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It’s just past 11pm and I’m sipping prosecco in a Covent Garden spa — a blue-lit oasis tucked beneath an affluent street lined with upmarket bistros and bars. But this is no ordinary relaxation session. Around me are twerking middle-aged women. Buddha statues and bowls of condoms. Swirls of sequins and Speedos and stilettos and suits. Guests are snogging in the jacuzzi. Jacking off in the sauna. Going down on each other in open-door dark rooms. The one constant in this Dionysian portal of sex and sweat is that everyone is wearing masks.
This is Hedonism, a no-phones, Eyes Wide Shut-style soirée hosted by the London sex party institution Killing Kittens. Emma Sayle, a school friend of the Princess of Wales, launched the community in 2005 with the goal of empowering women to explore their sexuality without judgement (women have to make the first move at the parties). Things really heated up during the pandemic, when Sayle reported that she had received more than 40,000 membership requests from single women alone. Covid “was a wake-up call to a lot of people that you have one life”, she told me, “letting fear and shame hold you back is not an option.”
While we may be known for our prudish politeness, London’s sex party scene has never been steamier. An underworld of spicy shindigs hides in the city’s shadows, a constellation of sweaty basements and balls and bars where the usual rules don’t apply.
An underworld of spicy shindigs hides in the city’s shadows
Killing Kittens is just the tip of the iceberg in the capital’s post-pandemic sex party scene (tickets to one of Sayle’s parties start at £65 for single women and £160 for guests, so they tend to attract an older, more moneyed crowd). Sprinkled throughout the city (and into the suburbs) are swinger hotels and sexy saunas. Dungeons and debauched dinner parties. Dominatrixes and drag queens. Cake-sitters (which is literally what it sounds like) and circus performers. Shibari (Japanese rope bondage) artists and strippers. You just need to know where to find them.
On a sunny Tuesday morning, I take the train to Dalston to check out one of the newest additions to London’s kink scene, a co-working space and adult playground dreamed up by part of the team behind Klub Verboten. Around the corner from natural wine bar Dan’s, STÜCK is housed in an industrial grey building on a side street with no sign outside. After sending the venue a frantic Instagram DM asking for help finding the entrance, the door opens and I’m led inside.
I admit I was expecting to find the “third space” a little pretentious (the venue bills itself as an “interim space between home, work and Berghain”), but I feel instantly transported inside STÜCK’s concrete vortex. The building is a two-storey brutalist play den, with yellow latex curtains and an assortment of metal and silicone furniture (imagine a spaceship with the curved finishings of a 1970s bar — and the trippy liminal vibe of a David Lynch film). “It’s a quiet space. It’s really good to concentrate,” says co-founder Hanny Amin, who has silver chrome nails and a necklace that says “anal” on it.
She tells me that “the space itself is a bit of an icebreaker because not everyone knows what to do with the furniture.” While sex is allowed, it’s not the focus. She often sees guests playing “like children”.
Membership currently costs £45 per month, providing access to a varied calendar of events including handstand workshops and panel talks about supporting trans people. They’re also crowdfunding for a sauna. “This is kink for the future,” she tells me.
“No party is 100 per cent safe but I think having a party with no drugs and alcohol makes the whole thing just a bit safer”
STÜCK is part of a growing movement of sober play parties in the capital, providing a softer alternative to techno-thudding basements pounding with pills and powders. “No party is 100 per cent safe but I think having a party with no drugs and alcohol makes the whole thing just a bit safer,” says Miss Masochist, who founded the sober party Lucid (and also manages the parties Pinky Promise and Quench). Without substances in the mix, guests at one of Lucid’s dungeon parties can experiment with riskier sensory play, using everything from shibari ropes to spanking benches to needles for blood play. The venue also has a cage. “That’s good for if someone’s overstimulated,” Miss Masochist says.
Today, social media is integral to London’s kinky infrastructure. Fetish parties are advertised on Instagram, while invites to the capital’s most secretive events circulate on WhatsApp or Telegram. But London has a long, sordid history of horny parties.
As far back as Roman times, Southwark’s streets were peppered with erotic temples, where sex gods were worshipped and boozy celebrations spiralled into public orgies. In the Victorian era, “pleasure gardens” emerged as spaces where naughty behaviour was overlooked Curator Danielle Thom describes the gardens as “a place where Londoners confronted their very best, and very worst, selves”. But it was less safe for women or queer people to explore their sexual desires in public spaces, with risks of harassment, imprisonment and even death.