Page 5 of Brat on the Ball

“There is another option…” John scribbled something down on a piece of paper. “If you won’t pay for it…there are a couple of clubs around where you should be pretty safe. But they have a clientele that tends to skew a little more adventurous than you might otherwise expect.”

“You’re sending me to a kink club?” I asked, incredulous.

“I’m notsendingyou anywhere,” he said. “I’m giving you a potential solution to a problem you’ve presented. That’s what I do. I solve problems.”

He stood up and wiped a hand down his jeans, leaving a streak of grease. “Just…be safe, mate. I don’t want to deal with any headlines in the morning.” He left without a proper goodbye, and without shaking my hand.

John walked out just as the waiter brought his glass of wine and my orange juice over. “Pass it here,” I said, gesturing to the wine. “I paid for this shit anyway.”

I needed to get drunk for what I was considering doing.

Chapter Three - George

It was a cool Cardiff night, but at least it wasn’t raining. I always packed light to go to Wings, the one kink bar in Cardiff where I felt completely safe that no-one would think to rat me out. In London I was practically anonymous, but in Cardiff there were enough rugby-player loving twinks to make me worry some kind of compromising footage could get leaked. I wouldn’t want to go full Finn Roberts.

The club was down an alley off Queen Street, not as public facing or bright as most of the other clubs in the city centre. People didn’t just stumble into Wings. You had to want to be there.

Other than the obvious difference in clientele, the club was much like any other gay club. I could vaguely hear Whitney Houston from one end of the alley, and it got louder as I approached. The sign flickered weakly in the darkness.

“Alright, Reg?” I nodded to the bouncer just outside the cloakroom. He smiled and nodded back, waving me through. It stung that I didn’t get asked for ID any more. But being friends with one of the bouncers, and being a six-foot hairy chub of a man probably didn’t help.

The club was lit red in the first little room, the cloakroom, and a bored looking young woman I’d seen plenty of times before held out her hand for my entry fee. I took out a five-pound note and pressed it into her hand. I stripped off my jacket too, and grabbed an extra pound from my wallet for use of the cloakroom. I hadn’t been wearing anything under my jacket and the feeling of the cool outside air on my back and warmer air on my front made me feel alive. I loved being here. I could feel the hum of the music vibrating the floor and running over my skin.

The woman took my jacket and gave me a numbered ticket to get it back later. As I passed her, she reached out to touch my arm. “New lad in tonight I’ve not seen before. Would you mind checking he’s alright?”

“Fresh meat?” I joked.

“That’s how the others will see him. I trust you to look out for him.”

“Sure thing.” I didn’t know the woman’s name, but my reputation obviously preceded me. I didn’t like it when people were lecherous with inexperience. It was the kind of thing that scared off new people from ever coming back.

I stepped into the club. The place was carpeted in ever-present smoky dry ice and my trainers stuck to the floor beneath it. The lights inside were low and red, and the mass of bodies on the dance floor writhed as one.

Cardiff’s one kink bar was nothing like the ones I’d seen in London or Amsterdam. There were no darkrooms, no sex on the dance floor, no drugs being taken off the bar. It was for the most part somewhere for men to meet, decide if they were compatible or not and then head home for some kinky fun. Then again, there were more toilet cubicles in the place than any other bar I’d ever been in, so maybe I was actually naïve.

What I loved about Wings was the dress code, or complete lack thereof. I was shirtless in jeans, but there were leather daddies, men in jockstraps and booty shorts, guys in latex, and men were of all shapes, sizes and ages. Kink was freeing for these people. And for me.

Because I knew I wasn’t bad looking. But on a lot of apps, I found myself rejected by guys because I was carrying a few extra pounds. No matter that I was fitter than most of the six-pack loving bastards that rejected me. But in Wings, all were welcome.

A gorgeous little twink in a jockstrap sauntered up to me as I approached the dance floor and stroked one palm down my furry chest. “What a daddy,” he muttered, either to me or himself. “Buy a boy a drink?”

“I’ll be back,” I grunted, pushing through the mass of bodies towards the bar. Now and then, I felt a hand grab my arse or try to cup my crotch and I eased them away. I liked the scene, but I was all about consent.

I finally pushed through the middle of the mass and headed straight to the bar. “Hey Phil, I’ll have a pint of Heineken…” I started, and tailed off.

Because I’d spotted the guy that they had asked me to look out for. And he wasbeautiful. He was leaning on the bar and facing the other way, toward the dance floor. He had short dirty-blonde hair, the smoothest alabaster skin I’d seen in my life, and eyes that flashed blue whenever a disco light lit up his face.

I knew he was the man I’d been told to look out for because of his expression, like a deer in the headlights, and that he was wearing a shirt, jeans and shoes. No one dressed like that unless they were going for business realness. And he didn’t look nearly confident enough to be role playing.

A couple of the older regulars were talking to him and I could tell they were scaring him a bit, whether intentionally or not. One had his hand on the guy’s bicep as he spoke, and as I watched, the other moved his hand over to the guy’s thigh.

“Hey!” I shouted. All three turned to look at me. “Back off!”

The poor guy looked even more scared as the two older men backed off and I gestured for him to join me. I probably looked just as scary to him as they had, and I did my best to look as non-threatening as possible by crossing my arms over my chest as I leaned in to speak to him.

“First time?” I asked him, having to shout into his ear to be heard over the music. I could smell him up close, some expensive aftershave and something else. Like the remnants of the minty-smelling stuff I used to stop chafing when I was playing rugby. I wondered for a second if he was some closeted small-town rugby player.

“Could you tell?” he asked.

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