What Goes On At A Sex House?

This week, Jess welcomes Kenneth Play. Kenneth Play is a former fitness professional, sex educator and one of the founders of Hacienda Villa - a sex house in NYC. You’re probably thinking ‘what goes on in a sex house?’ You’ll have to listen to find out!

As mentioned in this episode, we must share one of Kenneth's hacks! Featuring Dr. Zhana, check out what tips the pair have when your date cancels last minute!

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Rough Transcript:

This is a computer-generated rough transcript, so please excuse any typos. This podcast is an informational conversation and is not a substitute for medical, health or other professional advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the services of an appropriate professional should you have individual questions or concerns.

What Goes On At A Sex House?

Participant #1:
Hello. Hello. This is Jess O'Reilly from Sex With Dr. Jess, and I am a sex and relationship expert. My focus is compatibility and how you can create a compatible relationship to live happily ever after. And today I have with me a very special guest. I have Kenneth play. Kenneth is an international sex hacking expert and sex educator. So I'm really interested to learn a little bit more about sex hacking. He's also a former top fitness professional, a private celebrity fitness and sex Ed coach. And Kenneth is one of the founders of Hacienda Villa in Bushwick. So we're going to be talking about Hacienda Villa, which I'm going to as a lay person, describe as a sex house. And Kenneth can correct me if I'm wrong. So we're going to be talking a little bit about this sex house and about Kenneth's sex hacks. And he's been getting a lot of press lately, so I'm really excited to have Kenneth here. Kenneth, Hi there. Hello. Thank you for having me on. Thanks. Welcome. We're glad you're here. Now tell me what is a sex hacker? I think a bit more of a hack the way we learn about sex. I used to be a former fitness professional, and I thought their experience learning model in fitness education works really well for sex. So I've been obsessed with the idea of how do we improve our sex life? How do we literally get better in the bedroom? Because it's quite challenging when people just read books or talk to other people that they don't get a hands on education when it comes to sex. I've been developing this process called Play Lab, where people get to have a bowl from a Ted talk, like intellectual learning to watching a demo, and then they get to practice things live. And this is one way that they get to learn new skills that they could actually retain and use for the rest of their lives. So I've been kind of experimenting. And the idea of Play Lab is testing different hacks that from all type of different experts and kind of analyze which one it works and then kind of try to share it with as many people as possible. I love this. So you're taking the expertise and actually putting it into practice. And you've said a couple of buzzwords that I think people are wondering what they mean. So you said it's experiential and it's hands on. Does this mean people are actually trying these sex moves with you in the room? Yeah, I do it for a couple privately. And I do have something called up with a group of people. So you can imagine the cost started like a Ted talk where I'm explaining, just say, if it matterjaculation, because that's been the topic that I've been covering. So I'm also partnered up with Dr. Jeanna, where I have sipped through all the scientific research to date on squirting of human ejaculation. I explained the entire history of the science, first the anatomy and then my input on the topic. And then I do a live demo. When people get to watch me do the technique and I explain it more like a personal trainer play by play. And then the last part is more like a yoga class where they all get the individual spot from couples and they try out the different technique. But I deconstructed like what a personal trainer would do for a fitness class or yoga teacher. So you start off slow and you build on the technique. And I'm really obsessed with retention. Like, how can I teach someone how to do something where they're not just a physical technique, but they know how to connect with their partner. They know how to read their partner's feedback, and I want them to kind of do it until they get it right. But they don't have to do it on the first try. So this very low pressure environment where they get to practice a skill in a very comfortable setting, and surprisingly, it's also people get into group flow, like when you have a room of people learning the technique together, they all kind of synchronize eventually, which is the phenomenon I'm still so fascinated with right now. Okay. This is really great, because I have always talked about the fact that we cannot learn about sex if we don't observe sex.

So it's one thing to stand up there and lecture, and we need that. Obviously, we need background. We need the theory, we need the science, but it's another thing to actually observe a technique, a phenomenon, an experience in the flesh. Right. I was just talking football, so I can tell you how to throw a football. But if you watch me throw a football, you're going to get a lot more out of it. But you have added a third what sounded like a crucial step, which is to actually practice with expert there. And that's like I think about going to yoga class, and I'm in Downward Dog, and the instructor walks up behind and helps to adjust me. Is that a fair analogy? Is that a little bit of what exactly? And to me is they're queuing and they're giving people feedback, like a little bit to the left or just relax or you are squeezing your PC muscle. That works a lot better because they wouldn't necessarily get that feedback. Also, learning something in sex is stressful enough. So when people try to try something new while they're having sex, I find it really difficult because they're on performance mode. So I deliberately create the play lab as a learning environment where people get to learn from their mistakes or feedback, and they don't have to get it on their first try, because if just say, if somebody just rested to share great, and it's really a turn on, I want my husband to spank me. And the first time the husband spanked her didn't go so well and sprang her heart enough. And it creates this awkward, terrible first time experience versus, like, you have this very structured way of learning where I kind of, like, set the pace and their timing so that people get to relax and get into the learning zone, which I think is really important. So if I want to be spanked and I bring my partner and I'm okay with it, let's say, will you actually show him how to thank me? Like, will you bend me over and be the first to show him where to place his hand and whatnot? It depends. Obviously, there's some limitation with legality when it comes to sex education, because the only downside is I can't touch any genital in any of the coaching, so I go as far as I can without touching genital. But bondage and spanking is easy because I could just demo on a couple. But if I can't, I will bring in a co teacher because I'm not a vagina owner. So I always show all the technique live that way until they get it. But I could hold their hands and show them how to do it. Okay. So I teach this technique called the cross my fingers, so you put your fingers into a piece sign so everybody can try it right now. So you make a peace sign as you have your index and your middle finger up, and then you cross your fingers. Okay. So they're crossed, like, you're telling why behind your back and slide into the vagina and you gently rotate in and out. Does that make sense? Now, could you actually perform this cross my fingers on a model who's working with you? And so people could see because it's interesting because I'm describing it. And I bet you about 50% of people are going to understand what I'm saying over podcast here. And if I had video, another, let's say 30% would understand, but there'd still be 20% who would be a little bit lost because they're not really seeing it in the flesh. And I'm not there to give them any feedback, like they might scream their fingers or twirl their fingers instead of a nice, gentle twist. Would you actually bring a vagina owner and slide those fingers in there? Yeah, absolutely. I have very explicit sex Ed video on Pawn Hop right now because I don't believe in China using puppets or like demos. Those are great, but they're not ideal. And also people doesn't get to see reaction because it's really about two people connecting. Right. And on my fitness days, there's things like proqueception and and kinesthetic awareness, which is really important when it comes to sex. So I want to teach people how to like, this is how you move your body, but you have to be able to react to what you're touching, like how a massage therapist is not just rubbing your skin. It's looking for tissue and tissue quality. And not. And once they find that they are working with it. So I want people to kind of get the tactile feedback because sex is kind of live and in action. So I want them to learn how to read the feedback and move their body with it and respond. Yeah, this is great, because let's say you do this technique and nine of the people really enjoy it. But the 10th of a Gina Holder said, I really don't like that. You can say, well, why don't you try it this way? And you're actually there because I'm missing that piece in my work, right? It's one thing to write a book or teach a webinar, but it's another thing to be there in the flesh. And this is fascinating to me. I'm sure fascinating to many of my listeners here. Let me ask, where are you teaching these courses?

I co founded a sex positive intentional community called Hacienda Villa. So we also have a wonderful event space, Hacienda Studio, so we could host maybe up to 50 people downstairs. So I've been teaching that I've been teaching around the world to do different, like swinger communities or different travel or educational sex Ed cons. King cons. I've been privileged. I'm lucky, but I mostly teach it here. And I've been working really hard on trying to create a digital product with my playlist because I feel like I finally hacked their education model and really worked really hard on how to get people to retain a life skill. Right. But the space we have downstairs makes it a little easier because I could just don't have to worry about what my landlord would say about doing explicit sex education. Okay. I have to ask about Hacienda Villa. So you said it's a sex positive, intentional community. Tell us what that is. So as a mouthful, basically, our goal is to make sex positive culture, education and value accessible to the mainstream audience. And my personal mission is to make sex as accessible as porn. So we do a lot of different type of sex education events here, from like Padstra to King to I had Janet Hardy from co author Ethical Slut here to do a panel just so many different sets event here. But we also have 14 residential members where we all live together. Sometimes we have huge play party up to 250 people at the house. So it's sort of like the Sex Positive Community Center for our Brooklyn, New York community. Okay. So you're in Brooklyn. There are 14 of you living there. I can't imagine this is just about credit checks. How do you select who gets? First of all, is it offensive for me to call it a sex house? I mean, people would say that, and it doesn't really bother me. But the funny thing is that we actually don't have sex with each other, which is most people will find it fascinating. Our goal of living here is that we have a social purpose that we identify with, which is to spread sex positive education and culture and value. And we also have different principles within our community. But our goal is to really collectively contribute to this cost that we all share. But also our individual sex life is epic enough that we don't necessarily sleep each other. There will be a lot of, like, kind of algae and gangbang and group activity where we kind of have sex with not with each other, but together around one another. Yeah, but not directly having sexual relationship with each other. But we also don't. We celebrate sex here and our gender and our orientation. So we live in an environment. It's like kind of the world that I want to build. But we live in a bubble that we kind of construct. That's so interesting, because as a sexologist, I always joke that I'm living in a bubble because things that are a fight for other people, I think come naturally to me. And then also, I live up in Toronto. So I'm not far from you. I understand you're in Brooklyn, New York. It's just a very sex positive city. And so in my neighborhood, there are people of different genders. There are people of different sexual orientations, people with different relationship arrangements. So it's not a big deal. But I know that across North America and across the world, if you're polyamorous, for instance, it's a fight. You put your social status, you put your friendships, you put your family relationships at risk. So this happy end of Villa sounds like this bubble. There are 14 of you living there now. Are you disallowed from having sex with one another? We're highly discouraged. Fortunately, no one really is not like a rule like kids. It's an agreement that we made with each other to create their culture that we want to have here. I think what's more fascinating, the sex part of each other is kind of not actually that special. What we want to create is an environment where we could safely express our be self expressed at the same time, respecting each other's boundaries. So boundaries is a key thing in order for induced consent to happen. I look at our house more like a lab where we could create different type of cultures or technology or policy that enable people to celebrate sexuality in a safe, collective and really creative and fun way. And whatever we do test here, we spread it out to the world. And also my business partner, Dr. Jeanna, we really vigorous about collecting the data and see what science that we could draw from this. And if I had a daughter, I would feel that it's much safer to send her to a community party that we have created than send her to Cancun to explore her youth and sexuality with other people because we're so intentional about the consent part, how to make it fun. So I want the technology to spread. So this bubble is sort of a lap on how to try these things out. That's really cool.

Are you the first of your kind that you're aware of as far as the sex positive intention of community in this particular style? Yes. But obviously there's so many other Poly based community. We have monogamous people living here, too. I wanted to ask you that because some of your members are more vanilla and monogamous. And I was wondering because I'm sex positive, and I could see us sharing very similar values in terms of how we're trying to change the world so that it's a happier, more comfortable, more welcoming place for everybody. And sex positivity is essential to that. But I would say I wonder if I would be intimidated because I'm not highly sexual, like I might not be into group. Orgies all the time or at all. I might not be in the mood to talk about sex all the time. So can you tell me a bit about that? Is everyone highly sexual, or do you really run the gamut? We run the gamut, so we have people here and different people have different. It's a spectrum, right. Like everywhere else. But I think the thing that we bond over is that this our principal and collectively living together and sharing what we do to the world is what kind of state. And also there's a lot of perks living in a community like this. Our house is beautiful. We have so many others. We have a hot tub. We also have community support. Of course, you have a hot tub.

Participant #1:
Yeah. One of these houses without a hot tub. Yeah. We have a lot of toys in the house. So it's great to live here because a member gets a lot of additional perks. But I guess because of the experiential learning model and my obsession towards it, I think sex father culture is not something that we preach rather than for people to experience. So when people come here and they come to any of our events, they will be surrounded by a decent amount of sex positive people where they are not being judged for their sexuality. And that experience is more life changing than anything that I could ever say to someone. Of course. Yeah. I imagine you share a lot. It's a little bit like communal living. Do you also share sex toys? Yes. But not like people borrow my stuff all the time and we share them. But we also have a lot of big toys like St. Andrews Cross or amphibian. So tell us about the play lab. If I were to walk into the play lab, describe to me what I'm going to find there. I actually live stream a lot of them so people could watch it if they go to my website. But they walk into a lecture first, like a tech talk where I go over a lot of the science and intellectual understanding. And then that is 25% of a play lab. And then the other 25% is a live demo where just say we're talking about female ejaculation. That would show that all the various techniques talk about involuntary squirting versus voluntary squirting. The two types of ejectulate do you give people like raincoats, just in case I would tell them this is a splash zone, and I rotate people and I encourage people to look because I think we don't have a culture of sex Ed where people really get into the learning rights at classes. People are so quiet in the beginning, they're just nervous, they don't talk any other class. They're so chatty. So I encourage them to play and learn and invite them to really observe and look and really learn. What does the Fax lab look like, though? Is there a St. John's Cross in there? Is there a Sydney or all the toys lined up? Are there bottles of lube everywhere? It depends on which one. If I'm doing a kinky play for curious couple, then there'd be more King toy. If it's a squirting one, it's just chairs and lecture and projector. And then we have mattresses for pause three where everyone gets their station and they get to practice. And I give them loops and gloves and things to try. But I teach it more like what you imagine. Like you said, a yoga instructor and a personal trainer would do. I love this, and I love the correlation between sex and exercise because they share so much in common. You actually, Kenneth, I teach a workshop down at Desire Resorts in Mexico, which is also more hands on. So I'm not hands on, but I'm talking and describing and people are actually doing things, and I know from an instructor's perspective, it's a pretty powerful experience. What I'm missing is that I don't do live demos, and I don't know that it's more probably a legal thing for me with my insurance and whatnot, but I know that there is no learning like hands on learning, but because we don't have a lot of time, I want to ask you about your sex hacks.

Now, I know you teach a number of videos, and we're definitely going to post one on the blog here so people can find an embedded video directly from your site, but it's just in 30 seconds to a minute. What is your top sex hack? What can you teach people right here right now? The one that I like the most is the sex hack that I give away on my website is the squirting one that's kind of the popular one that I did it for Playboy TV, and it's really about lining up your body where you could use your palms to put pressure and rub the external clip while you are having your two middle finger inserted to create a lot of pressure and velocity, rocking the entire clip structure to kind of create this involuntary experience of female ejaculation because I'm a geek. I've been trying so many variations of how to line up the body between the two people that is comfortable and is reliable. So sex hack, to me, is something that a hack has to be reliable and it has to work most of the time for most people. Right. And when it comes to anything sexual, not everybody is going to enjoy it, or this is great, but I want something that works. My philosophy is not that my technique is the best and everyone should have sex like me, but I want people to kind of try things and see if it works for them and is pledgeable and just observe what's useful, discard what's not and make it uniquely yours. But I think that technique has probably been the most successful and I'm fortunate you have a very unique sex education myself from joining this community, to meet all the sex educator community, to meet all the sex party enthusiasts from around the world. I have a pretty large sample size of learning from experts. And also I started at such a late bloomer because I was very insecure growing up like late 20. I probably slept with 20 ish people. And then now I'm probably at like 400 something. So I've been pretty good at data tracking on what works and what does it so funny when you say 20, that sounds like a high number to many people, but low number. You mentioned sex parties. So can anybody come to the sex parties at the Hacienda Villa? That's the Wall Garden that we have? That's the only thing that's a private invite only. It's not a commercial party, and we could only host 250 people at a time. Only 250 people in these oranges. Well, you work at Desire. You've seen cruises with 4000 people in those scale, and we only have it four times a year, too. So those are private invite only events. But we have been very public lately because we want to reach the mainstream audience beyond our bubble. So our goal is to have more public events in the very near future. Okay. And how does someone get on that private invite list? Because I'm sure people are wondering they have to meet us, like joining the community, going to events, meeting people, and is someone who's willing to basically vouch for you. So maybe coming to your play lab and getting to know you and get to know other people too. I don't want to act like I'm an official gatekeeper of a private party, but I've been consulting for a lot of different parties. Like I've been working a party called House of Love for House of yes, which is a big party venue, and I've been trying to bring more of a sex positive culture and a kink experience to a very erotic sexy party. Not quite a sex party, but people still get to try impact play or try a little bit of bondage and do some performance art. So I think there is also a big market for not so much like full on lifestyle, but people want to have a sexier experience and more intentional and before. But not like a typical meat packing party where meat packing district party in New York, where people just come home and grind on you. So I've been testing a lot of different consent culture that we could put in nightclubs, because I think like, life is a huge market, that our sex positive.

So I haven't really tap into that's. Right. And that's true that not all sex parties are sex positive. And I appreciate that it is invite only in some respects because you want people who share the same values, who are going to be respectful, not who are just there and for their own interest and perhaps making other people uncomfortable. So I really value that, Kenneth, we are out of time. We try and keep these very short. But I want to thank you and ask you, where can people find you at kennethplay. Com? So K-E-N-N-E-T-H-P-L-A-Y. Com, Kennethplay dot com. And you're on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as well. Yes. And Pawnhop. So find me on Pawnhop, watch my videos. Well, I think that will be the first place they're going for. That makes sense. And thank you again for being with us. Really appreciate it. And I'd really like to have you back, because there's a lot to talk about. Yeah. And when you have a visit and you all come visit, my first stop now is going to be Hacienda Villa. I can't believe I haven't been what kind of psychologist hasn't been? We had a couple, but I'd love to have you here. It'll be honor. Thank you so much. Have a great one. Take care. Oh, gosh. This is really interesting. I'm sure that you not only learned a little bit, but I'm certain that Kenneth's experience and his living situation has helped to open your eyes to a whole new world. And I think that's really our job as sex educators. And in Kenneth's case, also as a sex hacker, which I love from a marketing perspective, it's brilliant. I definitely am going to visit the Hacienda Villa, and I encourage you all to look up the Hacienda Villa in Brooklyn Bushwick. And I always like to end with what can we learn from what Kenneth had to say from the topic of the day? And I mean, I think the takeaway is pretty clear here, and that is that it takes a village to make sex work. So it's not always just about the two people involved. It's about all the people you learn from all the people with whom you collaborate, even if you're not ready to visit a sex house, even if you're not ready to go to these sex parties at this point, maybe you never want to. And that's okay, too. But I want you to think about if it takes a village to cultivate sexuality, who is in your village, who is there to support you? Not just with your sex life, but with your relationship. And we see this that people with stronger social ties have happier relationships. So who can you reach out to whom can you ask for support? Because sex and relationships is one of these things that we sex and relationships are sorry topics that we keep very, very private. And when we run into problems, we don't want to tell anyone we feel ashamed because we think that it's supposed to look like the movies, and it's not always perfect. So who is in your village? And how can you build a village around you? And again, it doesn't mean that you have to have a coach in the room. Although that's pretty cool. And then I think the second takeaway really is that when it comes to sex education is really about experience. It is about practice. It's not just about what you learn in a book. And as an author, of course, I want you to read the books. I have four books, but you learn more practicing yourselves. And if you ever take my webinars or been to any of my courses, you'll know that I'm always reminding people here are some technique, but it's not a perfect science. You've got to try it. And if 99% of your friends love it and you hate it, your experience is just as valid. In fact, in your case, it is more valid than theirs. So practice learn experience. As Kenneth said, you don't always get it right the first time we're going to leave all the information for Kenneth and has the end of Theta on the blog portion of the podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, people of all gender thank you so much for tuning in. This is Sex with Dr. Jess. I look forward to talking with you all next week. Bye.