When Isabel and I first shared our sexual fantasies with one another, it was pretty terrifying. Mostly the fear was about discovering a horrible mismatch of desires. And there’s no taking it back. You tell someone you’d like them to do you with a strap on, and there it is. You can’t exactly laugh that off.
So the moment we handed each other our little notebooks and waited was both the most exciting, and the most anxious, moment of my life.
Fortunately Isabel is a bad girl. And so we started. We agreed: this wasn’t academic. It was stuff we wanted to do, to make come true for each other. So we ripped up small bits of paper and tossed them into a stripy blue box and pulled them out one-by-one, each time reliving some of the initial thrill of not only imagining, but doing.
The first one that came out was to attend a swingers club. My fantasy: to have sex while others watched. Hers, to revisit a recent visit to the swingers club but this time with someone she loved.
When Isabel first told me she had gone to a swingers club a couple of months before we fell, I was a little surprised to find myself turned on by the idea. In fact, everything Isabel has told me she’s done (apart from drinking her own urine, but that’s another story and not a sexual one thank god) has been a major turn on.
The first time she’d gone she’d done so simply to see what it was like, and she’ll probabaly tell you she had a few interesting encounters. But that was with Mr Noble and we don’t want to talk about him.
This time she says it was different for her, and I believe her. For one thing, we’d fallen, and that makes things complicated. So we agreed no sex with anyone else. Our one rule.
Now you may say what the fuck is the point of going to a swingers club if you’re not going to swing? I guess my theory on that subject is that most men fantasise about two- and moresomes, and I am no exception. In fact, Isabel says she’s fantasised about two men herself, so maybe when we escape from under the puritanical pillow all of us have these kinds of fantasies. I dunno. But I think this is where we have to be careful to know the difference between fantasy and reality. Easy to imagine fucking your girlfriend while someone else’s clitoris is in your mouth. Trickier to actually do that and not leave your relationship in ruins.
Likewise in reverse. I’ve told Isabel I am a nominal bisexual, so I’m not repulsed by the idea of another penis close by. But when I imagine it inserted into Isabel’s anus it starts to feel a little..er..uncomfortable.
So we agreed: the having sex with other people fantasy goes onto the shelf, for now anyway.
Other than that, we agreed to go and play.
Pharoah’s Fantasy Club is located in Midrand, in some dodgy little corner of some hard-to-find place which I guess is part of their plan. While the rest of Joburg is out trying to convince strangers to drink enough tequila to go home with them for instantly forgettable, alcohol-induced sex followed by the desire to have the earth swallow them up, Pharoahs offers the real thing on a platter. No-one has to pretend to be interested in your fascinating job or your opinions on JZ. They’re there to fuck you, to fuck each other, and..well, that’s it.
The whole experience was hard to believe from the start. It still sometimes feels like it happened to someone else.
To begin with, there’s dinner. Actually, no. There’s the tour from some guy I vaguely recognised. The porn room. The voyeur room. The pool. The bondage room. The private rooms. The dark room. We’ll get to all that, don’t worry.
Then dinner. A casual buffet affair, with tables placed around the semi-indoor swimming poor. This early part of the evening, I imagine, is intended as a way to allow you to slowly get used to the idea that you’re actually in a place where, very soon, everyone is going to be naked and openly having sex. You can’t help looking around and noticing who’s there. And you have to imagine you’re being watched in a similar way. Beautiful Isabel was no doubt greedily eyed by many of the men munching on their pre-orgy salads.
At some point the announcement came that the stripper was late. The stripper is where it all begins. The person to throw down her frilly lace gauntlet, after which we’re no longer in the same society we were in before. We find ourselves in some alternate reality in which the rules are suddenly different.
And so we did. Suddenly there were topless women on the dancefloor. And then the flash of naked bodies moving around in the private rooms across the pool. And various people splashing around in the water.
The first couple I saw actually having sex were in one of the smaller pools. They were tastefully concealed by the dark water, but people genuinely having sex as opposed to just getting into each other is unmistakable. And it takes some time to settle down to the idea.
Look, sex is something we’ve all been taught is private. Sure, I’ve watched my share of porn, even sharing that experience at times. But basically sex is done behind closed doors. I don’t know about other cultures or times, but for us that’s how it is. Now, suddenly, for this one night, for this group of people, the privacy was lifted.
Seeing Isabel’s gorgeous breasts in the half-light of the swimming pool light as we glided around, feeling the warm water on my own naked body, and all of this in the wide open, relaxed winding down of other people’s dinnertime. Well. It was not something I can compare to anything else.
Here’s the thing: it becomes normal so fast. If you’re naked and a bunch of clothed people arrive and their mouths hang open in shock and horror, well that’s embarassing and the stuff of nightmares. But when no-one cares, looks at you with feint desire or neutral disinterest, something else happens. You just accept it.
And let’s talk about what it’s like seeing everyone else naked. There are people you wish you hadn’t. There are people you’re glad you have. And there are lots inbetween that just blur into one. Yes, there are some bodies that are wonders to behold. But mostly we’re all just pretty much the same. I quickly found myself wondering just what the fuck all the fuss is about. I saw enough penises, vaginas, breasts and bums to desensitise me in about 20 minutes. From then on, it just seemed weird to even wear clothes.
Ok, but that’s not what you want to know. You want to know about the sex.
Isabel and I had sex in one of the semi-private rooms overlooking the pool through which anyone interested could watch. Pretty regular sex, I suppose. I licked her breasts and her clitoris, and she sucked my penis. Then I pentrated her. And all of this in plain sight. Was it everything I fantasised it would be like? Well..yes, actually. It was pretty fucking awesome.
The voyeur room is a room filled with beds in which you can have sex, and others can stand and watch through a one-way glass window. Apparently this is the highlight of place because it was full when we got there, both inside and out. Pun intended. When a space cleared, we decided to try it.
So we had sex in a room full of strangers also having sex, being watched. At one point, the guy next to us whose girlfriend was sucking on his dick looked at Isabel while I was inside her and told her how great his blowjob was. It was a surreal moment in so many ways I’m sure I don’t need to explain.
And here’s the thing: watching normal people having sex is actually not that exciting. That was a surprise. Now, as I sit here typing and thinking back on it, I am more turned on than I was in the moment. How weird is that?
Isabel and I concluded as we watched a porn movie a little later in the abandoned porno room that pornographers know what the rest of us don’t. That it takes some skill to make sex look sexy. Maybe a bit of cheesy music. Woman moaning unconvincingly. Closeups of anal penetration or ejaculation on the face. Whatever. But a bit of theatrics. The real stuff is…well…a little underwhelming. To watch, of course. Not to do.
I guess I feel that we missed one opportunity that night, which was to have sex in a private room with another couple present. Not with them – as I said, we didn’t want that – but to add some kind of intimacy into the equation. The anonymity somehow worked against the excitement. It needed to mean a little more.
Isabel and I came home and had sex again, late, late, late into the night, overcome by the bewilderment of it all. As always, the sex was fabulous, but there was something else with us. Our courage at having shattered some important boundaries in our own minds, and between us.
Pharaohs is one of a few such swingers clubs in Joburg. I was deeply impressed with how much respect and privacy, ironically, is accorded to everyone, and I’d recommend it to any couple wanting to walk the line together. But with this warning, perhaps: it’s the real deal. It made me realise how fake all the raves and bars and clubs I’ve ever been to before have been. This place dispenses with all the bullshit. And I’m thinking not everyone wants that, or could handle it.
On with the great adventure,
Nathaniel.
