By day, Jess Cattelly is a busy 32-year-old mum who loves to cook and travel the world with her partner. By night, she runs Australia’s most awarded female-focused swingers club.
On their third date, Jess Cattelly and Lawrence Jay went to Ikea to see what kind of furniture might suit the swingers club they had just decided to open. It was an idea Jay, then 27, had proposed to Cattelly, then 20, on an even earlier date. For most people, the suggestion of opening a sex club with someone who was a stranger a minute ago might have been chalked up to just one of those fun-and-flirty hypotheticals that come up on first dates. But Cattelly actually agreed.
“I had no concept of what a swingers club was, but he was so good at explaining it that I was enthralled,” she recalls. “So we went for it.”
It’s been just over 10 years since that Ikea date. In that time, their club, Our Secret Spot, has moved from its first location in Sydney’s inner city to a larger space in its inner west. Cattelly says it has also become the country’s most-awarded swingers venue, thanks to their female-first approach.
“A lot of people’s perception of a sex club is like going into a nightclub where weird guys touch you, and we really wanted to change that,” she explains. “There was a big gap in the market for a club that was feminine and made women feel safe and where they could make the first move.” That’s what made Cattelly and Jay such a good pairing: he brought the business knowledge, and she knew how to put women at ease “based on what would make me comfortable”.
We’re sitting in the club and, to tell you the truth, it is comfortable.
It’s 10am on a Friday, and we’ve just emerged from the dungeon. The entire place smells powerfully, thankfully, like Ajax as the cleaning staff mop up after last night’s party and prep for Newbie Night tonight.
From the moment you walk in, it’s obvious this is not the swingers club of your nightmares but rather a vibrant – dare we say, chic? – sexpositive space designed by a woman who knows what women want.
Nothing is unintentional here; everything has its purpose and its place. There are dark velvet robes hanging by the exit because, as Cattelly explains, no-one wants to have a cigarette on Parramatta Road in their lingerie. (The robes used to be white but they stood out too much to passers-by.) At the front desk, there is a jewellery stand where she sells colourful resin earrings with slogans like Baby Girl, Brat, and Kiss Me, designed by a local artisan. On the ground floor, the Chesterfield lounges in brown and red leather were chosen because the material is easy to clean and they’re light enough for guests to move around.
Upstairs, an expansive room features several luxuriously wide four-poster beds – the kind you’d want to have all to yourself if you weren’t here for the distinct purpose of sharing them with several strangers. Between the beds are hygiene stations that hold tissues, towels and a custom-made condom dispenser Cattelly designed so “lube-y hands aren’t rummaging around a communal condom bowl”.
Downstairs, in the dungeon, there are two wax busts on the wall, one female and one male. “They’re scented candles,” she explains, adding that they’re modelled off two of their regular guests. “Our signature scent is vanilla.” This is a woman who has thought of everything.
So, what actually goes on here? “We have different events depending on your level of comfort,” explains Cattelly. The most popular nights are Friday and Saturday, but there’s also a Sunday matinée-style option for busy parents. “It’s really great because you leave and you’ve still got the rest of your day to go grocery shopping and do bedtime,” she says. There are also Thursday night parties, kind of like late-night shopping, she adds.
A couple or a single woman can buy their ticket online. Single men must fill out an application form and wait for approval, and their tickets are also more expensive.
On arrival, the concierge gives new guests a tour and outlines the rules and etiquette. The number one rule is consent. (Never assume that just because someone’s in a sex club they are up for having sex.) Each person is assigned a locker and must leave their phone at the desk, not only for privacy but also to make sure you’re present. “We’re so glued to our phones, so here you can have a conversation with someone without the distraction,” says Cattelly. From there, it’s up to you.
“It’s important to note that there is no expectation to have sex or to play,” she says. “A lot of people just come to look on their first time. It can simply be a venue of exploration; you can just talk to people; if you just want to dress up in your favourite lingerie and walk around, all of that’s fine. It’s not meant to be stressful. It’s meant to be fun. And nerves can be amazing for pleasure because you get such an endorphin hit once you get what you want. People forget that nerves are good.”
In the decade since they opened Our Secret Spot, Cattelly has seen Australia’s attitude to sex clubs and swinging change drastically – for the better. “When we started out, it was hard to get the council on board,” she says. “Trying to explain what we do to people who don’t understand the concept can be quite difficult.”
She explains that a swingers club falls under the same “sex on premises” category as a strip club or a brothel, despite, Cattelly says, no-one on her premises being solicited for sex. Once you have paid for your ticket, no money changes hands. Essentially, she simply runs a venue where you are free to do as you please once you’re inside, and sometimes that happens to be sex.
She’s also noticed that swinging has become more mainstream in the past few years. Conversations about ethically non-monogamous relationships and understanding how gender exists on a spectrum “have really helped people to open up about wanting to explore more”, says Cattelly.
“When we started, you’d tell someone you’re in an open relationship and it would just blow their minds and they’d shut the conversation down. People have become a lot more understanding that you can be ethically nonmonogamous and still be very committed to your partner.” In fact, she adds, swinging with your partner can be an act of commitment: you are doing something together, something that’s out of the ordinary that breaks up your routine. “You’re doing this for the sake of your marriage, something sexy to lighten things up.”
But it’s not only the long-term married who are swinging. The oldest was 85, but generally Cattelly says her guests are getting younger. “I’ve found a lot more younger people are coming in, people in their twenties and thirties,” she says. “They are becoming more sexually fluid, so it’s relatable to younger crowds.”
Just as people’s attitudes towards swinging have changed, so have Cattelly and Jay’s lives. Three months after that Ikea date, Our Secret Spot was open. In that first year, Cattelly celebrated her 21st birthday at the club. She and Jay also got engaged while maintaining an open relationship.
But about four years ago, Cattelly fell in love with someone else. “I was on Tinder looking for the least relationship kind of thing possible, and came across Jamie, who was recently divorced and looking for the same thing,” she says. She and Jay realised that while their business relationship was stronger than ever, their romantic relationship had fallen to the wayside. Now, they both have new partners and both have one-year-old sons. Cattelly and Jay consider it one big happy family; their relationship now is more like siblings. “It’s great to know that when one aspect of a relationship falls apart, it doesn’t mean the rest of it has to,” she says.
“Our kids are going to grow up together, and now with our new partners there are four minds in this beautiful business.”
At the top of Cattelly’s priority list is ensuring she raises her son with a sex-positive attitude. “We’ve had a lot of conversations about how to broach the subject with him, because it’s obviously going to come up early,” she says. “But we’re so positive about it and we have a lot of friends and family in the lifestyle. My two sisters have been to the venue, so he’ll observe that it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Away from Our Secret Spot, Cattelly insists on a work-life balance. Her favourite way to switch off is to cook (a relatively new hobby) and have weekly date nights with Jamie.
“If you don’t put that time aside, you get caught up running a business and a family, and then you have to build that connection back up,” she explains.
“So every Tuesday night we put our phones down and have a couple of hours together to reconnect.” After all, some things are just for two.
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