We walk down some dingy stairs which are very steep and dark and I’m wearing stiletto PVC boots and I’ve had two shots of vodka so it’s slow going.
This is a fetish club. And my outrageously brief and shiny black studded bikini, which looked incredibly weird on the street, under my coat, looks completely tame and a little pedestrian down here.
I’m here with some friends. Let’s call them Big Daddy and Baby Girl… because that is their names… and it’s my first time in a club like this. I’m a newbie, but I’ve decided that I want to get publicly whipped this eve, because when in Rome and all that.
The crowd is a mixed bag. It seems to be a fairly even split between the hot, gym-toned leather crew and the nerdishly cool Dungeons and Dragons fans. It’s like high school – the jocks vs the geeks. But everyone is high and cuddling. Fishnet tights are getting entwined in nose studs a lot more than you would think could happen in a short period of time.
Then there are a few club goers who don’t fit anywhere. The guy in the Jason mask with a hockey stick who just stands in the corner looking menacing (who is probably a Dungeons and Dragons guy underneath). There is also a gaggle of older gentlemen in leather strips who are not shy about having their full scrotum on show. There is a gorgeous 6’3” Japanese goth girl with white contact lenses, who at some point pashes me and swings me around her head.
Most people have gone to a lot of effort, but then there are a couple of drunk randoms who came in off the street and decided that stripping down to their worn Bonds undies could pass for fetish wear. We are not fooled.
The club is heaving, the music is predictably trance-like and the dancefloor a heaving mass of sweaty, shiny people in various shades of black.