo concrete, and I put down my fork, not wanting to take a matzo crap. I was pretty full anyway, and I settled into conversation with the other people at the table. Because our host was in law school, many of her guests were also classmates. I had just dropped out of law school and their conversation about memos, statutes, grades, casebooks and exams stuck in my brain as a cold grey lump, as indigestible as matzo ball soup. They were certainly nice, but I really didn’t feel like stepping back into this competitive world in my leisure time, and as they started to turn to the tedious topics of GPA and class standing, it only seemed to confirm my decision, and I gradually tuned them out. Thankfully, Amber drew me into a conversation with her “gay friend Todd.” “So do you want to go to the place tonight,” Amber interrupted as I was talking to Todd about nightlife in Los Angeles. “I don’t know,” Todd said, patting his stomach. “I’m pretty full.” “C’mon it’s a new one you would like.” “I’m a little tired too,” responded Todd, “and I have to do a lot of driving.” “Yeah,” I agreed, “I don’t know if I want to go to a gay club tonight.” “No, not a gay club,” said Amber leaning in conspiratorially. “It’s an S & M club,” Amber whispered the sibilant “s” softly across the table, “You know, ‘Sadomasochism.’” “What?” I said, having almost the same reaction as when I had eaten the horseradish. “Well, there is this club that is right by LAX. I’ve never been there but my friend Kelly works there.” “You have a friend that works at an S & M club?” I said a little too loudly, turning the heads of some of the guests who had gone back to watching Moses part the Red Sea on the TV. “Sort of,” Amber laughed. “It’s actually kind of interesting because she works at a bio-lab doing research during the day, and then some nights she’s has taken up working at the S & M place.” “For fun?” “For fun and for money. She’s kinda into that stuff. And she has lots of clients.” I scratched my head. “When you say ‘clients,’” and here I did lower my voice, “do you mean that she’s some sort of chains and whips bondage prostitute—like a sex slave?” I served myself another helping of matzo ball soup, too entranced in the conversation to pay real attention to what I was eating. “No, she just sort of lets men spank her a little, nothing serious. She wears these sexy outfits and just lets them tap her a little with a paddle. But there are girls there that bind guys and beat them up a little bit. Some guys get off on that.” “Amber, I can’t believe that we’re talking about some girl binding men for sexual pleasure at the freakin’ Passover table.” “Well this is a festival about freedom and liberation,” chimed in her gay friend. “What’s more liberating than having your balls tickled by a French tickler” I shrugged. He had a point. “Ok,” I said nibbling on shank bone, “but what will we do? I don’t want to have my hairy butt paddled or whip some random girl. I’m not even dressed for that!” “Nah,” Amber assured me with a wave of her hand. “You just go in and observe. It’s ‘open house’ today at the S & M club.” “Open house?” I thought, remembering back to my high school days when an open house meant that I got to display my science projects to parents and talk about what we had been doing in school. I had a feeling that this would be nothing like that. “Yeah, usually you have to make an appointment with one of the girls or guys or reserve a room with your partner, but if we go today, we can go from room and room and just observe.” “Observe…” the word slid across the table like a hot slab of butter. “Observe…” “What, do you think?” I turned to Amber’s gay friend who was starting on this third glass of wine. “Are you going to come to ‘observe’?” He swallowed the rest of the wine. “Not a chance.” “Oh come on,” Amber implored, but Todd just got up to watch Moses save his remaining people. “So I guess it’s just us,” shrugged Amber. “I haven’t said yes yet.” “But you will.” “Maybe. But purely for academic reasons.” Twenty minutes later we were driving under the roaring jets landing at LAX airport as we pulled into a dark, decrepit side street occupied by warehouses and automotive repair facilities. “This is it!” I looked around but didn’t see anything except for a single side door on a warehouse, denoted only by a slender column of light peeping from a doorway and spilling in an elongated rectangle along the asphalt street. No other signs of life were visible. “Are you sure?” I said skeptically, stepping out onto gravel and feeling the cold, ocean air rife with the greasy scent of jet fuel wash over me. “Well, I’ve never actually been here before, but this is where my friend told me to go. She should be in there already,” said Amber as she started walking toward the light of the doorway. “Dude, Amber, this is the kinda situation in a movie where we wake up with our kidneys missing or in some basement for demonic experiments.” “Whatever,” Amber tossed over her shoulder as she climbed the concrete steps to the door. Opening the door my eyes were flooded with light. When they finally adjusted I saw a very large tattooed man standing by the door with a long chain hanging from his belt and a worn leather vest. “ID please,” he commanded in the bored tone of a bouncer. I quickly yanked my wallet out of my pocket and handed it over. He looked like some grungy Hells Angel and if he’d asked for my left kidney, I probably would have lifted my shirt for the knife. He checked my ID and nodded us on. Beyond him a slightly plump, middle-aged woman with long, curly black hair and pale white Goth makeup sat behind a desk. In spite of her “death-becomes-me” appearance, she was surprisingly nice. “Hello,” she said in a very proper office voice. “Welcome to ‘Passive Arts.’ Since it’s our open house today admission is $20 dollars.” Ick! Twenty dollars? This seemed kind of steep, but honestly how many times in your life to you go to an S & M club? Research. This was research. I paid the fee and she gave me a “membership card” that said the place’s name along with its credo: “Safe. Sane. Consensual.” “With that card you are also entitled to come to Passive Arts and purchase time with no membership fee.” “Well isn’t that sweet?” I thought, taking the card. While Amber paid for her membership I looked around the room. It wasn’t really isn’t anything special. Along the wall was a comfortable tan sofa next to two chairs, while opposite this were several potted ferns. It really looked more like a doctor’s office with an exocentric proprietress than a place for kinky sex. Still, we hadn’t gone inside yet. Amber received her card and the strange tattooed guard gave us another nod, opening a door behind the front desk to the darkness beyond. Once again, I was blinded, but this time by darkness, as my eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room around me. As shapes fade into view, I notice that the right wall is occupied by a large bar with about twelve seats. A thin bartender with a very tight black corset walks back and forth flirting with customers and serving them drinks. Just past the bar are four entrances leading to rooms unknown. To our left is a lounge area with four or five couches and several small round tables. At the end of the room is a raised wooden stage, beyond which is a huge projection screen with a movie playing. A subtitle along the side reads “Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.” I am mesmerized for a full five minutes while on the screen a buxom woman in a Nazi uniform tortures naked Jewish women with equally large breasts before returning to her quarters to rape and ruthlessly fuck imprisoned American male soldiers. “Wow,” I tell Amber. “This is a great way to celebrate Passover!” I clap. “Well, I didn’t know, but apparently this is “Nazi and Allied Forces Night” at Passive Arts.” “Oh, boy,” I say as we walk over to the bar. We order a drink and sit down on one of the black leather couches in the lounge area. As my eyes adjust to the light, I notice that Amber is indeed right. A middle aged man in a close clipped white beard, a small grey cap and army uniform, long black boots, and a large arm band with the red border, white circle, and Nazi swastika sits across from us at another table, giving a small smile and a wink. Oh my. “Wow,” I tell Amber, “I don’t know if I feel comfortable here…” “Relax,” she smiles. “We have the Allied Forces on our side.” And we did. Women in white sailor hats, extremely short white shirts, and tight white uniforms exposing their large breasts walk lazily around the room. I also notice several women wearing all blue or green variants on this theme. Although they may have low cut tops, and short skirts, their shiny brass buttons tell us that they are certainly part of the military. “Canadian, and Australian Forces over there,” Amber tells me and I nod. Turning to the large screen again as “Ilsa the She Wolf” fist fucks one of her female prisoners as she screams in pain. “Wow. I just had no idea that that could go into there. I think I need another drunk,” I get up. Amber smiles, “Isn’t this fun.” “I definitely need another drink.” I order a rum and coke at the bar. The place is still pretty empty, but I do notice that there are other “themed” individuals arriving that have absolutely nothing to do with Nazi’s or Allied Forces (as far as I know, but Ilsa the She Wolf may disagree). Next to me at the bar a very fat, bald man is enjoying what looks like a Red Bull and Vodka, wearing only two leather straps that crisscross his body, ending at his groin. From his point on he is supported by some sort of leather thong extending to the front in a much-too-small codpiece that allows a portion of his testicles to protrude like an inguinal hernia. He adjusts his thick glasses and scratches his hairy man-boob, and I hope that my drink arrives sooner rather than later. Trying to distract myself, I scan the rest of the people at the bar noticing several females that are in tight competition with this gentleman for lack of clothing. Many of them have short leather skirts and completely exposed tops. In fact, when I look closer I realize that the majority of them have absolutely nothing on the upper half of their body aside from simple black “X’s” of electrical tape across their areolas. When viewed as a whole, this minor concession seems absurd, like the covers of porn magazines that have little shining stars on the nipples of the girls on the cover, as if this was some sacred unknowable part of the human anatomy. Several very attractive girls walk by and smile at me. I smile back. I begin to feel a little bit better about the place—until I realize that most of these girls must be hired by the place to make everyone feel hospitable. I get my drink and the fat man in the leather straps also smiles at me. It’s the same smile that the girls had given me. Strangely enough, this does not make me feel more at home at all. Quickly walking back to the table I notice that there is a tall Asian girl with long black hair and a short black skirt talking to Amber. Although by normal club standards, she’s not wearing much, I’m still glad that there is at least one person here (beside Amber) with more clothes on her upper half than pasties. Especially since I have on a collared, long-sleeved black shirt and jeans which seem to be the S & M club equivalent of wearing an overcoat and a tousle cap to the beach. The girl turns when I walk up and greets me with a brilliant smile. “Hi! You must be Mark,” I’m Kelly. The effusiveness of her greeting throws me off for a second, and I eyed her suspiciously, as if she’s a stripper trying to collect lap dances. Catching my look, Amber puts her hand on my shoulder to set me at ease. “Remember, this is my friend I told you we were meeting?” “Oh yeah…” I say, a little embarrassed. “So… you work here?” “Yeah, but I am off shift now. I was wearing something a little more daring than this earlier,” she pointes to her black dress that really looks more like a slip. “But I do have cute pink panties on.” “Oh. Uh. Ok.” I redden. “That’s nice…” There is an awkward pause while I fish through my mind for something to say. “So how does this, you know work?” I ask. The more I look around the more I notice that nearly all of the Nazis in the room are middle aged males, while a good portion of the females are twenty-somethings dressed as Allied Forces. “Ah, well this is not how it usually looks or works around here. I’m sure they already told you this is one of our open houses. To get people interested. Show them what we do. Usually, during the week, it’s single guys or couples that come in. Very rarely single women. So the first thing a guy does when he comes in is tell us if he is a 'dom' or a 'sub.'” “A dom or a sub?” I ask, distracted by a tall man wearing only a top hat and a leather Speedo is sitting down on at a couch. A young, twenty-something black girl with purple dreadlocks and a string bikini brings him a drink and nuzzles up next to him. “Yeah, that’s a “dominant” or “submissive” partner in S & M.” “Ah,” I look her up and down quickly trying to gauge which one she would be. She seems athletic. “So you’re the dom?” I guess. “Nope. I don’t have enough training. “I tried once, but I tended to hurt the guy.” “But isn’t that the point?” I ask. On screen Ilsa is grabbing an American POW’s dick and twisting it into contortions that I was sure weren’t going to lead to a happy ending. “No. Not at all. S & M is all about trust. That’s a big part of the turn-on for the both the dom and the sub. The sub trusts that the dom won’t really hurt them beyond what they want, and the dom is turned on by the trust that is placed with them. Besides the sub is always in control.” “Really?” “Absolutely.” They’re the ones that determine the boundaries—how far things can go. You seem pretty new to this. Maybe it’s really better for you to see…” “See?” I swallow hard. “Of course,” she points to the doors at the end of the room. This is our open house. The time when newbies like you guys can see what really goes on here, but in a calm, comfortable atmosphere. We have professional doms and subs in most of the rooms, but we also allow couples that are regulars perform in the rooms today as well.” “Like have sex?” “No. Just whips and paddles. There is no release allowed here. At least not during the open house.” “C’mon, I’ll show you,” she gets up and motions us to a room just to the right of the stage. It is a large warehouse area with another bar. Inside is an Asian woman wearing an army Camo outfit with exceedingly short shorts and a buttoned top that strained against the apparent pressure of her large breasts. She wears a general’s cap and glowers at everyone around the room. Her outfit doesn’t appear to be from either the Allied Forces or Nazi camps, but since it’s apparent that she’s the one in charge, no one is about to call her on the historical accuracy of her clothing. There is a Nazi Officer in the center of the room facing her. She walks across the room and begins brutally ripping his clothes off-- but with just enough care to make sure that she didn’t pop any off the buttons his uniform. “Pussy!” “Coward!” she screams, batting him about the head. “You fucking spineless, dickless, cunt of a man!” He whimpers and cries. Finally, when he has been reduced to just a set of leather bikini briefs, she bounds his hands to a winch hanging above him. I look upward and notice that we are in a very high room like a warehouse storage facility with ceilings that extended beyond two stories. “Is she going to wench him up there?” I ask Kelly with a little too much concern. “Maybe,” she shrugs indifferently. The Asian woman shouts again at the man. “You stupid piece of fucking shit! Your body is repulsive!” More men and women gather around in a circle to watch the spectacle. I look around and notice that there are now many people dressed in normal street clothes. People like me here to check out the “open house.” In fact, there seems to be many more people in normal clothes here than in the main room. This makes sense though. After all, the real S & M aficionados probably find this sort of exhibition a bore, preferring more experimental “hands-on” activities during the week. “Fuck you!” the small Asian dom screams so close to the man’s face that spit flies from her mouth onto his nose. “Your cock is small, and now everyone here can watch you and see it!” I grimace, hoping that she will not take off the codpiece to prove her point. “C’mon, let’s check out the other rooms,” Kelly pulls at my arm. I nod and look one last time as the busty Asian woman slaps the guy’s backside with a paddle taken from a belt around her waist. “THWACK!” She smiles in malicious satisfaction and smacks his ass again, this time with her hand, looking back at the audience. A performance, sure, but there's something more to it. More compelling. Or repulsive. What it is I can’t quite put my finger on, but I have to admit there is something fucking hot about this. It’s not imagining being the guy being beaten, or the one inflicting punishment. It’s something else…Something of the voyeur in me is coming out. I look back at the crowd of men and woman behind me, a vast majority now dressed in street clothes, smiling and talking to each other as if they were watching a ball game. The busty Asian woman stops her beatings and berating to bring out a cloth. She wraps it around the humiliated man’s hands and ties it in a loop. Hearing a metallic sliding sound I look up and see a chain unraveling from the ceiling-- clunk, clunk, clunking as the pulley lets down a long metal chain. A large rusty metal hook is attached to the chain, making its way to the floor like the head of a lazy python. “C’mon,” Kelly pulls at my arm again. “But, wait,” I whine, “Is she going to string him up on the ceiling or something?” “Probably,” Kelly responds with a bored flat tone. “But there are performances in other rooms… Here, I’ll show you.” Performances? Like a three-ring circus? She pulls Amber and me down the hall to another room. Unlike the room we had left, this one only has a lower, one-story ceiling and only three couples inside—one Nazi and Allied Forces pair, and a standard dom-sub leather pair. A third couple stands next to the rear wall, which is a floor-to-ceiling mirror. The girl is pasty white, medium height, with a small pink shirt stretched across her full round breasts so that the cloth contours and tucks inward under them, folding into a darkened recess under each round, full globe. She wears a black bikini leather bottom and her face is absolutely stunning, with small red lips, lightly rouged cheeks, and deep heavy eyes. With hair cut short and dyed a bright red, she looks like a cross between a powdered 1930’s starlet and a Queen of the Dead. Behind her unwinding a whip is a man in his late forties. He is tall and slightly muscular with a pate of slightly balding hair pulled back into a small samurai ponytail. Two straps of leather cross his chest, coming together at a circular clasp in the center. A leather tunic wraps his lower half, with the skirt portion flapping slightly as he walks. Despite the fact the girl must be in her mid-twenties, she looks very young next to him, like a father and daughter pair. I am starting to notice that this seems to be a trend throughout the club. The man walks to the middle of the wall and stands spay legged, motioning the girl forward. She nods submissively and he pushes her down on her hands and knees in front of his leather kilt. I glance over at Amber, who gives a look that seems to say “hey, why not?” I give a look back that says “I didn’t like where this is going.” But it didn’t go where I think it will. He grabs the girl’s hair and pulls her to her feet, moving her close to his face. She lets out a sigh. Of pain? Enjoyment? He pulls her roughly again and places his grisly face close to hers. He pulls her hair back and examines her neck, while she keeps her mouth open in a silent moan. As violent as the scene seems, there is a sort of primal tenderness to it, like a wolf shepherding his cub. Then, as if he had grown bored of her, he pushed her forward on all fours again facing the audience. He stands behind her pulling her hair as she arches her back. He takes a coiled whip from a belt around his waist and places the handle across her neck, pressing into her white flesh slightly. She chokes. He releases her. She falls. I look to the audience. Some of us are smiling; some of us are staring with open mouths; some of us are waiting to see what happens next. But that is a part of it. We are all complicit. This is the show. “But what must it be like to have this show all to one’s self?” I think absently mindedly. Then I realize that I would neither like to be the one inflicting the pain or enduring it. Like so many other things, I do not want a part in this human drama, and prefer to be on the outskirts, a spectator—a voyeur. This is my only proper role, and the only role that I will be playing for the rest of the evening. The man uncoils the whip, letting her look at it hanging close to his crotch, as phallic as she wants it. He backs up and uncoils it, standing several feet away. She is on her knees now, staring vacantly forward—seeing nothing. A sudden crack of the whip from behind her and I jump, making a move to clutch at Amber, then straightening into a more “manly” posture. He does it again, cracking the whip in front of her face. She doesn’t react. She is a good servant. Lifting her up by her hair, he pushes her roughly down on her butt so that she is kneeling facing the audience. “Take it off,” he says with an all-commanding air. Her face remains motionless and expressionless, but her arms move in obedience, reaching behind her as she pulls her t-shirt off. Her breasts are lifted up by the material then bounce down again, smooth, full and pliable, revealing small pink nipples on a rounded expanse. Once again, I am taken aback by how beautiful this girl is, and looking over shoulders at her grizzled counterpart, who stalks the room like a proud wolf, I strained to see the attraction to her older mate. I want to leave my post and get up and save her, but I know that she is already saved, that what I am seeing is her “salvation.” He walks behind her, taking several steps back, uncoiling his whip to its full length. I looked over at Amber and Kelly with a pained expression, but they don’t return my gaze because they are too engrossed in the scene. Smooth sloping neck, perfect full breasts, tight firm stomach--it seems like such a sin to violate or despoil the creature in front of him. The man raises the whip, holding it high in the air. The girl is expressionless serine. His arm moves. I cringe. The whip cracks and I close my eyes. When I open them the girl is sitting in the same place, with the same mask for a face. Nothing appears to have changed. Had he even touched her at all? I look to the mirror behind her and see no mark along her back. He pulls the whip upward again and I hear a crack, but this time I keep my eyes open and watch. Just the tip of his whip touches her back, with a soft smacking sound like a parent paddling a disobedient child. I push through the crowd to the edge of the room so that I can get a better view. Her back is pink with small welts, but otherwise nothing mars it. No blood has been drawn. Time and time again, the man draws back the whip and I hear the crack, and time and time again, small pink welts appear on her back, but no blood. I watch and begin to understand how this is a game of trust, and not a simple game of violence and power that it is reduced to in the mainstream media. I am also starting to understand why they don’t let amateurs engage each other with whips on open house night. This is not only a game of trust, but skill. The dom must not only be able to inflict pain, but to do this within the limits that the sub has set. I look around at some of the muscle-bound frat-types that have now gathered in the room, and consider how they would surely tear this girl to shreds with the whip. Perhaps that is why so many of these female-sub male-dom pairs have older gentlemen as the doms. It’s just a question of maturity. Yet, looking around the room at several young female-doms with high heels and whips leading older men-subs by dog-collars, I am unable to explain the reverse phenomenon. Maybe the men don’t care how badly they are hurt as long as it is by the most attractive female they can find. It wouldn’t be the first time. “There’s more,” Kelly motions us and we leave the room as the whip cracks in front of the girl’s face. We walk down the corridor and I pass an Allied Forces girl with a plunging neckline, and I smile and give a nod in greeting. She ignores me and walks past me to talk to a large man dressed in a Nazi uniform. Maybe things aren’t so different from normal clubs after all, I sigh. We enter another room and I notice that it is identical to the one which we have just left. Like the other, the floor is made of hardwood, but has mats spread across it, and the far wall facing the entrance is a mirror. With the exception of what appears to be two long, padded doctor’s examining benches, it looks like this could be a dance studio. Maybe it still is. It’s LA after all, and such a thing wouldn’t be unheard of. “Are you on for yoga at Passive Arts?” “Wouldn’t miss it! Don’t forget to bring your mats and paddles!” When we first arrive in the room, the benches are empty with a Latin man in sagging jeans and a baggie shirt inspecting one of the doctor’s benches and moving around it with a puzzled expression, as if he is trying to solve a Rubix Cube with his eyes alone. Off in a corner, his female companion, dressed in a black top and small black skirt, more suggestive of clubbing than S & M, rolls her eyes. I imagine their back story. “Hey, honey, I know I’ve been promising to take you to a club and it’s been a long time since we’ve been out, but want to go tonight to this new place I’ve been hearing about?” “Oh baby, of course!” “Great, it’s right by the airport, just wear whatever you would normally to a club.” Poor girl. As the man continues to look curiously at the doctor’s chair, some of the regulars enter the room and get started on the other one. On the wall hang several paddles with holes drilled into them. A girl with blue mascara streaked in blots across the sides of her face like a character in blade runner or the caricature of a drugged out Native American with access to David Bowie’s Make-up cabinet, walks over to the paddles and picks one out. Her hair is pink and pulled into to perky pigtails sticking upward from the top of her head. It’s the hair cut of a schoolgirl but she looks anything but childish. Thick red lipstick covers her lips like blood puckered into a snarl. Her white top and pants are made of a shiny synthetic material that looks like rubber and hugs close to her body. Long black boots come to the level of her knee, and when she walks she stomps the ground as if it is alive and she is determined to kill it. She pulls along a chubby fat man that looks like a clone of all the other chubby fat men with collars I have seen that night. Perhaps all chubby, fat men secretly yearn to wear leather underwear and dog collars and be dominated in such a fashion. They just need to meet the right woman (or be willing to pay 10 dollars a minute to have the crap beaten out of them at Passive Arts!). She tugs at the collar again and pulls him onto the bed. Once on it, the fat man lies obediently face down. With the fat man in this position, the table reminds me of the massage beds at the mall. To his side are arm restraints, which the dom (who begins to look eerily like the sadistic Nurse Ratched) uses to fasten his arms down. Then she walks behind him, raises the paddle, and with a predictably gelatinous smack, lands a solid blow on the man’s rear. I watch the recoil of the fat along his body, with thinly veiled disgust. The nurse nods across the room to the Latin man with the baggie pants as if to say “this is how it’s done.” In turn, he looks to his girlfriend and motions her over. To my surprise, she walks to him and soon they are happily selecting paddles, like a couple at a used car lot, and in several more minutes, his attractive girlfriend is happily receiving blows to her rear. Who would have thought? When both couples are done they take a spray bottle from the wall and spray down the benches, wiping them clean with paper towels, just like equipment at a gym. Once again the rituals and motions seem both oddly familiar and out of place to me. Perhaps in a strange way, the S & M world is just a costume ball masking the fact that at its core everything is the same, and nothing is new. We leave the room, and I look at the screen showing the film in the main area. On it Ilsa the She Wolf is forcing some naked Jewish girl to eat her cunt while a line of bare breasted women wait in terrified horror for their turn. Mesmerized once again by this stunning piece of cinema, I fail to notice a surreal spectacle taking place just below the level of the screen. There on the wooden stage in front of the projection are two real-life women jumping and gyrating to a mystical beat that only they can hear. One is a girl dressed in an Allied Forces uniform, with a smartly cocked (no pun intended) hat, a low cut kaki top, and skin-tight shorts. Alongside her, is a happy, smiling Nazi girl, similarly dressed, but in grey, with a swastika on her arm, and high leather boots. They shake and shimmy, doing a go-go dance together. The Nazi pauses occasionally to do a little goosestep, which the Allied Forces girl indulge with a clap to keep the non-existent beat, before they continue their dance by shaking their breasts against each other. A crowd is gathering and I don’t know whether to be horrified or turned on, so instead I stand transfixed, my cock as unresolved as my mind, dangling in half limp solidarity with the dancers. I’m a bit dazed and confused and when Kelly and Amber begin looking through a mélange of chains, whips, corsets, and giant, bulging dildos set up “boutique-style” for purchase along a table next to the bar. Excusing myself, I walk in a haze down one of the side hallways. The first room that I come to is small and cramped with a chalk board along the wall perpendicular to four children’s-sized chairs and desks. In the center of the room, in front of the desks, is a waist-high table. I don’t understand its purpose, and I walk around it, analyzing it academically. It’s certainly too small for a person, being only a foot or two in length, so it can’t be one of the “doctor’s beds” I had seen in the other room. Still, there are two leather restraints along the sides. Perhaps it’s for a child? No that’s too sick. Maybe a midget? Possibly. Hmm…No. Even in a city as perverted and depraved as Los Angeles, there really can’t be that many S & M midgets. But what then… Just as I am pondering this, a small brunette dressed in a Catholic school girl’s outfit enters the room. Following behind this barely legal fantasy is a pudgy balding middle aged man, led along by the tips of his fingers. Yet “led” is a rather strong word in this instance, merely denoting his relative position to her, because he nearly outstrips the girl with his walk, eagerly bounding into the room like a puppy chasing his favorite ball. She looks backward over her shoulder flicking her hair, then bending over the table with her ass facing backward toward me and her gentleman escort. “I’m ready,” she coos as the gentleman advances, strapping her arms along the side of the table. Suddenly I have the feeling that I am in the middle of a vivid, very real porn movie. Supporting this thought, a strange little Indian man peeps around the corner and asks if anything is going on, before giving a little gasp of delight, and joining me at my side with an expectant nudge. Good God, I think, we are those strange men that appear at the window while the plumber is fucking the housewife. Only this time, according to the theme of the room, we are students watching our teacher exact a disciplinary measure on one of his “bad pupils.” The “teacher” wiggles and shimmies himself up behind her, and I half-expect the man to pull down his pants, rip off her pink panties (I can see them) and have a go at it right then and there. Instead, I see him step back and transfer something from his right to his left hand. I barely have time to register that it is a foot-long rubber paddle with holes drilled into it before the swift smack echoes in the room. SMACK! Class is definitely in session. “Oh, give it to me! Give it to me!” she begs. “Yeah, I’ll give it to you,” he responds. I have to stifle a laugh. This is perfectly ludicrous, this balding middle aged-accountant-schoolteacher-businessman- whatever beating this little vixen’s booty a rosy red while she moans orgasmically in-between hits. And really, couldn’t they think up better dialogue? This is soooo 1980’s porn. C’mon guys. Step it up. “Oh it hurts. It hurts.” “Oh yeah, it hurts.” A laugh is welling up in my throat again and I turn away to suppress any further visions of ludicrocity. The Indian man next to me seems to be grooving to the beat of the whacks, moving his head forward and backward to the sound of each smack. He’s getting off on this, I think. Really getting off on this. I try not to look, but have to—I have to—and my eyes are drawn downward as I detect a barely perceptible bulge developing in his pants. This is my queue to leave. Right now. I do an about-face and march out the door, walking farther down the hallway. The first room that I come to is barren except for a single lamp and I breathe of relief. I want to sit down and rest—my mind, my thoughts, my body—but unfortunately there is no chair, nothing for me to sit on. I start to sit on the floor, but I see discolored spots here and there that are white, brown, and red—the kind of colors that you don’t want to see on the floor of an S & M place. Instead I go across the hall to the next room. Inside there is a similar setup, a light in one corner, a light in the next corner, negative space in-between. Except that it isn’t negative space. Between the lights is a man in makeup, with a girl next to him, a blur of black leather bound couples moving and mending in the flash of my iris as I turn away and walk to the end of the hallway. One, two, three, four, five, six steps I walk and turn. Stunned, dazed goose-stepping in synch to verve of the club. I close my eyes. Seven, eight nine, ten, turn. I am inside the room. I open my eyes. And there they are. And why fucking not? Why shouldn’t they be there? Standing in front of me is a very fat old man with leather underwear. But not just “regular” leather underwear (if that exists), or even just Speedo-style leather underwear. This is the real deal, with a completely separate leather cradle for each individual testicle, extending in a hammock-like strap to the superstructure of the leather girding his loins. I look into his wrinkled bald face and he gives me a little wink. He is wearing glasses. And once again, why the fuck not? He needs those glasses to see his ever-lovely wife that is standing there right next to him, her sagging paps held in pace by her own precious leather hammocks complemented, of course, by a bikini leather bottom. They stand there and look at me, paternal smiles on each of their faces, American Gothic turned askew. “Well come in. Come in.” I spend the commodity of my eleventh, twelfth, and even my thirteenth step tracing a linear path toward them. “Why are you here?” I want to ask them. “Why do you still want to have sex when you are only one or two photon shifts away from an energy-level that will render you as protoplasmic jelly? Do you still even turn each other on? Do you imagine young celebrities naked when you attempt to fuck or to you fall back on old favorites like Grace Kelley and Errol Flynn?” All of this spins through my head, but I say nothing, and as they beckon me forward with their withered hands, I walk obediently to these hoary, sagging sirens, onward to whatever sexual deviance they will show me. “Hello,” the gentleman extends his hand. “Hello,” I tell the man shaking the withered stump that he extends to me, careful not to violate its dependence on a tinsel strength of near zero. “Welcome to the dungeon.” “Dungeon?” I think, and look around me. The walls are molded in plaster of Paris grey bricks with the iron bars of a prison cell partitioning off a third of the room. Inside the cell is a black leather bed precisely the size of a single person. Once again I don’t understand the purpose of the bed and the bars, but my adopted surrogate S & M grandmother and grandfather are more than happy to give me a demonstration. I watch as the elderly man waddles across the room like a penguin and sits down on the edge of the bed. The old woman walks forward with some small metal object, which she takes and then begins to attach to the end of the bed. Although it’s diminutive, I can tell that it is a vice. “What’s that for?” I ask, as she screws it into the bed. She doesn’t answer, but gives me a yellow toothed grin. “Don’t worry. This is an open house, and they don’t allow release.” “Release?” I think. “Ohhhhhhhh, ‘release,’” Jesus fucking Christ. I look up at the old man, which for some reason, seems to be intuiting my thoughts and smiles benignly back. There is a click and the vice snaps into place. The old man scoots up to the edge of the bed. The old woman moves to the end of the bed. I retract my eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth step and then follow the regressive path down the hall, past the room of blurred leather, past the now-full empty room, past the school room with the funny Indian man, and back into the main room. “So did you find anything interesting back there?” asks my friend Amber. I scratch my head silently. “I don’t know.” “Really? What’d you see?” she asks. “What do you have over here?” I point to something in her hands, changing the subject. “Oh what do you think of this?” she smiles and holds something up. It’s a simple black piece of cloth that looks like some sort of negligee. “What is it?” “It’s a corset,” interrupts Kelly, showing off a pink one and holding it up to her chest. “Oh…” I say, “Like for pushing up boobs, or making them seem bigger?” I look down at Kelly’s B-cups with an unintentionally meaningful glance. “What do you think of mine,” Amber counter-interrupts. “Yours…?” “The corset!” “Oh…uh…good?” I respond uncertainly, looking toward the screen at the end of the room as a flash of gunfire splatters hot Jew-girl brains and Helga the She Wolf is covered in blood. “Good,” says Amber with a satisfied smile, “I’m probably going to buy one, but it may be a while. They’re kind of pricey. But they’re ‘fitted’ so it’s worth it.” “Oh,” I say, women’s undergarments being an even greater mystery to me than the sum of the women they contain. As a side note, Amber did, in fact, purchase one of the corsets. A beautiful black number to tune of four hundred dollars. That’s right. Four hundred dollars. That’s probably more money than my whole closet of clothes. I didn’t know that they even had lingerie that cost that much. But they do. And Amber owns it. I think that years later she still regrets it. She’ll probably rent it to you if you really need something to give your boobs that extra Gothic, eggs over-easy look. Or, if you’re a modern woman living in an era beyond the eighteenth century you can just buy a water bra. I watch Kelly and Amber return to the corsets with an excitement that I’ve only seen matched by mother and sister at Macy’s. The noise, the sounds, the corsets, the dildos lying on the table, are all too much for me and I push past an SS Soldier and some girl in a Sailor outfit and order two shots at the bar. “Of what,” the female bartender asks me with a cruel smile. “Hmmmm….” “Rum…?” I say. “That was a question,” responds the bartender, “I asked for an answer.” “Oh,” I say more assertively to the bartender that looks like she missed the memo on Allied Forces and Nazi night and is instead dressed like some advertisement for the corsets that Amber is looking at with dash of Gothic “Interview with a Vampire” thrown in. “Could I have two shots of rum?” “A question again?” Ugh. “Ok, GIVE me two shots of rum.” “Right-o,” she smiles wryly and splashes alcohol into the shot glasses next to my hands, which cools my knuckles before evaporating on the bar. I throw the shots back, doing a little hop-shuffle in-between as I gag from the burning taste in my throat. I still have a lot in my stomach after the Seder and the shots aren’t taking effect right away so I order a rum and coke and head off toward the lounge area on the left-hand side of the room. I stir the ice cubes with my finger and raise the glass to my eye level, looking at the candle light on a table next to me in the flickering convolutions. A warm tingle is spreading through my body, and I can tell that the alcohol is starting to take effect. I look around and see that an attractive young girl with long black hair and a low cut black leather outfit is sitting on a couch across from my table. She twists her hair lazily, looking in no particular direction, with a bored stare that seems to trace a miasmic fog around her body like some invisible don’t-touch-me force field. A man in an American Officer uniform approaches, eyeing her for a second as he awkwardly repositions his drink in his hand. He is short, skinny, squints slightly (the effect of leaving his glasses at home?), and slouches as he walks. “Hi,” he says to her. “Hi,” she turns her head a quarter, does a quick flip-scan with her eyes, decides that it is not worth following through with a full head turn, and turns back to staring into some more meaningful event-horizon on the dating scene. Not taking he hint, the American Officer sits down on the couch a bit too closely to the girl. The leather of the couch gives an exhausted squeak and she scoots farther away. “So, I was just wondering how you like things so far,” he takes off his small hat and polishes its leather brim against his cotton uniform. “Great…” she says. There is an awkward pause. The girl turns her head farther away from the American Officer, as if she has seen something. “Hey Sasha!” she shouts, and crosses the room quickly to another girl. Left alone in the backwash of failure, I watch as the man takes a long gulp of his drink, obviously reddening even under the dark lights of the club. He looks around to see if anyone has seen this foolish display, and almost breathes a sigh of relief before noticing me looking directly at him. Because I am getting more and more buzzed, I don’t find it particularly awkward to be staring directly into the face of a stranger. “So how do you like this club,” he asks, embarrassed. “It’s ‘great,’” I respond, “really ‘great.’” He pales and moves away to some other corner of the club. I watch several other men flirt with other women with various degrees of success and failure. After a while I get begin to understand that although this is an S & M club, everything is perfectly and predictably exactly like a regular club. Men buy women drinks to talk to them. Attractive couples congregate together like globs of oil on water. Less attractive individuals hang out toward the margins or end up on the chairs watching Ilsa the Wonder Bitch kill an increasingly motley crew of hot Jewish prisoners. I wander back up the hall to the first room that I had visited. By now the man that the hot Asian army woman had been tying up has been hog-tied, gagged and winched twelve feet off the ground with a small crowd gathered along the sides of the room. “You fucking piece of shit! You like that? You like that?” the Asian army woman below shouts up at him. He nods and she winches it down lower, lower-- to eye level so that she can scream in his face. “Fuck you! Fuck you, you pussy!” she takes a paddle and hits his ass. He squeals and writhes. Then she turns the crank of a winch and he ascends toward the ceiling once again for the pantomime to repeat itself. At first I scrunch my face up in disgust, but after watching this happen two, three, four times things just become monotonous. Down to the next room. A naked girl. Whipping. A naked girl. Whipping. Next room. Spanking. Another girl. Spanking. Next room. The classroom. Spanking. Spanking. Spanking. Next room. Groups gather and talk. Something different. Something boring. Nothing sexual. Nothing scandalous. Business. Current events. Politics. Next room. A couple make out drunkenly against a wall. Down the hall. The dungeon. I stop and turn. I don’t bother. I repeat this several times. I repeat this several times. I repeat this several times. Although I never thought I would be saying this, I am actually getting bored at an S & M club. I order a Red Bull and vodka, hoping that the caffeine will perk up my dragging attention and sit at the bar. On the screen Ilsa/Helga the She Wolf/Fox-Whatever is repeating for the third? The fourth? The fifth time? I feel like I can almost recite the words and the plot at this point. Here Ilsa takes command. Here Ilsa forces her subordinate to fuck her before flogging him within inches of his life. Here Ilsa rounds up the virgins. Here Helga forces one virgin to kill another then fucks another on their bloody corpse. Booorrriing. Everything. This whole club seems to remind me strikingly. Sadly. Monotonously. Pitifully-- how boringly binary life is. In out. In out. Out in. In out. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Pain. Pleasure. Happiness. Sadness. Dark. Light. Life/death. All of it—merged and squished together. All of it really ones or zeros, black and white. Binary. But really, sadly, and once again pathetically, we somehow manage most of the time to be somewhere in-between. I am here not as a participant inflicting or being inflicted on, but a voyeur settling into some shady glen between peaks. But even these “peaks” don’t seem to be much. Just some lame jack-off to a shadowy stereotype of what sex could be or should be, denying its sad final truth that the action exists just to recreate itself in others. We fuck and fuck with the biological imperative instilled in us by some prime mover- some great god that had no precursor- so that the very act of our creation can only be though of as the most divine and holy masturbation of the great He into the eternal black void to which the less-than-great we can hope to return. Fuck, fuck fucking. We fuck and create more fuckers to fuck and fuck out to the end of time. One great eternal line of bent over cock sucking, cum dripping, tits and ass. But maybe all of this S & M serves to turn it away- subvert it and make it something beyond procreation, something closer to that great cosmic jack off. Ugh. I finish my Red Bull and vodka and feel my bladder demanding a visit to the bathroom. While I am pissing I look at the walls. There are back and white pictures. One shows a black a dildo between two large, white perfect breasts. “Not bad,” I think. Another shows the smooth curve of an ass. Still another shows a single eye surrounded by the leather mask. Not bad again. Probably some of the better things about this place. Maybe the best art here. In the toilet while I piss. I wash my hands and walk back into the main room and look for Amber and Kelly. They aren’t at the boutique table with the corsets, and I find them alone in the “school room,” sitting at one of the miniature desks. I slump down at a seat behind them. “You doing ok?” asks Amber, “you look tired.” “Yeah, I am ok,” I respond. “Ok.” “So yeah,” Kelly continues with some conversation that must have been underway before I came in, “he’s really hot. But he’s a janitor. I mean, c’mon. It’s a little pathetic.” “What are you talking about?” I ask. “This guy that I was dating.” “She met him at a ‘swingers party.’” “A swinger’s party?” I ask, a bit soddenly. “Yeah…a swingers party,” Kelly says with a bored expression that I realize is a carbon copy of the one I had seen on the girl on the couch earlier with the failed attempt from the young gentleman. For those that are even more ignorant about sex and sexuality than me, a “Swinger’s Party,” as I understand it, is usually an event in which partners come, exchange mates, have sex, leave/and or have more sex. “So you were there with a boyfriend? And you swapped with someone else’s boyfriend?” “No,” says Kelly lazily. “You just come to the party, with or without anyone, and if you find someone there that you like, you have sex with them.” She shrugs nonchalantly. “Really?” “Yeah. They basically have these parties at hotels and people come to them and they have bowls of condoms. Then if you see somebody you like you get a condom, go into a room, and well, fuck.” “Fuck?” I raised an eyebrow. “Yeah.” “And that’s where you met the guy you were talking about?” “Yeah. I was sitting on this couch with my friend, and I had been there for an hour or so and I was telling my friend that there was no one that I wanted there. Then I saw him come in and I was like ‘wow.’ So I watched and was thinking of saying something to him but he came up to me and then we went and fucked,” she laughs. I still don’t understand the basic mechanics of these parties, so I have to ask. “Wait, so you went—just you and this guy-- into one of the backrooms and had sex?” “Oh no,” she says. “There are several rooms with beds, so if you want to fuck, you can just do it. Of course there are other people in there. When you’re fucking other people just stand on the edges of the bed and watch. God, that night we must have fucked everywhere. On the bed. In the bathroom. Just in the hall. We fucked so many times that night.” “In front of a bunch of people watching?” more surprised by this than anything I have seen that night. “Sure,” she shrugs. “Isn’t that hard to do? In front of people?” “No. Why would it be?” “Sure,” I respond. “Why not?” Kelly seems to be talking to herself, more than me, off of some rehearsed script that she’s recited many times. She’s seems to be one of those people that likes to say and/or do the most outrageous things they can completely dead-pan, so that they can get the maximum rise from more conservative people. I already don’t like her that much, and don’t want to indulge her, but I am curious about what she has to say. “But aren’t you a little worried about, like, STD’s and stuff?” “Oh, they have condoms. And besides they have plastic on the floor.” “Plastic…ok…” “But yeah,” she turns back to Amber, signaling that our conversation is basically over. “I like this other guy but he’s not as good looking. Actually not that good looking at all, but he is going to get this place in this firm soon. As soon as he gets that he will be ‘ballin.’ But it’s tough, you know? This other guy is pretty hot…” she smiles looking to Amber for conformation. “Yeah,” Amber turns to me, “I’ve seen this janitor guy and he is actually really hot.” Amber turns back to Kelly, “But you’ve been with a bunch of guys that are really hot.” Amber later confirms that in general Kelly is quite popular with men and is a hot commodity at the S & M club. I look Kelly over. She was “ok” attractive. Nothing stellar or anything that would turn your head if she were wearing clothes on the street. And she’s conceited. Just the way she talks about guys being so into her in such an offhanded way is a major turn off for me, but I guess a decent number of guys actually go for that. Even though I’m making her sound bad, the fact that she is popular in the club is actually no mystery. She’s Asian, pretty tall at around 5’10 or so, and not un-attractive. So she’s basically a normal looking Asian girl. And other than her and the girl that had been shouting insults at the hog-tied guy in the first room, she has zero competition for guys with an Asian fetish. In fact, I barely saw any minorities at all in the club, so that if you’re a female with a skin tone that can take a decent tan, you’d probably arouse attention as an interesting commodity. “Yeah, so I don’t know about that janitor guy,” Kelly continues. “But the other guy is reallllllly hot,” laughs Amber. “Yeah, but he’s also really dumb. Like I said, jaaaanitoooor. I can’t take a person like that to meet my parents. And that is really important to me. He’s lame and has no ambition and just wants to be a janitor. I think I’ll dump him soon. It just seems that a lot of guys that I meet lately are just not as intelligent as me. Or they’re not attractive enough to date me. And they hit on me! Really, what are they thinking?! You know what I’m saying? I mean why should I compromise?” she looks at both me and Amber, and I try to hide my mounting disgust. “I just don’t want to waste my time on people that are genetically inferior. I mean, why would I want to have a baby that mixes my genes with someone who is less attractive or intelligent? Right?” “Of course,” I respond seriously, thinking of the absolute irony of listening to this conversation on eugenics amidst a backdrop of people masquerading as Nazis. “So I don’t know. Like I said I will have to see if this guy get’s his firm gig…” “Ugh,” I think. At least prostitutes have an honest profession. Kelly continues to talk about the multitude of men that are interested in her, her regular day job as a lab technician doing research, her strategies for finding a man that is the prefect socio-economic fit for her and her family, and my eyes glaze over. I almost I wish I was talking to the law students at the Seder table. I mean, I don’t know what I was expecting at this place. I think I was hoping that with a lifestyle choice that was so outside the mainstream there would be ideas and ideals that would be equally radical. Instead, it just seems like all of the some old social conventions are intact so that it’s the same old song with just a different name. The only difference is that leather, chains and whips have traded places with the black mini skirts, cosmos, and push up bras. While Kelly has been talking she has off-handedly drawn an animation wireframe of a character reclining on a chair on the chalkboard, and a sketch of Amber’s face. I note that they are amazingly detailed and that she has real talent. It’s just a shame that she has a personality limper than a ten-inch rubber dildo. As their conversation peters down and Kelly eventually stops talking about herself, Amber and her decide to have a “little fun.” Taking a paddle lying at the edge of the room, we all circle around the bench in the center. “You wanna try it?” Amber asks me, paddle in hand. “Being spanked?” “Or spanking me?” “Not really…” I trail off prudishly. THACK! I jump in pain. “Ouch Amber! That really hurt!” “Duh! That’s the point, Mark,” laughs Amber with the paddle held impishly skyward. I steadfastly refuse to be paddled, so Kelly and Amber decide to practice their beatings on each other. First Amber is bent over and strapped in, while Kelly wields the majestic rubber paddle. Then Amber takes her turn as the punisher. After each hit, they rub the red welt with their hands, as if they contains some magical ointment. Then they raise the paddle and hit again. People drift in and out of the room to watch. As Amber is finishing up spanking Kelly, the Indian man that I had seen before in the same room enters. He seems to have a particular fascination with Kelly and he asks her if he can spank her. Ass still in the air and arms strapped down, Kelly looks behind her, sizing up his non-designer jeans, frumpy ruffled shirt, and tussled black hair. “Uh, I don’t think so, ok?” she shoots back at him. Dismayed, but undaunted, he turns to ask Amber and she readily acquiesces. After strapping her in, he starts gently at first gearing up with progressively solid "thwacks." Amber winces then laughs between blows, and seems to enjoy it. Following the same ritual as the girls, he rubs the reddened portions of her ass with a broad smile before administering each successive blow. Kelly and I are sitting in the front row of the little classroom, while moment by moment I am increasingly creeped-out. Maybe I am a prude, but I just don’t get off on watching people get spanked. Especially unattractive, middle-aged guys spanking a young, attractive twenty-somethings. But since the law of the land was either spank or be spanked, I was the only odd man out. When they were done and the man had removed the straps, he thanked Amber with an overly obsequious handshake and with a very formal “thank you” left the room. I rub my head. I am ready to go. “You look tired, Mark? Are you ready to go?” asks Amber, sitting next to me on the miniature school desks. “No” I lie. “All of this is great.” Amber looks at me skeptically. “Actually,” Kelly says, “I think I am ready to go.” “Ok, I think I’m done then, I’ve ordered the corset and everything. Do you want to stay?” Amber asks me. “Nope,” I reverse my opinion a little too eagerly. “Ok, so we can walk out together.” As we walk down the hall I hear the sound of a single gunshot on the movie in the main room. I don’t need to turn around to know that this is the scene in which Ilsa the She Wolf is finally shot and killed against a wall for her war crimes. We walk past the bar with the cheeky bartender, past Nazis and Allied Force members, down a hallway, through the reception room with the intimidating bouncer, then out the front entrance and into the cold, Pacific-Ocean-smelling LA air. Kelly thanks us for us meeting her there and we head off to Amber’s car. The night is cool and clear. “That was interesting wasn’t it?” says Amber. “Yes” I respond. “Bet you didn’t think you would spend Seder like that?” “No,” I say. I look upward and focus my eyes on the impenetrable gray above us, feeling the chill air collecting dew on my face. Someone once told me that all the city lights of Los Angeles drown out the real stars so that now everything looks like a hazy in-between. There is the loud but still-distant roar of a plane’s engine approaching. It comes closer but I don’t turn toward it. The sound is louder than the night, and I want it to do something for me that I can’t seem to express, even to myself. I stare upward waiting for it, something just on the border of nothingness. In a crush of air so loud it hurts my ears, the white smooth body of a 747 interrupts my vision, so close above my head that it seems I can touch it, grab on to the wheels extending for landing. Closing my eyes, I absorb its white outline floating on the underside of my lids. The sound fills my ears, vibrating and pushing inward against my skull. When the roar has regressed to a faint buzz, I open them again. The plane is gone. As static and comforting as anything I have ever seen, the gray starless night of Los Angeles is above me. (c) Mark Jordan 2009 | 
