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.”
