This column first appeared in The Sunday Times on 3rd April:
CONCH – APRIL 2016
BEDS COME STANDARD WITH HANDCUFFS – By Paige Nick
Houses are so needy. I imagine it’s like having a teenager. When they aren’t eating you out of house and home, they’re breaking something. So a few years ago, when my house needed a new roof, I resorted to desperate measures and decided that if my house wanted to live under my (leaking) roof, it was going to have to get a job and chip in. So I put my home up for rent on Air BnB.
So far (touch wood) it’s mostly been an overwhelmingly positive experience. Although there was that one time two guys in their twenties from USA rocked up at 5pm one Thursday for ten days. By 7pm they had three women (who may or may not have been hookers) over, and by 4am the party was in full swing. I remember being amazed at how quickly they’d managed to procure new friends. And thinking how greedy it was to have three girls over when there were only two of them, how’s that maths going to work? I had to ask them to leave the next day, and was rewarded damages by Air BnB which were enough to repair everything they broke, burn and replace everything they touched, and invest in new mattresses for every room.
So being an AirBnB convert, this item in the news caught my eye. Did you know now there’s also a KinkBnB? It’s just like Air BnB, same principle, same premise, same practices, well, not entirely the same practices. Say you’re the kind of person who has particular proclivities; you now don’t need to leave your gimp mask at home when you travel.
Kink BnB is a ‘Sex positive home sharing community’ where you can book your kinky holiday, whips and chains included. Say you’re looking for a two bedroom, two bathroom house, with views, easy access to beaches, the Waterfront, public transport, and a sex dungeon, then Kink BnB probably has what you’re looking for, plus nipple clamps.
The co-founder, Ryan Galiotto, told The Huffington Post, “We want to help people explore themselves.” If that’s not a euphemism for masturbation then I don’t know what is.
The whole thing started as a bit of a joke, but then their first hundred users signed up through word of mouth, and the rest is a fairytale made up of safe words and cock rings.
The business model seems to be a lucrative one, with a growing database of kinky hosts in dozens of locations around the world. Look I won’t be turning my garage into a play pen for adults who like to wear nappies any time soon, but I do have a basement afflicted by quite a bit of damp, a funny smell, and an odd dripping sound that I’ve been struggling to locate, which may appeal to someone who gets turned on by being tortured. So perhaps I need to be more open-minded about this whole Kink BnB thing. After all, my house is going to need a new paint job any day now.
Email: amillionmilesfromnormal@gmail.com
Twitter: @paigen
