ew Yorkers are accustomed to a lot of human contact. Whether it’s rubbing against a fellow pedestrian on a crowded sidewalk, squeezing into a full elevator or nudging into the last subway seat, people in this city get a lot of touching every day.

But how often do New Yorkers get the type of human touch that they really want and need? Two men think they found a way to satisfy this desire, but the events they host cater to a very different clientele.

Reid Mihalko organizes Cuddle Parties in Soho, urging adults to feel more comfortable with human touch and affection. In rooms padded with pillows and blankets, he brings together groups of people to cuddle, hug and massage each other while enjoying graham crackers and orange juice for a few hours on Sunday afternoons. New Yorkers have been cuddling with Mihalko for over a year.

In the East Village, Master Steelow throws weeknight parties for “kinksters” called Flesh Theater. The parties attract people with fetishes who come to meet new people, talk over drinks and maybe even enjoy a good whipping.

The television series Sex and the City was based around the lusty night life in New York, and on any given night, the mainstream club and bar scene is teeming with unsolicited touching, groping and drunken

Similarities between cuddle and fetish parties may seem as unlikely as similarities between James Taylor and Marilyn Manson, but both parties address desires for human touch. People interviewed this week by NYC24 at both events agreed on one thing: their party of choice offers an atmosphere for getting really, really close in a way that best suits them – far away from critical eyes.

“It’s a place for people to have permission to explore and play as adults, and that’s just not happening anymore, especially around touch,” said Mihalko, 37, who bartends and bounces in Soho to pay the rent. “We’re creating a playground for people to feel safe around welcomed touch and affectionate play.”

Mihalko and Cuddle Party co-founder Marcia Baczynski create a safe space by setting boundaries with a list of 16 rules that make sure the parties don’t become too sexualized. The Cuddle Parties, for the price of $30, allow adults, many of whom said their childhoods were devoid of nurturing touch, to spoon, caress and stroke each other, or simply be held — things that Americans rarely do outside a romantic or familial relationship.

NYC24 asked New Yorkers
how they connect intimately
with their significant others.

Yolanda Johnson, 36, support staff at
Columbia University

"Cuddling, because it makes
it more intimate. You cuddle and talk and you know…
touchy feely.
[Sex and cuddling] have
to go together. There has
to be a combination for the foreplay and being intimate
and being in the mood."

M. Wilson, 41,
librarian

“Cuddler.
I’m very traditional.
You could even say
conservative.
It’s not that I would go
to a Cuddle Party.”