They had reservations

Not often enough in the life of any newsman does a note arrive over the transom with a sentence that reads, "As the elevator door opened, in walked a woman in a leather bustier leading, by a dog leash and collar, a man wearing nothing but a string thong."

Let's first of all thank astute reader Mark Warter, formerly of Boston, now of Rhode Island, who had the good sense to know that the issue might be of interest to the community at large.

When I called him, Warter laid bare his story. On Friday, Jan. 9, he checked into the Park Plaza Hotel with his wife, two daughters, their husbands, and his two grandchildren, all to attend his grandson's christening at the Trinity Church. Any more wholesome it doesn't get.

Back in the Paleozoic Era, about the time of its last full-scale renovation, the Park Plaza wasn't a bad hotel; these days, it's more exhausted than just tired, catering mostly to downscale conventions, airline crews, and people who don't know any better.

Put Warter in that last group, but he'd quickly learn. After he settled into his room, he rode the elevator back to the lobby with his wife and their 3-year-old granddaughter.

Ding-ding. Elevator stops. Doors open. And that's where the woman in the bustier with the man on the dog leash come in.

"She's not a small woman," Warter said. "She's overflowing out of this thing, and she has fishnets on. He is looking down, and he has a collar around his neck.

"I immediately start talking to my granddaughter to distract her," Warter added. "The other women in my elevator and my wife, their jaws drop. You could hear them hit the floor."

Next stop: the front desk, where a clerk informed Warter that the Fetish Fair Fleamarket was being held in the upstairs ballroom all weekend. Okey dokey.

Soon, a bored-looking manager explained to Warter that the Park Plaza was a convention hotel and, as such, refused to discriminate against any group. Hotel executives never thought it necessary to prewarn other guests. He offered a free breakfast.

"I told him, `So you value money more than decency?' and he replied, `Apparently,' " Warter said.

By this point, the lobby was literally filled with hulking cross-dressers gallivanting about in skirts, men in leather chaps and little else, obese people with whips, and dwarfs in masks -- all of them ready to celebrate.

"It's everything you can think of," Warter said. "I'm not a prude, but I couldn't believe it."

Admittedly, I'm the suspicious type, and was starting to think hoax. I envisioned the night I'd be sitting at a bar with a bunch of college friends when one of them would say, "Remember the time we got you fired from the Globe . . . ."

So I plugged a few words into Google and, sure enough, there it was, the Fetish Fair Fleamarket at the Park Plaza, Jan. 9-11.

According to the event website, for a $10 admission charge, attendees could visit vendors such as Dungeonware and Happy Tails or take classes such as The Joy of Canes and Flogging 101. There was a masquerade ball on Saturday night.

The management of the Park Plaza didn't return calls. Maybe they were, ahem, tied up. But event organizer Cecilia Tan bragged that more than 4,000 S & M-minded people and 100 vendors came through the hotel, making it the most successful fair she's hosted. She said the most scantily dressed and sexually open people were discouraged from lounging in the lobby.

She sympathized with other guests, but said of her group: "If people are in their rooms having a lot of sex, they're not getting drunk and running down the hallways." Good point, and one that the Warter family can laugh about now. But you have to believe that in the back of their minds they wish someone would whip the hotel back into shape.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.