介绍:
Steaks were served.
"The thing that really drives me crazy," said the artist,
"is when I see a woman wearing one of those tartan skirts and high knee
socks. I can't work all day."
"No," countered the hotelier, "the worst thing is when you sort of follow a
woman down the street and she turns around and she is as beautiful as you
thought she was going to be. It represents everything you'll never have in
your life."
The artist leaned forward. "I once stopped working for five years because
of a woman," he said.
Silence. No one could top that.
The chocolate mousse arrived, and so did my date for Le Trapeze. Since Le
Trapeze admits couples only—meaning a man and a woman—I had asked my
most recent ex-date, Sam, an investment banker, to accompany me. Sam was
a good choice because, number one, he was the only man I could get to go
with me; number two, he'd already had experience with this kind of thing: A
million years ago he had gone to Plato's Retreat. A strange woman had come
up to him and
pulled out his unmentionable. His girlfriend, whose idea it had been to go
there, ran screaming from the club.
The talk turned to the inevitable: What kind of people go to a sex club? I
seemed to be the only one who didn't have a clue. Although no one had been
to a sex club, everyone at dinner firmly asserted that the clubgoers would
generally be "losers from New Jersey." Someone pointed out that going to a
sex club is not the kind of thing you can just do, without a pretty good excuse,
e.g. it's part of your job. This talk wasn't making me feel any better. I asked
the waiter to bring me a shot of tequila.
Sam and I stood up to go. A writer who covers popular culture gave us a
last piece of advice. "It's going to be pretty awful," he warned, though he had
never been to such a place himself. "Unless you take control. You've got to
take control of the place. You've got to make it happen."
NIGHT OF THE SEX ZOMBIES
Le Trapeze was located in a white stone building covered with graffiti. The
entrance was discreet, with a rounded metal railing, a downmarket version of
the entrance to the Royalton Hotel. A couple was coming out as we were
going in, and when the woman saw us, she covered her face with the collar of
her coat.
"Is it iftin?" I asked.
She looked at me in horror and ran into a taxi.
Inside, a dark-haired young man, wearing a striped rugby shirt, was sitting
in a small booth. He looked like he was about eighteen. He didn't look up.
"Do we pay you?"
"It's eighty-five dollars a couple."
"Do you take credit cards?"
"Cash only."
"Can I have a receipt?"
"No."
We had to sign cards saying that we'd abide by the rules of safe sex. We
egot temporary membership cards, which reminded us that no prostitution,
no cameras, and no recording devices were allowed inside.
While I was expecting steamy sex, the first thing we saw were steaming
tables—i.e., the aforementioned hot and cold buffet. Nobody was eating, and
there was a sign above the buffet table that said, YOU MUST HAVE YOUR
LOWER TORSO COVERED TO EAT. Then we saw the manager, Bob, a burly,
bearded man in a plaid shirt and jeans who looked like he should have been
managing a Pets 'R' Us store in Vermont. Bob told us the club had survived
for fifteen years, because of its "discretion." "Also," he said, "here, no means
no." He told us not to be worried about being voyeurs, that most people start
off that way.
What did we see? Well, there was a big room with a huge air mattress,
upon which a few blobby couples gamely went at it; there was a "sex
chair" (unoccupied) that looked like a spider; there was a chubby woman in a
robe, sitting next to a Jacuzzi, smoking; there were couples with glazed eyes
(Night of the Living Sex Zombies, I thought); and there were many men who
appeared to be having trouble keeping up their end of the bargain. But
mostly, there were those damn steaming buffet tables (containing what—
mini—hot dogs?), and unfortunately, that's pretty much all you need to
know.
Le Trapeze was, as the French say, Le Rip-Off.
By one A.M., people were going home. A woman in a robe informed us she
was from Nassau County and said we should come back Saturday night.
"Saturday night," the woman said, "is a smorgasbord." I didn't ask if she was
talking about the clientele—I was afraid she meant the buffet.
大家还在听
