FEBRUARY 10

@ MASS, BRIXTON

The beauty of a fetish club like TG is that pleasure abounds in the most unexpected ways and places. Sure, gimp masks might not make for the kindest faces to have about the place, but did you ever expect to find a large transvestite fairy who gives stellar hugs skanking to The Specials? Or to get along famously with Alexis, a PVC clad stock broker, who chats to me as her wigged, nurse-uniformed boyfriend massages another bird they’ve just met. Some unseen thread entwines your path about the labyrinthine venue with certain other individuals’; a winding staircase that links assorted levels of sin seems to magnetise one guy wearing rubber Speedos, diving shoes and goggles. His movements are jerky and eager, but all of that energy is entirely focused on each inevitable step. Other regular passerbys are a girl with a bloody something like a cross between a cock and the head of a foetus protruding from her exposed chest, a guy dressed in surgeon’s scrubs about to roll into surgery, the hairiest man you have ever seen – these are no curly wurlies but hedgehog style static hair spikes all over his naked back arms and chest. His girlfriend’s eyes are bouncing about as if on chemically charged springs and her lunges in, uninvited, to kiss me are so miscalculated that she nearly falls over...To the dancefloor!

As varied as the clientele is, the music is an inspired mash up of jungle, breaks, swing, ‘slut rock,’ ‘atmospheric;’ never did I expect to hear the exquisite melancholia of Anthony and The Johnsons’ ‘Hope There’s Someone,’ with the added percussion of people spanking each other. Speaking of spanking, in my early elated honeymoon state when a certain lady whispered to me as she slipped past, ‘I’ll be back to dominate you in a minute,’ I found myself stopped in the Dungeon Room laid face down on a leather operating table, waiting to be slapped about the arse. Five minutes later my buttocks are aflame and I’m wondering if there’s something deep inside of me that is irrevocably changed; whether it was an enraged or an enraptured glint I noticed in Chris’ eyes as I squeezed his hand. I’m at least losing my London Underground mentality that will only allow me to glance at another person; but then everything and everyone are so preternatural you have to look at least twice to trust your very vision.

Six hours in and the tightrope I’m walking between laughter and tears is tilting a little too frequently to the sadder side. Enough is enough. My eyes have been wrenched right open but my claustrophobia has finally sealed up my mind; I’m rammed into a fleshy sex fest and if I feel even the unintentional brush of one more alien body I might just need to be spray cleaned by the local kebab chef as soon as we hit home. Never before have I enjoyed the bus journey East so much; never has buying a pack of Rich Tea biscuits on the walk back felt this liberating. TG means a hell of a lot to numerous people; first it’s a friendly place full of unique characters in creative outfits. Sure there are no real boundaries between these consenting adults, but for me the magic of the night is to discover where my personal boundaries lie. This time there’s an internal ticking bomb that explodes after precisely six hours. My brain is fried, my fishnets are ripped and I need to get to bed before the Hollyoaks omnibus starts. Alright, let me get one final thing off my chest: where were all of the beautiful people?! So not only am I Jo Ordinary but woefully shallow as well. But the good thing is that I did need to go to TG to learn that; you think that by getting onto the guest list you’re automatically super advanced, way more daring than any of your mates and built to deflect shocks of the violent kind. And what’s on next weekend for this taste-making Princess Of The Edge? Supersize popcorn (salt mixed with sweet, thank you very much) and a central seat in the cinema, next to my man.

Whether sticking your toe – or any other body part you feel like flexing – into fetish culture allows you to discover new fixations or serves to weld you closer to your enduring object of love, emotions will assault you thick and fast; more than anything you are alive to the fact that you are a thinking, feeling human, which makes you just like everyone else, nipples clamped or not. Ask me if I’ll ever go again once the flashbacks have stopped...Here’s Chris’ take on the wildness...

“Take off your shirt and it will stay off!” was the first thing I heard; there you were naked (apart from kilt and workmens’ boots) with hundreds of fellow, also naked Londoners (apart from leather straps and PVC). The regular staff were totally untroubled by the fact that Steve from last weekend was now Stacey. Well nearly. Some choose to be chained to huge wooden apparatus to be abused, some rock up, get a little high and chat to randoms like your typical Friday night. Why some men choose to don a skimpy pair of PVC pants and crawl around in the dirt is still beyond me, but when was the last time you went to a club and EVERYONE was loving it? ‘People don’t dance no more...’