Yahoo Lifestyle Meet The Woman Selling Sex To High Society
The gravel drive is lined with Ferraris, Aston Martins and Jaguars. Inside the imposing early 20th-century mansion, men in sharp suits and women in expensive cocktail dresses sip champagne, eat oysters and make polite conversation about work and the weather. Outside on the terrace, guests admire the hectare of formal gardens cascading below, as the sun sets on this perfect summer day on England's south coast. At the centre of it all, our effusive hostess, Emma Sayle, is working the room. She's statuesque and blonde in a lemon chiffon William Tempest floaty dress and the kind of nude, patent court shoes that have become synonymous with Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, who - as it happens - is an old friend of Sayle's.
High-society wedding reception? Not quite. This is an orgy. Sayle might look like something straight out of a bridal party, but over the past eight years, she has steadfastly built up a million-dollar business, Killing Kittens, that specialises in up-market, female-friendly sex parties and online dating. A private members' club, Killing Kittens now has 40,000 members worldwide, including 3,000 in Australia - and Sayle has recently written a (graphic) memoir about her life and the sex parties she has hosted.
Tonight, "The Salutation", a mansion in Kent, will play host to one of these parties. Upstairs, three of the house's 17 bedrooms will be transformed into "playrooms", which Sayle's team of breezy, efficient young women have prepped. Curtains are drawn, candles are lit, beds are stripped of doonas and pillows ("they get in the way"), bowls of condoms and lube are on the bedside tables, and doors are left open: "So we can check no-one is taking drugs or filming on their phones, and that no-one is feeling uncomfortable or unsafe," says staffer Jordie. For the first few hours, everyone must wear a mask (most opt for sparkly featured and sequinned numbers) to set guests at ease.
Tonight's 60 guests, who range in age from early 20s to 50-somethings, ooze wealth and confidence (in the way that Ferrari drivers tend to). The men are well-groomed and the women are uniformly slim, attractive and glossy - everyone carries expensive clutch bags and manicured nails. I talk to one handsome 40-something man who works in corporate finance (a lot of them do) and, bored with London's restaurants and clubs, wanted to do something more "adventurous" with his girlfriend. Another well-spoken man in his late 30s is standing with a nervous-looking brunette clad in a chic red lace dress. He apparently bought his partner a Killing Kittens membership as a present to mark their one-year dating anniversary.
The club's rules state that only couples and single females may join, and at the parties, men can only join in when invited by a woman. One single girl, a cheery, effusive Northerner with a blonde bob and metallic stilettos, explains that she loves these parties because they're a world away from the dark, threatening, underground male-led scene - she fled one such event after seeing one girl tied up in a basement and another having sex with a whole roomful of aggressive men. A sultry 30-something woman, in an emerald green lycra dress so revealing I catch myself staring at her huge breasts, turns out to be a chatty, suburban stay-at-home mum who sees tonight as a rare chance for some "me time". She has a bumless PVC catsuit in her bag for later, she tells me.
By 10.30pm, there is a frisson in the air. The chatter grows louder, glasses are drained. People become increasingly tactile - women place their hands in the smalls of each other's backs as they talk, while others look around the room, gazing flirtily at strangers. Giggling couples start peeling off upstairs towards the playrooms. Sayle had breezily predicted "the action" would start at 11pm, and it does, bang on time - people start kissing and undressing, buoyed by the soft, flattering candlelight. Many of the women have gone to town with Agent Provocateur lingerie. Others stand around the edges of the room just watching - apparently up to 50 per cent don't participate at any given party.
Men and women start reclining on the beds, reaching for condoms, the anonymous house music soundtrack now overdubbed with moans of pleasure that become increasingly louder as inhibitions are shed. There are couples who arrived together and couples who definitely didn't. In one corner, a group of three women - one flaunting enormous and obviously fake breasts and dressed only in a tiny pink G-string - are kissing and pleasuring one another. One man is having sex with his girlfriend while touching another girl.
The rooms are so dark that you really have to squint - and count limbs - to work out what's going on. An older gentleman forgets to take his socks off in flagrante delicto, which causes much sniggering. I notice one couple heading back to their own hotel room for a private party along with another couple for what they quaintly refer to as a "sleepover". Sayle, pregnant, tired and having seen it all before, slips off to bed at midnight, leaving her team to close things down at 3am.
A couple of hours before, Sayle and I sit on a bench in the garden to talk. Basking in the sunshine, her long legs curled up beside her, she oozes self-confidence, the kitten who got the cream. She's 36, but has such a deep tan she looks older - a testament to a life of late nights and outdoor sports. In Britain, Sayle is something of a personality, occasionally appearing on TV and seeming to revel in her notoriety: posh, entitled and overconfident in the way that British boarding school alumni tend to be. In person, she's more fun and chatty than I expect her to be. She doesn't do pre-party nerves - after eight years, she says, her events run like clockwork.
Sayle is also notorious as Kate Middleton's racy mate - the two both attended Downe House, one of the UK's most exclusive private schools (at $55,000 per year). However, Sayle points out that she has no recollection of the duchess, who is five years younger, at school. It was in 2007 that their paths crossed when, on a break from Prince William, Middleton joined the Sisterhood, Sayle's all-female sporting group who compete in dragon boat races to raise money for charity. Middleton trained for a cross-Channel race with Sayle and friends, but pulled out when the paparazzi started showing up every day, and the press clocked that Britain's possible future queen was consorting with an orgy organiser.
Officially, Middleton left the Sisterhood for security reasons, but did the palace tell her to steer clear of Sayle? "No", she frowns. "Well, I don't know that for sure. She left when she got back together with William. She's a lovely girl and we got on well when our paths did cross. But we were in such different places. We're not close and I haven't seen her in six years. I may still have her mobile number in my phone, but she's probably changed it." Needless to say, Sayle hasn't sent Kate a copy of her book.
I wasn't expecting to like Sayle, but came away admiring her spirit and ambition. This is a woman with an empire to build. Five months pregnant to her British Olympic hockey player partner, James Tindall, she says impending motherhood has given her new focus: "I've had a really productive year - I haven't been up drinking till 4am. It's because I know after I've had the baby I won't have so much time to rule the world!" Tindall is, she says, entirely comfortable with her career, and will sometimes meet her at a Killing Kittens party, before whisking her off on a date. "My job can be massively threatening to some men, but James is a beta male and I think that's why he and I work. He's very secure in himself. Before I've had alpha male boyfriends and there's been power struggles," she says.
The daughter of a distinguished colonel father and charity fundraiser mother, she had a privileged upbringing, living in expat splendour in Berlin, Kuwait and Egypt. Growing up, she was the archetypal rebellious army brat - when her father was posted to Kuwait, Sayle, then 18, sparked a diplomatic incident when she was caught having sex with a US marine on the rooftop of the US Embassy. She was also entrepreneurial - living in Berlin when the Wall fell, she chiseled off lumps of brick to sell to her friends back at boarding school in England.
In her 20s, she worked in PR, and her clients included firms that ran adult parties. It was the '90s - when Sex And The City was huge - and people were more open about sex, but she found herself "riled" by how the events were run by men, for men, with male desire at the fore. And so she launched Killing Kittens - the name inspired by the US college campus joke about how every time someone masturbates, God kills a kitten.
Sayle's parents blanched at first, but came round once they saw she was serious about her fledgling business. "The thing that drives me is that we allow girls to be in charge of their sexuality," she says, in a manner of someone trotting out the party line. No doubt, the opportunity to make lots of money comes into it, too - members pay $180 per year to belong to Killing Kittens, with party entry $200 per couple, and $50-$90 for single women (depending on membership level).
Despite her line about empowerment, Sayle doesn't identify as a feminist. When I ask her about it, she launches into a rant about how much she hates women who complain about men opening doors for them or offering them seats: "We're a completely different species to men. I don't want to be equal to a man - we think differently. I think women should be feminine". For someone who run orgies, she's remarkably old-fashioned in some of her views on relationships. "I say to girlfriends who are struggling with men - make him feel needed. If you're opening a can, give it to him to open. If you want something from a guy, make him think it's his idea."
Sayle now has two outside investors, employs five full-time staff and two part-time, and runs six Killing Kittens parties a month in the UK. Her LA arm is about to launch and she has plans to open other British outposts later this year. When it comes to the orgies, she says, when you've seen one, you've seen them all: "We'll be having a random conversation about a rugby game or something and one metre away from us there's a girl giving a guy a blow job," she laughs. "When I walk through the playrooms now it's like white noise, I'm desensitised to it."
Her eyes are firmly focused on the bigger prize. A range of Killing Kittens sex toys is imminent. She's worked with sports scientists to create aphrodisiac products. A Tinder-style app, which tells members when fellow Kittens are in the vicinity, is in the works. There's the new monthly book club in London, in which members drink wine, listen to guest speakers and network ("there's no nudity", reassures Sayle). She'd like to do a lingerie range next. And then there's her book, Behind The Mask, about her life and business - the 50 Shades Of Grey market in her sights. While she's in no danger of winning a Pulitzer (when describing an orgy, why say boring old "vagina" when you could say "exquisite love tunnel"?!), the story itself is an interesting one, the crux of it being this: what's a nice girl like her doing in a job like that?
Sayle talks about five-year plans, profits and losses and working capital just like any other businesswoman, but knows that the nature of her company means she'll always have detractors. "I spend a lot of time defending myself, but I've been doing this for eight years and know every argument they are going to throw at me. I've become detached - it's my business they are judging, not me. I don't take criticism personally and I don't get emotional," she shrugs. She robustly rejects the idea that what she does is seedy. "I find it more seedy when I go to nightclubs and get groped as I walk to the toilet, or get hit on by guys with wedding rings on. That's way worse than what goes on at my parties - women are in charge."
As for the future, "I'm hoping I won't still be running orgies when I'm 50! The parties are the tip of the iceberg - this is about building the brand," she says. What will she tell her future children about her job? She replies that in 10 years time, society may be so much more liberal, her orgies might seem as tame as our parents smoking dope in the '60s.
She claims never to have had a low point, wobble or crisis of confidence over the years - apart from in the early years wondering whether she should cut her losses when she was barely able to pay her rent. Sayle may not be everyone's cup of tea, but she is self-aware: "I'm a pain in the arse, stubborn, aggressive and opinionated. Over the years, I've grown a really thick skin - it's like a force field!" she laughs, slipping on her heels as she gets ready to greet her guests. "Anyway, it's only sex."
The next day dawns, as cloudless as the day before. Mid-morning, guests in jeans and trainers begin trickling down from their bedrooms to the terrace to enjoy a full English breakfast, that classic British hangover cure. It also affords them one last chance to view those exquisite gardens. Everyone is crinkly-eyed with tiredness, but still smiling. No-one is remotely embarrassed. The only clues to last night's activities are the odd risque joke about the sausages and one enigmatic lady who's breakfasting alone, still wearing last night's floor-length black gown (nobody asks). Up in her room, Sayle is toting up the night's profits, as her clients fire up their fancy cars and head back to their normal, respectable lives.
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