Doing sex: Curating sensory experience at the play parties of an Amsterdam-based nightclub

I present a sensory ethnography of doing sex at three men-only play parties at an Amsterdam-based nightclub. I refer to sex as sexual acts and use doing to highlight these acts as embodied practices. Through the curation of sensorially stimulating experiences, characterized as feel-, sound-, smell-, and viewscape, bodies are aroused and oriented toward each other and engage in sexual practices differently. Using participant sensation, an ethnographic method featuring multisensory observation, and queer phenomenological analysis, I show distinct ways of doing sex enabled by and mediated through varied sensory experiences. This ethnography responds to the lack of attention and methodology in addressing sensuality in the discursive analysis of sex. It foregrounds a sensory body that situates a discursive body in its flesh and senses.