Human Condition: A naughty New Year...

For some energetic folk, New Year's Eve is an excuse for positively Bacchanalian excess. Michelle Olley, formerly of fetish mag 'Skin Two', reveals all

So, what are you doing New Year's Eve? Opting out in front of the TV with the last of the mince pies? Perish the thought! This is your last chance to party before months of work, cold weather, dieting and exercise - don't you owe it to yourself to go a little crazy one last time this holiday? Maybe get a little saucy, too? It's the perfect evening for it...

On New Year's Eve, you may want to be with your friends, but spending the final minutes of the year squashed on a dance floor with a bunch of strangers has its advantages, if they are cute. You can be a bit cheeky when the clock strikes - any lust object you lunge for is bound to reciprocate, it would be churlish not to.

Lots of midnight disco kisses go some way beyond a peck on the cheek, some turning into toilet encounters of the third kind, though not many people, my enquiries suggest, go home with someone they met in the first minutes of the new year - their auld acquaintances usually drag them off into that Nineties netherworld of after-parties, late-night drinking dens and "chill outs". Maybe people are just too busy running around snogging each other to actually chat each other up properly.

But there are exceptions. Neil, an old friend, once picked a guy up in Heaven on New Year's Eve. They went back to Neil's, did the business, then the guy fell asleep. Neil, still full of energy, decided he'd actually rather be with his friends, so, at 4am he left the flat, locking the door behind him, and went to a chill out a couple of miles away. He was having a lovely time until, around midday, he remembered the guy locked in his flat. When he got home, his flatmate was somewhat bemused to report that he had opened the door that morning to to find a strange, startled man behind it who made a run for it, sharpish. Not your typical case of New Year's gay abandon...

Fetish clubs are cute at this time of year. Last year's mini-Submission party saw many of the scene's die-hards dropping their usual kinky cool act and, come midnight, running round the dance floor, kissing every slave, mistress, tranny and fashion bunny around. Snogging and S&M? Whatever next? They are normally a bit coy, the fetish lot. Eyes do occasionally meet across a crowded dungeon, but despite the raunchy gear, and the occasional public spanking, it's more of a socialising scene.

But saucy nonsense can still happen. I remember one New Year fetish club where toilet sex became something of an Olympic sport. A guy and girl, who shall remain nameless, decided to lay in wait in a toilet cubicle for any unsuspecting but willing flesh that should pass by, luring them in with the promise of boy/girl titillation, piercings to jingle and strawberry- flavoured condoms.

At one point there were five of them in there - one on the bowl, one on the cistern and three wriggling, giggling and jingling around them - and they still peered over the next cubicle to ask a startled woman if she'd like to join them. It was, as the instigator put it, "Like one of those student games where you try to get as many people as you can into a Mini. I didn't know who was doing what to whom, frankly, but it was great!" When they finally fell out of there, clothes in disarray, one girl with her red plastic dress still pushed above her waist, knickers a distant memory, it was only to run back into the club and find more recruits.

But it's at house parties where flirty, dirty fun comes into its own, especially with the fetish crowd. It was at a New Year's Eve house party that I first saw someone get fisted (I stumbled into the 'scene' - but they were very cool about it), and that a nice lady showed me what silicone boobs felt like (hard, weird and kind of floaty).

This year, some friends of mine are throwing a Splosh! party. Splosh is a speciality magazine for "lovers of messy fun" - custard pies, food fights and the like. The plan is to install a large paddling pool in one room for same-sex mud-wrestling (the winner will be the first one to pull off their opponent's pants). Guests, I suspect, will be expected to wear something waterproof. Can't wait! Now, if I could just find a pair of high-heeled wellies in the sales...