Ladies Night

I have a confession to make. Until last week, I'd never been to a hen night before. I have been to and enjoyed stag parties, with their focus on curries, running around, drinking heavily and baying at the moon. Hen nights, however, less so. Amongst my vanilla friends I am somewhat infamous for my "excuses" to get out of them. For whatever reason, they hit all my dislike buttons and I need to battle with English politeness rules in order to negotiate my way out of a social corner.

It's a combination of many things. First, it is almost certainly going to be an all-women event with women who I do not know and therefore am not prepared to deal with. Following an exceptionally ugly teenage tenure of being bullied I still retain a certain twitchiness around other, unfamiliar women. In my day-to-day life I can deal with this by simply ignoring them and living in a bubble of various types of superiority (justified or not, I'll leave that to you). I can, of course, flash the charm when I need to, but generally, and especially in situations where I have no real interest in either the people or what we are doing I don't. I'm selfish - I have a limited amount of time in this world and only want to do things that are fun, amusing or interesting. Which brings me on to the activity. These do tend towards the kind of ostentatiously public girly activity that I general avoid like spa days and cupcake icing. I prefer to keep both personal grooming and baking as private indulgences. And finally, in the interest of being crushingly honest, there is the element of sour grapes: not only am I not the centre of attention, but the reason that I am not is because someone else has found the love of their life and they are having a massive party to celebrate. Naturally this will rankle with any exhibitionist.

It was with a quantity of interest, therefore, that I received an invitation to appear at a kinky hen night organised by two new acquaintances. There is a certain element of what goes on tour, stays on tour about such events, which does clash a little with my usual internet honesty. With that in mind, and with the fact that I know how salacious (and saleable, we decided we could have funded the entire wedding based on a pay-per-view webcam stream of the night) the idea of a dozen kinky women, clad in their underwear, in an apartment somewhere in London must be I can hardly avoid writing about it.

The plan was to offer "sex education" to the hen - who I had never met. This instantly dissolved the issue of the irksome activity and on one level it felt very much like a private performance gig, which, combined with the fact that I had been selected to attend, indulged my ego to the extent that I was very keen to attend. Clearly, this was the way to make hen nights palatable, in fact, once the day came around I was excited, enjoying spending the few days prior planning what kit and what sort of play I would offer. I didn't know who was going to be there or what level of kink they would be up for. Whatever I did, it needed to have an element of showomanship, group participation and also be easy to access with the opportunity to ramp up to eleven should said access prove too easy. That meant pallet wrap and a violet wand together with their "natural" accessories: pinwheel, point metal objects, glass dildo and vibrator.

Because I didn't know who else was going I was unsure what precisely to expect, so I initially planned to arrive, do my thing and then take the last tube home. I'm glad that was one of the several assumptions that was subverted in the course of the night. There is a myth, supported by almost all forms of media, that women gathering together will watch romantic comedies, drink bad white wine, discuss tampons and men, eat too much ice-cream and then have a gentle, giggling feather falling pillow-fight whilst clad in their bra and pants. There will be bitching, crying and someone will vomit and need their hair holding back whilst over the bathroom. I can confirm this myth to be untrue, at least in kinky circles. There was alcohol, of course, served in pretty tea cups and saucers. We did discuss "women's things", though not tampons. We talked about our relationships, our loves and lovers, coming out to our parents, being queer and not being queer. And yes, there was a lot of lacily clad flesh on display once the latecomers had received their forfeits and the night was officially underway. No-one was hit by a pillow.

After we had all delivered our "advice" to the hen, who now ranks as one of the most glamorous women I have ever seen in the flesh (and what flesh, the range of amazing bodies on display was one of my favourite moments of the evening) the night started to warm up. I took the violet wand upstairs to prepare a space on the bed and soon had a mattress full of giggling women who wanted electrocuting. Feeling like the mad scientist I have never trained to be but can mimic quite entertainingly I ran through the different attachments and power levels, having a lot of sadistic glee over the way that the shocks travelled through adjacent body parts. From there different sorts and styles of play emerged and one of the things I enjoyed was simply lying back and watching. Whether it was seeing someone suffer from an extended period of clothes-peg torture, then holding them still as they were wrenched off, feeling my heart leap as the tears came (I do love tears) or listening to the growls and curious animal gasps from red stripes of pain caused by a misery stick - a thin plastic wand for flicking at skin. I made a mental note to get several of those. We also engaged in some make-and-do by mummifying one of the guests as a present for the hen - mummification is always so much easier when you have friends to help you.

Eventually, after a slow taxi ride home with the hen, still looking extraordinary, in the pale, white morning light I fell into bed at some point around 6am. Grinning madly to myself and looking forward to booking in plenty of future dates with my new friends, as well as hopefully introducing them to The Ladies Who. Another step forward in world domination, I feel.