What happens at Wicked, stays at Wicked!
The Toronto hedonistic Wicked Club is, of course, all about sex.
On the club’s top two floors, where the “playing” goes on, couples can balance on a swing or tie their partner to a cross. They can have sex in a room with a two-way mirror. More discreet action can be had at the “glory hole” booth, or in private rooms, while those in an expansive mood can frolic on six big mattresses lined up side by side.
For owners Aurora Benzion and her husband, Shlomo, the club is an extension of the “open-minded relationship” they’ve long shared. It has also given them a window on evolving sexual mores.
“Before, it was very rare to see single ladies coming,” Shlomo says. “Today, I’ll have groups of 10 girls coming for dinner or to celebrate a divorce. Some of the girls are under 25, and you didn’t see that years ago.”
“Women are a little bit more mature sexually and more self-confident,” Aurora says. “They’re going to go to a club like this to explore their own sexuality without having to compromise with a male partner. They can just do it on their terms.”
Shlomo and Aurora came to Toronto from England in 2000 and opened a lingerie store. They found the club scene a tad boring, so they started throwing invitation-only sex parties at the back of their shop. As the flesh fests became popular, the couple first moved them to a farmhouse in Woodbridge, before opening a club on Richmond St. in 2004, and moving it to the corner of Queen and Brookfield, just steps from Ossington, in 2006.
The main floor is a cabaret and dining area with much titillation but no nudity. For a $60 fee, couples can move to the play areas upstairs. (Men without a female partner are not allowed upstairs on Saturdays, unless they are a couple’s “boy toy.”)
The Benzions say most customers are between 25 and 35. About 40 per cent are from the GTA, and the rest from the United States or other parts of Ontario.
Some come to swap partners, some for one-night-stands, some for a threesome, some just to watch and others to simply wear sexy outfits.
“There’s a couple that likes to come and find a single guy,” Aurora says. “But afterwards, they don’t want to have anything to do with him. They just want to go home, and I assume that during the week they have their normal ma and pa life, and this is their secret indulgence on the weekend.”
For couples in good relationships, the upper floors add a little spice.
“Then you have the ones where one partner is doing it for the other, to keep him or her faithful,” Aurora says. “And there are those on the brink of a divorce who think it’s going to fix their marriage.”
In those cases, she adds, the upper floors are rarely a good idea. “This will just send (a bad relationship) faster towards its death.
“We could be marriage counselors. People ask us for advice all the time.”
“What we learned about relationships is that it’s all about communication,” Shlomo says.
That can especially be important on the upper floors.
“Sometimes the problem is between the couple — one continues to play and the other one’s had enough and they don’t know how to communicate, they don’t have their little signals in place, and then they’re arguing — ‘Oh, how come you didn’t stop when I stopped?’ ” Aurora says.
The club has simple rules: no means no, and no touching without permission. Aurora says some couples add one more: “Whatever happens at Wicked stays at Wicked.”
For their part, the Benzions stay out of the games.
“I run everything professionally,” Shlomo says. “I can’t be thinking of whether people are having a good time and everything is going well, and at the same time I have my pants down.”
Toronto Hedonistic Wicked Club.
