In a hotel lobby in the centre of Avignon, my husband and I told my family we were heading to bed for an early night. The lie passed my lips with pleasurable ease. Back in our room, I changed into a short black corset dress and heels. An hour later, we were behind an unmarked door off the picturesque medieval streets in… a glory hole maze.
This wasn’t how we thought our holiday would go when we booked it. But a month earlier, we’d made a spontaneous visit to a sex club in Paris’ red-light district — and we were hungry for more. Behind that Parisian door was an opportunity for the impulsivity I had been craving, and it would open up a world of new experiences that saw my husband and I embark on an unplanned tour of Europe’s sex clubs.
In recent years, sex clubs have had a quiet resurgence. In the UK, female-founded and -led sex party Killing Kittens reported a 400% increase in party attendance between 2022 and 2024, while data suggests that the number of permanent, on-premises sex clubs has grown from around five in the early 2000s to more than 40 today. Across Europe, clubs like this have become part of the nightlife fabric, marketed less as taboo dens and more as curated experiences.
This renewed interest makes sense in a cultural climate in which people are talking more openly about desire. Sex is increasingly treated not just as something private or romantic, but as something social. Researchers have framed this as sex becoming a form of leisure: something people actively plan, book, and experience, like any other night out.
During my single years I’d attended sex parties solo and enjoyed the unbridled erotic atmosphere, but this was new for us as a couple. Our sex club curiosity had been sparked in 2024, during a visit to the UK’s only remaining porn cinema in Huddersfield. My husband was working nearby at the time, and what began as a tongue-in-cheek suggestion to visit ended with us having sex in front of the other visitors. We’d enjoyed the thrill of exhibitionism it offered, but left with a new question lingering between us: what would it feel like to be voyeurs instead?
Paris à deux
Before Avignon, there was Paris. Our Eurostar was delayed; an inconvenience that turned into an extra night in the city. We checked into a hotel in Pigalle, the city’s red-light district, and while I was admiring the neon signs flickering outside, my husband casually announced he’d been researching sex clubs in the area — and there was one across the road.
This was the first distinction I noticed between Europe and Britain’s sex club cultures. In London, most erotic nights are event-based, and there aren’t many bricks-and-mortar clubs you can wander into on a whim. Instead, you have to plan: register your interest, buy the right outfit (y’know: latex, harness, nipple clamps), wait for the location to land in your inbox. For me, that strips away something essential. Eroticism thrives on anticipation, sure, but it also needs spontaneity.
And so, hours after my husband first pointed it out, the two of us were standing at the door of Pigalle’s Moon City, staring at two foreboding pastiches of East Asian sculpture. Inside, a stern man handed us two floral sarongs and an ankle strap containing a locker key and condoms. (Am I really going to have sex with the man I love while he wears a floral sarong and an ankle strap? I thought. Maybe the harnesses aren’t so bad after all.) We paid him €80 and he instructed us to go upstairs, change, and lock our belongings away.
Barefoot and sarong-clad, we padded back downstairs. The space felt like a sexy Tiki bar — orange lamps; Buddha statues tucked between fake palms. Sat with my genitals plastered to a plasticky leather tub chair, I felt sure this wasn’t going to be an erotic experience for me. Still, I remained open-minded. We shed our sarongs, slipped into the communal jacuzzi, and I settled into my husband’s lap, kissing him deeply as I did.
Upstairs in the club, narrow corridors hummed with distant sounds of pleasure. Our bodies brushed against others as we craned our necks to peer into different rooms. We squinted through holes in doors and slats in shutters, pressed our faces against cold metal bars. My favourite was a cage-like room, darker than all the others. Inside, I saw the faint outline of bodies moving in the blackness, grunts and moans escaping from unseen mouths; I could feel my husband pressed against me as we watched.
In the sauna, we encountered another couple, slightly older than us: his hand rested discreetly between her thighs; her head tipped back, her mouth parted in quiet pleasure. I wondered what it might be like not to have sex with them but beside them, to share the intimacy of their moment without intruding on it. I guided my husband’s hand between my own legs and noticed the woman watching him as I did. It was the first time I became aware of my husband as an object of desire for the other women around us — and the realisation only intensified my own desire.
After stepping outside to catch our breath, my husband locked us into one of the private rooms. It was only when I was bent over with him behind me that I realised the room wasn’t that private. There were bars separating us from the room opposite, accessed by an alternative door. I became aware of a presence: a man masturbating as he watched us. His need radiated through the metal bars that separated us; its safe proximity made the experience more pleasurable.
Afterwards, we headed back to the changing area and debriefed. At the porn cinema, I had been the sole object of attention for an entirely male audience of passive masturbators, but at Moon City, the presence of other women in the club had transformed the experience for both of us. Mixed with other couples, our experience became less about being the sole focus point for a crowd, and more about being part of an expansive, collective erotic experience.
Getting it on in Avignon
Over a few months, we visited more clubs in Avignon and Vienna — watching, touching, experimenting — and ultimately discovering the limits of our own desire, bolstered by the confidence of our first experience.
Behind that unmarked door in Avignon was a decadent subterranean space, filled with mirrors, chrome poles, and lacquered surfaces — and, when we visited, La Nuit du Clitoris (no translation required), a night for couples and single women. There were multiple floors, and even an entire private apartment that could be hired out. It seemed implausible that this sleepy corner of southern France housed a purpose-built, multi-level complex of sexual debauchery, replete with circular gang bang beds, mirrored ceilings, an orgy-ready sunken conversation pit, and a restraint room with postmodern 80s upholstery. This was a space with sexual ambition.
In the darkness of the glory hole maze, I felt the strange thrill of a disembodied hand reach for mine through an opening as I knelt down in front of my husband. Afterwards, he led me into the restraint room. His gaze was intense, the buckles reassuringly tight around my arms and legs. The lack of single men meant there were no lone wolves to negotiate with; I let myself go, submitted to the experience, and my orgasm came easily.
After, we were drawn back into the leopard print cave by the sound of distant moans. Here, I encountered a new aspect of sex in shared spaces: comparison. Sex with one other person is emotionally fraught enough: add other bodies into the mix, and the scope for insecurity magnifies. In the corner of the room was another couple, already naked and absorbed in each other. As the woman was touched, her audible wetness made me question my own reactions. Is that what it’s meant to sound like? Why isn’t my body responding like that? I let the thoughts pass and focused on my partner. As I settled into the experience, my comparison softened into curiosity, and eventually, into arousal – her pleasure could heighten mine rather than diminishing it. Difference is an inevitability in these spaces, and so I chose to work with it rather than push against it.
Our Viennese whirl(wind)
Two months later, on holiday in Vienna, we found ourselves at a Latin night at Vienna’s Unique X. After initial hesitation — sparked by the sight of several middle-aged men in Hawaiian shirts circling a pole to Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” — we noticed a small group nearby. Or rather, I noticed them noticing us.
There was an older, striking couple with a younger man in tow. The dynamic announced itself immediately: the younger man was their third, kissing and touching her while her partner looked on. As they made deliberate eye contact and started towards the stairs, I felt the question surface. We had talked about sleeping with another couple as the likely next step in our trajectory, but we hadn’t articulated any firm boundaries.
As we navigated our way through a fake arctic cave, an Alice in Wonderland room, and a Western saloon, we stopped at the entrance of a large mirrored room where the throuple was already naked. Hesitantly, we removed our clothes and climbed in with them (we had made little effort with regards to the Latin theme). As my husband and I began having sex, the woman from the throuple gestured towards his penis and asked, “May I?”, which may be the most polite way I’ve ever heard anyone solicit sex from a married man. I nodded, and waited for what would happen next.
She wrapped her mouth around him as the younger man moved between my legs. My husband and I lay side by side, both receiving oral sex from complete strangers. Every so often, I glanced up at the mirrored ceiling to catch a glimpse of what he was doing. I could see the woman’s head moving rhythmically over him, but strangely, I felt no jealousy.
When the older man reached for a condom and looked to me for consent, I nodded. It felt like the natural next step. And yet, I was oddly unmoved. The experience carried no real charge; it was as if it were happening at a slight remove, to someone adjacent to me. I was present, but not fully inside it.
After a few minutes, my husband appeared beside me. He signalled to the older man — still inside me — that it was time to stop. Kneeling next to me, he said quietly: “Okay. That escalated quickly.” He didn’t seem jealous, more overwhelmed. Everything had unfolded at speed, and I felt an unexpected rush of relief when he drew the line. The whole encounter had begun to feel strange, almost disembodied.
We thanked them, disentangled ourselves, and moved on.
As we debriefed in a ‘crashed’ campervan playing porn on a retro TV, the conclusion we kept circling was unexpectedly banal: the experience had felt pornographic, but not erotic. It felt like we’d been cast in someone else’s abstract idea of fun — going through the motions of a ‘sexy’ scene, rather than something either of us actually found arousing. We had been neither excited nor regretful; rather, the whole experience felt sort of mundane. The lack of connection had left us wanting. Had we had our fill of sex clubs?
*****
Over that summer, I learned that desire for me isn’t about how far I go, but how present I feel — in my body, with my partner, and with the others having sex around me. European sex clubs taught me that erotic spaces don’t need sleaze or secrecy to feel charged: their confidence and emphasis on couple-based pleasure allowed me to explore my own boundaries in an atmosphere that felt relaxed and fun. British sex clubs could learn from this sense of ease: less emphasis on taboo and performance, more on the normalisation of a shared erotic culture.
At the same time, I realised I have a very particular sweet spot when it comes to sex in the presence of others: too distant, and I slip into being an object of spectacle; too close, and I risk being pulled into other people’s scripts of what sex is meant to look like. In both cases, the danger is the same — to dissolve into someone else’s fantasy, rather than staying anchored in my own.
Coming home, I realised that what Europe had given me wasn’t a taste for more — but a sharper sense of what I actually want. I’m not done with erotic spaces in the UK, but I’m no longer chasing novelty for its own sake. Sometimes I want the reflections of strangers in mirrored rooms; sometimes it’s enough to catch the soft outline of the two of us in our bedroom mirror.
Jessica Key is a London-based writer exploring relationships, desire, and modern intimacy. Blending first-person reporting with cultural criticism, she examines how technology, sex, and shifting social norms are reshaping the way we love. She is currently working on her debut novel, Computer Love, a coming-of-age story about growing up online and learning how to love offline.
