It’s late, you’re tired and horny, but home is a long way away and the alleys are riddled with CCTV cameras and drunk revellers, giving one no privacy in which to administer a suck-job to an equally horny friend. At these times, the UK is ill-equipped to cater to your deviant lusts, unless you’re willing to pay a week’s rent for one night in a scummy hotel.

When it comes to impulsive sex spaces, other countries do it far better.

Korean DVD bangs

In Korea, there exist special rooms called ‘DVD bangs’. At least, there used to. It’s been a while since I was there, and they’ve probably now been replaced with ‘video streaming bangs’ or ‘Angry Birds bangs’ or whatever the kids prefer these days.

In Korean, ‘bang’ means ‘room’, and so DVD bangs were essentially just places where you’d go to hire a DVD and watch it on a big telly – the kind you either couldn’t afford to have at home or would reject because its gigantic size made it impractical for anything other than a dividing wall. You enter the complex, pick a DVD, thumb through your phrase book to work out how to say ‘how much?’ in Korean, then the person behind the counter takes your money and directs you to a room with a number on the door.

We picked something appalling and shit – I cannot remember what. Some bullshit early-90s movie that we’d seen a million times before. We weren’t there for the DVD so much as the ‘bang’, and the idea of being able to hire a private room for a couple of hours for less than the cost of a vodka and tonic was just about perfect. The room itself was small – dark and dingy and furnished with just the aforementioned TV, a sticky leather sofa and – we took this as proof that it wasn’t just for watching – a roll of toilet paper.

Japanese Love Hotels

When you mention quick fucks in paid privacy, lots of people will leap up and shout “ooh, do you know in Japan they have kitsch hotels designed just for fucking, with pictures of Hello Kitty in bondage ropes on the walls?”

To which I reply, “yeah, except there’s usually more bondage than Hello Kitty if you pick the right ones.”

As he emerged from the Subway exit I went a bit weak at the knees. This guy had swept into my life on a wave of filth and heat and the fear that our time would be short. We didn’t touch in public, but at the entrance to the station I turned him east and pointed out my favourite love hotel. A beaten-up, garish building which featured a room I’d wanted to use for a long time.

It had chains all over the bed – cuffs and collars and even some medieval stocks – positioned right at the end of the bed so you could either get in doggy with your head through the hole and be fucked in a way that wouldn’t kill your knees, or standing up on the floor, with your partner gripping your hips as you choked happy fuck noises in the other direction.

They say Japan’s got it nailed when it comes to quickie shags. To be fair, the sweaty, desperate, let’s-try-it-all-before-time-runs-out shag I had with that guy certainly put it on the leader board. But as far as I’m concerned, if you’re wandering the streets late at night with a horny partner, there’s one place that hits the perfect spot.

Amsterdam sex booths

It stinks in here: sweat and spunk and sorrow. A thousand lonely wanks by a thousand lonely people crouched in this wipe-clean booth. We bundle in, hoping we snuck past the guy on the front desk without him realising there were two of us. We huddle together on the damp bench, push the door closed. There’s a mirror on the door and a TV behind the bench – an awkward way to get round the problem of space.

When you put a Euro in the slot something filthy starts playing, and you watch the reflection in the back of the door while you wank yourself to a climax.

Unless you’re us. If you’re us you smoosh as close as you can together, pushing fingers and hands inside each other’s clothes. Rubbing, kissing, crushing forearms against mouths to prevent any noise. You pause – one beat, two beats – hearing tinny music from outside and the oh-so-dirty shuffling from the booth next door. The rhythmic shuffling of a guy on his own.

I press a button, flip the porn, browsing the five or six available channels to find one that isn’t awful. Two women. Three women. A gaping ass. A gang bang. Mascara-streaked, sobbing, guilt-inducing shit. Ah, better: a fuck. All we really want.

I drop to my knees and start sucking him – the smell of his shower gel mingling with the musky post-jerk-off spunky scent of others. It’s like being in that sex cinema all over again – the ghosts of wankers past linger through the fluids they left behind. He pushes my head down onto his cock, puts another Euro in the slot. Reclines.

I turn around, face squashed against the door of the tiny booth, barely room to move. Yet somehow I manage to get my knickers down just far enough that I can sit on it. Squish. Slick. He lets out a muffled cry and I bite my lip. At least one of us has to remain quiet. Quickly, silently, I fuck him with hard strokes, trying not to touch the walls too much, struggling to keep time as my legs start to tremble with arousal. I slip.

It’s easier on the floor. Squatting in front of the bench I can grip his thighs for balance, feeling the wet lust dripping into my knickers and the twitching of his arousal in my mouth. He puts in another Euro and whispers “please. Please. I’m going to come.” So I suck him harder, I push my head as far down on his cock as it will go so I get to feel the pressure as the jet of spunk hits the back of my throat.

His legs tense up, and he presses the button – flicking quickly through all the channels. Two girls. Three girls. Gaping ass. Gang bang. A montage of porn that he’s no longer really watching, just a visual collage to hammer home the seedy, desperate nature of the booth itself. As he comes in the back of my mouth I close my throat, collecting his spunk there while I breathe in through my nose.

Sweat. Come. Guilt. Sadness. Lust.

All for just three Euros.