Big Bang Theory
Reluctant wives, horny accountants and leather slaves: A Green Door memoir
BY SKYLAIRE ALFVEGREN
I wondered what they were teaching in high school as I was relieved by a recent graduate who showed up in hooker heels for her job interview -- and had no problem donning a safety-pinned towel to be glad-handled by patrons of the top floor sauna.
My first visit to The Green Door back in December came by way of a gag holiday gift. I ended up having a long conversation about South American travel with a seemingly gay airline steward, flitting from themed room to lounge, realizing satyriasists need conversation, too.
Americans are kings of the secondhand experience. Hard-wired for sex and violence, our country is run by Puritans and porn profiteers, our kinky sex comes on DVD and our blood sports are animated. But in Vegas, paid sex can be had with a whistle and for $5 you can shoot a live machine gun. Who in this age and in this town would seek out a public place to have sex with strangers?
Owned and operated by a journeyman plumber, the Green Door is one of many so-called adult social clubs in the Vegas Valley, most of which are crowded together on a grimy strip mall in the Commercial Center off Sahara Avenue, sharing a sidewalk with the Gay and Lesbian center, a pool hall, a handful of ethnic restaurants and the city's best tranny bar.
It's the most popular club of its kind in Las Vegas. Once owned by Las Vegas sex king Terry Gordon, The Green Door is no longer a "clip joint," where girls are hired to lure patrons in with the promise of nookie, only to disappear after the rube had paid his admission.
Joseph Cavaretta has owned The Green Door since 1998, running a relatively tight and, by all accounts, legal establishment. The dozen or so permits Cavaretta pays for to keep the place open are posted at the club's entrance, alongside signs prohibiting alcohol and prostitution. Patrons are sometimes searched if they're suspected of smuggling in booze or illicit substances.
The Green Door has its competition: the Red Rooster, a private residence off Tropicana Avenue that hosts barely-private parties, and features weekend orgies which draw hundreds of people. Guests get access by "renting" a locker at the adjacent storage facility, and can bring their own liquor. Plush, an upscale floating Lifestyle party -- or "glittering hedonistic pleasure dome," as the married couple who hosts it likes to refer to it -- ran a night at the House of Blues before taking up a Saturday night residence at Sapphire's Gentleman's Club.
The cafe I ran, affectionately nicknamed Starfucks, doesn't do the Green Door justice. The feng shui just ain't happening. Very little speaks of the den of iniquity that lies beyond the hallway.
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