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There is an enduring appeal to a woman talking frankly about sex. Karley Sciortino, the blonde, bold-mouthed, bright-featured writer best known for the blog and TV show Slutever (as well as her Vogue relationship column “Breathless”) has long understood this. In 2007, at 21, she began writing on the internet to document her escapades with the honesty and inhibition that can only come from the assumption that nobody is actually reading. She wrote about hating handjobs, the squalor of the London squat where she slept on the landing between stairs, and the introduction and subsequent deterioration of relations with the “slave” brought in to do the house’s cooking and cleaning—in a kinky, consensual way, naturally.

Word of these salacious little posts quickly spread. VICE got in touch, giving her access to a much wider audience and the eventual TV show. Now, not only could people read about Sciortino’s thoughts on sex, they could now watch her talk about it—and see her practice blowjob tips on a banana, or kiss other beautiful blonde women, or stare at her vulva in a mirror. Sciortino may no longer be in front of the camera much anymore, but the fundamentals of her work haven’t changed. Her Vogue column discusses topics like why we fake orgasms and how to have a good threesome—the kinds of problems that have cropped up in the dating world for decades. Sciortino didn’t invent this combination of confession and advice—before her, for example, we had Dan Savage and Candace Bushnell (and Carrie Bradshaw). But as some of us revisit the indie sleaze-era when she first made her name—and perhaps the skeevy American Apparel-ad sex appeal and pre-#MeToo sex-positive feminism that came with it—there is something about Sciortino's whole deal that feels distinctly of-her-time and somehow still fresh.

Now, with her new podcast Sanctum Unmasked, Sciortino is grappling with some of the most pressing questions about sex, distilled into the ultra-scandalous story of Hollywood’s most famous sex parties. It traces the story of the infamous “elite” sex club Sanctum, known for its orgiastic masquerade parties, and the fact that some members were allegedly charged upwards of $400,000 a year for a membership. It is a distinctly 2013 story, one that takes place in the same sort of sexual landscape that Sciortino got her start by others navigate. Now, rather than telling us exactly what’s happening right now at the extreme ends of the sexual landscape, as her writing usually does, the podcast reflects back upon an era we are still reckoning with.

If it all sounds a little like Eyes Wide Shut, that’s because it was directly inspired by it. The story begins when family man and eventual founder Damon Lawner watched the film and saw an opportunity to climb his way out of nearly a million dollars of debt by turning debauched parties into something that felt ritualistic and exclusive to wealthy Hollywood types. It wasn’t just Kubrick he drew from, either—by developing a fake secret society using language and imagery of the Freemasons, he managed to convince a critical mass of wealthy people to buy in. The parties became larger, more lascivious, and more lucrative for Lawner, but his personal life unraveled with it: Just as he separated from his wife, Sanctum was conducting blood oaths and live auctions of naked women.

It’s this dichotomy that sits at the core of the narrative of the series. Can unrestricted sexual freedom ever be balanced with stability, love, partnership and family? Must they always be at odds?

“I think that is, in a way, kind of relatable,” Sciortino tells me. It’s asking the question: can I have my cake and eat it too? Like, I want the safety and stability of my family, but I also kind of want to fuck 10,000 people. Can I have both? It seems like maybe I can't.”

These are just the sorts of questions Sciortino has considered since the early days of Slutever, and the answers have yet to be found in our present sexual culture. Perhaps the vials of blood and sex auctions have a better place in the past, but it can feel as though we’ve done a complete turn away from hedonism that maybe isn’t serving us, either. “I feel like among millennials growing up, there was a lot more getting blacked out and sleeping with a random stranger happening. It just was so normalized to me—like, everybody was doing that. And now, and I don't think that that's ‘good,’ but then there's the other version now where it feels like people don't have sex at all. Which is better? I think I would prefer getting blacked out and sleeping with a stranger.”

Looking back on these encounters (which Gen Z may or may not be having), she acknowledges that they perhaps weren’t the most fulfilling in terms of pleasure, but they were fulfilling in the totality of the experience. “There was something transgressive about the idea of sex that was kind of anonymous,” she says, and speculates that perhaps it’s lost its edge. “Obviously slut shaming is still a big thing, but I feel like now culturally, the idea around female sexual empowerment or women having multiple partners is not as looked down upon as it was. I wonder if Gen Z has less to resist.”

It’s not as though it’s been that long since talking about polyamory, pony play and VR porn felt fresh and new—again, her TV show with VICE on all these topics only ended in 2019. But something seems to have happened in those last four years that has made introducing these conversations almost passé. We all know what polyamory is at this point. We’re aware that people are using technology in increasingly horny ways. “It’s like, I know people masturbate,” says Sciortino. “You want to have a perspective. What do you have to say about that? That’s what makes me care.”

And Sciortino does have a perspective. She always has, from the early days of her blog. That’s what, she hopes, makes her the right voice for a story like Sanctum Unmasked. It’s not just the story of rich people paying to fuck in a cult-like environment, it’s the story of rich people paying to fuck in a cult-like environment and the turmoils of the man who made it happen, told by the woman who defined the conversation about sex in the 2010s. It’s the story told by the woman who gets recognized at the Western Wall for making out with $10,000 sex dolls, who was platforming sex workers in a time when even the Women’s March excluded them, who would openly blog about wanting to fuck someone and then go and do it.

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Beyond the podcast, Sciortino still navigates her own life with much of the same lens she always has. She’s made a semi-recent return to the world of casual dating, but has made the decision to skip the apps. “I made the decision that I'm not gonna get on dating apps, because I think when you're on them, you like to sit at home and swipe and think that that's the way you're gonna meet people,” she says. “If I’m not on apps, then my orientation toward the world will be fundamentally different. I am going out into the world with the idea that maybe I could meet someone.”

Is that a terribly innovative concept, of looking for attractive people when you enter a new space? Of course not. It’s the same sort of thing with the podcast. Rich people have weird sex and cheat on their wives, what else is new? But they’re both exactly the type of advice and familiar narrative that go overlooked and forgotten, then feels fresh when a voice like Sciortino’s brings it up again. It’s obvious that not everything about our relationship with sex was so liberating and fulfilling in the 2010s—Sanctum Unmasked is a testament to that. Yet still, Sciortino hasn’t given up on what was good about that era. For Sciortino, there continues to be something new to glean from the culture of sex we’ve since turned away from, even in the simplest bits of openness and curiosity that defined it. If we take one bit of advice from her that has shaped her perspective from the start, let it be this: “I feel like people should be scanning rooms for hot people.”

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