DOES IT REALLY WORK?
Orgies, like almost everything else over the past 12 months, have found a new home online. But can logging on and stripping off with her long-term partner revive one knackered mother’s sex life?
Could Zoom sex parties reignite your relationship?
Years ago, a night out to a hedonistic fetish club with my partner, Dan, worked magic on our sex life. We’d always meant to go again, but now, eight years into our relationship, amid the daily slog of parenting our toddler, work and life admin, it’s fallen off our to-do list. Add our lockdown routine (Netflix, grab bags of crisps, repeat) into the mix and our sex life had become... stale. So, when we heard that purveyor of glam, female pleasure-focused erotic parties Killing Kittens was staging its first ever online sex party, we thought: why not?
Although a trip to an IRL sex party had previously been a turn-on for us, we were nervous. Would checking the chat box for flirty messages kill the vibe? Would there be a thrill without the promise of skin-on-skin contact? Would we look like we were filming bad amateur porn? Finding out that phones are banned, that all participants are vetted beforehand, and that everyone wears big Venetian masks to hide their identity helped assuage our privacy concerns. Establishing ground rules (we could both reangle the camera to move body parts out of shot, leave the party if we felt uncomfortable and would wait for a nod of permission before removing items of clothing from one another) helped, too.
When the evening arrived and we logged on to the Zoom call at 10pm, we started messaging other couples in the waiting room while the moderators vetted participants once more. That – and wine – helped our nerves, and by the time we were let into the video call, we were confident enough to send flirty messages to an attractive couple right away.
Soon after, our pencil skirt-suited host led the whole gathering in an adult twist on Simon Says, then Never Have I Ever, and we watched couples removing clothing and downing their drinks.
By 11pm, our screen was full of half-naked bodies. Many couples were having full penetrative sex or teasing each other with tongues and feathers. Our chat box lit up with a message from another couple: ‘Why don’t you unbutton his trousers? And why doesn’t he unhook your basque?’ Extremely turned on, we complied, and soon we were having sex, too (we repositioned the camera so only our torsos were on show).
As we got into it – all our inhibitions forgotten – the moderators flashed our antics up on the main screen for everyone to watch (we had given permission beforehand) and we both got a thrill out of being watched that neither of us expected.
Two hours later, the party ended; days later, we set an alarm for 3am to join a buzzy New York-based sex party we’d read about online. Our new hobby has reinvigorated our sex life. It’s also reminded us that being stuck inside with our son upstairs is no excuse to reach for the slippers and the remote; that we’re the people each other chose, not just partners and parents. It’s something to smirk about over breakfast, too.