AUTHOR'S NOTE: this semi-fictionalised account of life in the adult Scene features characters as constancies rather than walk-ons. Or even, as hard-ons. This chapter can be a stand-alone but makes more sense in the context defined by Chapter 1. 'S up to you, Reader.
A swingers' event in Vegas, centered in and around The Strip. A trade show for the adult entertainment industry with a particular emphasis on the latest in video, fashion, kink and, even more so, plastics and pneumatics.
Well: that's my husband's take. But then, he is a materials scientist.
At check-in he gazes with professional interest at two platinum blondes crossing the lobby, analysing their superstructures, quietly figuring out the mass times weight over gravity equation. He asks me if I think implant technology really is improving, but we both realise it ain't when that evening we watch a couple of similarly structured girls in a pole dance act.
They're wearing high heels and, quite naturally, nothing else, which means when their bodies mash together everyone is able to see bare breasts spreading and flattening nicely.
Except: they don't. It's like watching two rocks in an avalanche.
Later still, we encounter a fellow guest and his wife. He's a specialist in body image enhancement – ah, so that's what they call it. He doesn't look like Ken and thank God, she doesn't look like Barbie, so it's possible to at least have a chat along the lines of how's business, and what's new.
What's new, it turns out, is that -- according to his wife -- this surgeon is quite a name in labial enhancement – my, my, I wonder: what kind of name might that be? If I'm interested, then Stuart and I should come along to their suite later, there are some other couples who –
Thanks but no thanks, we say, and head out of one bar area into the next. We grab two seats at a table where another couple have also only just settled down. They're our age: he's big and soft and comfortable with it, she's slimmer almost to the point of being sleek. She has big dark eyes in an elfin face framed by cropped auburn hair and the moment we meet, I know.
She and I soon collapse in fits of laughter over the likely name of the surgeon I've just met. He and Stuart are immediately into a debate about a Mustang parked up under the neon marquee, looks like something called a three-ninety as driven by Steve McQueen though of course, a Dodge Magnum would always have been too quick for it. Oh, absolutely.
Hello, Laura. Hello, David.
Men. I don't know. I sometimes think my husband loves the smell of a hot engine as much if not more than the scent of a good woman.
Here we are, having dined quite well and watched an act that was pretty good once the bouncing brick, or non-bouncing brick, stuff had been done with and the girls got on with finishing each other. But now the next high of the evening is a discussion about hemis. Or semis. Demis. It's beyond me.
Turns out, David's in the family Lexus dealership. Maybe even Dealer Principal, which I think is something to do with black jack but Stuart says no, no, and then sighs a lot. Laura once worked in the business too, though I'm guessing she was front of house rather than on her back under a chassis somewhere. Laura says she has been on her back in a service bay but it had nothing to do with any warranty work.
So. Where to head next? Plenty of choices if you know where to look.
We finish up in a seminar suite converted into a kind of play room and the four of us are draped in white towelling that stays on all night and doesn't come off because, well, we don't, either.
Yes, of course there are break-out rooms well worth exploring, in one of which we discover this gorgeous nude black guy, extensively oiled, extensively endowed, demonstrating just how supple a man can be. It's a solo act Laura and I would really, really like to watch through to the guy's completion because we've never seen a performance like this.
But we've got Starsky and Hutch in tow and this isn't their scene. Not only is there not a Mustang in sight, we suspect they're secretly lamenting the size of their hemis.
Another break-out room has two naked girls going at it on a raised glass dais, you can stand underneath and look up at what they're doing to each other. But I've already enjoyed one Sapphic spectacle and another isn't worth a crick in the neck. So I get Stuart to escort me back to the main area, leaving Laura and David to watch the performance because they missed out on the pole dance duo.
When we finally re-group, it's clear the press of the crowd is a bit too great and the noise just a little too much. It's also pretty obvious that it's been a long day of long flights, easier for us than for Laura and David from upper NY, but even so. We're in the same tower, it turns out, though different floors. It's just a quick hug and kiss outside the elevator on their floor before we continue on up to ours.
And very soon, lights out: the only desire I have is for sleep, snuggling up with Stuart and letting thoughts tumble in lazy scatter, about the trip, about the day, about the night. And also, about Laura.
Elvis has left the playground.
It was the next night when I loved her.
When, cringingly, I couldn't help but remark on how good she looked. No excess fat. No stretch marks. A mother-of-two with a body like that? I'd never gone through the pain and pleasure of child-birth yet I sure as hell didn't have, and still don't have, a figure as taut yet as soft as hers. My boobs are bigger, and without artifice, but there could only be one size between us. I don't run to a full Brazilian, either, though Laura's sculpturing was enough to make me wonder if I shouldn't smooth out completely now.
All that, of course, was after a day of sleeping in late and meeting up for lunch and then going our separate ways before re-grouping for dinner. Stuart and I were in Ceasar's mall for so long he wondered if we going to sleep in the fountain. David said he and Laura had spent so much time in that Italian village place, he thought she was looking to trade him in for a gondolier.
Dinner, then. And wine. And for the four of us, talk of many things. Their experiences of the scene. Our experiences. The way those experiences almost uncannily mirrored each other. What had been the best. What had been the worst. And what had never been experienced. Whether atop a glass dais or not.
Laura's gaze held mine. They really had been good, she said. The two girls. You could see how it could be. . . You know. She laughed. Not sure about how comfortable a girl could get on glass though.
Or, Stuart interrupted, even Perspex – ah, what it is to have a partner to whom science is all. Beds are definitely better, David said. Well; so long as they're not too firm. Stuart nodded like the two of them were lab techs discussing formulae. Our bed is OK, he said. Not too hard. Not too soft. He looked at me. It's a nice bed, isn't it Kate?
Ho-hum. Ho-hum.
