The Allen Street Health and Fitness Club is so much more than just a health and fitness club. It is all of those things of course, and it is also a Spa. There are world-class massage therapists there, available day and night for the perfect post-workout recovery.
There are locker facilities, exercise machines, free weights, all that stuff, even an indoor olympic-sized swimming pool.
Nutrition? Of course. The finest pre-, during, and post-workout foods and drinks are available. The water is of the finest purity, and there is a wide selection of the best and most cutting-edge of electrolyte-replenishing beverages.
It has no licenses, is completely unregistered with any city, state, municipality, commonwealth or government. It pays no salaries and reports no taxes. It exists and is busy and full of people every hour of the day, and yet it does not exist.
Not on paper, save this one.
In the technical sense, it is not even a private club, despite the many fit and well-dressed men who can be seen coming and going through either the elegant front doors opening onto Allen Street, or via the more popular, gated and circular driveway, that can be accessed by foot or motorcar, from the house's rear.
In the technical and legal sense, it is a private home, owned by a rich old widow, who can often be seen on the premises, admiring the fit male flesh on display. Because this is only a private residence and not a commercial business, it makes these men her houseguests. She can say who stays and who goes at a word.
Good manners and good behavior are highly prized by the membership, almost most of all.
The members have paid a pretty penny and have passed a rigorous background and physical check-up to get in. But bad behavior could ruin a good thing for everybody, so the widow's word is the final word. The fiction that these are all her guests, and she's throwing a decades-long fitness party, is the one her husband devised on his deathbed to protect her. It was eccentric enough and true enough that it just might work if ever confronted with the harsh light of day. Would it survive a reporter's inquiry? Good thing the widow's husband bought the only newspaper in town decades ago.
She has not had to cancel anyone's membership to-date, that is, there's no gossip that she ever has. Good thing, since she definitely would not be refunding the ample initiation fee nor any of the monthly dues and special assessments.
It started out from a simple desire: a nice place to work out nude, in public with other bodies that want to work out in the nude. This was the idea that the widow's husband had originally possessed.
And then, if those bodies might get aroused by working out in the nude around other nude bodies, then it might be nice to have a place that let's you do something about it right then and there.
"It's what everybody wants to do, so why are we lying about it?" the widow's husband used to say.
Having already the olympic-sized pool that he inherited with the house and estate, it was also easy to retrofit the ballroom into an elegant temple of both cardio and strength training. Mirrors everywhere, originally to reflect the dancers, but now to reflect the sweating, healthy bodies of the exercising members.
The natural high, grand ceiling of the nineteenth century ballroom, easily accommodated the highest-end ventilation, heating, and cooling system, updated each decade or so. After all, the ballroom was originally designed to accommodate more than a hundred dancing, reveling, sweating, scheming, planning, lusting Victorians, and then Edwardians, and always with their human servants.
Nudity was not required, but it was always an option, and the option favored in one way or another by most of the guests. It was not uncommon for members to work out nude but for sneakers and socks, and perhaps a towel around their neck or shoulders. This was thought in fine keeping with the spirit of the endeavor. Feet and toes are delicate things, but the membership were all adults, and more were adult enough to have long walked the earth in search of such opportunities as the Health and Fitness Club provided. Those who did not wish to risk their toes on modern cardio and weight lifting equipment were hardly shunned. But adults are also adult enough to weigh and chance any risks. Of course, the risk of a weight dropped on a foot and/or a toe is far less when the lifter is not lifting any silly type of weight above his casual control. Reps over weight was decidedly the mantra of the Health and Fitness Club.
As the years went on, for those who discovered it, the Health and Fitness Club's pleasures did not go stale. The membership grew organically. In the first decade, only a few friends and their occasional, ever-changing lovers.
But they told two friends. And then they told two friends. And then they told two friends...And several decades later, hundreds of guests, almost entirely male, had circuited their way through the pec decks and free weight benches and steppers and climbers and gliders and runners and all the rest, regularly maintained and changed out over time for the newest and best equipment.
Nothing to hide the honest beauty of the body. The simple beauty of muscles expanding and contracting. The purity of pecs and delts and lats and traps and glutes and taut hammies and of course the abs.