By day, it was a beacon of hope for the city's three hundred or so arthouse artistes waiting to be discovered: the new wave of Warhol wannabes, Mapplethorpe maybes, and Almodovar also-rans. By night, the gallery of 'Silver Lining' reverted behind the walls to be replaced by the club's gaudy and bizarre emblems, most of them collected over the seven years of its financially impressive existence. These emblems were also a hallmark of the bottomline-powerhouse's equally gaudy and bizarre history. The uninitiated of the city, those who dare but watch from beyond the moat, and first-time visitors, those who dare but venture beyond the first-floor foyer, could be forgiven for assuming at the first sight that this club were some sunset meeting place for black-nailed Goths and netherworldly cult followers.
Nevertheless, it was a journey I had wanted etched in my memory for a long time. Last week, I had made up my mind to stop being among the uninitiated and boldly go where angels feared to tread. The flyer delivered free to my mailbox was promoting the club as "the castle in the air that has been brought down to earth, where every crowd has a silver lining". For whether it was for expansion of one's business networks or social life that one was there, one's prospects were limited only by one's lack of imagination. Silver Lining's moniker was also its advertising premise.
I was proceeding according to my personal schedule. It was nine o'clock of a Friday evening. Ignoring the snores of the dull fellow sitting beside me, I drank in the lights and nocturnal sounds surrounding me.
I had lived on the outskirts of the shire for nine years, and had taken this same rail route to my office in the city's busy Central Business District throughout that time. Yet, I continued to be fascinated by the clack of the tracks under me and the blare of horns above. And all around me was the enchantment of untidy condos, impeccable backyard gardens and quiet campus environs. Ah, how I enjoyed a ride on the locomotive. The upstarts could have their cybernetic ambitions and the skid row bums their mint dreams, but this was my reality.
But now we were approaching the central station. I kept my senses peeled to the passage of the tunnel ahead of us. This was the most exciting part of the ride. I imagined the iron caterpillar now burrowing through the black tunnel like a lake nosing up the wall of someone's house. The iron maiden soon screeched to an incongruously silky halt. I disembarked and milled about with the throng of Friday night revelers, each on his or her own way to fulfill some exciting or apprehensive private itinerary.
Outside the station later, I flagged down a cab. "To the Silver Lining Club, please," I said to the driver. He nodded, smiling with a suggestive crook of his upper lip, and I was on my way. I was both excited and apprehensive about the experience that lay just thirty minutes ahead of me.
The cab driver, speaking with a foreign accent and a Rastafarian friendliness, struck up a conversation with me. Careful not to divulge too much free information, I revealed to him what was but some safe because ancillary personal data. My name was Mikael Tomasz, I told Silvio, and I was thirty-two years old. I was a lawyer with a pecuniary interest in insolvency cases. I was single and lived on my own in a fully paid-up one-story bungalow. All my assets included that, a twelve-year-old weekend-use Nissan Coupe that was lately spending more time in a car hospital than the shire's narrow carriageways, and a cancer-stricken Chow Chow named 'Godzilla'. My family - my parents and an unmarried sister - lived down south and ran a Catholic boarding school. I had not seen them for four years already.
I didn't tell Silvio that the reason I hadn't seen my folks all this time was that they had disowned me after I came out of the closet. In their theologically rigid minds, I had violated the learned catechism. Just the same, I was sure Silvio could guess this much of my secret identity from the little information he had about my rendezvous at Silver Lining tonight.
Nor did I tell Silvio that I was a statistical interest for AIDS research. It wasn't that I had the sickness, but I had been slated to be present at the local government-funded community hospital for a twice-yearly test for the HIV virus. This was since my last lover tested positive six years ago. Stefan eventually succumbed to full-blown AIDS and later died from pneumonic complications. He had also gone blind by that time, so it was a blessing that he went. It was a blessing too that he went in the company of family and friends, and not surrounded by his own excrement.
May the stars continue to sing Stefan a sweet lullaby.
And so I had been alone since. I was growing tired of free falling in a loveless and lonely life and that was the reason for tonight's bravado on my part.
"Okay, pal," Silvio said to me suddenly, interrupting my reminiscence, "this is your stop."
Paying the driver his dues, which included the nominal ten percent tip, I got out of the taxi and stepped onto the manicured grounds. I was a solitary figure among many other solitary visitors that were arriving or had arrived, and even more paired couples that were wearing matching leather chaps. For a moment I had cold feet while I stood about a yard's distance that was all that separated me and what could be the realization of my deep yearning. But someone suddenly winked at me, restoring me to courage. I followed the crowd to the arbor-lined embouchement.
Two men, clad only in leather chaps and face hoods, greeted me at the door. Having done my homework, I knew what was expected of me. This was always a good idea, to research everything possible about a place one was going to for the first time, in order to avoid appearing as a first-time visitor.
I paid the men the club's fees of one hundred dollars, which included the fifty dollars' refundable down payment that was kept as surety against any trouble one was intending to create here. At the same time I endorsed with my signature on the dotted line the documents presented to me, to agree to abide by the club's safety rules and regulations. After that I was given complimentary rubber sheaths and an expressed goodwill that I had a pleasant evening and experience. I refrained from replying that it was more than a pleasant evening I wanted. I was wishing for a meaningful and long-term relationship with someone who shared with me a proclivity for BDSM, especially spanking.
A bizarre interweaving of musical notes and lines from a masque that were far from familiar wafted through the interior rafters above me in what was supposed to be Muzak. I had already been curious but now I was in awe. The breathy argot immediately had an effect on me that was akin to that of an aphrodisiac. This was superceded however by the powerfully erotic images of the fashionably waif-bodied young men and saccharine-faced androgens that were strolling along the raised crescent-shaped concourse, apparently in celebration of youth and the freedom of the weekend. All the boys were half-naked, pared down to the bare essentials: black boots and black thongs that were wedged tightly between their equally tight bottom cheeks. I had read about these boys and their mission to score for an hebetudinous one-night stand. This was all their interest but it was hardly my cup of tea.
Nevertheless, I was aroused by all that I was hearing and seeing. I could already feel my penis desperately straining for release from my tight jeans.
I ventured farther than the foyer now, and bore myself up the stairs. Other curious onlookers with salacity on their agenda and minds, were also perambulating the corridors, peeking through the glass windows of the gray-doored cubicles that resembled the dorms of the Catholic boarding school owned by my family. Some of the patrons were lingering outside the doors, mindful of what was within them, and perhaps in some dilemma to make up their minds if they ought to pick up the persons waiting within them. Would it be Candy, Lollipop or Pepper tonight? Funny how a lot of the boys that worked the joint chose a sweet or spice for a pseudonym.
Very soon I was joining the corridor amblers, now and again peeking through the window of a cubicle that bore a name that interested me.
I stopped first outside Rea's door. A young man with delicate Asian features, aged about twenty-four, caught me looking and smiled brashly in my direction. With a move deliberated to seduce, the lovely youth wiggled out of his laced panty and slithered fluidly onto his bunk, his backside turned towards me. Supporting himself on bent elbows and knees, the slim youth then arched his back, raised up his backside and rocked himself back and forth, and back and forth, in a slow-motion simulation of _s_e_x_ual intercourse. He took his time while parting his legs next, quite clearly in another rehearsed attempt at appearing seductive, and then threw his arms back. His fingers went on to grasp his own buttocks, prying apart his cheeks to expose a large and elongated anus. Rea tossed his head back towards me and smiled once more. I smiled back but hastily verbalized a soundless, "thanks but no thanks, doll," to him. I left him.
In the next hour I must have lingered outside about five doors, watching intently the seduction and strip teasing of just as many young men, while at the same time assessing how well they were going to be able to connect with me. 'Cinnamon' scored for his contortionist acts and his ability to service his own seven-inch simply from lowering his mouth toward his crotch. 'Marsh Mallow' was superb at impaling his own hole with the largest _d_i_l_d_o_ I had ever seen, and I had seen quite a lot of large _d_i_l_d_o_ during my playtime with Stefan. How I missed that, and Stefan.
But my personal favorite had to be Hansel. Perhaps it was the name that had me. It was a real name. Perhaps it wasn't really the blond-haired bearer's real name, but 'Hansel' was a real name. It was honest, unpretentious and unambiguous. It made no reference to personality and by virtue of the honesty, raised no prejudice or partisan interest.
However, I think the actual reason that might have led me to feel a metaphysical connection with Hansel was the parallel of personality I was able to draw between him and my poor lost Stefan. Hansel possessed the same kind of insecurity and timidity, even the same thoroughbred's insouciance toward pursuing _s_e_x_ with an open aggression. There was that soupcon of gentility surrounding him. The entire time I was watching him he did nothing but repose naked on his threadbare mattress, nibbling on his thumbnail. This boy-man was the classic closet-spankophile, if ever I saw one. He was also painfully pasty and undernourished. I felt tempted to take him home and feed him, but in the end, as I had done most of tonight, I verbalized to Hansel a tacit, "no thanks."
"What's wrong with you?" I heard a voice ask me as I returned now to the foyer downstairs. "You know you want him."
I might have astonished some others who had seen me engaging in a verbal chastisement of myself, but I finally convinced the voice inside my conscience that this was not the way for me. For just how meaningful was a relationship with a _s_e_x_ toy, that might be butt-slammed a few times every Friday night, going to be? And was it safe from the health standpoint? Besides, could I endure the throes of watching another person I was going to grow to love, slowly become ravaged by a mortal disease right before my eyes, and after that die in my arms? No, I told myself, I couldn't go through, without rancor, another experience of the kind I went through for five years when I had watched my dearest Stefan's life disintegrate and all our plans and dreams reduced to tattered ideals.
But the night was still young, as they always say. I committed myself to the bar, ordered a beer and watched with some envy the couples that had found a shared destiny together. I was starting to believe Silver Lining's spin. If the fact that there were more couples here than the lonely singles that usually populated the current social forms at bars was any indication, one had to believe Silver Lining's spin. I just had to be patient about negotiating this vast consumer minefield that had expanded so much since my arrival here that I could afford to be choosy and discerning. Now if those men at the door did not stop letting in people, we would soon be fighting for space and air. On the other hand, crowds improved the opportunities from which prospects were drawn.
Beside me, a couple that had been conspicuously quarreling for some time were now turning the quarrel into a dramatic caper. I wanted to complain to the management that the quarrel constituted a breach of club regulations and was disturbing my peace when a number of the other customers started to encircle the couple, and then someone said, "here we go again."
Is this a lovers' spat that's in the club's usual order of events? I wondered to myself.
And then, as if to happen for my benefit, someone else replied: "Well, it's about time."
No sooner was that heard than I saw a hand raised to a facial cheek. The owner of the hand had given his younger friend a stunning slap across the cheek.
"Oww!" the youth cried out while his hand automatically went up to his own cheek to rub off the sting. His older lover scowled at this act he seemed to be interpreting as insolence and unacceptable. Getting up from his stool, he caught his younger companion's hand by the wrist and pulled it away from his face. The young man was already weeping.
"Okay, boy, get up," the older man ordered.
The boy got up from the stool with some help from his lover.
"You never learn, do you," the man said. "Your manners are a disgrace. I'm disappointed in your behavior. For this, I'd say it's time to teach you to feel some shame. Now get all those clothes off you."
"Please," the shell-shocked young transgressor cried, "oh, please, daddy, not here in front of everyone. Not again."
"I said take off your clothes," the daddy demanded. "Do it now!"
The boy hollered once more and then also pleaded, and almost received another slap. His daddy, who had already grown quite impatient, gripped his boy by his upper arm and pulled him along to the lounge section in the middle of the foyer.
There was also a growing spectator-interest assuming the palisade spaces in the upstairs galleria.
But this had to be a worse fate for the boy for now he was the center of focus and attention, besides being in full view of the crowd.
"All right," the man said, "looks like daddy's gonna have to strip you of your clothes."
And he did. The boy was blushing while all of his clothes were being shed to the floor: his leather vest and tight leather pants, and also his boots. The daddy kindly decided to allow his boy to keep his socks. This and his underwear, at least for now, were all that protected the boy while he stood before his daddy. His tight black jock showed off his bulge in front, his penis visibly stretched to the fullness of its erect dimensions against the snug lycra confines for release. Release it was generously given very soon after. As the daddy slowly peeled down the strap, the boy's eight-inch was liberated and finally allowed to swing about freely. I watched the pretty flush in the boy's face deepen to a shade of crimson.
Towing the boy along toward a low table next, the daddy put one foot on top of it, raising up his thigh. While some men beside me started to chuckle delightedly at the move, the older man was barely heard ordering his boy to hop up and place his body across his raised knee. Sniffling to lay to rest his wretchedness, the boy did this with some difficulty. His body was now stretched across the older man's thigh, that seemed built like a sire's, his legs and arms dangling southward. He was at least two feet off the floor and seemed helpless, vulnerable and at the mercy of his daddy.
"Okay," the big man ordered next, "spread those legs nice and wide so that everyone here can have an eyeful of your sweet ass and what's under it. Nothing's allowed to be hidden anymore."
The boy immediately spread his legs as if fearful he might suffer a fate more humiliating otherwise. As he did, the crowd cheered and whistled at his exposed hole and scrotum. Around his scrotum cascaded, though not always obviously, his thick and wiry, black pubic hair. Now, had I been the boy's man, I would have had his pubic hair shaved off completely. On the other hand, his bottom was hairless and smooth, and on his left butt cheek was a tattooed ichthus. It was all simply beautiful. The boy was beautiful.
The daddy called someone he seemed to know from the crowd to hasten over to him. "Oy, Gunnar," he exclaimed, "c'mon over here. Okay, now reach under my boy and pull out his _c_o_c_k_ and balls. You got that? Good. Now, I want you to squat down and hold his feet apart, and keep them apart while I spank him nice and good. Don't let go till it's all over now. You got all that? Very good."
It was the vagaries of the boy's response to his punishment that ensued shortly after, that I found most attractive. At the onset, he seemed to approach his spanking with a nerveless sense of defeat as if he had learned a long time ago that he could not fight against it. But later he shamelessly gave himself over to his own shrill screams and heart-rending pleas for mercy. His bottom quaked, his legs bucked, his genitals bounced in the small space between his stomach and his man's lap while his naughty bottom was deservedly being menaced.
SWAT! SWAT! SWAT! SWAT! SWAT! SWAT! SWAT! It was all entirely arousing.
For the second time tonight, I was desperate to liberate my own penis. The next time I came here, I swore to myself, I was leaving these jeans at home in favor of those leather chaps. Perhaps there was a reason for the leather chaps' ubiquity at this club. Worn as a _s_e_x_ual prop, they were an inventive adaptation of the Y-fronts for swift access to the groin area. I noticed that all around me now, the spectators' hands were clasped on their open crotch between the chaps, stroking what lay under the hands.
"Good God," I thought to myself. And then, with quiet hilarity and amazement, I observed for a long time the uniformity of human behavior towards what was a third-party erotic arbitration, while at the focal point of the arbitration, thunder continued to clap on resilient landscape and sobs of penitence were soon replacing screams of defiance.
I suddenly felt nostalgic for something. Answering helplessly to a distant but compelling memory, I found my picture-making mechanism reproducing the hundreds of times I was in a similar scene with Stefan. Stefan had loved a severe spanking. I had always obliged, never to berate or humiliate him, but always only to gratify. That had been a long time ago but the recollection had not lost its effect on my yearning.
I could have it all again, I knew. I had known this about two hours ago.
Everyone was now watching the daddy gathering his sobbing boy into his arms. The boy pressed himself deeply into his benefactor's bosom, hungry to receive his love and kisses. Very soon the chastised youth would be soothed back into the sense of security and belonging that would only elevate his desire for his man, and maybe even fortify his fetish, all the more. It was now time for all of us to leave the two men to their own very private and intimate time together. The drama, as spectacular as it had been, was all over.
But I was smiling. It had been such a long time since I last smiled that it had become a forgotten art. I knew what I wanted to do: what I had witnessed had been just the thrust I needed to wear me down at my emotional hearth.
I went upstairs to look for Hansel.
(Copyright, JRK, December, 1998. This version is copyright, April, 2000.)