Big Bang Theory

Reluctant wives, horny accountants and leather slaves: A Green Door memoir

BY SKYLAIRE ALFVEGREN

My most memorable afternoon experience: One portly, Jersey gentleman who was among the place's biggest, most vocal proponents, informed me he was a pool cleaner. One afternoon while working the café, I watched him chat up a ditzy stripper in the parking lot. He convinced her and her piece-of-mutton boyfriend to come in. While giving a tour to a bewildered Asian couple, I waved my hand at one of the usually empty voyeur rooms, only to point out a three-way between the stripper, her boyfriend and the husky pool guy. Later on I brought in a college student on a tour to find the leggy blonde spread-eagle in the "love chair" in the couples only area. "Honey, you need some lovin'" she said, and although that might've been true, I told her I had to return to my post.

The pool guy talked to me later, incredulous. Turned out the woman was one of his customers. The menage a trois "just happened." It was the sort of thing the owner wished happened every afternoon, but mostly happened upstairs, at night.

Nighttime customers fell into one of four categories: strangely conservative older couples, random hedonists, packs of drunken frat boys looking to score, and packs of conventioneers looking to walk into an orgy.

I could just as easily apply an advertisement on a poster seen in the mental health office to swingers: "We are your friends, neighbors and family. We are major contributors to American life. We deserve dignity and respect." Swingers: They're your pool guys, your delivery boys, your corporate accountants, your computer technicians.

One Saturday night, a cop hovered in and out; not because prostitution is illegal in Clark County and he was looking to bust someone, but because he couldn't make up his mind about coming in. "So women will just walk up and have sex with me?" he asked, to which I gave the scripted single-guy response: "You could go to a strip club, and end up with a hard-on you can't do anything about. Here, at least, you have the chance of getting lucky."

Among the regulars were a few couples in their 50s. One was an impish, always topless investor and her free-wheeling husband. Only after I started working the back bar did I have a chance to talk with them. I explained my unease with having to stand around while random strangers jerked off in front of me. "You'll get used to it," the husband said, promising that before I knew it I'd become entranced by the "lifestyle," attend Red Rooster parties and befriend the close-knit family of long-time Vegas swingers. He had worked for Ralph Engelstad when the Imperial Palace was constructing its secondary towers. Drawing the layout on a cocktail napkin, he dispelled the rumor I'd heard that the place was laid out in the shape of a swastika. On the same napkin, he gave me directions to Common Ground, the only nudist colony in town.

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