Beetlesmith's Ch. 23

Jackie opened one of the drawers of a table. It was filled with neat rows of dildos, vibrators, and anal plugs of all shapes, sizes, and colors. There were ten more drawers just like it in the room.

"Holy fuck," Gloria intoned with awe, as she scanned the chamber.

"What do you think we should call this room?" Karen asked, rhetorically, and with equal awe as Gloria.

"The Caligula Grotto, perhaps," I said as a joke.

"A capital idea, my dear sir," Portnoy uttered. Then upon further reflection, he continued, "In fact, we should name all of these specialty rooms after a particular emperor. We can put their names above each entrance. It would help organize things in a deviously clever way."

Jackie asked, tongue in cheek, "Speaking of naming things after emperors, which one should we call you, William?"

I balked at the suggestion. "Wait a minute, I don't want to get that deep into role playing."

"Oh come on," Jackie whined, "You and Karen should each have a name. A proper, noble Roman name. Dominus and his Domina. Emperor and his Empress..."

"Gods that walk among us mortals," Denise added quickly while lifting an eyebrow, and subtlety alluding to mine and Karen's special abilities. "I think it's a wonderful idea, Will."

Karen nibbled at my earlobe, and said, "It would be fun."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, we don't even have a name for the club yet."

"Roman Wilderness," came a quiet reply.

It was Gloria. Oddly, she was standing off by herself, absentmindedly fingering a suspension chain for one of the swings, while looking around at the other equipment. It was obvious she was captivated by the room.

We all stared at her for some time, wondering who this person was, and what they had done with Gloria. Finally, Karen asked, "What did you say, baby?"

"We should call the club, Roman Wilderness. It reminds me of a song I liked as a kid. I think it's fitting." She turned to face us, and smiled. "Just a thought."

The others continued to stare at her, dumbfounded. I looked over at Portnoy, who was silently mouthing, 'Capital.'

"Sounds like we have a name for our club," I muttered, almost to myself.

Jackie finally injected some levity into the odd situation. Holding up a steel, cock cage, she quipped, "Oh, look at this. I haven't seen one of these since my second husband. Ah, the memories. Maybe we should put Willy's willy in something like this? It would make all of us ladies feel safer."

Denise laughed, and said, "Not a bad idea, though it needs to be bigger."

"A hell of a lot bigger," Karen added, laughingly.

"So much amusement at my expense. Your Emperor is displeased. Twenty lashes with a wet noodle for the lot of you."

"You direct those noodle lashes at my bare hoochie-coo while sticking that thick rod in me, and I'm..."

"What's next on the agenda, Mr. Portnoy?" Karen interrupted, with only slight irritation in her voice.

"There's another room similar to this, but with... More modern equipment, let's say. More electric devices and cages rather than manual as you see here. I even procured a couple of Sybian vibrators that should provide a wonderful torment when used in capable hands. The real plum for the other bondage den, though, is a full head, arm and leg stock."

"A head, arm... Stock? What in the hell is that?" Gloria asked.

"You've seen a medieval stock? Well, this is similar, but the stock itself is housed on a table and consists of two parts. The submissive first sits on the table with their legs extended forward. The first part of the stock is secured around their thighs. Then they are doubled over so that the second stock locks their wrists and neck in place. I'm told it's a most uncomfortable and humiliating treatment, and made more so because the submissive's derriere hangs over the edge of the table, thus adding to the effect.

"Oh, Jackie, it sounds perfect for you," Karen intoned, musically. Karen ignored the look Jackie gave her, and added, "That room could be the Nero... No, on second thought, the Domitian Grotto. I never really cared for Nero. Even with all his cruelty, he was still a momma's boy."

Portnoy smiled. "Quite. Well, we can look at that room later. Instead, let me show you the bathhouses."

Tiled from floor to ceiling with white marble, the bathhouse had an open floorplan consisting of just long rows of shower heads all around the room. There were tiled benches below every other showerhead so that one could sit and soak—or do other things—under the spray.

"There's another like this, just across the corridor. There's also a smaller annex attached to each shower area," he said, pointing to a smaller room behind us, "With toilets, bidets, sinks and a trough urinal. No stalls. Fully communal and unisex like the showers."

"Speaking of which, I need to tinkle," Jackie commented.

"So do I," Gloria seconded.

As they walked off toward the toilets together, I commented, "Ah, the heady days of Rome. I can smell its historic aroma already. Communal toilets, something they never quite talk about in history books."

Portnoy quickly added, "I put in more than adequate ventilation. I figure these bathhouses are much needed, and will be welcomed relief with so many guests exerting themselves, covered in a fine sweat, and other...stickiness."

"Yes, an excellent idea all around, Rodney" I said.

Karen turned on one of the showers. A forceful stream of warm water shot out onto the floor, and then ran to numerous drains in the middle of the room. A moist, warm vapor quickly filled the interior.

Putting her hand under the spray, she closed her eyes in bliss, and said, "Mmm, warm water mixed with hot sex. What could be more luxurious?"

Portnoy handed her a towel, and said, proudly, "If you like that Domina, you're going to love this. Come. Let me show you my pièce de résistance."

It was a short walk from the bathhouses, and even before we saw his masterwork we could all smell the chlorine.

There was already a wood plaque above the entrance, which read, 'Golden Grotto.'

"I took the liberty of naming this room already," Portnoy said, "I hope no one minds."

We descended a short way down blue-painted, concrete steps. When we got to the bottom of the landing, the room expanded up and out, away from us. At our feet lay the most enticing pool of water. Steam wafted off its surface, illuminated only by submerged lighting. There were no other lights in the grotto.

The pool itself must stretch seventy-five to one hundred feet away from where we stood, and looked at least thirty feet wide. It was all lined by turquoise-colored tile. The walls above were gilded paper, and shimmered blue and gold from the lighting. High above us, the ceiling was painted jet black, with small splatters and speckles of phosphorescent paint to imitate a starry night sky.

From behind us, we heard Gloria and Jackie say in unison, "Holy fuck." They had finally caught up.

"Took the words right out of my mouth," Karen said.

We all took a moment to catch our breath, and to marvel at it.

Portnoy stood proudly with his arms folded across his chest, taking a well-deserved moment to admire his handy work, as well as listen to our awe-struck compliments.

Finally, he broke the silence, "Given the number of members we'll have, I thought this better than hot tubs. It's a constant eighty degrees. There are two cooling showers on either side, one on this landing, and one on the other across the pool. It's a uniform four feet deep. Good enough so anyone can completely submerge and soak, but not too deep to make it an uncomfortable prospect for those who can't swim or for shorter members. It took quite an effort to retrofit the plumbing for this room, waterproof it, and add heaters, filtration, skimmers and the like. Much of our investment went here, but as you can see, I think it's worth the expense."

"Holy fuck," Gloria said again.

I was still in awe when I asked, "This is all magnificent, Rodney. But I still don't understand why you went to such expense and opulence? We could easily do just as well with half as much."

A sad look crossed his face before he answered. "You don't see it, do you sir? None of you really do. I guess you're too close to it, or unaware of it. But I've traveled the world over, delving in all forms of its...sexual decadence. I seek it out, revel in it, swim in it..." Spreading his arms out over the pool, "I submerge myself in all of its passionate self-indulgences. I've been to orgies in Europe, Japan, Brazil, and even harems in Arabia. So many orgies, all exotic, all unique, and all in places where conventional Western moralistic scruples have become passé, and yet, never have I seen such continual, unabashed, wanton lust and fervor as I've seen at your parties. Bar none. I don't know how you do it, but in my eyes, you and Madam...I'm sorry, Domina...attain the perfection of absolute decadence." He finished with a slow wave of his hand, "Something that exquisitely perfect needs a proper home, and I have built you one."

We all fought off the temptation to jump into the pool, and as we made our way back to the car, we stopped briefly to admire the main pleasure grotto again.

Portnoy smiled as he looked around, and said almost as an afterthought, "I only wish we could have real marble for the walls. That would really bring out the Roman excess. It would be a terrible expense, though, to cover everything in marble."

Looking up and around at the ceiling and high on the walls, I asked, "Speaking of excess, how much would it ruin the atmosphere you've created if we put up more than a few big screen TVs, or even smallish Jumbotrons like the ones in casinos, all about this area and in the various specialty rooms in the back?"

Karen looked at me with narrowed eyes, and asked with a sly Mona Lisa smile donning her lips, "What are you thinking?"

"A man once told me to go big. I'm going big."

********

It was another two weeks making the changes to the club suggested by Karen and the others before we opened.

I was happy for the additional time. It allowed us to get better organized. Actually, it allowed me the time to fully wrap my head around our new venture.

Unlike myself, Portnoy was well ahead of the curve. It seems that over the past four weeks, in between converting the warehouse into a Roman pavilion, he had already been advertising the club to his many contacts, local, national, and international, as well as soliciting for members with advertisements in underground newspapers and on the internet. He even had a web site ready for launching. All he was really waiting for to complete the logistics was a name for the club, which Gloria had already brilliantly provided.

We thought about printing membership cards, but disregarded the idea. They would be too easily counterfeited. Instead, we relied on a secure server and computer system where member's names could be quickly accessed when they bought admission.

We charged an annual fee of a thousand dollars. The same amount I paid for that first vial of elixir—it seemed fitting to me. Each member, couple or single, was allowed to bring one guest, preferably female. Besides the membership fee, we also charged an admittance fee of one hundred dollars per person per visit. Only members and their guests were allowed to enter, and only with a reservation.

Some would consider that a poor business model, to exclude so many potential customers by first charging a pricey membership fee, on top of limiting the number of attendees to 700 a night. However, you would be surprised how many people from all walks of life would scrap together enough money to buy membership into Roman Wilderness. When word got out about the events on opening night, we almost couldn't keep up with all the new applications that were submitted to the web site.

To make things equitable to all members, we implemented a reservation system where each member could only reserve a slot one night out of a week. In this way, every member had the potential to enjoy the club at least once during the month. Naturally, overseas clients who happened to be visiting the States were admitted without reservation, at least for the first night.

Young men and women having a particular body type, and who wished to be members but couldn't afford the luxury, could work for their fees as slaves of the club for a month. We required them to be clean shaven—face and body, alike. When working in the club, they were only allowed to wear a single, silver chain—loosely fitted around the waist for the women, and around the neck for the men. Besides providing certain services to the other members, the slave's main duty was after hours club clean-up. In any given month, the waiting list to become a Wilderness slave exceeded a thousand names. Karen and Denise assumed charge over the slaves, and would pick the fifty most suitable each month.

Being the old softy that I am, I gave our friends free memberships. All those that attended that first orgy in my home became regulars, except for Jack, and most of them helped out with the nightly operations. Sara, with Jackie and Gloria's help, was particularly adept at organizing over-the-top sex games and contests for the other members.

The club was open seven nights a week, from eight in the evening to four in the morning. In keeping with Portnoy's original idea, each night the first 580 reservations in line gained immediate access, while the 120 late-comers had to wait. These were let in two or three members at a time over the course of a couple of hours after the club opened its doors.

I thought it excessively haughty to make paying customers wait, but Portnoy said it soothed his sense of equitableness. Why should the tardy be given the same treatment as those who showed punctuality? Besides, he'd say, it did his heart good knowing the slothful wealthy and powerful had to wait alongside the great unwashed.

Each day, rain or shine, the line would begin to form starting around four. The gathering of patrons was usually orderly. Most waited quietly in line, though some heated jostling did break out on occasion. After the first, such incident, Portnoy hired four, very fit and very large men, ex-military types, to keep order while everyone waited for the doors to open.

Every evening was a packed house, and surprisingly, many more showed up than had reservations. I guess they were hoping beyond hope that there would be a cancellation, or that a member would unexpectedly leave early, thus providing an opening. The Glommers, as Karen called them, were roped off separate from the others. Some of these weren't even members—Uber-Glommers using Karen's vocabulary. Even more surprising, Glommer and Uber-Glommer alike, stayed waiting right up until the club closed in the morning.

On opening night, membership to Roman Wilderness stood at around 6000. By the end of the third month it was just under 40,000, and climbing. We had to stop taking applications at 50,000 members. Any more, and it would be too many people for too little club space even with the reservation system.

At a thousand dollars a member, it was hefty sum of money to be sure, and unlike the gate receipts, which were subject to state and local taxes, the membership fees were deposited in an overseas account in the Caymans, sheltering it from any tax liability.

Every week, gate receipts from the first two nights more than paid for the weekly overhead. Most of these costs went to cleaning the satin coverings and pillows in the main pleasure grotto, paying security, and paying a small team of techies for maintaining our web site, and another team for camera work—I'll get into that shortly.

Overhead charges could have been less, but I wanted to provide libations for the members—a fairly inexpensive champagne, Bollinger Brut Special Cuvee, as well as a nice little Merlot and Riesling from Napa. No beer or harder alcohol was provided, and members were frowned upon bringing their own. Portnoy was worried about needing a license, but since everyone was an adult, and we were providing it free, there were no state or federal, bureaucratic entanglements.

The wine was served by the slaves, Roman style, in metal goblets, and usually when the members were gathering in the main grotto after the doors were opened. Once everyone was in frenzy, there was very little drinking done—which cut down on costs.

Membership and gate receipts aside, the real moneymaker was my idea, and the reason for the wide screen TVs—an adult, amateur web site.

On any given night we had 700 willing participants, more than eager to be filmed. Husbands and wives, first-timers or experienced swingers, everyone eventually made it in front of the camera, and no one cared. And why should they? We live in the age of rampant sexual lasciviousness, and our cultural excesses showed no signs of slacking. Porn was mainstream now, and everyone wanted to star in their own movie at least once.

Couples, married or otherwise, were already filming their bedroom antics with their phones and digital cameras, and dropping them on the internet or even putting them on their Freakbook page for all to see. Who cared anymore if someone you knew watched as you knelt in the middle of a bukkake circle jerk? If the moral busybodies and societal prudes weren't hypocritically doing it themselves while condemning it in others, they were longing to do it just the same. All anyone needed was the right incentive to become their very own porn star. The club and web site provided just such incentives.

I hired five, semi-professional camera operators who were good at shooting porn on the go with a shoulder mount, and told them to film anything and everything they see. Besides a remote feed from the cameras to the numerous wide screens all over the club, the first weeks shooting became seed videos for our pay-per-view subscription site.

New videos were added every week, subdividing them all into over fifty different categories of filth. Anything and everything was offered for any fetish imaginable—excluding scat and snuff, of course—and all for the reasonable fee of twelve dollars a month. Yeah, we undercut our competitors a little, which pissed them off to no end.

Besides shooting the various activities in the main pleasure grotto, we would peel off a few of the more sultry and eye-appealing members that night for a special shoot. These went out on live feed all over the world. Eventually, we converted one of the back chambers into a mini-soundstage, and made a small production out of these special shoots, complete with direction, simple plots, and a few lines of dialogue for some of the members who could act.

Jackie had a particular knack for spotting talent, and would pull them aside to shoot her own, special, high definition videos. It wasn't long before a Jackie O'Bannon production became a by-word to everyone, inside and out of the industry, for the sleaziest, raunchiest, most deviant true amateur adult, pay-per-view porn this side of Bangkok. Jackie had finally found her niche. We set up her material on its own, and charged triple our normal membership for just her HD's alone. We figured her material increased our pay-per-view membership by twenty percent.

The web site took off better than I could ever dream. By the sixth month, subscribers numbered in the tens of millions, and all the proceeds were funneled into our Cayman accounts.

When word reached us that swingers clubs and private parties all over the world exclusively showed our live feeds during their own festivities, we knew the popularity of our web site was unsurpassed.

About a month into our newfound popularity, I had Portnoy begin setting up satellite clubs in most major cities worldwide. They were all connected via closed-circuit, digital video to our main club. Consequently, Karen and I, and our powers of persuasion, were with everyone. As such, all members from Paris to La Paz, Bangor to Beijing, fell under our complete control. As it turned out, the same effect occurred for those just using the pay-per-view sites, and was one of the reasons how our popularity increased at such an astronomical rate.