Klub Verboten: I went to a sex club - diary 19/11/23
this week's diary is all honey and no porridge
I am firmly a student of the Sofia Coppola school of art: give your audience what they want. You want to lecture them on Gaza. They want to be tucked in with a bed time story. With that in mind when an old friend reached out and asked me if I wanted to go to a sex club with him, I said, GO ON then. I need something to write about.
I am not a night-life person and I don’t take well to casual sex. I told him if he doesn’t mind having an awkward side kick, I am in. I was already plotting the delicious substack I would write off the back of it. My friend was the ideal person to accompany me to such a place. I know him from our time in a centrist Labour Party adjacent think tank. He had previously posted a photo of himself going to a similar party and I had expressed awe at how he was not worried about his future potential political career and was calm and confident about his lifestyle. I have known other people in the past who go to these parties but frankly I wouldn’t trust them with my cat, let alone with my comfort and safety in a sex club.
I was also amused by the idea of me in a sex club as the concept is far from my aesthetic and sexuality. The club (Klub Verboten) has strict fetish dress code rules: latex/leather/PVC. Cotton is strictly forbidden, verboten even. A very close minded list if you want my opinion. Is it unthinkable that some of us find pleasure in tweed or corduroy?
Here is an non-exhaustive list of things that excite me:
Men who privately speak to me like characters in a Jane Austen novel
Men who are undeniably more eloquent than me
Following that, there is no level of ugliness that will prevent me from fancying a really good writer
The spotlight
People who wear the same (clean) clothes every day because they don’t care
Men whose bodies betray a lifestyle of a lot of hard desk job and no time or vanity to exercise as much as I do
Men in baby blue/baby pink shirts (yes, it’s that easy)
People who have the confidence to flirt with me even though I am being reliably told I am very intimidating (meow meow)
Men’s little moans, you know the ones
Men who can drive and drive me places/pick me up
People who are very present
People who pay me close attention
Men who believe that God is a woman, and she is me, and find the words to make me believe in her too
Controversy and the risk of exposure (hence the contrarianism)
Men who have something camp, flamboyant or feminine about them (for Greek standards this is all posh coded British men) e.g. a man who when drunk lets a feminine laughter slip
Androgynous women
Women who are both smarter and better looking than me (though not necessarily as or more funny than me)
Myself. No matter what.
There is certainly an element of S&M in the above but perhaps more subtle than balls out (excuse me) whips and chains.
Despite the fact that I am an obvious, brash, person I believe eroticism needs to be slightly concealed to breathe life. The embarrassment is the point. This is why I don’t find sexiness sexy if that makes sense. I have said this here before, my favourite position is missionary with a man I love. My fetish is and always has been small ‘c’ conservative men. The Dad types, not the sex mansion types.
With my wardrobe disappointedly low on the fetish gear (unless you count my collection of campaign shirts from the US primaries, that works for some) I had to buy an outfit so I asked one of the trainers in my gym who is also an only-fans girl for advice. She said to go and buy a PVC set and some stockings/fishnets tights and make sure you are exposed enough to be allowed in. Gulp. Ok then.
I set off to Soho looking for my sex club kit. Like the noob normie that I am, I strotted into Ann Summers, grabbed the first shiny bra and knickers in my eye line and made a bee line for the check out. I also picked up a pair of wet look stockings, for warmth- it’s getting nippy out there and flu season is well and truly upon us. On my way home I was confronted by window shops brimming with comforting, oversized knits. I felt a pang of jealousy for all the homely girls that will be donning them, cosied up with their boyfriends in front of the telly, watching Bridget Jones or one of the other greats, while I am awkwardly stepping around mystery puddles of liquid in a dimly lit dungeon. I sighed melancholically and patted my self on the back. These are the sacrifices I need to make for my art, and my simps.
It is also surely another string on my political bow. Isn’t it girls from lower socio-economic backgrounds that often have to resort to sex work? Yes, no more spectator politics, as a neo-prude and communitarian natalist I need to know what I am railing against. Luxury Beliefs, as my friend Rob Henderson said, sexual promiscuity being the worst culprit as who else but middle and upper class people can afford that risky lifestyle.
On the day of the party, I arrived at the flat where the crew would be gathering beforehand a few minutes past midnight. I was already dizzy from the sleep deprivation (2 hours past my bedtime and counting) and stone cold sober. It would be 6 of us: 3 boys, 3 girls. I was the oldest, at 29, and may I add, the wisest. The girls were two sweet tiny angel blonds. The boys were also very sweet, and ripped. They looked and sounded like they did this thing often. They asked me if I have been before. I informed them I am in bed by 9:30pm most nights and have been doing so since 2018. One of the boys handed me a bottle of orange gin, I briskly informed him I am staying sober this month to focus on my writing. ‘Ah’, he said, ‘cool’ and counter-offered some coke. He had a polaroid camera and they started taking photos of each other, Tumblr circa 2011 style. I was sat on a corner like a mother hen, sizing up the girls, trying to guess their age.
I resisted the dosh out life advice and allowed the guy to take a polaroid of me looking as you would expect. Deer in headlights. On our way out, I scooped the polaroid off the Coffee table. Ain’t no Daily Mail buying that off you young man.
At the club, staff members shined flashlights under our coats to check that our outfits abided by the dress code and handed us fleece blankets to wrap ourselves in as we run from the cloakroom to the main club space. They also quizzed us on the rules of the club which were mostly about consent. Inside, there were four spaces, I think. A dance floor, playing techno punk music, which looked like a normal club only with sex swings in every corner. One playroom, a dark room and a BDSM room. I only visited the playroom and the dancefloor. Apart from these, the club was very much like your garden variety club. Only difference is that people were having a lot of sex. After 10-15 minutes max, I was desensitised. My biggest discomfort was that I was feeling cold as my attire was simply not appropriate for London in November.
I had been thinking about writing this piece all week prior to going to this club. I was amusing myself and drafting silly little jokes in my notepad about how awkward I would feel and how I would be like a fish out of the water. I had previously read a piece by another nerdy political journalist in London who went to a sex club, had no action despite intending to, and left disappointingly early. I thought I’d do much the same and spent my night furiously typing awkward nerd jokes in my iPhone. Alas, God had other plans.
The realisation that creeped in once again, as I live and learn and allow myself to just be, is that as much as I say I am cosplaying as a hot woman in some of my posts on instagram, I am also LARPing when I describe myself as a political nerd. It’s not either or. After about an hour at the club I surprised myself. I was part of the furniture (no, not in that way, I am not into that!!!!1!). The friend I arrived at the club with headed out to meet someone else after I reassured him I would be fine, and I meant it. I was more than fine. Lads, this place was a revelation. The fact that everyone around me was doing something taboo did indeed make it less sexy but also made me feel less fragile about sex more generally. In there it was fine, it was all fine. Rather than intimidating me, people dressed in head to toe fetish gear relaxed me. It’s all good. Live and let live.
I thought the place would smell like that semen tree outside my high school that made us all burst into childish giggles whenever we passed by it. But like that tree, it was only funny because none of us really knew what cum smelled like. We just assumed. Similarly, going to a sex club is only hilarious as a cope. You’ve never been to one and wouldn’t dare go to one so you convince yourself that everyone who goes there is either a deprived loser or a coked up degenerate. You couldn’t live with yourself if the reality is that there are people there who are normal and intelligent and who found a way to enjoy intimacy while you are still trying to find the words to ask your girlfriend to put a finger up your butt. While the former most definitely must exist, I did not meet many of them on Friday. I primarily spent my time with another nerdy type, an ethereal bisexual, who just so happened to be wearing latex boxer shorts with a hole on the back and a leather harness. What of it. He was seasoned to the scene, and adopted me for the night. He asked me if the music was my vibe. I said in my head it’s playing Taylor Swift. It’s a love story, baby just say yes. We giggled like school children. I was consensually joined at the hip with him for the next few hours, then I roamed freely for a bit and he did the same.
I agree that everything is about sex, except sex itself. That is about power, and in that sex club no one had any power over me apart from my own self. I felt.. may I dare say.. empowered. Ultimately, the highlight go the night was the intimacy I felt and developed, not the sex. While the acts going on around me were hard core, the vibe itself was friendly, jovial, open. Not in the sinister, creepy way that underlies a lot of performative open mindedness (*cough* polyamory *cough*).