Читать книгу The Three of U.S.: A New Life in New York - Peter Godwin - Страница 15

Our curiosity piqued by the outsize V sign in our view, Joanna has asked me to phone the Vault, which, she suggests, we should visit. I refuse. S&M is not really my scene. I am a coward. I treat pain as an enemy and go to great lengths to avoid humiliation.

‘But it’ll make a great story,’ she wheedles. She is always desperate for column ideas.

Later in the day, running short of work-displacement activities to divert myself from my book, I pick up the phone and dial the Vault.

‘Welcome to the Vault,’ says the earnestly perky male voice on the answering machine. ‘America’s most popular S&M club. Please listen to our upcoming attractions:

Friday is our bare buns contest;

Saturday is our foot fetish night;

Sunday is the finals of our bald beaver competition;

Monday is our popular schoolgirl evening;

Tuesday features hot-wax branding;

on Wednesday our weekly slave auction takes place;

join us Thursday for Shiatsu bondage;

and next Friday is our speciality dental ‘n’ head restraint.

We supper at the garage-like Café Braque, voted New York’s coolest summer hangout, full of slender models nibbling tiny organic mesclun leaves, and I tell Joanna of the varied fare offered by our neighbourhood club. ‘What do you fancy being entered for,’ I enquire. ‘Bare buns? Perhaps a little hot-wax branding?’

‘What really intrigues me,’ she confides, ‘is the speciality dental ‘n’ head restraint. What on earth could that be?’