Since Le Trapeze admits couples only—meaning a man and a woman—I had asked my most recent ex-date, Sam, an investment banker, to accompany me. Sam was a good choice because, number one, he was the only man I could get to go with me; number two, he'd already had experience with this kind of thing: A million years ago he had gone to Plato's Retreat. A strange woman had come up to him and

pulled out his unmentionable. His girlfriend, whose idea it had been to go there, ran screaming from the club.

The talk turned to the inevitable: What kind of people go to a sex club? I seemed to be the only one who didn't have a clue. Although no one had been to a sex club, everyone at dinner firmly asserted that the clubgoers would generally be "losers from New Jersey." Someone pointed out that going to a sex club is not the kind of thing you can just do, without a pretty good excuse, e.g. it's part of your job. This talk wasn't making me feel any better. I asked the waiter to bring me a shot of tequila.

Sam and I stood up to go. A writer who covers popular culture gave us a last piece of advice. "It's going to be pretty awful," he warned, though he had never been to such a place himself. "Unless you take control. You've got to take control of the place. You've got to make it happen."

NIGHT OF THE SEX ZOMBIES

Le Trapeze was located in a white stone building covered with graffiti. The entrance was discreet, with a rounded metal railing, a downmarket version of the entrance to the Royalton Hotel. A couple was coming out as we were going in, and when the woman saw us, she covered her face with the collar of her coat.

"Is it iftin?" I asked.

She looked at me in horror and ran into a taxi.

Inside, a dark-haired young man, wearing a striped rugby shirt, was sitting in a small booth. He looked like he was about eighteen. He didn't look up.