Farah Haze gets invited to a sex party.
Illustration by: Iza Buleczka
I assumed I’d get to a sex party in this city sooner. With a sexual appetite you’d struggle to describe as modest, sane, or even safe, I thought the moment would present itself. The usuals intrigued me, but the queues put me off. I wanted maximum debauchery, minimum effort. I’d like an orgy to spontaneously coalesce around me, please. Don’t the best things in life come to you? And on you, in a room full of strangers fucking?
It didn’t quite happen like that. But it is true things find you in the end. I was a month into a blossoming friendship-romance with Eli, 25, from Barcelona. So it was make or break territory: flirting with being forever refined to the new-friend-graveyard of Insta DMs, a memorial for those relationships that never get off the ground. (The people you have to catch up and need to get a drink with, DM to make, postpone and cancel plans with ad infinitum. This goes on for years. So long one of you moves to Prenzlauer Berg and you are finally free.) But Eli was captivating. Naturally energetic, stunning and disarmingly smart, she’s also a true deviant. An enlightened sinner.
Text from the enlightened sinner. Do I want to come to a sex party tonight? Her friend’s dropped out and there’s a €50 ticket to snap up. I’m deep in my ‘say yes’ phase, before the pandemic essentially cancels the concept of decision making, and chaotic energy is my lifeforce. So I’m in, no questions asked. Well, one. Where the fuck do you get a hooded robe from in Neukölln on a Friday night?
It’s the dress code, as specified in on the group message sent out from the organizers. I muster a vintage silk robe and cheap lingerie that just about passes as matching. Of the 150 people crammed into the private party in a penthouse overlooking Boxhagener Platz, I’m one of the few without one. The enlightened sinner is more prepared, wearing strappy lingerie under a full length red velour cape, little red riding hood style. When we arrive, she’s hood up, clutching two bottles of Rötkappchen in the lift up to the top floor. The hero Berlin deserves.
The place is packed. The 300sqm penthouse is basically a sex club for the night. There’s a main room with a dancefloor. And three separate rooms, each startlingly well-lit and filled with damp mattresses and people grinding unselfconsciously under the bright lights. The enlightened sinner and I take up space on the side of the dancefloor, clutching our wine in cups and watching the bodies in the room. She dives straight in, snogging guys and girls and making a big show of it as others watch.
Turns out, I’m not so much of a natural. I’m not super aroused when two minutes of average small talk is the gateway to guys shoving their tongue down your throat, but I think, I guess I did come to a sex party? So I let go, and one of the two-minuters slips his fingers in my pants. Something about the dull lack of connection and awkward dancefloor finger bang makes me feel like a teenager, and I pull away. Consent is sexy. And there doesn’t seem to be a huge emphasis on it from the guys hungrily prodding pussies on the dancefloor.
So I spend a lot of time grilling people about their life in the sex party scene. I meet an NYC rich kid with a thing for ketamine. Wholesome party people genuinely warmed by the sense of community in the scene. A few unfriendly hotties. While everyone around me’s fucking, my insistence on getting people’s life stories doesn’t make me hugely popular.
On the balcony around 3am, I’m wasted and ready to admit defeat. I need a final cigarette before I slip away in an Uber. A woman with unbelievable, cartoonishly-perfect boobs softly demands I touch them before I’m allowed one. Next to her, a woman in a mask, bunny ears and latex (under her cape, of course) lightly roasts me for my sloppy German. Straight away, I’m in the palm of her hands. Though not as much as her slave. Stood obediently at her side, she holds a tight grip on a lead attached to the neck of his full face, leather mask. She barks orders at him and tugs on his leash. His devotion is touching. And in her tough controlling of him, there’s true tenderness in her eyes. So yeah, I need the story. He tells me what they have is love. They’re both married and their partners are aware of the dynamic. She offers him something transcendent. And in a way I can’t understand, he does to her.
The dom bunny looks at my waist. “Can I touch it?” Yes! Finally. I blather on about how I’ve been missing that sexy consent all night. She laughs knowingly. “Can I kiss you?” She pulls me in, her leather harness presses against me. This was the genuine connection I had given up on. She asks her slave if she can take me inside. It’s on. She walks me to the front of the dancefloor, parks me by a chaise longue. We start making out. Drop our robes. At some point I end up on the chaise, on all fours, ass facing the dancefloor, face buried in the cheap velvet. Kneeling behind me, she grinds against me and pulls my head back to kiss. She asks if she can spank me, tells me to say if it’s too much. Then she gives me loud, hard smacks, increasing in intensity. She knows what she’s doing. In between she puts her mouth on my pussy, her hands in my hair. It’s ecstatic, electrifying, and the crowd behind us melts away. She tells me she’s going to give me some really hard ones. I’m hers. In the moment, I slip off somewhere else, and breathe into the pain.
We’re both pretty blown away. We gather our things and have a drink by the bar, giddy. Brought back to life, the crowded room comes back to us and we can’t match the same intensity. I lose the dom bunny shortly after that. I leave the enlightened sinner to her debauched evening, and sit my flushed ass in an Uber back to Neukölln, smug and giddy about the moment that had presented itself, when I wasn’t looking.