Swing Like They Do on the Flying Trapeze

There comes a time in a daughter’s life during adolescence when her mother tells her, “Your body is a holy sanctuary, a temple.” Well, mother, I am afraid the temple has been looted, and no Judah Maccabee is going to be able to undo the damage. Living in New York for the summer, there have been plenty of opportunities that I have never come across in suburbia. Swinger clubs. Well, sure, there are definitely ones outside the cities, but it just seems wrong to go to a swingers club in the middle of nowhere. And I could not imagine the crowds that would flock from suburban towns to suburban swinger clubs. Manhattan just seems to yield the green light for me to put myself into corrupt situations.

It all started when an old friend, Walter, proposed the idea of going to Le Trapeze with me. I thought, oh fabulous, we’re going to learn how to be trapeze artists like in the circus! However, if you ever try googling Le Trapeze NYC, let’s just say you will not find results relating to the circus. Walter is a complex onion who constantly seeks entertainment. It may also be worth noting that he is a sex addict. He is the only person I know who is more sexually advanced than I am. And so whenever he dares to jump, I must always jump higher.

Around 1am on a Saturday night I meet a degenerated Walter at some midtown Irish pub. We drink ourselves silly and write the blueprints of what the night will become. I decide to rename Walter. His name is now Sebastian and he is my significant other. We walk a few blocks and come across a secretive Checkmates Swingers Club. We take the elevator down, and the doors open to a small room sprinkled with glitter, a desk, and a man decked out in a hot pink ribbed tank top complete with a cowboy hat. Gay night. Whoops. Back up the elevator we go.

My sexless lover, Sebastian, hales a cab and to Le Trapeze we ride. As we approach the door of the club, a somewhat attractive 30-year old woman walks out holding hands with a middle-aged man. Loopy Sebastian says, “Hey they weren’t that bad at all!” What Sebastian meant to say was, “SHE wasn’t that bad at all.” This is an accurate preface of what I would be coming face-to-face with in the very near future.

As new Le Trapeze members, we are greeted by the hostess decked out in braids and leopard-printed articles against her dark skin. We begin the tour. “This is the main room,” she says. I see maroon and raspberry colored velvet couches with disco balls hanging from the ceiling. I see women with half-smeared eye makeup and big nipples sitting on the lap of either a heavy-weight man, a 60-year old man, or one blessed with both qualities. I hear myself gulp. We turn to the right to see a buffet of food and a bar. Yeah right I wasn’t touching that shit. “This way, please,” continues Leopard Cleopatra. We walk through a hall with shut doors on both sides. “These are the private rooms if you and your partner decide to have some private time.” I don’t think Walter has ever looked this desirable. I gaze up at Walter, though, and he looks determined. FUCK.

”And up those steps is our two-story orgy room,” casually adds Cleopatra. “Now because it’s the orgy room, it is very likely that somebody is going to touch you. But don’t worry, if you are not interested you can just tell them to please get off of you.” Did I mention that I am anti-confrontational? Then we are guided to the locker rooms in which we are given our towel attire. Walter hands me my towel. Shit, I have to measure up to his measure. I had to do it; no way was I going to be the buzz kill and pussy out. Isn’t it ironic that in order for me to maintain my pride, I was going to have to swallow it for the next two hours?

Sebastian and I walk out in our puke-tinted beige towels. We shuffle into the main room and take a seat at a table to scope out the place. Sebastian spots a young looking couple. I look over, the girl was fuckable. Definitely could use improvement on the body and face, but definitely better than her counterpart. Her boyfriend was an African American trapped in a little Jewish boy’s frame size. Braces nor whitening could help this fellow’s mouth. It was a sure cry for veneers, but they were from Harlem. Well, Omar was from Harlem. We find out that the girl is Jewish. Fuck you Sebastian. Fuck you. Sebastian whispers, “We can’t leave here without fucking somebody!” We have a drink with them and then go into one of the private rooms off the hallway. I cover the pillows and mattresses with our towels. God knows what a black light would find in this room. About Omar, when he was limp the penis looked small and Jewish, but now, it was hard it belonged to a black man. I find myself unable to pay attention to the sex, though, because I am too occupied with hearing “OH SEBASTIAN, OH YEA SEBASTIAN!” an inch from my ear. I turn doggy style so I that I would not have to look at Omar’s teeth. By the way, I have no recollection of what Omar’s actual name was. And I may or may not have been holding in my laughter the entire time because just hearing somebody moan the syllables that made up my created character of Sebastian was just absolutely bizarre. Nearing the finish, Sebastian and Kelly stopped because Sebastian’s condom broke. I really hope he’s gotten tested since.

So after we finish, I think, pheww I survived, not terrible. But when Sebastian verbalizes his frustration about not being able to finish, I realize that I am in fact nowhere near the finish line. Once again, fuck you, Sebastian. God damn you Sebastian, why didn’t you bring your own fucking Magnum Trojan! We run to Cleopatra who of course only has basic protection for the basic penis. One of the only instances I’ve ever hated a big dick.

We walk up to to the first floor of the orgy room and plump down in a corner. Sebastian eyes this 50-year old woman he calls a milf. This woman was not a milf, but I know Walter had taken xanax beforehand. Let me tell you, this woman was fugly. But Sebastian only saw blonde hair. He kept nagging me like a child, “Come on take one for the team.” I take a look at this “milf’s” lover. No way he was younger than sixty. My hand is resting on the ground and suddenly I feel a hand touch mine. I follow the hand to the arm to the shoulder to the neck to the face AHHHH FUCK NO. I grab Sebastian and we leave the orgy room. We take a stroll through the upstairs of the orgy. It was like a jungle gym with no toys in it. Just contaminated pillows and shit. And by shit I mean old men fucking ugly women. We decide to go back downstairs to regroup.

Sebastian and I take a seat in our towels on a couch in the main room. After much coaxing and bribing from him, I go up to a couple still clothed. They are clearly not going to fuck at this place tonight, so I don’t mind asking them to participate because I know they’re not. The girl is ethnic looking and attractive. The guy has yellowy fire-crotch hair and is small-framed. Not my style. His eyes twinkle as he sees me. I tell them that it is also my boyfriend and my first time here, so we would love to experiment with them. Meeting my expectations, they tell me that they are still deciding. I walk back and jadedly tell Sebastian the sad news. Sebastian straightens out his towel, flashing the hot ethnic girl. Ohhh Walter.

Walter and I walk back to our table by the probably contaminated buffet. He spots a Latin girl with not great teeth, but a decent face and big boobs. Sebastian starts going berzerk like a dog who has spotted a squirrel for the first time. He asks, “What about them?” I take a look at the man. He is overweight, tan, and hairy and looks 40-something. “Come on we can’t leave here without fucking at least two couples!” Walter was never going to live this down if I refused. I didn’t have a choice. I had to man up and do it. No way was I going to be a pussy. We walk to the upstairs of the orgy room and enter an empty section of the jungle gym. It was like the private room we had been in before, but there was no actual door. Becoming a part of the routine, I lay the towels on the floor to cover the pillows. I completely remove my soul from my body and black myself out. I only remember two things from this round: 1) men came to view the four of us, crowding around where a door should have been and I believe they were whacking off to us and 2) fat men are hard to balance on. Toward the end of round two, some staff members pass by our section of the jungle gym, “Closing time.” Walter had made us stay until closing.

We leave, laughing our asses out of the club. “Debrief tomorrow.” Walter hales me a cab and we go our separate ways. I come home to my friend Veronica Vogue upset because a boy she had made out with a year ago spotted her making out with his friend. I smile and I tell her everything is going to be okay. Tomorrow is a new day. God I hope it will be a new day. This one needed to end. I throw every article of clothing that had touched my Trapeze-contaminated body into my laundry bag and jump into the shower. I have never scrubbed so hard. I even purelled my phone. The things I do to rid myself of boredom. Ohhh the things I do.