Of Human Bondage

Having completed the first phase of our Tokyo campaign - subduing the shopping district of Shinjuku, and exhausting most of our arsenal in the process - the inimitable Sgt M, the Delightful Miss E and I moved on to the most difficult and challenging part of our campaign, the conquering of the night life in nearby Kabuki-Cho. This of course was going to involve an all night struggle, possibly with a forced march at the end. Since I had guided Sgt M through the wilds of Northern Honshu, and the Delightful Miss E had seen him safely through the sinister and smokey gentlemen's clubs of Hiroshima, we left it to Sgt M himself to choose the best terrain for our nocturnal endeavours in Tokyo.

Sergeant M being the young man-about-town that he is, he chose the most sinister and expensive spot he could, a likely-seeming Goth club called Midnight Mess. This fine looking club commenced at midnight on Saturday, cost 3000 yen to get in (that's $35 kiddies), and was the first club of this sort which the Delightful Miss E had visited for almost a year - in Hiroshima she is restricted to the vagaries of Trancing, and of course in Tottori there is little to be done in the evening except turn Japanese.

So there we were, the three of us, at the bar at half past midnight ready for a surprise attack, and the first warning presented itself - the only patrons were foreigners. The presence of foreigners in Japan usually does not stand for anything good (present company excepted of course), and just as the Nova teachers generally seem to be the bottom of the uni-dropout barrel, so the goths appeared to be drawn straight from the bottom of the not-happy barrel. Nonetheless, we persisted. The club had its own charms, as one can tell from the picture at the head of this post, but not many people. A band played, and they were good. For about an hour the music was good, and certainly the gin and tonics were not diluted...

Unfortunately things took a sudden change for the ... worse ? ... after the band. Instead of better music and the stage turning into a dance floor we were confronted with a Japanese man dragging two girls onto the stage by their hair. A woman ran on and helped him tie one of these two lasses (who was wearing bandages over her face) to a chair while the man stripped the other girl and hung her from the ceiling. Even with the slapping and the nipple pinching this did not take him very long - he certainly knew what to do with his hands.

Not being one to turn down the view of a naked girl when it is offered me, and having suddenly realised why the club cost 3000 yen, I decided to move in to the front where the audience was gathering to witness the spectacle. I think I can spare you the vivid details, dear reader, as can Sergeant M, since the whole thing horrified him and he had to retreat to his table (from where I think, incidentally, he had a quite decent view). The girl hanging from the ceiling was rather sexy too, and I think that Matt just wanted to protect her. He probably made a wise move, as the Korean girl at her first Goth Club ever would attest to, because some 10 minutes later the man with the deft hands starting dripping candle wax on the lips of the girl with the bandaged face. This was all a little too far off the standard porn-movie crypto-bondage track for me, and I had to join the Korean girl in looking away (though I think she may have looked a tad more horrified than I did). Call me squeamish, but it looked like it hurt. Probably the point, really.

This little spectacle took about 30 minutes in all before the girls were led satisfied off the stage, only to return amongst the crowd a few minutes later to collect their belongings. The MC, whose picture you can see in Midnight Mess's website, subsequently invited audience members onto the stage, and two pretty Japanese girls got up from the crowd to take their turn at the wheel, as it were. One of these gave a rather extensive show, and in the nature of most B&D work it started interesting but got tedious fast. At this point my endurance was starting to wane, as was my interest in watching semi-naked strangers writhing on the other side of the room. The Delightful Miss E would probably concur in saying that 30 minutes is enough bondage for us (*cough*) and we wanted a return to good music and dancing. Sadly it wasn't to happen, and for the next hour the lucky girls got slapped and felt up by half the audience, including one of the two sad old trannies (did I mention the sad old trannies?) and her girflriend's best friend. I should say at this point that the balance of foreigners to Japanese goths had become a little more even, but this didn't stop the biggest, fattest foreign man from volunteering for a bit of the action. Fortunately the MC spared us all his blubbery nakedness in ropes, and he stood fully clothed on stage with his hands tied behind his head, smoking a cigarette. Tasteful. Just what I expect from my fellow white man. Good thing he showed the usual endurance of the fat foreigner and sat down after 1o minutes, fag in hand. Anyway, while the nice Japanese lady was being threatened with a 3' long glass dildo (did I mention the 3' dildo?) the three of us gathered in a (completely platonic) huddle, worked out when the next train was, and split for the exits.

So it was that our big night campaign came to a fizzling halt. A combination of poor choice of terrain, failure to adequately research local conditions, and inflexibility in the face of superior enemy tactics left us with no option but to engage in a mad rout to the railway station. We were just in time for the 5am train, even with allowance for some dawn-light snapshots on the way. My recommendation to those who follow in my footsteps in Tokyo is this - if the advert for the club says goth/fetish/dark/experimental don't go unless dancing is not the first thing on your mind. And having heeded my warning, if you do go make sure you wear your best underwear.