My recent visit to Aarows

Aarows is a gay and bi club situated at Rydalmere, west Sydney. I'd been before and wasn't particularly impressed, but seeing as it's free for trannies and women on Saturday nights I decided to give it another try. Parking was tricky because the place was busy, I'd say about 150 people. Mostly guys, of course, but quite a few trannies and even a few women.

The place itself is huge, too big in my opinion. Three floors - ground level is the snack bar, changing rooms, spa, saunas, pool table, stage, televisions and an outdoor smoking area. On the first floor there are several darkened rooms for sex, including a suckatorium, sling room and a room with a cage. On the top floor there are more rooms. Combined, probably about forty rooms in all.

Now here's the strange thing, I arrived about 9pm and I walked all around the place, up and down and round and around and then up and down again. In one room there were three middle-aged men watching porn on TV, one of them was wanking while the other two ignored him. In another room there is a narrow exit which leads to a small darkened area with a mattress on the floor. One guy was sucking another while another looked on.

And that's it!

The suckatorium was empty and so were all the other rooms. Everyone was just walking around paying no attention to anyone else. People avoid eye-contact, or any contact at all for that matter. Oh, there was a small group of Asian trannies, probably three in all, sitting by the first floor stair well, talking. Talking, not mixing. Perhaps they get into it later.

One thing that really pisses me off at Aarows is their clothes optional policy. It means that most of the guys are walking around fully dressed, or at best, wrapped in a towel. Two tough looking blokes in long coats and wearing big heavy boots strode past me and nearly bowled me over. They were quite menacing.
I returned to the ground floor and met Angel and David, two friends of mine who I knew would be there. Angel is a real woman who loves her sex, and Barry was there too. I also bumped into Celestine, Wendy and Lisa, tranny friends of mine, plus a few other gurls who recognised me but I couldn't place them.

A male stripper appeared on the stage and inserted a dildo up his arse but no one appeared interested, least of all me. Then a guy playing a guitar took over. I guess there would have been a dozen people close to the stage but no one was really interested. Frankly I was bored. I had been there for almost an hour and nothing was happening. The only places where there seemed to be any friendly conversation were around the pool table and the outdoors smoking area. Everyone else, except for the people I already knew, didn't want to know me or anyone else for that matter, or so it seemed to me.

Lisa warned me that I had parked in a towaway area so I zoomed out to save the car, and decided not to return. Apparently, thanks to Angel, things started to liven up about half an hour after I had left. Cel tells me there was a bit of bi/tranny action going on somewhere, but I doubt if the whole place was hopping. Most guys would have been walking up and down and around and around all night long, doing nothing. It seems extraordinary to me that in a gay/bi club it takes a woman to get things going.

You can't blame the management but Aarows always strikes me as an impersonal and unfriendly place. It seems to attract a very odd bunch of people, except for my friends, of course! The customers just don't seem to know what it is they want. Are they gay, bisexual or just bi curious? I can't tell. On the positive side, we're lucky to have such a place in the inner west. A bit like the local Coles supermarket at Telopea, everybody moans about it but we're lucky to have it.

I just wish the management at Aarows would make up their minds exactly what sort of crowd they're trying to attract and stick with it. It's been trannies welcome, trannies unwelcome, trannies welcome AND free on Saturdays... Same with women. And the clothes optional policy is a killer. It works in tiny hole-in-the-wall clubs but not massive places like Aarows. I don't know why, it just doesn't.

And it needs more socialising areas, maybe convert some of the unused and wasted space into a lounge area with comfortable sofas with its own coffee machine but no television. There's porn a plenty, keep the lounge room just for socialising. And if the management decides to keep it tranny friendly, a changing room complete with mirrors wouldn't go amiss. And as for the techno muzak, the less said the better. OK, I'm old and ancient but I do appreciate some modern music, but not that, whatever it is.

Look, I wish them luck, I hope Aarows becomes a huge success, and I will continue to drop in from time to time. Law of averages, I'm bound to strike a good night eventually!