CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Nate
“Where are we going tonight?” I asked as I dressed. It was a balmy night and so jeans and a t-shirt was the attire du jour.
“A club called SODA. They’re a new chain of conscious clubs,” Jack revealed as he sat on the bed and laced his trainers.
“What the hell’s a conscious club?”
“Have you really not heard of conscious clubbing?”
“No, I guess I’m not looped in. What is it?”
“Strictly no alcohol, no drugs, no smoking, and no phones. We just dance, connect, and have fun. It’s kinda spiritual,” Jack explained excitedly. I knew Jack was environmentally conscious, and wanted his life to be as natural as possible.
“I love getting out of my head on music and dancing, just to experience it, you know…listen to my body, give it what it needs and not have my senses numbed by drink or drugs,” Jack explained earnestly.
“And, it’s heady foreplay!” he added with a grin.
It sounded kinda neat. The thought of watching Jack move his sinfully hot body in time to the beat, and then join him, grinding on a packed dance floor, high on nothing but pheromones and sensuality…
Damn! This was going to be a great night, and when we finally returned to our suite, I’d enjoy a long-awaited fuck with sexiest man alive.
“We need to leave our phones here,” Jack reminded as I headed for the door.
It would feel odd to be without my phone, but the purpose of tonight was to let go, and disconnect from the noise of our real lives.
I pivoted and deposited my phone into Jack’s out-stretched hand.
“Good boy!” he praised before locking our phones into the biometric safe along with our passports and a little cash.
And so, on this humid summer’s night, we left the hotel travelling light, with just our credit cards and hotel keycards.
Anticipation made me a little fidgety and I needed to do something with my hands, so even though there were other guests in the elevator I reached for Jack and threaded my fingers between his.
It was a connection that gave a fizzy rush.
With a quick side glance, and a squeeze of his fingers, I knew Jack felt something too.
A line of taxis waited outside the hotel and so we took the first one and Jack told the driver our destination.
“It’s a fifteen-minute taxi ride away, on Prenzlauer Alee, in the Pankow district,” Jack explained to me.
The journey was direct, and passed in the blink of an eye.
When the taxi pulled up outside the venue, I tapped my credit card onto the terminal to pay for the ride.
I was bemused that, on a Monday night there was a queue outside the club.
“I guess the weekend never ends for some!” I laughed.
“Berlin’s the party capital of Europe! You can find a place to dance 24/7 and there’s no such thing as a last call!
” Jack said as I followed him past the queue.
He spoke to the doorman in German and we were let straight in.
As we entered the building the bass of an Electro song I didn’t recognise throbbed through my body.
There was a booth behind safety glass where a staff member took the cover charge, and beside it a doorman gave each reveller a stamp on the back of their hand with the venue name.
I was surprised when he also handed me a small business card with text in German on one side and an English translation on the other.
“Bitte lesen Sie” the man said and I turned to Jack for a translation.
“Read it,” he said. And so I did. The card explained that the ink used for the SODA stamp contained nanotech bio-sensors that changed colour if alcohol or drugs were consumed, by choice or covertly.
This was to prevent people from breaking the club rules–and to deter those who tried to spike drinks.
The stamp on my hand was currently blue, and according to the info card, if I consumed alcohol it would turn yellow.
If I ingested Cocaine the ink would turn purple, and Rohypnol would change the stamp to red.
I’d never seen this kind of Nano tech used in a real-world situation before and honestly, I was impressed.
Anything that made potential victims aware and slowed predators down was fine by me.
Jack entwined his fingers into mine and with a joyful whoop; he pulled me up the hall and into the club.
The venue was built inside the shell of a renovated Wilhelmine era townhouse with the upper floors removed.
A steel wrap-around industrial style mezzanine was installed and the place had a very high ceiling.
The walls were bare brick and the lighting above the dance floor was a collection of fabric chandeliers that were made to look like octopi with long tendrils that changed colour with the rhythms of the music.
Overall, the club was cool and bohemian.
“How long since you’ve been out dancing?
” Jack roared into my ear so he could be heard above the music.
I was a little embarrassed to admit, “Probably, um, ten years, or so, not since Erik and I danced on our wedding day.” Our wedding day was so much fun, we’d waited so long to win the right to marry, and a wave of sadness hit me again at the realization it was over.
Jack’s hand slid around my hip and I was pulled from my maudlin thoughts.
His touch was grounding, keeping me in the here and now, reminding me that I’m a single man out on a date with a sexy Brit who makes me feel horny as hell.
“Oh fuck, that’s not on babe!” Jack said, commiserating after hearing about my dance drought.
“Looks like I’m going to have to re-pop your dancin’ cherry then!
” he decided, his body pressed to my side already moving to the beat.
I was here to have fun and I’d take whatever I could get!
Jack was bobbing his head in time to the electro dance music and eyeing the dance floor.
I wanted him to have a good time too so I leaned in,
“Go on, I’ll find the bar, get our booth, and some drinks.
” He laid an unexpected kiss on my cheek, grinned impishly and then, like a puppy off the leash after spotting a pile of autumn leaves, he was gone.
In a flash Jack was in the middle of a group of men and women, his arms in the air, body moving fluidly like the music flowed in his veins.
My heart did this strange little flutter.
The man was a force of nature, and tonight he was mine.
I made my way toward the bar, happy that it wasn’t too crowded.
The bartender was a mixed-race woman in her mid-forties with purple hair in braids and purple iris contact lenses to match.
When she caught my eye her gaze widened and disappointed, I thought, damn, she recognizes me!
I’d had such a great day of anonymity. No one had given me that ‘aren’t you him’ look, or asked for an autograph or barged in on my personal time to get a selfie.
The bartender came over and we both leaned in to be heard.
“Hallo, was kann ich Ihnen bringen?“ she asked. I kinda figured that she’d asked what I wanted to drink.
“Hallo, ein Stand war für Jack Timothy reserviert,“ I said. Jack set me this small mission to learn a little of the language. He‘d made me repeat the sentence several times during our taxi ride until I got it right. The woman nodded and I was pleased she’d understood.
“Oh ja, einen Moment.“ She turned and called to a server at the other end of the bar. “Dieter, zeige diesem Kunden Stand sechs,“ then turned back to me. “Was mochten Sie trinken?“
There were lots of words in German that sounded familiar to me, similar to English, and so I got the gist. Maybe I was better at languages than I thought. I held up two fingers to denote I wanted “Zwei eistee mitt Pfirsich bitte.”
The server, Dieter, was a young, sallow skinned dude. He led me to a booth with a curved banquette facing the dance floor. The table sign stated it was reserved.
“American?“ Dieter asked.
“Yeah.“