Chapter 44: Club Excite

Majority of the events at Safehaven barely broke even, and the dungeon was having trouble reaching the levels of popularity that Passive Arts enjoyed. After Passive Arts burned down, new dungeons opened and many of the people who made Passive Arts great moved on to new venues.

There was one regularly occurring event at Safehaven that actually made decent money. The event was called Club Exodus, and it was managed by the same people who had hosted the first events Sara and I ever went to back in the Passive Arts days. It was the event hosted by the same people who had ignored us and not made us feel welcome years before. The woman that Klara from the sex shop had known from high school. It took place at Safehaven once every other month.

After nine months working at Safehaven, Sara was given the chance to run her own event again. Mistress Azule had come up with the idea to offer the employees of Safehaven the opportunity to promote and organize their own events. Each event would require a minimum of $1000 worth of tickets sold. Once that minimum was reached Mistress Azule would split all profit with the event organizer.

Mistress Azule partnered the ladies up and gave each team a date. Sara originally had one of her coworkers, Apothecary Anne as her partner. The two of them came up with the name Club Excite for the event and brainstormed the event theme. Anne lost interest pretty quickly when she discovered running an event required actual work. She quit being Sara's partner after about a week.

The date they were given was near Sara's actual birthday, so we decided to make it a huge birthday party. We assumed we could trick some of our non kinky friends into attending if they thought it was just a birthday party. Worst case scenario we would have a really cool venue to host Sara's birthday.

We had three months to prepare. Sara started having her doubts after Anne dropped out.

"I am not sure I want to do this Jordan. Remember last time?" Sara confessed.

"You mean the Star Wars party?" I replied.

"After our first failure, the Star Wars party, I am just not too confident we will make any money. We really don't not have any experience hosting and promoting events. How are we going to advertise?" Sara continued.

"You just get your friends from the bar to show up and the dungeon ladies to perform, and I will do the rest." I reassured her.

I was on a mission to make something of this opportunity. My regular 9 to 5 work with my father was slow at the time, and I was hungry. I wanted so bad to be part of the dungeon and prove my worth. I didn't just want to be a Dominatrix's boyfriend or the guy who cleaned Sara's toys.

I would take on the responsibility of advertising the events and Sara would handle recruiting the performers and hosting on stage the night of. The theme she came up with for the event was "A Night in the Garden of Eden". I wasn't thrilled with the theme.

Safehaven always had its share of aspiring amateur photographers hanging around either at events or during business hours. They were always looking for opportunities to work with the ladies or shoot in the dungeon to expand their portfolios. By now Sara had been working at Safehaven long enough she had a few photographers in her back pocket. We needed a picture to put on the flyer for our event.

Sara enlisted a free photgrapher and scheduled a photo shoot with a sexy submissive woman who also worked at Safehaven. The two of them would pose for the flyer.

Unfortunately, last minute the woman had car trouble and canceled on Sara. Sara then randomly asked a woman she has been talking to through a dating site if she would be interested in posing for the event flyer.

The woman agreed thinking Sara was joking and was surprised when she showed up, and the address was a real dungeon with a photographer ready to go. Her name was Nadia. She was a little thick but still cute. She had tan skin and dark brown hair and eyes. She was from a wealthy family and studied at UCLA.

Sara brought her own pet snake, and the two women posed naked with Sara on top of the Nadia holding the snake. The snake just coincidentally covered their visible genitals at the right angle. It had a Garden of Eden vibes. Adam and Eve or should I say Amy and Eve, tempted by the snake.

Nadia and Sara ended up dating for a few months, but Nadia was an upfront, undisputed lesbian. I basically had to let Sara go stay with her on random weekends and sporadic weeknights. I don't really remember getting a choice in the matter. After Raven, Sara just kind of started openly dating women as well as me.

We never really had a formal discussion or talked about my feelings. I was so focused on Safehaven, Sara's career and my adventures with Leo, I sort of looked the other way. I thought it would be cool to date two women. Or having a girlfriend who dated women made me cool. Sara was always promising to find a woman we could share but they always somehow turned out to be lesbians.

The flyer turned out great. I did the lettering around the picture. The event title, the date, time, and location. That kind of shit. I found a website with tons of cool fonts and image effects. Mistress Azule sent the flyer to a printing company and had the flyers printed.

For three months I busted my ass every single day. I brainstormed ideas. I went on search engines and searched for anywhere I could post about our event.

We handed out flyers. We had the guys at the local Spencer's gift and Hot Topic in the mall handing out flyers. We had my skater friends from the neighborhood canvassing the beach and the pier. Sara made her rounds at the Pitcher Place promoting the event. We went to every single Safehaven event every weekend and handed out flyers. We used Sara's takeover of the playrooms as a chance to advertise.

My advertising motto was simple. We planted as many seeds (advertisements) as possible, expecting nothing to grow (no one to show up). I posted ads anywhere and everywhere.

Social media like Facebook was fairly new and not as popular as it is now. I realized if you created event pages and posts on Facebook, people who had befriended you online would receive notifications on their phone.

It was the surest and easiest way to reach customers in an organic way that they would see. This is obvious information these days, but at the time, in the early days of social media, even the creators had not even realized the advertising potential. I started telling people at other Safehaven events to join Facebook, download the app and to befriend our event's profiles. I convinced so many people to join Facebook; Zuckerberg owes me finder's fee.

The other main social media for kinksters was Fetlife. Fetlife had many online discussion groups dedicated to different areas and themes. I found everywhere you could post about events (and a few you couldn't) and bombarded them with info about our party. I did daily posts on all social medias advertising the events. I found cool pictures and jokes that represented the theme.

I even got Jason in New York to send us some T shirts from a clothing brand he was starting. By now Jason was making so much money selling weed he started his own clothing brand on the East Coast. He capitalized on his LA roots to make a brand that was West Coast inspired called Ocean Grown. We gave the shirts away as raffle prizes to help spread the word about his brand. As Jason's best friend I was his first customer and biggest fan. I paid him for the raffle prizes, and he ended up sending a few extras for me.

Jason and I still talked regularly. I had informed him of every step of the current adventure and my involvement under the mentorship of Leo. We both dreamed of him coming out for the event and touring the grow op. In reality it wasn't possible with his legal problems.

When it came closer to the party day, everyone wanted to help out or be part of the event. Not only did we have good buzz going in the community, but Sara was beloved by her coworkers. We had a roster of Safehaven's best performers on stage.

All our friends we had made from the events and the Safehaven employees wanted to bring food, baked goods, snacks, decorations. Everyone wanted to help out. We had cookies shaped like cocks and chips of every flavor. Numerous sodas and candy. We even provided free booze.

Sara and I purchased large plastic drink dispensers and made up two popular drink specials. I distinctly remember one of the drinks being called "The Angry Mistress" and involving whiskey, lime juice and orange soda. We filled each dispenser to the top and then gave out free cups to our friends.

The usual bar manager was not thrilled by us stealing half his customers. But the free booze appeased people who were performing and helping out for free. It also helped our non-kink friends who were extremely uncomfortable being in a BDSM dungeon.

One of Sara's metal head friends from the Pitcher Place slightly resembled Jesus so we purchased him a Jesus costume and invited him to the event to walk around pretending to be Jesus. Jesus may not have been at the Garden of Eden historically, but he was sure as hell in ours.

Sara insisted on using the DJ, DJ Soul Joel, from our local bar Pitcher Place. He wanted to be paid more than what we were given as a DJ budget by Safehaven and we would have to pay about $100 out of pocket. I will admit, at first, I did not think he was worth paying the extra money, but Sara was certain he was what we needed. This was her birthday after all.

As far as numbers on social media goes, we had big numbers for our event RSVP list. Bigger than any usual events that happened at Safehaven. We didn't have a link or sell tickets online so there was still that doubt that numbers are just numbers, and no one was going to show up.

I had prepared an introduction for Sara but in the end, I sort of chickened out and let the DJ Soul Joel read it over his microphone. As the event began to start and the first performance got ready on stage, Soul Joel got everyone's attention, and the venue went silent.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Doms and subs, and anyone and everyone in between. It is my pleasure to introduce a woman who needs no introduction. At our local bar she's known as the Pitcher Place Punisher. In Hollywood they call her the House of Blues Humiliator. And to everyone around the dungeon who has to listen to her music, she is the Heavy Metal Mistress. Put your hands together for our host of the evening..... Mistress Mary Jane!"

It was perfect. Although Sara had complained about being nervous and unprepared she went up on stage and was a natural. I stood in the back near the bar with Leo and surveyed the scene. He gave me an approving nod and thumbs up. I took out my cell phone and took a photo for Jason. The dungeon was fuller than I had ever seen before.

Chapter 45: Fire in the Hole