Club Noir (Fashion Only Forum 3/15/00)

They were dressed in black - leather, vinyl, rubber, and lace - and were clustered in front of the seedy looking bar, smoking. Three large people of indeterminate sex wore black nylon jackets with "SECURITY" in yellow on the back. Wearing my high formal photographers' black and carrying the old all-black Pentax on it's original black strap, I approached the girl with black lipstick at the ticket table and mumbled something about being in the right place.

I asked for Kitty. She didn't know no Kitty, so I provided a description based on the snapshot she'd sent, and Denise (of the black lipstick) said, "Oh, you mean Kat," and said she'd be coming, but wasn't here yet. So I checked out the dive, keeping my back to the wall and my eyes on the characters, and eventually pulled a stool up to the bar and ordered a Guinness.

The tap wasn't working well, so the stout took a long time to get there. Hanging lights above the bar were red, and showed the three babes working it to their best advantage. The one with shape was working my end, but the skinny one with the navel was at the far end. I should have checked that out before I sat down so I could get a closer look at the skinny one.

Kat was there trying to get my attention, putting her hand on my arm, saying, "Are you Fran?" I said, "Yeah, that's me. Fran Bilder." Kat showed me things I hadn't seen before. The smoking room, how to get to the far side of the dance floor...stuff like that. Then she went off to the smoking room with her Marine boyfriend - lace and leather. I nursed the Guinness.

An hour later, people started arriving. They knew each other and were clustered, talking, hugging, and one bald guy with a long coat, vinyl pants and high boots crept onto the dancefloor and stepped and turned, his face down, away from the lights, his arms moving broadly, turning and stepping, always with the face down. It was a pattern I'd see again over the next two nights. One man, alone on the floor, dancing for himself, by himself.

This wasn't the prom. He wasn't waiting for anyone to join him. He danced to the fast discordant dirge, feeling himself move, dancing for the dance, not for the audience. A girl I'd later meet at other places, six feet of her plus four or five inches of shoe, wearing black plastic hot pants and halter climbed into the cage above the floor and started moving to the music. Other people had taken some of the tables by the floor, and some were along the drink shelves on the walls, and one or two were moving to the music edging onto the floor. A short beauty in a bobbed red wig with fishnets and a vinyl corset set with steel rings and clasps was in the far corner, out of the light, moving determinedly to the music. She'd attracted her own audience, including me. I couldn't see if there was anything to her costume beyond the corset and fishnets, but I wanted to know. Then a tall thin man in yellow plastic cowboy hat, matching hotpants and black jacket, with the highest heeled boots I'd ever seen danced and spun to the music, under the lights, where my film would work. I walked, unnoticed, onto the floor and sat down in front of him, between him and the mirror wall and showed him the camera.

He turned around and left the floor, and as I was about to leave, came back sans the jacket to show his black fishnet sleeveless T-shirt to the camera, and danced for the record. The night went on like this, with people into themselves physically, or talking with friends, or seeing the sublime (in Kant's terms) music, feeling the lights, leaving the week of banality behind, being who they are or who they want to be.

Just like me - Fran Builder, Private Photographer.

The next night was going to be tough. I'd planned to visit the place where the "real" alternatives hung out, and then go shoot a private party. I'd gotten to the club early to scope it out. A very large bald guy wanted to see some I.D. so I pulled it out and flashed it at him. He took me to the back room where it was all going to happen and I did my scoping. Few people were there, so I got a Guinness from the guy behind the bar, found myself a place with a view and waited. And waited.

The regulars came in and clustered around the bar. The black leather, latex, rubber, PVC, lace and satin kept the light down. Not an earth-tone in sight, except for the two tourists along the side of the dancefloor keeping their eyes wide open and their hands in their laps. Cute girls, but way out of their league. Maybe my photo black and attitude would impress them and they'd get a chance to see what life was really like on the dark side...

A figure walked onto the dancefloor, ankle-length black coat cut narrow on top, sleeves to waist, with flowing skirt slit on the sides showing equally flowing gray pants. Its movements were fluid, feminine, erotic. It was a man, and I'd been forced by the dance to question my orientation...but only for a second or two. Fran the Man considers these things quickly and moves on. I walked out to photograph him and he faced away and left, but came back. Later, at the party, I'd see him chained, mauled and scratched by others and hear him offer to show me a real party.

As others joined him and dancers climbed the platform above the bar, and profilers showed off their newest off-the-shelf cat eye contact lenses, I sat on the floor and made photographs, because that's what I do.

When they started suspending the gymnast by her ankles and the crowd was forming to watch her writhe, I left for the next job. A private party, refuge for the underage and fringes and the perfect place to find out more about the dark denizens of the night.

I'd arrived to find that they were short one camera to record the night's events, I returned to my office in the industrial area to get location gear and reentered the party in progress to drape the black commando cloth behind the chains and cuffs hanging from the ceiling. For the rest of the night, until about 4 AM, I hung pretty girls, and wannabe rock musicians, spaced partygoers and nerds in black from the beams, and photographed them while others tormented, tickled, tore and tongued them. My fingers were blistered from buckling and unbuckling but as the pro I am, I continued the job I'd set out to do. Did I mention the girl with the long legs who took off her dress to climb the wardrobes and hang the commando cloth? Probably not. What's another gorgeous dame in underwear to me?

No Guinness here so I drank Coke. Others used chemicals of choice and socialized. I observed. That's what I do. I'm Fran Bilder, Private Photographer

Back in my office with the green-shaded lamp over the desk, I contemplated one more shoot. This one was at a club specializing in fetish/BDSM and I expected a different sort of crowd - a rough crowd. But that was at night, and now it was about 5 in the morning and I had some serious sleeping to do.

(Fran Bilder is an alias of D. Brian Nelson)