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OK-The one-legged bisexual narc in the swimming pool—a reminiscence. Of all my outré stories, this one is the most Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers of them all. But first, some exposition. Feel free to ask questions in the replies.
In January 1980, on the rebound from a Yuppie NYE party (the only fun was the 40th floor snow view), we joined 2 Northside Chicago couples swing clubs, which became our primary weekend entertainment (weeknights were symphony & opera).
Funny stories about how we got there will be in my memoirs & may trickle out if anyone’s interested. For legal reasons, private clubs were BYOB and ostensibly drug-free. No male-on-male bisexuality, tho female-female was fine.
Club 1: Friday Night Live, no frills NWS bungalow. We soon found inner circle formed around Don’s drug dealing: grass, speed (Black Beauties, pink hearts), Quaaludes, LSD (microdots, later at our request, blotter), and best of all, MDA.
MDA was the Queen of sex drugs in 70s-80s before being eclipsed by its fellow methoxylated amphetamine, MDM (Ecstasy) in the mid-80s. MDA is an upper & aesthetic enhancer, great for dance, music & sex, but a rough hangover.
Club 2: Chicago PM. Saturdays, pretentious 2-floor penthouse by O’Hare—lounge/buffet above, sex rooms below (“going downstairs” was the euphemism du nuit). Drug free except for what we Same Ol’ Buncha Degenerates (SOBOD) smuggled in.
Dr Z reminds me to mention the stuffed badger that graced the wall of Don’s basement bar. Carol, Don’s partner, made a slow cooker pot of bitchin' Polish Sausage for every party. Off-brand local Chicago mixers. Dance floor.
Chicago PM finally foundered because they were paying penthouse rent and kept adding new features. The advent of the hot tub and the (temporary) mud-wrestling pit stand out as extravagances that sank that ship. By ’83 they’d been evicted.
Chicago PM moved to ad hoc parties in a huge suite at Racetrack Hilton. We Same Ol’ Buncha Degenerates continued our host duties. As with FNL, when the speed freaks are in charge, parties are astonishingly efficient and clean!
There were private parties, too. I recall one hosted by the Mob--didn’t take off despite providing extra paid girls. Downstate was Prof. Swing & his wife with 3-day weekend theme costume parties in a 10k sq ft hippie villa. But I digress.
In ’82 came a new club. Wealthy plumbing contractor & wife, alias Hansel & Gretel. He built house in exurbs specifically as a party venue. The only club with enough bathrooms (always an issue at fuck parties), plus a dungeon & an indoor pool.
About the dungeon. BDSM still fringe in ‘80s Midwest. As Don told us when asked about a BDSM party he once attended as a VIP (imagine NWS accent), “Interesting. But every Saturday night?”
We did have a few kinksters, mostly of the cocaine and tranqs-fueled dress-up-as-Nazis fantasy variety. I once ran into Capt Kink in a bathroom at a private party in his full regalia. LoLed so hard I fell off the toilet!
Hansel & Gretel put in dungeon by request to attract kinksters. One Saturday a month they held “special interest” parties with kink on the menu. We SOBOD just treated them like every other party with our usual drug-fueled antics.
But there were still rules: no nudity in the public spaces, bisexual men unwelcome, kink only in private areas or dungeon. We druggies found a remote storage closet in which we used to toke up and hand out white powders and blotter.
The pool was my favorite part of Hansel & Gretels’ parties. By this time, I had realized there were not that many men I wanted to fuck, but that I loved LSD + MDA fueled acting out. My club nickname was Princess Runamuk.
It was winter 1983, another cold one in Chicagoland. The winters of ‘77-83 were awful. Record snow, record cold (several 25 below 0 events). Z & I used to pack winter camping gear in our rental car to parties in case we got stranded.
I discovered that nothing was more fun than coming up on acid naked in a heated indoor swimming pool in the middle of winter watching the hallucinations in the water vapor. I usually had the pool to myself early in the evening.
The bar overlooked the pool through a soundproof glass window. You could mix your drink, grab a stool and watch whoever was in the pool (often me, as the guys well knew). The closest bathroom to the pool was only reached through the bar.
Don & Z would hang out in the bar between women. Jerzy, another SOBOD, was already at the bar that evening. I dropped my 400mcgs, disrobed & was happily paddling in the pool, waist-length purple hair floating around me.
In the bar (unknown to me) Jerzy called Don & Z over to the window. “Hans invited a bisexual narc. He’s heading over to the end of the pool. Princess Runamuk’s already in it.” Don & Z promptly pulled up barstools and got good seats.
I was enjoying the hallucinations when, to my dismay, I noticed an ugly guy heading to the pool. I thought, “Shit, he’s going to come onto me, and I am not interested.” I pretended not to notice and stayed at my end of the pool.
However, even in my acid-addled state, I could not help but notice that after he took off his clothes, he unstrapped one of his legs and took it off too! “Yikes,” I thought, “Who’s writing this?”
He slipped into the pool and headed towards me. I tried evasive action, but the pool was not that large. Inevitably, he caught up with me and struck up a conversation. “Hiya. I’m a narc. You know what that is?”
With my pupils dilated out to my ears and treading water, I did not think I was in any condition for narc conversation. “Uh, yes,” I said as repressively as possible and swam off. He doggedly followed me.
“My job is stressful,” he said. “I really need some sex. I’m bisexual too. But it’s hard to find men who want to fuck me.” My heart rate matching my LSD dose, I thought. “I bet it’s hard to find anyone who wants to fuck you.”
I paddled away, but he kept following me. I did not think the Acid Queen Stare o’ Death would suffice in this situation and was torn between increasing paranoia (a narc?) and kosmic hilarity (a one-legged bisexual narc?).
Putting as much distance between us as possible, I paddled to the side of the pool where my towel was not. I climbed out and headed towards the bar, naked and wet. By this time, J&D&Z were laughing uproariously in the window.
As I came through the door, I knew they’d seen the whole encounter. I shook my very wet hair out over everyone in the bar and stomped to the bathroom declaiming, “Bad trips I can handle. But one-legged bisexual narcs in the swimming pool is too fuckin’ much!”
Fast forward to late ‘80s, Big Island, Hawaii. We told this story to Terence McKenna, who along with Kat, stood up at our wedding in Kona. His response was a raised eyebrow and, “How picaresque!"
Shit. One Tweet off thread. No club was sustainably profitable. Don had pension & drug income, hosted in own bungalow. Low overhead, BYOB, basic buffet (speed freaks don’t eat much), 8-track disco & a plaster cast of Bernini’s Rape of Proserpina on the toilet tank!
