24 Hours In A Sex Sauna

Across the country, women like you are getting their kicks from adult ‘health spas’, but what really goes on behind closed doors? Alix Fox feels the heat

- Alix Fox

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a man masturbating using a Jacuzzi jet stream, but it’s a lesson in contortionism. The guy in front of me is wilfully demonstrating – one scrawny leg hooked over the edge of the pool, his knuckles tight with exertion as he clings on lizard-like, bubbles blasting his genitals. Behind him, a nude girl emerges from a shower block, soap suds foaming over her breasts. Her giggles echo through the misty, tiled room as she heads to the pool – followed by her also-very-naked partner and his bobbing erection. Four men gaze on, greying towels wrapped round their waists, leaning against a cluster of dusty fake pot plants I wish could speak – they’d have stories. As for me? Well, yes. I’m also 100% naked, like everyone else here on this Saturday evening. That’s because I’m at Rio’s: an X-rated ‘naturist health spa’ in London. It’s one of several hedonistic ‘health clubs’ in the UK, where seven nights (and days) a week, adults of all shapes, sizes and walks of life gather to shed their clothes, shed their inhibitions – and, well, there’s no other way to put it… shag.

I used to believe only two types of people had sex in saunas: gay men and ’70s porn stars. But as I look around, a very different picture emerges. Yes, there are the requisite old guys with sagging skin and lascivious grins, but there are also younger men and women, hot hipsters with tattoos and pretty, stylish young women in their twenties and thirties.

So what happened? When did sex in a steam room go from niche sexual-frontier stuff to apparently more mainstream fun?

Hot in here…