I Went To A Berlin Sex Club Last Night

An Irishman walks into a bar

Latex is expensive so I’m buying my sex club outfit at Primark.

The changing rooms are closing. Quick, be practical. Where will you put your keys?

I scour and find the only women’s leggings with pockets. They have two sizes: large and extra, extra small.

I am basically wearing the bottom half of a wetsuit.

I’m capping a week of attempted integration (spoken word open mic! helping a tourist with the S-Bahn! gaelic training on an abandoned Nazi airstrip!) with a look at the city’s famously liberated night-time spaces. And I am terrified.

“You have change of clothes?” The bouncer rubs my €12 bottoms, Bangladesh’s finest, and frowns. The dress code said “elegant”. The other one nods.

Inside, the lax door policy makes sense. Attendance is sparse. Still early for Berliners.

The club’s promo video — in which a curious young couple are led, gently, by the hand, through the building’s libertine layers — is a piece of slickly produced wish-fulfilment.

Looking round, the fantasy dissolves. Geography teachers in their underwear, swaying to techno mulch. The inevitable Eyes Wide Shut getup. Fedoras. Non-natives wandering around in boxers, lost, waiting on some signal.

I order a white wine (€5, not bad) and look to my right, where a man is getting “relief” from his “pet”. And I was worried not wearing a shirt would be A Bit Much.

You know that feeling when you are too early to a party, and everyone seems to already know eachother, and you sort of hover and feel exposed and vulnerable — picture that, but also everyone can see your nips.

Protocol uncertainty paralyses me. Is small talk appropriate? Would friendliness be interpreted as “interest”? Is it rude to look? Is it rude NOT to look? How do you flirt with someone who is already almost naked?

“Hey, nice…stomach.”

Every now and then a door opens and a man with a latex snout is led out on a leash. It’s probably okay if I don’t know what’s happening behind that door.

I’m so bored. How long have I been here? They confiscated our phones. When does the chorus kick in?

For a change of scenery I move to the Jacuzzi, which is, the website promises, cleaned “regularly”. Opposite me is a German man wearing only his glasses. We stew. The tension is too much.

“Hi, I’m Conor!”

“Hah?”

I’m in too deep. I point at myself. “Conor”.

I shake his hand. It’s probably fine. I mean, we’re in water.

I forget his name immediately. I feel the bubbles and think about how much writing I could be doing at home.

I hand in my coat ticket. “You are going?”

I sense an explanation is needed. What do I say?

“I….

I am from Ireland.”