(Erica and Katie thankfully push that a bit). After e-mailing Chemistry a request for an application, my next-door-neighbor “dates” Erica and Katie and I are sent digital questionnaires, along with requests for “G-rated” photos.
The first step: Curate the hottest-and least creepy-crowd you could ever hope to find yourself in a room with naked. As organizers, our job, first and foremost, is to create an environment where women feel very comfortable.” “A lot of our members are just getting out of college-mainly couples and single women.
But what really makes these naked shindigs tick? My goal: infiltrate, assess, and maybe even participate, all in the fine name of glossy magazine journalism.Ĭhemistry, a New York–based “producer of erotic parties,” and the host of the pre-Halloween bash, is one of a handful of members-only partiers in the city marketing themselves as playgrounds for the young, beautiful, and “sexually enlightened.” “I don’t like the term swinger because it harks back to the ’70s and the misogynistic practice of wife swapping,” says “KennyBlunt,” a mysterious dude in his early 40s who says he started Chemistry with his then girlfriend in 2006 after the two became disenchanted with the local swingers scene, finding it awkward, poorly organized, and disconcertingly male-centric. and Europe, is expanding exponentially by replacing the old swingers model with something more upscale, more exclusive, more attractive, less emotionally scarring, and specifically targeted to the instant-gratification ethos of a generation weaned on Tinder and text message hookups. The modern reality: A new crop of invitation-only sex parties, located in big cities across the U.S. But plenty has changed since your Uncle Howie was doing the jellyfish at Plato’s Retreat. Then, after maybe 10 seconds of hesitation, the two reclaim the divan and carry on with the same reckless fervor as before.įor many, “ sex clubs” conjures up images of leathery swinger types performing passages from the Kama Sutra in clouds of patchouli smoke. The man looks around, red-faced, his white buttocks illuminated in the loft’s weird blue light. “Oh, oh!” the woman cries, her big, Kardashian-like mane spilling over her face. Erica stands, too, and when she does the ottoman seesaws, dumping the bare-assed conjoined couple onto the floor. “I’m gonna get some air,” I say, standing suddenly. A low-grade funk moves through the place like a rising weather system. Beyond them, a few dozen beds lined up like some kind of Hieronymus Bosch version of a Sleepy’s showroom play host to sexual situations of varying size and gender combinations: girl-boy girl-girl-boy boy-girl-boy girl-girl girl-girl-girl and, on the large, sweat-drenched mattresses at the center of the room, girl-boy-girl-girl girl-girl-girl-boy-boy-girl-boy (I think). Erica and I are doing a rather heroic job of shifting our gaze to just about anywhere in the room but at our feet, where a pretty brunette in what’s left of a Dorothy costume (ruby slippers) services a grinning, half-naked cowboy in a Stetson and not much else. I’m in a warehouse loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a few nights before Halloween, sitting uncomfortably between my friend Erica to my right and a naked couple struggling to have sex on the eight inches of available ottoman to my left.