Saturday 21 November 2015

Swinging in the Deep End - Learning Boundaries

One of the events I was most excited for at the Swingset Takes Desire was the High School Play Party. We’ve been to a few swinger events at local clubs, but have not yet met a crew of people who do play parties the way my friends in other cities have described them. Adding the element of the high school games like spin the bottle was a fun twist and we were down to get down. The rules were first bottle match meant chaste mouth kiss, second match was frenching, third match you went into the shower stall near the hot tub for ‘7 minutes in heaven’. Either party had the option to refuse at any time.

The game started with a medium crowd of people, with all of whom I had either already established a sexual relationship or at least an intense flirt that I was happy to have lead somewhere more physical. As the bottle spun, I got the chance to smooch a few people I hadn’t had the chance to put the moves on yet, and it was a fun, light way to have that happen.  The fact that I happened to be sitting in a spot that the bottle favoured due to the uneven tile floor... no complaints from me.

A few more people joined and after some dissatisfaction about the chaste kissing part, and that the game was moving too slowly, it was decided that we needed to up the ante so that the first kiss was frenching and then straight to the shower. It was a still a small enough crowd that I could go for that, and when Flick made my dream come true by frenching one of the other hot guys on a first match, I was in my happy place.  I was so impressed by the guys in the game either kissing one another or opting out, without any ridiculous chest pounding or making a big deal over it.

The group grew larger a few more times and it got to the point where I no longer knew everyone in the crowd. Since we were merely at kissing, I was perfectly happy to give and accept kisses, even if that was essentially my first introduction to someone.

Everything changed when the ‘7 minutes in heaven’ started.

When I looked up to see oral sex happening in the shower as the immediate step after frenching, my stomach dropped and panic began to set in. I am exceptionally naïve to have imagined there would be making out, maybe some grinding as the next step. Admittedly, the people in the shower were people who had already established sexual connections, and so it made complete sense for them to go right to a more advanced level, but it was setting a precedent for those of us watching. Even if the players in heaven had been out of sight, so we only had to wonder what they were up to, it would have been okay, but I felt sick dread, rather than sexy fun as I watched.

If the group had remained with the initial, smaller crew, I likely would have been willing to step out of my comfort zone a bit, but as things progressed, all I could think was that I was either going to have to blow someone I didn’t know/didn’t have chemistry with, or have to reject someone rather publicly and have it be this whole awkward awful thing. I knew that I had every right to say no at anytime to anyone, but it was a different situation than someone approaching me at an event and me saying, ‘no thank you’ to their advances. This would be everyone in a large group watching me say, ‘no thank you’ and potentially humiliating a really delightful person I felt a friendship connection with.  This was a high school play party, but I didn’t want to be the person sending someone back to that terrible time by turning them down in front of all their friends.

I mentioned my fears to the sexy friend in the seat next to me and he was on the same page, so at least I knew I was not alone. I tried to figure out a clever code phrase to say to Flick, but ended up just asking him to come talk to me away from the group. He felt exactly the same way I did, so we decided to opt out and leave the party. We bade our surprised friends goodnight in a rather sudden way and headed back to our room.

Leaving felt like a shitty option too, because we’d been so excited for a night of play with the people we wanted to play with. There are only so many nights at Desire, so missing out on one of them sucked. And we probably could have just gone into the hot tub for a while and popped back in on the party when the dynamic changed, but I knew I’d be overly conscious of the laughter and ruckus from fun and games we were missing out on.  Leaving was the best bad decision we could make.

We spent a couple hours lying in our bed chatting and processing, and trying to figure out what we could have done differently, but couldn’t come up with anything. We were simply out of our depths in the situation and leaving before one of us did something we really regretted was the only call.  I suppose it was a good opportunity to learn a hard boundary for us. We’re just not open to play with people unless we’re really into them, and we’d rather give up the potential sexy connection with people we are into than do something we’d rather not with those we don’t know or feel chemistry with.

Another fucking opportunity for growth, as they say. It would just be nice if doing the right thing actually felt good.

Friday 6 November 2015

Fanfiction Saved My Sex Life

Like most couples in long-term marriages, our sex life has encountered some serious ups and downs--phrasing!--over the course of our 21 years together. We’d been in one of those down slumps approximately 2 years ago when I discovered the rich web of slash fanfiction dedicated to a TV show I was obsessed with at the time. I couldn’t believe there was so much out there. Even more so, I couldn’t believe how much of it was really good.

I started devouring everything I could get my fingers on by a few discovered authors, and gradually I started branching off to more and more writers, reading story after story after story. Sure, I found some terrible drek as well, and plenty of the mediocre, but for the most part, I read a lot of great stories that stimulated both my brain and my lady parts.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I started masturbating like crazy. Total wank fest! The stories were so hot and I was almost always turned on by something. And the more I read and sought out stories, the more I found newer, hotter stories. Then I found the ones that were dirrrrty and I was completely hooked. I could explore kinks I’d secretly held for years, and I was discovering new kinks I’d never considered at an astonishing rate.

Once I’d been reading for a few months, I got the idea for a story of my own, and soon I was madly writing fanfiction as well as reading it. And between all the necessary breaks for frantic self-abuse, I discovered that spending endless hours describing men’s bodies in exquisite, pornographic detail made my husband’s body more and more appealing. All the time I was detailing the texture, weight, scent, and taste of cocks made me want his cock more and more.

Up to that point, I’d bought into the lie women are told about how penises are ugly and silly (I could probably write a paper about the sociological reasons for this lie, about an oppressed group seeking power through ridiculing the symbol of that oppression, but I won’t. You’re not here for that. Bring on the dirty stuff!). Sucking cock had been a chore I did because I loved him, not because I loved it.

Writing extensively about cocksucking changed all that.

As I wrote more words dedicated to hot, messy, sticky, delicious blowjobs, I was discovering their hotness and I suddenly wanted cock in my mouth. On purpose. Cocks are beautiful and sexy and smooth and velvet, and they feel amazing on my tongue, and they smell good, and...well, I’m a fan!

My preferred porn has always been gay male porn, so I don’t know why it was a surprise to me that I was a huge fan of peen. After I started writing slashfic, when I watched porn I began to focus less on the fucking and more on the oral and it was hot. Really fucking hot. Somehow, taking away the power differential that tends to be present in much of the hetero porn I’ve seen, the blowjob became an incredibly sexy act for me (not that power differentials can’t be super-hot in sex when it’s all consensual and hot for everyone involved).

Inspired by my reading, writing, and watching, I started initiating oral on Flick without expectation of it leading to other things, but because I wanted to do it. This, in turn, made him feel sexy and appreciated, and he started initiating more, which made me feel sexy and appreciated. The best kind of positive feedback loop.

Writing (and reading) dirty stories was also an exercise in discovering many unknown kinks, and owning those kinks in the written word helped me claim them in real life as well, which led to conversations with Flick where I revealed some of my deep, dark likes and wants for the first time in a two decade relationship.

By the time our discoveries and reveals came around to wanting to have some sexual adventures together, we’d had 6 months of the best sex we’d had in at least a decade, possibly our entire marriage. At that juncture, we both felt safe to reveal the deepest of the married person’s deep, dark secrets: ‘I want to fuck other people.’

As we pack our bags heading to Desire Resort and Spa with other Swingsetters, I can’t thank those dirty stories enough.