Naked Tea Party - Monday

Monday

My first day at the Sapphire Rooms on Lothian Road didn't go quite as I expected, but I really enjoyed it.  The doors hadn't yet been officially opened and there was still a lot of decorating to do, so I joined in and helped out.  Moving furniture, hanging up posters, fixing up old picture frames - the whole lot.  For this week, the place is an exhibition from 11AM to 7PM, and then it becomes a traditional strip bar and pole dancing club - and therefore a public space.  It's during the exhibition times that I'm scheduled to be the host of the Naked Tea Party.

The people were really cool and I liked all of them.  I talked a lot to one of the girls - a dancer - and she gave me a couple of cool tips about getting my own pictures displayed somewhere.  I need to ask her again where the venue was that she recommended.  She spoke about the irony that she - as a stripper - often more clothes at work than young girls did on the street just outside the club.  She'd throw something on so she could step outside and be "decent", but see girls - often very young girls - dressed a lot more provocatively.

Later in the day, there was supposed to be a photographer from one of the newspapers along, so everybody was asked to get "in character" and that was the first part of the day where I actually got undressed.  At first I confined myself to my corner of the club - the Naked Tea Party room - because I wasn't sure if I should mingle without any clothes, but I relaxed that pretty quickly.  And for the next couple of hours, I wandered around casually, talking to everybody else and having a laugh.

One of the girls joined me in the Naked Tea Party room, and as we curled up in the couches talking to each other, I suddenly found myself with a bit of a problem that I don't normally have.  Being the only naked person in most environments, I generally don't have to contend with too much visual stimulus, so suddenly sharing a room with an attractive naked girl was definitely a heightened experience and I definitely responded.  Fortunately, I was on a different couch and I was curled up, so I managed to conceal the effects.  But I better make sure I'm just as discreet for the rest of the week if there are similar events.

The funniest part of the day was when two guys wandered in off the street and sat at the bar, expecting strippers.  I had been drinking a can of coke in my corner, and so hadn't seen them come in - and they hadn't seen me.  When I stepped out and walked over to the bar, they were very surprised that the one naked person they saw in there was male and didn't hang around for too much longer after that.

I had a couple of free beers towards the end of the day - something I'd been offered a few times but resisted until then, because I didn't want to go running to the toilet every five minutes.  And then, shortly before the club opened up its doors to its regular clientele, I was told it was about to become a "public space" and that naked men weren't supposed to be part of that ambience.  So, my shift was up.

So I got dressed and  then, just before I left, one of the girls - wearing little more than a black corset - came forward and gave me a hug.  She thanked me for joining in and lending a hand, so I told her that it was worth it to get a hug from a half naked girl - and then briefly wondered whether that statement was a bit too cheeky.  I'm not always very good at knowing where I've crossed a line - especially after I blurt out something like that.  She just laughed, though, and told me that she shouldn't have waited until I got dressed before offering me a hug.

After that, it was a short bus journey home to a much less glamorous environment.  But a lot of fun until then.