He found himself at the entrance to a club that looked like it oozed with sex. It did. It oozed with more than sex or semen. There was a sinister quality to the club inside that was not apparent when he first walked in.It was a narrow club. The bar was almost invisible, but the men were there, like guides to inner doors that revealed darker and darker secrets. It had been what seemed like years, though only days or weeks had passed since he had made hard, cold contact with a naked form in a club, so the inner recesses of the club drew him deeper and deeper until he thought he found what he was looking for. When he entered the first room and stripped completely nude, to his horror all the other nude men in the room were flagelating themselves with leather whips in a brightly lit room that made the scene even more garrish. It reminded him of the monks in Spain that walked the streets in white hoods and simultaneously flagelated themselves as the blood oozed from their atoning backs. Hoping that this was just some sort of bad cabaret from spoiled clubbing denizens, he got n
earer to the opening of the darkening door that led into the back room. To his horror, with what little light fell into the door to the backroom, among the crouching men and twisting bodies were other men whipping themselves and whipping others as well. Nothing like this could ever attract him. In fact the darkness of the entire series of rooms and situations filled him with the darkest of horrors.He slipped into his shorts in time to be met by Lindo Archer, whom he hadn't seen in years, and the pot belly that greated him told a sorry tale of beer and too many late nights in the dark. Both Lindo and his potbellied form greeted him by quickly taking off his shorts and not asking, but demanding, that he let him quench his thirst. He liked the guy, so he just stood there and let Lindo help himself. After all he was a one-time friend or acquaintance, and this was better than anything the dark rooms and the whipping men had to offer.
He waved goodbye to Lindo, pulled on his shorts again and walked over to the outdoor pool where he was the only one to jump in with nothing
but his cotton briefs on. The huge pressure of the water pushed the flimsy fabric off his body and he walked out of the water totally nude. No one seemed to notice. It was that kind of town or state of mind. When the owners of the club, waved at him to come back next week and do it all again, he waved with a doubtful smile and looked at his soiled lace bikini briefs that had an odd burnt-ochre stain on the fabric and on his fingers. He wished he were closer to water to rinse away the odd-smelling paste, but the taxi was not going to wait another minute, so he jumped into the cab as is and let the driver complain about smelling nothing pleasant for the second time that year.
