Old-School Gentleman's Club

A pool table lined with blue felt sports a lively, raucous game, ivory cracks, the men drink, shoot the bull while they play. A humidor lined in fine wood stocked with Cuban cigars, a smoking lounge grandiose, ceiling painted like the stars. A bar right out of the Wild West serves beer and old whiskey, an insurance guy loosing at darts to a bookworm with a PhD. A library stocked with real books, no paperbacks or e-books there, classics vaunted alongside the spy novels and western fare. Gym in the basement, no windows, where everyone toils and sweats, a sauna large, and no member has grown tired of a steam yet. Upstairs is the banquet hall, used once a month for feasts, where steak is served bleeding red, no concoctions of soy or yeast. On the third floor, rooms to crash if you’re visiting from out of town, or if you’ve drank a bit much, relax, and lay down you head. Fixtures in brass and mahogany, reminders of more elegant times, side rooms for talking business, a cellar filled with fine wines... This is our place, our shelter, when the world rears and ugly head, yet at least once a month feminists show up outside and wish us dead. They like to shout and chant a lot, with their one word, ‘patriarchy,’ never seeming to realize their protests are pure malarkey. This world had lady-only gyms, and female-only hair salons, they never decry that as sexism, they just go along to get along. Turn-about must be fair play, so we made ourselves this place, what really bothers them about us is the mere existence of male space. But this club is a private affair, so they’re wasting their powers, they have places where men don’t tread, so this place, this is ours.