Roving sex trailer Dungeon Crawler is coming to Pittsburgh's streets

On a rainy Pittsburgh afternoon at the end of 2023, in an East End coffee shop full of remote workers wearing bland, expensive leisurewear, Mataya Costello and Bill Souza are remarkable. It’s not only because, when they enter, they pause to regard the space —  assessing the energy and flow (rather than arriving to the counter unaware of themselves, phone in hand, scrolling and muttering their order without looking up) — but because they are dressed dramatically, and as a pair, in a way only those more interested in each others’ authenticity than societal norms can. Their look is denim, dramatic boots, baby pink, and black leather. 

Side by side, Costello and Souza are preparing to share their passions — BDSM, kink, and fetishes — with the city of Pittsburgh and the entire Western Pennsylvania region by way of a rentable mobile sex trailer called Dungeon Crawler.

Inside the cafe, Souza and Costello step to the side, reading the menu at length and with care, then speak to the baristas with respect, and tip appropriately, nearly giddy with anticipation for the pastries and espresso drinks that have become mundane to the crew cut and Arc’teryx jacket crowd. Costello and Souza, I will soon learn, are exquisitely attentive to one another, to whoever else they encounter, and to experience itself. Also, they live out near the airport, where good coffee is hard to find. 

Souza, who wears his hair shaved on the sides and long on top, dyed purple, and flopping to the right, in the style of straight male doms everywhere, insists on buying me a coffee. It is bad journalistic practice to accept, but I do. Costello parts her long hair down the middle, and around her neck she has fastened both a baby-pink play collar with a heart-shaped D-ring in the center, as well as her day collar — a more discreet BDSM flag — in this case, a subtle necklace with a dangling cat charm. It pleases me that she recognizes my wedding ring as serving a similar function. It surprises me that she is here; Souza had made me think he was coming alone, but I soon come to see how much the two of them help each other to be comfortable and present out in the world. Costello’s dress, the same baby pink as the play collar, is printed with repeated images of a stylized capital letter D which ends in the flourish of a whip. Souza designed the dress, and the stylized D is Dungeon Crawler’s logo, which is repeated on Souza cellphone case, and on the business cards he hands me — baby pink again — at the end of our meeting. 

The couple have come to the city to tell me about their new business venture. Dungeon Crawler is a mobile sex dungeon secreted inside an ordinary trailer that can be ordered on demand like a bounce house for a birthday party. “We have a truck, she and I will just hitch it on and drive it out, one hour, two hours,” Souza says. It can be parked discreetly at a curb like a rogue hotel room filled with luxury sex toys, which, if used, become yours, like nips in a minibar. (As at a hotel, patrons will also be welcome to bring their own toys rather than paying house prices.)

Currently, the trailer itself is being built in Indiana, and the interior, which will feature custom sex furniture upholstered in deep purple leather, is being constructed by a specialist wood and leatherworker in Poland. Costello and Souza hope to be ready for a public open house some time in March, and bookings are already live on Dungeon Crawler’s website.

At first glance, Dungeon Crawler might seem quite radical in its support of unusual and sometimes taboo formations of intimacy and desire, depending on the viewer and their vantage point. The mobile dungeon will have a St. Andrew’s Cross, a padded sawhorse, a queen bed with a stockade — so much furniture it seems most inviting to a group, lest the space feel empty.

The company works with a cohort of models who appear at events like munches (BDSM gatherings), queer craft fairs, and happy hours, and who pose for photos together, leaning back into one another, thighs spread, or holding one another by the throat, long fingernails extended and gleaming. These photographs populate Dungeon Crawler’s Instagram page. Costello, who is the lead model, introduced Souza, who is 15 years her senior, to kink after they met at a sex club near Pittsburgh three years ago. Now she lives near the airport with Souza and his legal wife, who moved to Pittsburgh with him when he got a job here nearly 20 years ago at an aerospace and defense company.

Costello and Souza are engaged.

Souza’s wife, Rachel, wasn’t interested in joining him as he explored BDSM and polyamory, but she wanted to support him in doing so. Now, Souza says, the great gift of his life is that there is so much less lying. He, Costello, and his wife walk around the neighborhood holding hands, all together; it’s a relief to have friends over for game night and to know that they all understand his life choices. “It’s easier,” Souza says. “The connections are deeper, you can have more fun even playing a board game because you know these people understand you,”  because those friends are in “the lifestyle” too.

Souza is an older millennial, and he worries about discretion. For Costello, a Gen Z-er who’s always been into kink, Dungeon Crawler is simply part of her life now; she doesn't have friends she’d need to hide herself from. Costello, who stretches in tall, spike-heeled black leather boots while we’re speaking, tells me about strong-arming her mom and stepdad into accepting the unusual relationship structure she’s adopted, about exploring her queerness from a young age, and thinking about her interest in intense sensation through the lens of her own autism.

Souza is more reticent about his own desires and motivations, turning my personal questions into opportunities to outline the ins and outs of the dungeon launch, or pivot towards Costello, who is happy to talk, and to answer logistical questions that aren’t so much in Souza’s wheelhouse. (For those wondering, yes, the dungeon will be available to rent by anyone for any purpose.)

Behind the scenes, Souza writes the copy, finagles the logistics, and finances most of the project, which he began in October after being laid off from his 20-year career. One of the main benefits of Dungeon Crawler’s trailer, he emphasizes, is its invisibility; anyone with $59-$299 to spare, depending on the length of experience desired and towing distance from Pittsburgh, can enjoy a session of two to 20 hours in the dungeon on wheels, almost without leaving the house; Souza and Costello plan to hitch the trailer to the back of their truck and ride it all over Western Pennsylvania. Souza adds that he hopes photographers and models seeking locations for photo shoots, as well as people hoping to have a quickie, will take advantage of the shortest sessions.

Notably, and uniquely, this experience will be available to patrons without their ever having to set foot in an adult bookstore, bathhouse, sex club, or play party — without having to admit desire to anyone beyond an already chosen partner, or set of partners. Sex could happen in a realm of total, almost risk-free privacy, if that is the goal. Whatever a customer’s intentions, it seems essential, particularly to Costello, that the Dungeon Crawler be hospitable and welcoming. Costello is indignant at the idea that there might be some right way to have sex, angry at some of the failures of inclusion she’s witnessed in the kink community: “Some people,” she tells me with a wink, leaning across her latte, “They think that unless you’re getting electrocuted in a bear trap, snorting cum, it’s not kink.” Souza beams as she says this. He appears to admire Costello, her bravery, her clarity around her own worth and desire. Costello is using his money to put that admiration to diligent use, creating a venue in which a person might get electrocuted in a bear trap snorting cum if they so choose, their lover looking on as they risk the pain of being known. Which is to say, Souza is, perhaps, trying to show Pittsburgh how it feels to be with Costello — to give them such an opportunity to tell the people they love what they want, and to have it.

Will all that pleasure stay in the trailer, or spill out? In other words, will Pittsburgh’s private sex trailer remain just that, or does it have the potential to impact the city’s kink scene and foster a deeper sense of inclusion?

I don’t think that’s something either Souza or Costello could tell me, even if I’d asked. But before I’d gotten the chance to, our hour was up, Souza had bussed all our plates, and he was walking Costello out the door, holding it open for her, promising to take her to lunch.