Mike Sager - The Lonely Hedonist: True Stories of Sex, Drugs, Dinosaurs and Peter Dinklage

Praise for The Lonely Hedonist

I have been a fan of Sagers work roughly since I learned to read. Whether hes profiling the actor Peter Dinklage, a professional clown, or almond farmers in Californias Central Valley, Sager gives you a peek into his subjects soul. How he does it remains a mystery.

Elon Green, contributor, Harvards Neiman Storyboard, The New Yorker

For four decades, Mike Sager has been one of our finest practitioners of feature magazine writing, picking up where the New Journalism GodsWolfe, Talese, Thompson, et alleft off. This latest trove of Sagers irresistible brand of social anthropology shows him in peak form, whether writing about celebrities, like J.J. Abrams and Peter Dinklage, or the usual gathering of bonafide American originals that find their way into his storiesa family-owned sex toys factory, a family farm, a weed doctor, a clown, and a man who started a sex club in Beverly Hills, and more.

Alex Belth, Editor, EsquireClassic.com

Filled with unforgettable personalities and muscular sentences that mean business, Sagers incredible stories of celebrities, dreamers and capitalists take readers through the warped frontier of new American excess and commerce, and they locate the pain and beauty in the dark circles under Americas eyes. Thankfully, Sager has a great sense of humor.

Aaron Gilbreath, editor, Longreads.com, author, Everything We Dont Know

I have been a fan of Sagers work roughly since I learned to read. Whether hes profiling the actor Peter Dinklage, a professional clown, or almond farmers in Californias Central Valley, Sager gives you a peek into his subjects soul. How he does it remains a mystery.

Elon Green, contributor, Harvard Universitys Neiman Storyboard, The New Yorker

The Lonely Hedonist

The founder of Beverly Hills' most elite sex club divorced his wife, rented a mansion and filled it with debauchery. Why is he still unhappy?

In a leafy enclave near Beverly Hills, behind an aging Tudor mansion, Snctm is hosting a pool party. The sun is radiant overhead, the sky is cloudless and blue; the therapeutic aroma from the eucalyptus trees mixes in the air with the scents of expensive perfume and hydroponic weed. Couples lie here and there on chaise longues or large blankets on the grass. A trio of topless young women, members of Snctms erotic-theater troupe, known as Devotees, float languorously on giant blow-up swans, sipping drinks through bent straws. Two more Devotees bounce on a trampoline. In a little while, the brunette will be tied up, the blonde will employ a suede flogger and other toys, dispensing pain and pleasure. A waitress circulates, delivering food prepared by the French chefa choice today of sirloin sliders or fish tacos, with a side of crisp steak fries.

Sitting poolside in a wicker chair, presiding over all, is Damon Lawner. A handsome man of forty-five with a lean and chiseled physique, he wears gauzy, low-slung pants and a necklace of fragrant mala beads he picked up during a sojourn in Bali. With his longish tousled hair and high cheekbones, his inner glow and sober mien, he looks like a hunky Hollywood guru. Four years ago, he was a cash-strapped real estate agent with a beautiful wife and two young daughters, struggling with monogamy, facing with dread the prospects of his fifth decade. As many men do when they reach his age, he began to ask himself, Is this all there is?

Tattooed on Lawners right shoulder is Snctms official symbol, a teardrop shape containing a cross and an all-seeing eye. Lawner calls it the Oculus Dei. He drew it in a fit of inspired desperation one night in the living room of his small apartment after his family had gone to bed. The cross stands for faith. The eye stands for the Hindu chakra that leads to inner realms and higher consciousness. The tear was meant to stand for the earths life-giving elements. But as Snctm has become more successful, as Lawners life has been transformed, the tear has become instead a bittersweet reminder. In the quest to make your fantasies come true, he has discovered, you can sometimes lose as much as you gain.

One week from today, Snctm will hold its regular Masquerade, an exclusive monthly event with the guest list limited to ninety-nine people. As the name suggests, masks are required. The atmosphere is reminiscent of the erotic party scenes in Stanley Kubricks Eyes Wide Shut, Lawners initial inspiration. Among those already confirmed for next Saturdays soiree are a man who owns hotels in New York, a billionaire from Moscow, several wealthy couples who have each been married for more than twenty years, the producer of a number of well-known television shows, an actress with a respectable IMDb page, the twenty-one-year-old son of a movie producer, a number of international models, and a couple who are opening a big new store near Rodeo Drive.

When Lawner founded Snctm, he envisioned something more intimate than previous incarnations of swingers clubs. From Platos Retreat, the disco-era den of iniquity in New York, to Pariss thriving and swanky Les Chandelles, the more notable spots over the years have been known for unfettered debauchery. A child of hippies who spent his earliest years in a commune in upstate New York, Lawner has tried to create a spiritual and erotic utopia where people of like minds and desires can have as much sex and romance as humanly possible, in as many different ways as the imagination can invent, with the most beautiful and engaging people they can find. And no strings attached.

At the moment, Lawner is using a custom phone app to screen applications for this weekends Masquerade. There are still a few more slots open for women, who can apply to attend for free. Sitting beside him, in a matching wicker chair, a dark beauty sips champagne. Call her Caroline. Tall and impossibly thin, with huge brown eyes, she has recently earned a degree from a college in Texas. Shes visiting Lawner for a couple of weeks, seeing agencies, hoping to get into modeling.

Joining the couple is one of Lawners most trusted collaborators, Phuong Tran, thirty-two, known to Snctm members as Bunnyman. By day hes a manager at a Fortune 500 company in LA. At Masquerades he wears a martial-arts outfit and the black leather rabbit mask that earned him his nickname; hes highly regarded for his expertise in the ancient Japanese rope-tying art of shibari. Tran was the very first to purchase a membership to Snctm. He joined, he says, because some of my friends were in other private social clubs, like the Johnathan Club and the California Club, and I wanted to be able to reciprocate with something a little different.

Check this one out, Lawner says, showing his phone to the others. She works as a research chemist.

Shes that lovely librarian type, Tran says appreciatively. Today hes wearing Italian-made print pants rolled above the ankles and a short-brimmed straw chapeau.

Lawner reads aloud from the application: Im a hyperpolyglot and enjoy dirty talk so hopefully during a sexual escapade, other members will learn some kinky words.

Hyperpolyglot, Tran repeats, sounding intrigued. I believe that means somebody who has the ability to learn multiple languages really quickly.

So, Lawner says, summing up: Shes totally hot, probably knows eight languages, likes to talk dirty

And likes to get fucked really hard, Caroline interrupts. Shes been reading over Lawners shoulder.

You think we should invite her? Lawner asks.

Damon Emanuel Lawner never set out to be the founder of a sex club. His paternal grandfather was a wealthy sporting-goods manufacturer from Long Island. His father was a talented violinist who chucked it all in the early 1970s to join a commune upstate. Damon was given his name by the communes leader, as was his sister, Hadria.

Lawners parents split when he was three. Both moved across the country to the burgeoning hippie community of Fairfax, in Marin County, near San Francisco. Lawners father, Loren, lived modestly off the proceeds of a trust. He once rented his house to Owsley Stanley, the famous LSD chef, and on a number of occasions he jammed with Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart, both members of the Grateful Dead. There were late-night parties, lots of cocaine and acid, lots of booze, Lawner says. His mother, Melissa Rome Lawner, took up with a Jim Morrison look-alike who made leather clothes; to make ends meet, she received food stamps.