The surprise 'reunion' with Fionia had been more than pleasant, but as I completed my morning run on the Rock Creek Trail that meanders beside the Potomac, I knew she was probably already on her way to Ocean City for a week at the beach. I idly wondered what she and her girlfriend had chosen to wear, so images of Fionia in various bikinis occupied my thoughts for the better part of two miles.
This morning, I had decided for some variety, so rather than go south toward the Capitol Mall, I'd go north. Just after I crossed under the Francis Scott Key Bridge, I could see the towers of Georgetown University about two blocks off to my right on 37th Street and I immediately thought about Hayley and wondered where her office was and which classrooms were hers. About two weeks ago, I had given her a draft of a story I had written about her journey to the Freyja Club and had asked her to correct anything that I'd gotten wrong, but I hadn't heard from her yet, so there was that little bit of unfinished business.
Soon after I had been initiated into the Freyja Club at the end of an astounding series of events in Paris almost a year ago, I had decided that, in addition to just blithely enjoying the hedonic pleasures the club offered, that I would also try to discover how it operated and grown into twenty clubs scattered around the world, and had done so for over ninety years in almost complete anonymity. I had been successful in finding the answers to many of my numerous questions and Hayley had proven to be someone who had given me the key to one of the most nagging ones on my list.
When I first joined, I was told that there were twelve thousand members worldwide and the male/female ratio was roughly 60/40. In order to be a member, a person had to undergo a rigorous background check and then pay a hundred-thousand-dollar initiation fee plus two thousand every month. This, in itself, was a significant hurdle, but my work in real life often found me circulating in groups of people who could easily manage the financial part, but the gender of that group was at least ninety-five percent men.
How the Freyja Club was able to achieve a reasonable 60/40 balance was a nagging question in my mind because of the population of women that I knew could afford the financial burden, very few would be attracted to join a sex club, where they would be required to be naked while men would remain fully dressed. Oh, I knew a few; Jennifer, Danielle, and Susan immediately came to mind, but most of the other women I encountered had joined on the coattails of a male partner. To me that still left a huge gap that the club had to fill.
Hayley, who's a tenured Professor of Literature at Georgetown had been introduced to me, and through her, I learned about the F.C. Academy in London. Simply put, the Freyja Club recognized that they had to recruit women with the right hedonic mindset as members, but since few would be able to meet the financial demands, those would be waived for women who qualified. So assuming that the club has just under five thousand women members, as a result of the insight that she gave me, I now believe that around two thousand female members, like Hayley, are non-payers. I had to redo some of the math in my assumptions about the club, but it didn't alter my conclusion that there was still enough income coming in to support the club's worldwide operations. So far, Hayley was the only Academy alum that I'd personally met, but I was on the lookout for more.
I hadn't been to a Freyja Club since I had returned from a weekend visiting with a friend of mine and his wife in Miami three weeks prior, but yesterday around noon, I found myself bored and uninterested at work, and I had impulsively decided to drive to Washington and spend the rest of the week. I booked a room in the Freyja Club Hotel and discovered Libby's exhibitionist fetish and had that surprising reunion with Fionia, and that all took place on just a Thursday afternoon and evening! It was now around eight a.m. on Friday and the club didn't open until six, so I had almost the whole day with no plans and I found myself wondering how to spend it.
As I usually do after a morning run, I eschewed the elevators and took the stairs as one last sacrifice to the god of physical fitness. The hotel level was on the top floor of the eight-story club building, so I trotted up and as I knew, all of the doors that I passed on the way were locked. For reasons that still escaped me, the Freyja Club Hotel was a separate entity from the club itself. I had been told that this was because you didn't need to be a member of the club to stay there, hence the need for a separate entrance, but that made no sense to me. No non-member would even know it existed, you couldn't book a room, there was no signage and they didn't advertise. The only thing that made sense was the fact that the hotel had to be open twenty-four hours a day, but the club didn't open until six p.m.
The trip up the stairs did however remind me of one other club mystery that I hadn't yet cracked that was unique to the Wasington club, and I'm embarrassed to admit that it was my friend Jennifer who had pointed it out to me during her recent visit. From the street, the brick building is remarkable only because it is so austere. There are no signs at all indicating what firms might be located there and the main entrance is made of opaque double doors with what is obviously a chip reader on a steel pedestal located to one side. There are two other entrances off the parking garage, one to the club and the other to the hotel, but they're not marked either. The only difference is that the door to the club has a chip reader but the hotel entrance is unlocked.
The club proper is located on the first three levels, and as I subsequently discovered, in the basement as well. The hotel is on the eighth floor and is accessed by an elevator and the staircase that I was now ascending. Jennifer's question was what's on the floors between the two? It was obvious to me that given the obsessive secrecy that characterized the Freyja Club, those floors wouldn't be rented and I knew they would be used for something, I just didn't yet know for what.
As I emerged into the hotel lobby, I immediately saw that Libby was back at her post behind the reception desk. When I had passed by earlier on my way out, no one had been standing there, but I knew that Libby's shift didn't start until eight a.m. and I assumed that she'd just come on duty. Yesterday she had worn a white blouse with "F.C. Hotel" embroidered on the breast in blue, and I noted that this morning the colors were reversed, but she still wore the same blue miniskirt. When she heard the door open, she looked up and gave me a wide smile.
"I thought that might be you," she said, "Nobody uses those stairs." Yesterday, I discovered that Libby not only was an exhibitionist but liked to jog after work. Even though I had already done my normal five miles earlier that morning, I joined her for a circuit of the Mall. It was at the end of that run, that I challenged her to run the last three blocks to the parking garage topless and she had reluctantly done so while trying to stabilize her bouncing breasts with her forearm. It was an image that I recalled fondly.
It had been a delightful morning, sunny and cool, so I hadn't broken a heavy sweat even despite the last sixteen flights of stairs, so I didn't feel the urge to rush immediately and take a shower. So, before heading for my room, I sauntered over to the coffee station and filled a cup before turning to talk to Libby.
I reminded her that I'd offered to write a story about her, but all that I knew about her so far was that she liked the idea of people seeing her naked. She laughed at my brief, but truthful synopsis, and for the next few minutes she filled me in on her life story, as short as it had been for a twenty-two-year-old. I learned that she had grown up in Manassas, across the river in Virginia, where a couple of famous battles had been fought during the Civil War, and that she had a twin sister named Molly. I asked if Molly was an exhibitionist too and Libby gave me an embarrassed nod. I was still sipping my coffee and leaning against the front desk when Libby interrupted and asked her own question.
"Do you like to watch girls get themselves off?"
