While hanging out with friends at an outdoor concert on Friday night, someone asked me if Jill and I were coming to a couples’ Pleasure Party at her house on Saturday. I pleaded ignorance. Ostensibly the evite she sent out for this little gathering ended up in my spam folder because I’m pretty sure I would have noticed had I received it. Come to think of it, I still haven’t checked my spam folder to see if it’s there. And I doubt I ever will.
Our friend spoke in a hushed voice, as hushed as possible without being drowned out by the 1980s cover band. The party was for adults only, she said apologetically. I don’t know whether her sheepish tone was due to the fact that she was acknowledging that Jill and I would have to get a babysitter in order to attend, or whether it was because, possibly for the first time ever, this particular friend was attempting to discuss something with me that is, at best, on the periphery of the sexual realm, and was perhaps worried that I was going to be offended.
I should mention that M, our sometime unicorn, was there; surely the things she knows about me (and Jill) would surprise everyone else present.
We told our friend that we had plans Saturday night, and in fact already had a babysitter lined up. However, since the party began two hours before our plans did, we’d do our best to show up for a bit. But the truth is that the last thing I would ever want to do on a Saturday night – or for that matter a Wednesday afternoon – is attend a party, even one at the home of close friends, for the purpose of listening to some thirty- and fortysomething hens, glasses of pinot in hand, cackle way too loudly at the sight of sex toys proffered from a trunk by a professionally-dressed, neatly-coiffured pitchwoman while their husbands and boyfriends fidget awkwardly in their seats and pretend to be focused on the playing-on-mute Giants game.
Okay, the truth is that I’ve never been to a Pleasure Party. But I’m guessing that my description is accurate. We’ve got nothing against vibrators, obviously; far from it, in fact. Unless this post is the first of ours that you’ve read, you are undoubtedly aware that we have a small fortune tied up in sex toys that see regular usage. But generally speaking, when we’ve bought a sex toy we’ve done so by walking into a brick-and-mortar shop and making the purchase. On occasion we’ve ordered a toy online.
What we’ve never done, however, is gather in a private residence with other people for the purpose of hearing a sales pitch and deciding based on same whether to purchase the We-Vibe 2 or the glass double-ended dildo. Which leads me to believe that the sort of people who purchase their sex toys in such a group setting are those whose confidence isn’t sufficient to walk into their local adult store for fear of being seen and judged. This is extra perplexing considering that, by attending a Pleasure Party it stands to reason that these same people may then be browsing sex toys in the presence of people they actually know.
Understand that, as always, I’m not judging anyone for their sex toy-purchasing habits. My belief is that any means of acquisition short of shoplifting is preferable to going unsatisfied, or worse, turning up one’s nose at masturbation in general. In theory, and with the right attitude, Pleasure Parties could be a step in the right direction toward greater sex positivity in suburban America. But I got the feeling that, given the crowd that had assembled at our friend’s house, the attitude was all wrong.
We walked in an hour after the party started, but at least forty-five minutes before the vibrator lady showed up. The mood in the house was tense and uncomfortable, similar to how it feels when you’re a passenger and you notice that a police car is behind you. It was the sort of paranoia that sets in after a thirty-six-hour weed-and-coffee jag, with everyone cycling mentally through a catalogue of tension-diffusing jokes that they would be too flabbergasted to recite properly.
The conversation shifted between anything-but-sex (not to be confused with butt sex), including but not limited to work (several of the guests were co-workers of our friend), sports (the Niners had a disastrous exhibition game against Houston, and the Giants played simultaneously), and food (by either an unfortunate coincidence or clever but admittedly juvenile planning, the menu included chicken breast, meatballs, and sausage); and at the opposite end of the spectrum, vibrators. Makes sense, considering the nature of the party, but to me it seemed like someone released a pressure valve. What follows are actual snippets of overheard conversation, presented verbatim:
“You know, I want to get another vibrator, but my husband is way too uncomfortable with it.”
“What’s the one that has batteries, a dildo or a vibrator?”
“In college I had a vibrator that was shaped like a huge black dick. My boyfriend said if I ever brought it out around him I would never see it again.”
“Vibrator vibrator my vibrator the vibrator vibrator vibrator.”
We had every intention of getting the fuck gone before the sales pitch began. Not because we’re uncomfortable, though we are certain that that was the assumption among the Vibrator Lady (now capitalized because for all I know that was her fucking name) and the assembled guests. No, we wanted to leave before the Magic Trunk of Dildos was opened because, well, frankly, we didn’t want to be lumped in with the gaggle of vanilla hausfraus and their frazzled significant others for whom this Pleasure Party was a sojourn into taboo waters.
We sat on the sofa, balancing our paper plates precariously on our knees as we tried to cut our chicken breasts and sausages with plastic utensils. As we watched the Vibrator Lady carry in her wares from her car, I imagined myself staying for her presentation, and listening to her stammer cluelessly the first time I asked her if a particular product was phthalate-free. I imagined listening to her promote a product I know to be unsafe, or simply unsatisfying, and calling her on it. Yes, I realize I’m smug. But I’m entitled to be, I think, certainly in that situation.
As she set up the presentation area – a blank expanse of our friend’s living room wall – she told somebody that she still had to go out to the car to get “the pillow”. At first I had no idea what she was talking about. Perhaps it was a giant throw pillow that she was going to place on the hardwood floor so she could sit on it. But when she mentioned that the pillow was needed because all the guys “need extra help”, I figured it was some sort of oversized plush vagina with all the parts clearly visible. I know that such things exist, and while I found her presumptuousness a turn-off, I understand that she’s likely given many such presentations at Pleasure Parties and can probably predict the expertise of any given group. Based on my own initial impression I would assume that the average guest didn’t know the clitoris from a chrysalis, the labia from the labroid, the vulva from a Volvo.
The woman who’s holding the pleasure party has a vagina pillow because all of us guys need “extra help”. That’s cute.
— Jack (and Jill) (@jackandjillcpl) August 19, 2012
As our friend
Mr. AP pointed out, my ability to regularly locate Jill’s G-spot and make her squirt probably qualified me to lead the presentation. I imagined Vibrator Lady producing the pillow, to a chorus of gasps and murmurs. I imagined her pointing out the various parts of the female genitalia, and me raising my hand to ask where the G-spot is located. I imagined her dismissing my question and saying, “The G-spot is actually a myth.”
Yeah, this wasn’t going to be fun for anyone. It wouldn’t be long before my need to prove myself the smartest, most sex-positive person in the room – something I’m now convinced was evident to everyone anyway – brought the party to a screeching halt and challenged our friendship with the hosts. With presumably seconds to spare, we rose from the couch and announced our departure. We said good-bye to our friends and the handful of people with whom we had actually spoken. I told M that if she bought anything I expected a review, or better yet, a demonstration.
So we hustled out of there. I wasn’t concerned over anyone suggesting that we were too squeamish to stick around, or over some overcompensating husband or boyfriend projecting his own insecurity onto me. The truth is, we were heading to a much more exciting party, that being
BiblioBound, a play party held at the
Center for Sex & Culture. We’d missed the opportunity to attend their
Masturbate-a-Thon in May, and having been invited personally by one of the event’s hosts, we weren’t about to miss out a second time.
Fortunately, the environment at our second party of the evening was much more our speed, and despite the fact that we are settled into suburban life we found it well worth the drive out to the City. When we arrived at 9:30 the CSC seemed fairly packed, with guests practicing their ropework, enjoying erotic storytime, admiring the artwork on display in the gallery, and perusing the library’s floor-to-ceiling bookcases.
I should point out that the most renowned feature of the CSC may very well be its expansive library, a unique collection of “
books, magazines, journals, zines, comics, dissertations, works of art, videos, memorabilia, and the personal papers of key members of the community“. My own love of books is familiar to those who know me well; every room in every house in which we’ve ever lived (other than the bathrooms) has contained at least one bookcase (and in most cases several), each jam-packed with a variety of printed literature. To say that the library’s collection is impressive is an understatement of the worst sort. There doesn’t seem to be a word that accurately describes the massive scope of the collection.
By comparison, this is our sex book collection. It takes up three shelves.
Over the course of the evening it became clear that the tall library ladders, so useful for climbing in order to reach that desired tome on the highest shelf, were also perfect perches on which to facilitate spanking and other sexual pursuits. That wasn’t for us, though; with our luck our relative lack of grace would manifest itself in a fall from the ladder at which point we’d be asked to sign liability waivers and our names would be permanently removed from the guest list for all play parties to come. Rightfully so.
No, our public play was largely confined to one of the benches that line a wall of the facility, whereupon I hiked up Jill’s skirt, pulled her panties aside, and fingered her for about half an hour. She was beyond wet to the point of being, for lack of a better word, gushy. I considered heading right for her G-spot, but the CSC has a well-publicized policy prohibiting the exchange of fluids, and while making her squirt wouldn’t constitute an exchange of fluids, exactly, we both recognized that it was probably best to avoid her G-spot altogether, especially as we hadn’t brought any towels.
Nothing against
Power Exchange, the BDSM club where we attended a Halloween party last year and performed for a sizable crowd, but the environment and the atmosphere at the CSC was exactly what we’ve always wanted in a public play space. I’m not trying to compare Power Exchange negatively against the CSC, as we didn’t find it to be an unsafe place to play, but the environment at the CSC felt particularly safe and secure, clean almost to a fault while still being conducive to sexual activity. We found it to be the sort of place where we might take off our clothes and fuck with wild abandon without fear of judgment, or for that matter unwanted advances from aspiring play partners incapable of understanding refusal.
Other than some technical problems with the overhead lights, the facility was generally well-lit. This made it easy for us to enjoy a show when one was offered, whether a demonstration involving a violet wand and a chair that conducted electric current, or a couple enjoying doggy style up against the stacks. Insufficient illumination would have limited or completely prevented reading, mingling, admiring the art in the gallery, as well as the various demonstrations. In addition, the music was for lack of a better word ambient; while there was a variety of musical genres represented, I didn’t once get the impression that I was at a club. Nothing against techno*, but I doubt I would have had a very good time if I was popping Advil every couple hours.
Beyond the aesthetics of the facility, the real draw lay in the sensibilities of our fellow guests who, like us, were sex-positives, members of a community to which we longed to belong. Presumably these were people who could be shown a vibrator and refrain from giggling or pretending they hadn’t noticed it. They were there because of an abiding interest in sex and sexual health that transcends mere horniness**. They were the sort likely to stand up and fight over some asshole politician trying to restrict women’s reproductive rights. And though we conversed with just a few of them, we felt camaraderie.
The event ran from 8:00 pm until 1:00 am. We were there from 9:30 until 12:30. I would have gladly stayed the last half hour but Jill was exhausted, having started work a couple days prior. Add to that the fact that she’d been walking around in her
fuck-me heels all evening, as well as the fact that her panties were drenched, and she was ready to go once she’d recovered from her last orgasm.
We bid farewell to our hosts, thanked them profusely, and expressed genuine interest in returning the next time such a party is held. I snagged
a couple condoms and a sample of lube, while Jill took a Lemonhead from the snack table. Then we headed home and finished what we had begun.
*Okay, everything against techno. Look, it’s just not my thing.
**Not that horniness is “mere” by any means.
