I’m going to hell.
I’m going to hell.
I’m going to hell.
Catholic guilt brings with it its own particular brand of irrational paranoia. It’s deeply messed up, if I think about it too deeply. I suppose it comes from a lifetime of having been indoctrinated into the belief that someone up there is watching your every sin.
That God knows everything.
That you can’t hide.
My belief in the divine has morphed from a blind faith in the over-engineered structure we were taught at school and in church—the Holy Trinity flanked by eternal beings from the Virgin Mary to St Peter to our archangels and angels—into something more ephemeral. Even so, I’ve retained my bloody paranoia.
I’m not sure if I’m more scared of someone Up There or Down Here watching (what if Daddy’s rigged up some security cameras I’m not aware of?), but whoever my own Catholic version of Big Brother is, I always feel like he’s watching.
Which is why I only touch myself in the dark, under the covers.
I know. It’s messed up.
Or why I pause my audiobooks if they get to a spicy scene when I’m listening on the tube. I cannot sit there and listen to anyone having any level of sexy time when there are people pressed up right next to me.
My instinct now is to get under my duvet before I check out the dratted website that’s pervaded my thoughts all afternoon, but the part of me that’s been a legal adult for four years talks me down from that particular act of childishness.
Instead, I open an incognito browser on my laptop, take an enormous slug of wine, and type in alchemy club london.
Okay.
The homepage doesn’t look too bad. There are no pictures of sex swings, or rooms of pain, or whatever else I imagine sex clubs to feature. All I see here is a photo of a white marble lobby that would put most London day spas to shame and the letter A in an elegant, statement-making font.
It makes sense. From the little I know of him, Rafe is the kind of guy I’d imagine running a classy operation. Even if its currency is sex.
I rub my hands together. My palms are clammy. God, I am so pathetic. I really hope this isn’t the kind of site that’s too cool to have any actual information on it, or that puts said information behind a members’ firewall. But Maddy seems to have found out plenty.
There’s a Services option on the header. I hover and scan, trying and failing to read any word on the menu that’s not Unfurl. Private Sessions, Soirees, Kink Questionnaire… Oh, God. Unfurl: Men. Unfurl: Women.
I click on Women. Blow out a breath. And I read.
If you’re reading this at the very start of your real-world journey to uncover your sexuality, then we applaud you. Not for you the forgettable first time, the drunken fumble, or the discomfort of taking this important step with an inexperienced partner.
For many, losing their virginity can be an awkward, painful or even traumatic experience that fails to meet their physical, emotional or sexual needs.
The Unfurl programme at Alchemy has been meticulously created to change that.
Unfurl encompasses a series of sessions that are fully tailored to your own personal circumstances, taking into account your age, sexuality, preferences, fantasies, and triggers. After you undergo a detailed online questionnaire and in-person interview, our experienced team will match you with an individual member, or group of members, who are seasoned in the art of giving and teaching pleasure.
Oh my God. Members? Like, plural? This isn’t for me—I’m way, way out of my comfort zone here. I should definitely just drink the rest of this bottle and send Harry, my old boyfriend from uni, a booty text. Is that what you call them? He always wanted to pop my cherry. He could come over this weekend and we could just get it done. In, out, Bob’s your uncle.
Done.
But, already, the text on the screen is calling its siren’s song to me. Either these people are very good at what they do, or I’m more of a cliché than I realise, because I agree with everything they’ve said so far (apart from the members bit). I’ve waited this long. I don’t want some rubbish, awkward, underwhelming first experience of sex at this age.
Right?
I keep reading, my lower lip wedged against my glass so I can sip at my liquid courage as necessary.
At Alchemy, we don’t view the act of vaginal penetration itself as being the delineation between virginity and its lack thereof. (Oh, God. They had to go and say the P-word, didn’t they? Ugh.) That is to say, virginity in itself is a troubling construct. There are many individuals who enjoy a flourishing sex life that does not include vaginal penetration by a penis.
Instead, our starting point is to offer women who have little to no real-world experience with sexual partners the opportunity to explore, voice, and act on their sexual desires in a safe, liberated, and intoxicating environment. Penetrative sex can be the culmination of this experience, but it need not be.
Our objective is that any individual identifying as female who participates in the Unfurl programme will emerge from it with a clear understanding of her desires, a framework within which to act these desires out, and, possibly, a group of like-minded individuals with whom she may keep in touch for the purposes of mutual pleasure.
The programme lasts between three and five sessions, depending on the requirements of the individual. The potential content of these sessions is discussed in more detail in the interviews. However, all sessions are practical in nature and involve the participant being touched or stimulated in a manner they have deemed arousing.
We pride ourselves on meeting our members’ deepest sexual needs, and we see no reason why a lack of experience to date should preclude any participant from aiming to fulfil their most audacious fantasies within the framework of the programme.
I put my glass down and close my eyes.
Whew.
That’s a lot to take in.
It’s short on details, on the mechanics of how the whole thing would work, but I can’t deny their approach resonates. And by resonates, I mean I feel it in those exact parts of my body I’ve neglected too long. My nipples are hard. There’s a prickle of sensitivity trailing over my skin, a flush rising up my neck. A heat that’s been licking that space between my legs since the moment my eyes alighted on some of those words.
Stimulated.
Arousing.
Audacious.
I swallow. This isn’t some convenient bridge that will take me elegantly, effortlessly across the void I perceive between my current sexual status and the one I want.
It’s a space rocket.
The sky’s the limit.
And the only things preventing that moment of lift right now are me, and my fears, and my mental blocks, and the religious doctrine and social niceties implanted so deep into my soul that I don’t know if I can ever dig them out.
I don’t know if I dare.
I don’t know if it’s even possible.
I FaceTime Maddy. I have my generation’s characteristic horror of actually speaking to people on the phone, so, like my peers, I trade voice messages and emoji-and-acronym-filled WhatsApps with my friends.
But Maddy and I are different together. We call each other like it’s not even a phone call, like the other person is there while we do the most mundane stuff like cook and cleanse our faces and even wee. We’ve always done it. We’re basically virtual flatmates.
But right now, I don’t even know why I’m calling her. Because calling her feels like the next step on a journey I have no business contemplating, let alone undertaking.
I’m a well-bred girl from a religiously conservative family who’s been brought up to fear the Lord, respect my body, and mistrust anyone who wants to take liberties with me.
Yes, that sounds Victorian.
And yes, I feel guilty that I’m so… unenlightened. I’m permanently caught in no-man’s-land. I feel guilty for betraying the beliefs I’ve had drilled into me, and I feel guilty for betraying the privilege of being a modern woman by holding onto what I know are outdated beliefs.
I’m lost, and I have no idea how to navigate this minefield. All I know is that, obscene and profane and downright ridiculous as those words on that website were, they felt like more of a way forward—a way forward on my terms—than any other options I’ve had.
‘Did you read it?’ Maddy asks. She’s lying on her bed with her LED mask on, so her voice is muffled and creepy. But I don’t care, because it means she can’t see my face.
‘Yeah.’ I pour another inch of wine into my glass. I know whose skin is coming out of this evening in a better state.
‘Well?’
I sigh. ‘I don’t know what to say. I mean—’
‘Uh-uh.’ She holds up a hand. ‘Don’t get shitty with me. Just do me a favour, and answer one question, and do yourself a favour and be honest. Okay?’
I stay silent.
‘Did you get turned on, even a little? Because I know I did. I read that intro and thought holy fuck, I would actually stitch my hymen back up for a shot at that. Because that, my darling, is hot as fuck, and you’re the lucky one who can take advantage of it.’
‘Yeah,’ I mumble. ‘I get it. It was hot.’
She sits up and tugs off her mask, her glossy dark hair tumbling around her face as she does. She picks up the screen and gapes at me.
‘You just admitted that was a turn-on. Right?’
‘Yes.’ I’m beginning to regret my honesty.
‘Woo-hoo!’ She throws herself dramatically backwards and tilts her phone so I can see she’s kicking her legs in the manner of Julia Roberts closing her three-thousand-dollar deal with Richard Gere. ‘OMG. This is the most exciting thing ever. My little Belle is going to go to a sex club and get played with by all these hotties, and she’s going to have orgasms coming out of her pretty little ears.’
‘That’s just—no. Don’t say things like that.’
God.
The idea of being a plaything is so… hot. The fantasy of turning myself over to a guy who knows what he’s doing is enticing enough. But guys? Me, who has no clue what I’m doing, with multiple men? Lying back on a bed, and putting myself in their hands, and letting them loose on my body? Letting them worship me? Show me what I’m capable of?
Playing me like that metaphorical Stradivarius Maddy mentioned?
I can’t tell you why that’s such a turn-on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had that fantasy when I’m alone in my bed. And I can’t tell you why the sheer horror of it, the shame of considering something so dark and morally depraved and so far beyond what God invented sex for, makes it even more enticing.
All I can tell you is it does.
The fear and the shame and the certain knowledge of how messed up it is have got all tangled up with the fixation. The fascination.
The need.
You know the saying, right?
May as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
