I went to a fetish party and fell in love

Latex bodysuits, candle-lit sex rooms and a wholesome underground kink community.

Earlier this year, I read an article on Vice about Spank! Wellington City’s annual Fetish Ball. Despite my self-proclaimed ‘proficiency in all things sex’, I’d never heard of such an event in my hometown before.

The article, headlined: ‘I Went to a Fetish Party and Left Feeling Just a Bit Sad’ wasn’t encouraging, but when I saw the event advertised again, I immediately bought two final-release tickets for around $100. After all, isn’t this what a journalism degree is for? Joyriding off articles you re-read to type up your own introspection?

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On the Sunday night of Halloweekend, my boyfriend and I got ready together, nervously sipping our canned Moscow Mules. A ball of nerves, my boyfriend silently put together his outfit, a combination of something borrowed (a pair of Dangerfield pants), something new (a red leather chest harness) and something blue (his balls).

I rummaged through my closet, managing to combine festival and club attire into a look that made me question whether I respected myself. My fully thrifted look of the night was a pair of vintage low-rise micro-shorts with large eyelets up the sides, my favourite thong and a leather bra top that looks straight out of an Orc dungeon queen’s wardrobe. It’s by all accounts the most naked you can be while still wearing clothes.

The event started at a sobering 7pm, we were there at 9pm and I wasn’t drinking. I’d consumed so much alcohol over Halloween that the sight of it had begun to make me nauseous. The veil of Halloweekend shrouded us and to onlookers, we might’ve passed as a couple just very committed to the spooky season.

The Fetish Ball’s chosen venue (or only willing venue) was Eva Pub, best known for its bar food and awful open mic nights. When we arrived, the usually empty bar was full of half-naked bodies. Music thrummed as tits and latex walked past, people danced in masks, bows, ropes and buckles, restrained while showing no restraint.

I joined everyone else in immediately shedding my additional layers, the heat of a hundred bare bodies colliding into each other made the whole place almost unbearable, save for a few industrial fans you could crowd around for brief relief. I saw more young people than I’d anticipated, dressed in catsuits and bunny ears, ass-less jeans and spiked chokers. I was immersed in a festival of flesh; breasts, tattooed butt cheeks, men on chains, couples smacking, spanking and teasing. Tailed butt plugs, ski masks, whips and gimp suits, trays of rainbow shots, Demonia boots and muzzles.

The crowd itself was diverse and eclectic, a girl was confidently selling MDMA and the drinks were cheap but weak. The DJ played songs I’ve been desperate to hear in town, thrumming rhythmic beats and pure feminine pussy-centric pop music. No ‘Apple Bottom Jeans’ or ‘Club Can’t Handle Me Right Now’, thank God.

I was transfixed by the visuals projected on the massive screen atop the stage; a cartoon woman walked to the beat, hips-swaying, her micro-shorts slowly dissolving. Another video showed a Babylonian feast featuring a crowd of ancient topless women, thrilled as men slowly moved from eating their figs and brie to eating them. The dance floor was wet, either from spilled drinks or accumulative sweat.

Sex and anticipation for it hung in the air, but not in a seedy Courtenay Place clubbing way. The crown jewel of the evening was ‘the cage’, open for anyone to dance in. The moment I saw it, I knew I needed to dance in there.

I waited for the boy currently caged to notice me while I silently asked to join, keeping my eyes on him. He beckoned me up and I danced outside for a few beats before climbing in. Surprisingly, the skin-to-skin contact was instant but it was all bite. The bark on the other hand… he told me his life story, how he’d moved to Wellington and felt as though this event was “straight out of New York”. He asked if I was bi, pan, gay? “I’ll fuck anything that moves!” I declared. I remember him throwing back his head and laughing, “Oh God me too,” his hips never missing a beat.

Suddenly, the cage was a cage and I felt like he and I were two birds, flapping our wings and crashing into each other in what might have looked like a mating crescendo, but was really a blender collateral of thick thighs and twinky hip joints. I slid out and descended the steps back to my partner’s side, enjoying the feeling of space around me while someone else strode up to take my place.

The cage wasn’t just something to fulfil our Berlin nightclub fantasies, it was a place to connect. It was heart-warming, watching everyone in and around the cage chat as they danced and contorted. Two strippers joked together as they twerked for the crowd.

The event tried to cater to singles but didn’t quite nail it. It had a singles table and a coloured flag system; white for ‘don’t talk to me’, silver for ‘I’m open to chatting’ (they were completely out of silver when we arrived) green for ‘dark room co-pilot’ (let’s have sex in the sex room) and purple for ‘seeking a flogging partner to hit or be hit on the large red St Andrews cross to the side of the dance floor’.

But the flags were small and often precariously positioned on attendees’ outfits, so you had to look hard to decipher its colour from a distance. Wristbands might’ve been more effective? But I understand they’d be hard to interchange. I asked the staff working the bar about the flag system and received nothing but shrugs, a little disappointing they weren’t briefed on the colour consent system. The singles table was a little sad in practice, with often only one person hanging around it, scrolling through their settings.

Then there was the ‘sex room’, which wasn’t really a room but a corner of the venue hidden behind large grey blankets and a staff member standing outside, observing each entrant. Inside there were no seats or beds, just a couple of black gym mats on the floor. There was a small wooden mirror propped up on one wall and small clusters of LED candles providing ‘ambient’ lighting.

I’ll admit, I half-expected to be met with propositioning old men laying cold hands on my lower back in the thick pit of a dance floor, or to have to awkwardly decline proposals like: “My wife and I saw you across the room and we wanted to say we really liked your vibe.” Maybe it was my tall boyfriend trailing behind me like a golden retriever, dutifully taking pictures of my ass and holding my drink while I twerked that kept them at arms-length.

Although my general demeanour all night was ‘Look at me’, I could pick up when people moved with us around the room, or opened up their body language, inviting approach, but I never felt uncomfortable.

My boyfriend and I left just after midnight, the event only growing in intensity as attendees kept downing red and violet-coloured shots, the sex room entrance door flapping open and closed. Hand in hand, we walked down the cold empty strip of Courtney Place. I left horny, excited to go to every future event and even more in love.

For more on fetish balls, read this.