The 5 Sexiest Cities In The World
What makes me an expert in the sexiness of cities? Nothing, other than I’ve traveled extensively and had a lot of sex. Combine the two and I am a verified sex travel guide.
For real though, when I was starting out as a writer, my beats were fashion, travel, and sex, and those three topics to this day remain my biggest interests.
One trip in particular was particularly pivotal, both travel and sex-wise—a European adventure I took in 2016 is what inspired the AURORE erotica collection in the first place. And I maintain that dating and fucking your way through a place is the best way to have a local experience.
Disagree with my list and rankings? Fight me in the comments.
I want to know: what’s the sexiest city you’ve been in?
this photo was taken by my Seoul lover at a terrace cafe
5. Seoul
There are…so many places to have sex in Seoul. There is this “room” concept called, conveniently, “bang”. Rooms for watching DVDs (DVD-bang), rooms for cuddling, rooms for hugging, rooms for sauna-ing (Jimjilbang), rooms for karaoke (noraebang). And then there are the love motels, more officially for sex, though all the aforementioned rooms can be rooms for sex if you want them to be (the tissue box in the DVD room is probably not for the sad movies.)
When I lived in Seoul I mostly used the above bangs for their intended purpose, and my own apartment (also just one room) for banging. I didn’t meet my main lover until spring the year I was there, as things began to thaw, and as I write this I realize that all the cities I’ve listed, and all the sex I’ve had in them, has been warm weather sex. Sex and summer are so alike: wet, hot, slow, sweaty, lazy. I remember exploring the streets with him and sitting for hours in Seoul cafes slick with sweat, then coming back to my place to slide all over each other.
He was a service sub and preferred to massage me before sex to the point where I was so pliable, he could bend and mold me however he liked. His cock was thick but short, he’d slip out a lot when I was on top, and that slipperiness, my wetness on his already sweaty skin, is a hallmark of our fucking.
That summer there were cats in heat in the alleyways behind my apartment and they would scream and cry for it, sometimes it felt like we were screaming to cum back and forth, a call and response. I loved that the bars and restaurants were open all night, we could fuck for hours after a day out, then nap until midnight, and still go into the night, neon and charcoal, still humid as fuck, sex still on our skin.
in the lush perfumed lobby of The Edition
4. Miami
Something happens to me in Miami, it makes me wide eyed and willing, and as a New Yorker I can assure you that my usual stance out and about is suspicious and guarded. In Miami, strangers approach me, I’m magnetic—even in a gay bar I’m the main attraction. I make friends with the sandwich guy, the career drinker at Mac’s Club Deuce, the random woman waiting in the hotel lobby. I don’t say all this to be self aggrandizing, I take no credit. It’s simply the energy of the city.
Though the traffic can be tragic, Miami nights have a way of taking you one place to the next, flow like cascading ribbons, you must hold on for life and trust the process.
One of my favorite nights in Miami started at the Broken Shaker, the cozy backyard chirping in the twilight with lush foliage and lush me—in a lace up bodysuit I was spilling out of. It was Art Week, and I was introduced to an artist, a Chicago Banksy if you will, with a more political, homegrown style. I let the drinks make me warm all over in the already warm air, while our heads dipped toward each other, retreating from the crowd of friends old and brand new.
From the Broken Shaker we teleported to Soho House—he knew the door guy so the line simply didn’t exist. I have been to the private member’s club in other cities, but Miami Soho House is a jungle, expansively blending the indoors and outdoors. At night, the ocean no longer shimmers and you lose track of it, you lose track of where you are and why. Wherever I am in Miami, I feel like I own the place.
I led the artist by the hand outside, letting the paths unfold in front of me until we arrived at the pool, and then I easily took off my pants (remember I’m wearing a bodysuit) and dipped into the pool. We made out in that weightless way, my legs circling his waist, salt with a hint of chlorine, our own secret hideaway, until the security guard showed up to tell us the pool was closed and we needed to leave.
The lobbies are all perfumed in Miami and envelop you like they’ve been waiting for you to arrive, like you’re the missing piece to the evening. Even as you’re being escorted out, even that feels like an invitation. Back into the possibilities of Miami.
at the Vatican, famously wearing a dress too short to get in to see Michelangelo! the nuns said don’t even bother trying!
3. Rome
I spent a few nights in Rome that are as blurry as the photos we somehow managed to take, but still, they help me piece it together. The last one in the album shows my friend and I holding ivy to our hair, like disciples of Bacchus. Skin shining and eyes heavy with love and wine.
I was traveling through Italy with two friends, one I was fucking and the other a girlfriend who did not know we were fucking, so I got rug burns on my knees doing it in hotel hallways in Venice. One day, we sat on a canal dock drinking Limencello from the bottle, devising a way to get on the water (we were college students and could not afford a gondola ride.) We spotted a boat with three men in uniform and used our limited Italian— “scusi!” to come aboard. They didn’t speak English and we didn’t have more to give them in Italian, but we did have Limencello as the perfect aperitif. Even I was surprised when I ended up on one of the young man’s laps with my tit in his mouth.
We drank cheap wine every night and ate cheese and honey for breakfast. Bounced from Spartan hostels to rooms where the three of us shared a king bed and a bathtub.
When my fuckbuddy diverted to Naples, my girlfriend and I went on to Rome by ourselves. In every city, Ciao bella meant hi, hello, good morning, good afternoon, but in Rome as two single girls, ciao bella meant more: let me buy you a drink, spend the evening with me, how about we get married? Perhaps you’d like to give me a kiss?
We said yes to it all: Roman Holiday style rides on the back of men’s Vespas past the Colloseo, invitations to join for drinks, a free ride home in their car, to kiss each other in front of them. We only said no once when our agreeableness brought us to a vacant basement banquet room with an older gentleman. “Throw your drink behind you,” my friend whispered as he kept pouring for us. We were already both quite drunk and we escaped, squealing and laughing into the night, into the next man’s designs. Kiss me, now kiss each other. Okay, and okay! Italian men were friendly and inoffensive, even borderline wholesome as they requested their fantasies. That Italian earnestness and desire to connect translated perfectly into sex. We were willing to perform.
at the rooftop pool in Buenos Aires
2. Buenos Aires
If you’ve ever witnessed an Argentine tango, you understand why this city is ranking. It’s such a fluid slinky dance, it feels like you’re watching the dancers have sex. My friend and I watched tango at hole-in-the-wall clubs with mismatched thrifted furniture, the dancers wore harem pants, the crotches skimming the ground as they did their fancy footwork.
Outside of dance clubs, there were people making out all over, on park benches, on street corners, at the tables outside restaurants, there was a sexual buzz in the air. Dinners are long, lingering affairs, with red wine and red meat. There’s an earthiness to the sustenance. Something carnivorous. There’s sweat and cigarette smoke. Add a dash of machismo—Buenos Aires is incredibly fuckable.
Our rental apartment had a decadent balcony and rooftop pool, that while the size of a 3 bathtubs, provided a great photo op (and this was before Instagram if you can imagine). We went out late nights and slept until midday, and about 5 days into our trip, right when we had found a gentle rhythm, more friends arrived. Boys that had lived upstairs from me in my first apartment at university. We shepherded them around and then ended up back at our place. Empanadas delivery and chain smoking in a foreign city.
Out on that balcony deep in the drunken night, one boy asked me for a haircut. Have you ever cut someone’s hair? It is…among the most sensual things you can do with someone. There’s the trust of course: don’t fuck this up, but the scalp and hair and how you handle it? I can still remember coming around his front to check my work. My eyes scoping his halo, his eyes deep set on mine.
exquisite pastry in Paris
1. Paris
It is not an exaggeration to say that Aurore was born in Paris. Not the first time I was there, but the second.
The first time I went to Paris I packed up for a semester abroad in the Marais, had a dramatic French boyfriend who made orgasmic duck l’orange, smoked skinny cigarettes and wore lacy, unsupportive bras because they felt more chic than my previous push ups—and I desperately wanted to be as chic as the French.
The sexiness of French women is a real phenomenon. I think it’s in the undone-ness, a slight messiness and imperfection that is akin to post sex: hair out of place, breasts natural, hanging, nipples on view, nothing too tight or too flashy, instead bare, letting your naked self show through, like you’re wearing a sheet that threatens to slip off as you slip out of bed.
The second time I was in Paris was nearly 15 years later, dating my way through European cities, and interviewing my dates on sex and relationships in their respective cultures. By the time I got to Paris, I’d realized that the interviewing portion of my assignment was leading to incredibly vulnerable and intimate conversations…and also sex. I am a very thorough journalist!
I had two special interview subjects in Paris, which occurred by chance in one day (you can read more about that here) and where that story ends, this one begins:
The day after my escapades, my gay friend who was also in town, upon seeing my shared AirBnb rental and deeming it not up to par, declared that he was getting us a hotel on points for our last night. I was agreeable. It was a five star hotel, who would say no. We checked in and threw open the windows, threw on the plush robes, and ordered cigarettes to the room from the concierge. He had an early flight to catch, so we stayed in bed drinking and dishing, and I texted Jean to come by the next morning.
I’ve never been so happy to see a man sneak out of my room at 6am.
And as one left I prepared to welcome the next. It had only been two days since I’d first met and fucked Jean, and I still had the semi violent butterflies of a new fling. I kept my bedhead but brushed my teeth, and decided to answer the door fully nude. Have I mentioned how dramatic French men can be? This applies also to compliments:
“You are exquisite,” he breathed, as he crossed the threshold and immediately lifted me so our lips were at an equal height.
We went on and on and on. Part deux to come!
What city is your sexiest?