Is it possible to be disappointed by something when you have pretty low expectations anyway? The answer is yes. Especially when you have paid £45+ for a ticket.
I went to House of Noir’s Nude Noir show recently but I won’t be going again. House of Noir is an invite only/members event running kinky-performance parties. Their Instagram shows a sexy crowd with sexy things happening among it.
I knew we were in trouble when we arrived and there was but one modestly sized room and one stage. The crowd were typically West End with some rather suspect pairings of much younger, more attractive women than their male counterparts. But I had sort of expected this. I thought it might be a Killing Kittens kind of crowd (not that I’ve yet been) rather than my usual, more diverse scene. But I had thought there would be a little more room to mingle, and an actual bar, rather than just a table set up serving wine at £10 a glass and barely able to cope with the not particularly huge crowd.
To be fair, I found the performances quite titillating and a bit different to what I’ve seen before. When I could see the performances that is, as the place was so crowded and the performers were on a barely raised dias and did a lot of writhing on the floor which isn’t great for the vertically challenged.
This turned out to be less of a problem when three quarters of the crowd left by 1 am! And suddenly the overcrowded room became almost devoid of atmosphere. This was a good chance to get a decent view of the performances which then took place more within the audience but it didn’t help with the feeling of value for money. I already thought the stated 3 am was an early finish but the party feeling dead at 1 was a disappointing surprise. No time to even get drunk and hope that helped things.
There were also some dodgy views on consent, with the performers going into the crowd at times and feeding fruits seductively to the attendees. I was force fed a strawberry (hate strawberries) by a ravishing woman and my friend was fed a grape by the stunning man, and also given a fleeting grope on the boob in the process. I can see how they wanted to make the audience feel a part of it, but that was skirting very close to a line.
I can see this event might be a nice gateway into ‘real’ kink for a certain demographic, and as I say, professional, polished and sexy performances, but it was not a good party!