I needed more than my second Moderna shot to be ready for this OnlyFans orgy

• The Kinky Rabbit Club in L.A. is again hosting exclusive sex parties as Hot Vax Summer roars to a start.
• The club's founder partners with sex workers who post exclusive content from the party on their OnlyFans accounts.
• Journalist Heather Hauswirth donned a green and gold speckled catsuit to see what it was like.

A crowd of 30- and 40-somethings, mostly semi-nude women, hungrily prowled about the six-million dollar Hollywood Hills mansion dressed in "disco kink." The theme, Studio 69, was an homage to the legendary 70s playground Studio 54.

I had just watched a buff, brown-haired alpha guy in gold short-shorts and white varsity socks - he told me later he was a researcher at a local university - being pleasured by a man in a shiny speedo and a woman sporting matching metallic star pasties, all in front of a pink Kinky Rabbit statue, the club's logo. A fluffle of onlookers applauded.

"A mouth is a mouth," the man told me a few minutes later, stroking my hair behind my ear while we chatted on a damp sofa.

That was pretty much the ethos at the Kinky Rabbit Club, one of L.A's most exclusive sex parties, emerging from the ashes after a year in Covid lockdown.

A dozen feet from me, another live performance was getting started: a blonde and brunette in tassels and beaded lingerie were scissoring in a glittery bathtub, drenching each other in Champagne. When the bottle popped, it squirted me right in the eye - which was not wide shut. Meanwhile, hand-made pink nipple clamps circulated as party favors.

"It's the golden age for sex workers," Miss Kenzie Anne, the blonde in the bathtub, had told me while getting her hair and makeup done hours before the debauchery began. Well known in the adult film and in the OnlyFans world, where strippers, adult film stars, and cam girls post their X-rated content behind a subscription-based paywall, Kenzie Anne was the star attraction that night. This was her first live performance outside of her own bedroom, she told me.

Founded by sex club impresario Alina Ratuska, Kinky Rabbit brands itself as a "female-empowered" sex club. Most of the performers were not paid directly but are compensated with something they say is even more valuable - the free use of content created during the party that they would later post and monetize on their OnlyFans accounts.

The platform exploded in popularity during the pandemic, especially after Instagram banned sexual content. Parties like this offer fresh content to help keep their subscribers engaged, they say.

Ratuska said she preferred to work with performers who have OnlyFans accounts because it allows her to cut out the middle men who manage sex workers. "Whatever people want to do, I talk to the girls and make it their thing," she said. "I make sure the girls feel comfortable and super hot and super empowered."

I came here with a hard-headed plan to do a story about sex workers emerging from the pandemic. After a year of isolation, I - straight and single - was vaxxed, waxed and ready for whatever the hell "hot vax summer" was going to be. But I really had no idea what I was in for.

For the occasion, Ratuska had loaned me a green and gold speckled catsuit with a black leather waistband and plunging V-neck that she designed herself. It fit like a latex glove--latex being a popular fashion choice with this crowd. I could barely breathe.

Party-goers drifted to the open bar where they could order drinks like a Kinky Mule or the Fifty Shades of Greyhound.

"I'll have two shots of anything," said my new friend, the researcher in gold disco shorts, as he wiped his sweaty brow and flirted with the shirtless bartender. Around us, a few people critiqued his performance. "I'm not sure he got it up the first time," suggested a woman standing next to me in black bell bottoms, a lace bralette and purple wig. "But they did a good job covering him."

It was all what you might imagine a wild sex party looks like: attractive people, predominantly women, in outlandish costumes, wontonly frolicking around to a fun and flirty theme. This being 2021, there was an "honors system" that everyone present was fully vaccinated against Covid. No cell phones were allowed. Everyone could be refreshingly straightforward about what they were there for: a night of hot in-person sexual thrills. "I'm over online. This is so much better than a sex party on Zoom...trust me, we've tried," said a woman, wearing shiny disco flairs and a Jimmy Hendrix jacket.

After a string of erotic performances set the mood, a cluster of glittery, glistening bodies climbed a stairway.

On the next floor, in the largest of three bedrooms, a black St. Andrews Cross (a 7-foot wooden "X" graced with binding straps) was center-stage. Beyond it, a sliding door led to a balcony overlooking a pool. Below, people were smoking what I could only guess were postcoital cigarettes.

There wasn't the usual party small talk that warms people up to strangers. It was all very direct; not a lot of foreplay.

"As a bi woman, I find it hard to meet girls who like other girls," a busty brunette with bright blue eyes in a silver dress told me. "But this party is a place where everything is on the [table]. Where else can you get f**ked by your boyfriend and then have a girl eat you out while you are tied to a St. Andrews Cross? Now I get to have my cake and eat it too, and don't need to worry about offending anyone--because we all know what we're here for. Sex."

A buxom woman, shrink-wrapped in a black minidress with orange lingerie glowing from underneath, looked fetchingly at me as she held a cat o' nine tails. I walked over to her, and she led me to the Cross. My new friend then made me an offer. Maybe it was the Champagne residue in my eye, or the orgy churning away on the bed behind me, but I acquiesced to her invitation: to flog me on the cross.

"Let's tie your wrists," she said. "Sorry, I haven't done this in a while," I quipped. I turned my head to watch her strap my wrists and ankles to the cross, turning my body into a giant "X marks the spot."

She started to flog me, and she was merciless. I had always thought of myself as a wannabe masochist, but the leather straps were smacking my thighs instead of my ass. I kept offering my buns, but she never hit the mark. Another woman beelined in my direction, and we locked eyes. She touched my hair, then went in for a kiss. I turned away. It was sensory overload.

I get how such extreme sensations unhinge the mind from pedestrian concerns, not to mention the pent up stresses of a tough year. I was hoping for a cathartic release, but found myself more self-conscious than anything else. And all this, in front of an audience of expectant voyeurs.

As I climbed down from the cross, I resigned myself to the possibility that I wasn't the sexual Olympian I had imagined I was. I had limits; a comfort zone smaller than most of the revelers around me. And yet, as I left the Kinky Rabbit Club in the early hours of the next morning, I found myself noting that the next party - a Bacchanalia, in the "kingdom of kink" - was only a month away.