"...Me? ...Nothing! ...Him?...HEEEAPS..!!"


____________________________________

...Speaking of clubs, I recently heard of an exclusive establishment,
somewhere in the older part of Sydney, near the old stables, that
offers its patrons the most bizarre kinds of sexual entertainment.

Curiously, the building in which these premises reside - or parts of it
- do not appear on any city plans.
The explanation, often put about, is that the original developers
procured the site as part of a Machiavellian 'split-document' scam -
a tangle of near identical, or mutually inconsistent lodgments - in the
hope that important details might remain sufficiently ambiguous, or
in contradiction, to create legal grey areas.

By the time they were finished and the 'curtain was finally pulled
back', the place was more 'wallpaper' than brick.

This, of course, is undoubtedly pure urban myth - but the mystique
that such stories provide the establishment, form an indispensable
part of its mythos.

The club itself is clandestinely unofficial, open only on irregular
nights and random weeks of the year, and almost impossible to find.
And, you will be permitted entry only at certain, ungodly hours - a
quarter past three in the morning, twenty to six, in the morning - and
only in the company of a member, although you can never become
a member yourself.


You may knock, and you may be admitted. But, to enter is taken as
your tacit consent, ...to whatever ordeals, surreal or painful, may
befall you.


__________________________________________________

So, after numerous subterranean turns, and alleyways, and
backtracking, my friend - who is a 'member' - stops, and turns to
me.

Before us, set into a fearsome stone wall, is the entrance ...a
dark, heavily varnished door, with blackened steel hinges - in the
centre, a tiny, metal window frame, its vertical, toothy-looking spines
torn, by all appearances, from Hannibal Lector's facial restraint, and
then driven, viciously and permanently, through the antique timbers.

But, consideration of these aesthetics was just the foreground, to a
deeper landscape going on further back.

By now, my head is swimming with images - not the obedient and
submissive images of fantasy, but certain and incontestable
recollections, of things ...yet to be endured, future memories - of
relentless and unsolicited tortures - needles inserted into the penis,
or perhaps finding oneself in a drugged stupor, unable to
understand what is happening, incapable of preventing it, and
eventually wondering whether humiliation is actually an art, or a
science.

Or, told to wait, ignored, or among surly strangers, until the
realization dawns that 'anxious boredom' was, in fact, exactly the
'exquisite treat' you were promised - so expectation and reality
conspire, to ...rip you off, and then laugh when your misfortunes are
not even those you thought to prepare for.

And strange, supposedly thrilling, kinetic episodes, where one is
first blindfolded, or bound spread-eagled, and then flung at great
speed through the darkness, knowing that spaces are rarely empty
- any exhilaration poisoned by fear.
Of falling into a space, sworn to be empty, and infinite ...but by
someone you cannot possibly trust.


Although unquestionably novel, the mere existence of such a place -
and the knowledge of that existence - seems ample titillation, and I
lay a hand on my companion's shoulder, before he can pull back on
the heavy striker.

________________________________________________

Thus it was that we postponed our initiation into that cultist
underworld.

But, if that is true, why then am I haunted by 'memories', which
seem to contradict that. Can I really be sure, in the end, that we did
not partake of those strange 'inverted pleasures'?

And how long will these memories be with me? Or, what of my fears
that, with the passing of time, rather than fading away, they instead
become more vivid?


Will there come a time, in order to be rid of them, that we shall one
day have to return ...and venture inside that tortuous place?

And, that, only then, my 'reverse memories' will begin to fade?