‘I have never seen so many strangers orgasm’: my accidental education in a Berlin sex club

Like all great epiphanies, it happens in a sex club. I’m with my gal pal, Bessie, on a short summer getaway to Berlin. It’s her birthday and her birthday wish is to visit a den of iniquity. Bessie has read about this place online and her heart is set on a scandalous night of debauchery.

We’re queuing up outside the venue, an innocuous concrete slab of a building covered in graffiti. Giddy in the balmy night air, we are buzzing from a cocktail of anticipation and trepidation, as well as the actual cocktails we just drank. We aren’t sure if we’ll get in, what with the city’s famously strict door policies, but we’re determined to give it our best shot.

Being sex club novices, we haven’t got the memo about the standard sex club dress code: latex, lace, strategically placed cut-outs for your nips. Instead, we are wearing summery bar-hopping ensembles. Bessie is in a cute top and jeans. I’m in a polka dot mid-century sundress and peep-toe wedges. Wedges! At a sex club! What am I thinking?? We look perfectly lovely, but not exactly the kink scene’s wet dream. At the front gate, a bouncer in leather chaps gives us a cursory glance. We await his verdict with bated breath. He shakes his head, distinctly unimpressed and unconvinced.

A man of few words and two visible buttocks, he declares, ‘Nein.’

Bessie’s sexually liberated face falls. Oh crap. I really do want her to have the best birthday ever and this is her one birthday wish. She’s been such a good friend to me and I totally adore her. The least I can do is give her a lovely birthday knees-up (and whatever else goes up in these gaffs). I snap into action. I need to sort this out and get this little lady in this sex club sharpish. Doesn’t Assless Chaps understand? Hello, it’s her birthday. He’s obviously not au fait with the international rules of birthdays. You don’t say no to a sweet angel of a girl on her birthday. That’s just mean and also really missing the point of birthdays.

But fear not, sweet Bessie, your fairy gaymother is here to save the day. Hopefully. So in my very best pidgin German – which is dreadful, worse than if an actual pigeon tried to speak German – I start blagging.

My tone is purposeful and business-like. ‘Wir are hier für sex club,’ I insist.

AC doesn’t look convinced, but I plough on.

‘Wir are… kinky.’

He scoffs, gesturing at our decidedly unkinky outfits. Although cutting, he does highlight a salient point. We’re looking way more department store than dominatrix. In a desperate attempt to demonstrate our kinky credentials, I tug on our bra straps and point emphatically towards them as if to say, ‘Look sir, we wear bras and we’re not afraid to show you the straps. We are clearly wild.’ My own wild, sex club bra is a pink, flowery number from M&S.

Luckily, he takes pity on us, or squints a little until he sees our inner sluts, or just can’t be arsed to do whatever the hell this is we’re doing any more. He nods us through and we cannot believe our good fortune. We are triumphant. Wahey, we’re going to the sex club!

‘Danke, danke!’ we cry out in gratitude. ‘Gut sex party to you, sir.’

High on our victory, we pay our entrance fee and totter through to the cloakroom. It immediately becomes clear that before we will be allowed to venture any further into the erotic underworld, we’ll have to get our kit off. We obediently disrobe, stripping down to our undies. All around us other people are undressing too, revealing some genuinely showstopping outfits: harnesses, chains, fetishwear, tutus. The club is a strict no phone zone, so we dutifully hand over our mobiles.

There is a clothes check woman, who has already checked in all her own clothes and is now at work in nothing but a crotchless body stocking. She’s much friendlier than the security guard. Sealing my dress in a clear plastic bag, she tells me I’m ‘zehr attraktive’, which is a thrill, but also a social minefield. How on earth am I supposed to return the compliment? ‘Danke, and you and your fanny look splendid’? I smile shyly, extremely aware that we’ve only just met and I’m in my pants and she’s not wearing pants and I can see her everything and this is a lot, but hey, I am in sex club world now. This is no time to be prudish.

We head through the doors, hearts pumping, eyes wide and vaginas clenched like steel traps. Inside it’s dark and smoky but with bursts of psychedelic colour, strobe lighting and fluorescent paint on the walls. A glitterball hangs from the ceiling. The floors are suspiciously sticky and the air stinks, predictably, of sex. But the diverse crowd is loving it, spanning all ages, genders, body types, sexualities and pain thresholds.

The techno music is throbbing. Other things are throbbing. Oh, I knew it was coming. Everywhere I look, strangers are screwing each other senseless. They are at it hammer and tongs. Part of me is delighted at this scene of sexual liberation. This must have been what the Sixties were like! Groovy, baby! Another part is still on edge and extremely nervous. Suddenly, in this German sex club, I have never felt more British. I applaud all the rampant self-expression, but I’m very sure I don’t want to get directly involved in any of it myself. I’m not here for action tonight. My role is as Bessie’s chaperone and an accidental, overly polite sexual anthropologist. Imagine Mary Poppins on safari: ‘Oh crikey! What a tremendous amount of rutting! Tally ho, good for you. How supercalifragi – no, no, you mustn’t use my umbrella for that!’

We grab a drink and head to the dancefloor. I try and fail to look nonchalant, like hanging out with PVC-clad people doing it doggy-style is my idea of a low-key Tuesday. While it takes me a few minutes to chill out and become accustomed to my bold new environment, Bessie is instantly in her element. There’s a body painting station, so she gets her chest decorated in fluorescent colours and now her bosom glows in the dark.

She meets a beautiful stranger and now they’re kissing and now they’re cavorting on this massive four poster bed with no covers. I’m overjoyed for her. This is so exciting! Whoop, whoop, go Bessie! But I also feel very protective and quite maternal. I want her to get off and have a birthday adventure for the ages, but I also want to make sure she is comfortable and safe at all times. I don’t usually supervise my friends when they’re getting jiggy, but then we aren’t usually in a sex club. So, like an embarrassing mama bear gatecrashing her daughter’s date, I keep sticking my head around the corner to check in on her, just to make absolutely sure she’s still having a marvellous time.

‘Are you ok?’ I pantomime.

She nods and tries not to giggle at me, her ridiculous friend, popping in for a quick chinwag mid-foreplay.

‘Do you want me to stay?’ I mouth. Then for clarification, lest she thinks I am volunteering to be their third, I add, ‘For safety.’

She shakes her head and merrily returns to her new lover. I give what I hope is a reassuring, but also right-on thumbs up. As you can tell, I am by far the coolest person in this sex club. Who am I kidding? I’m wearing M&S surrounded by S&M.

With Bessie suitably occupied, I set off to explore. This place is enormous, a labyrinth of dancefloors and darkrooms. There’s even a swimming pool. I discover an array of elaborate apparatus and erotic accoutrements including an old dentist’s chair, a large cage and a sex swing. With no phone, I lose all sense of time.

Here are some things I see on my travels: spanking (obvs), strap-ons (naturally), gimp masks (bloody loads of them), men being led around on leashes, bondage, flogging, finger-blasting, furious wanking, muff-diving, blow jobs, butt stuff, group sex, gay sex, lesbian sex and even a dash of straight sex (jeez guys, isn’t that a bit vanilla?).

When I spot two tattooed women enjoying a heartwarming mutual masturbation sesh in the middle of the dancefloor, I’m genuinely delighted for them. I have to fight the urge to rush over and give them a high-five. I suspect they would leave me hanging. There are plenty of sapphic couples and the odd throuple and I can’t help smiling encouragingly at all of them, but it’s more ‘you go, girls’ than ‘can I join in?’ None of this really turns me on, but somehow all of it sets me free.

Interestingly, this sex club is considerably more respectful than many of the non-sex-club clubs I’ve been to. The atmosphere is hedonistic and bacchanalian, but there’s an emphasis on consent. I clock some suggestive smiles in my direction and I get propositioned a few times, but everyone takes it really graciously when I tell them, ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I’m just here to watch.’

I go up to the mezzanine and look down on the mass of writhing half-naked bodies below, some dancing, some making out, some going at it full throttle. This takes people-watching to a whole new level. I have never seen so many strangers orgasm. I’m fascinated and awed by the spectrum of human erotic expression on display. Surrounded by people of all different identities who are having all kinds of encounters, I have a realisation. I understand that sex can be whatever you want it to be. It dawns on me that the parameters most people think about sex in are false, constructed limits. Real people have real sex in all different ways and it all counts.

I also clock that the patriarchy is a massive hypocrite, still PRing the myth that straight sex is at the top of some manufactured hierarchy. Just look at all this non-straight sex happening around me. People are having a smashing, sexy time and there’s barely a heterosexual couple in sight. I learn more about sex that night than I ever did in sex education at school.

‘Extracted from What a Girl Wants by Roxy Bourdillon. Published by Bluebird, available in paperback now.’