The Ethical Slut (36 page)

San Francisco and many other major cities boast a fair number of party houses, where one or two stories of a building have been dedicated to social areas and play rooms for partying. Party houses may rent space to private groups, who might host a party once a month or so for their particular guest list.

The first group sex parties that Dossie attended were held in a communal flat in San Francisco, under the presiding genius of Betty Dodson. Those who lived there were all dedicated to feminism, gay liberation, and sexual liberation, and their commune was a conscious experiment to radically change the conditions in which we can enjoy sex. They took out all the doors and made the loft space upstairs into one unbroken room by getting rid of the furniture. On a typical day, you could find several people on the deck sunbathing nude, some others organizing dinner, two more playing chess, a couple fucking, and another person across the room vibrating her way to her own orgasm. There were larger parties three or four times a year, full of people making love in groups, in twos, or singly, with lots of massage, and tantric practitioners chanting “Ommmm” in tune with the ever-present hum of vibrators. This space and what happened in it were private, available to the friends and lovers of the six or seven people who lived there.

Public sex environments, whether they’re large public clubs or small party houses, have the common function of providing an agreeable space in which you can be sexual. Although the decor and furnishings of group sex environments vary as widely as the human sexual imagination, there are basics that you will find in most party spaces. There will be a door person to check you in, and you may be asked to sign a waiver of liability. There will be a social area, with places to sit and talk and meet people, usually with a small buffet of snacks and beverages. Sex does not usually take place in the social area, so if you’re feeling shy you can hang out there until you work up your courage.
There will be lockers or coat racks or shelves or some place to put your street clothes, then either change into party costume or simply disrobe. Some parties are mostly naked, others feature a dazzling array of costumes for every sexual fantasy. There will be provisions for cleanliness, including bathrooms and showers. Then there will be the play room or rooms.

Play rooms vary from tiny cubicles, often set up in mazes, with a small bed just big enough to fuck on, to large rooms with mirrored walls and upholstered floors for puppy piles, group gropes, and other orgiastic activities. There may be hot tubs, steam rooms, and gardens for you to cruise and relax in. There may be an area for dancing. There is almost always music with a very strong beat, to wake up your natural rhythm and to give a sense of aural privacy so you won’t be distracted by your neighbor’s heavy breathing or squeals of delight. The lights will be low, and often red or orange, so we all can look a little tan and perhaps a little sexier. There may be rooms with furniture imaginatively designed to have sex on, like medical examining tables or slings, mirrored beds or dungeons for S/M fantasies, or perhaps a giant waterbed for those who like to make waves.

In recent years, hotels that host conferences for various groups celebrating their lifestyles have been allowing party spaces, even dungeons, to be built in their ballrooms for the guests to enjoy. These parties are run by the conference and usually staffed by helpful conference volunteers, with cooperation from the hotel staff to keep the space private. Hotels tend to like our conferences—we don’t drink too much, we are polite to the staff, and we wear great outfits. Talk about the radical political act of deprivatizing sex! Major hotel chains now have policies about play parties, policies that support us. Yay.

Play party spaces tend to form communities. People try out the various parties in their area and usually return to one or two groups that they find congenial. As people get to know each other and share the special intimacy of sexual connection, they often become friends and form extended families. It is not unusual at all to find a sex party club hosting a benefit for a member who has had an accident or a major illness. These are communities, and communities take care of their own.

We know they didn’t teach you in school how to behave at an orgy, and we bet your mother didn’t teach you either.

There is a particular etiquette needed for public sex environments, since everyone in them has let down some of their customary boundaries in order to get closer to each other. Social boundaries usually serve the purpose of keeping people at a predictable distance, so we all feel safe in our own personal space. Group sex poses the challenge of figuring out how to feel safe and comfortable while getting up close and very intimate with a whole bunch of presumably nice, sexy people—so new boundaries must be developed, learned, and respected so that everyone can feel safe enough to play.

Many party houses show you a list of rules as you come in or post them on the wall. Read them. They will make sense. Most places specify the level of safer-sex precautions they require, and provide condoms, rubber gloves, lubricants, dental dams, and so on. Even if you and your partner are fluid-bonded, you may be asked, or feel it is polite, to use latex barriers in a public environment. Ethical sluts obey the rules of the parties they choose to attend.

Responsibility in voyeurism is a must. You may watch what people do in public places, but always from a respectful distance. If the participants are aware of your presence, you are too close. Whether or not it is okay to masturbate while watching varies from place to place, but it’s always polite to keep your own excitement discreet enough that you don’t distract the good folks who are putting on such a nice show—they are probably not doing it for you, anyway. Also be aware that when you are close to people who are playing, they can hear you—this is not an appropriate place to tell your friend all about how awful your boss is or about your recent experiences at the proctologist.

The boundary between social/talk space and play space is very important—when you enter play space, you enter into a different state of consciousness that tends to get you out of your intellect and into your body very quickly. Too much talking in play space can yank you back into everyday, verbal, nonsexual awareness.

Cruising is active but must not be intrusive. Ideally, a respectful request receives a respectful response, which means it’s okay to ask, and
if the answer is “no, thank you,” that is okay too. Remember, people who come to orgies are pretty sophisticated, and they are here because they know what they want. If that person you found attractive doesn’t want to play with you right now, take it easy and find someone else. Pestering anyone at a sex party is unspeakably rude and will quickly earn you an invitation to the outside world.

Cruising at group sex parties is not that different from elsewhere, although perhaps more honest and to the point. Usually, you start with introducing yourself as a person: “Hi, I’m Dick, what’s your name?” is way preferable to “Hi, do you like my big dick?” People will talk for a bit, flirt a little, and then ask quite directly, “Would you like to play with me?” When the answer is yes, negotiation follows: “What do you like to do? Is there anything you don’t like? Let’s check that we both mean the same thing by safer sex, and by the way, I have this fantasy …”

Cruising by body language also can work, as long as you are willing to be relaxed about any misunderstandings that may arise. We believe that it is important to learn how to put what you want into words, so you have an option for absolutely clear communication. Then you can pursue nonverbal cruising if you like it, knowing your good communication skills will back you up if you need them.

Body language is about catching someone’s eye, exchanging a smile, moving your body closer—always checking the response. If you catch someone’s eye and they turn away, well, there’s your answer. Don’t take it personally; maybe they have another commitment, maybe they’re just not in the mood—people have as many reasons for
not
wanting to play as they do for wanting to play. If you move into someone’s personal space and they move closer, there’s another answer. It helps to initiate touch on a relatively neutral part of the body—a shoulder, a hand—and again, does the person move away, or closer? If they freeze, it’s probably a good idea to communicate with words.

We live in a society where people learn some pretty warped ideas about sex. Women learn that they are not supposed to be sexual without
falling in love, men learn that sex is a commodity that you get from a woman, men may even learn that women themselves are commodities. Group sex only works when everybody is acknowledged as a person. Nobody likes being treated like a thing. To avoid such problems, most group sex environments that include both men and women restrict the number of single men who are invited or insist that no man is welcome without a female escort. These requirements are a sad last resort for dealing with an unpleasant reality, and we quite agree that it is unfair that men of good will get penalized for the intrusive behavior of men who evidently don’t know any better. But that’s how it is, and the only way we are going to change it is to work on our own behavior and teach our brothers and sisters what we learn. Pansexual environments that make a point of including a variety of people—gay, straight, bi, transgendered—tend to inspire more respect for all, and in such environments we get to learn from a lot of people whose lives and sexualities may be different from our own.

Cruising is different by gender, and those differences become very visible when you compare gay men’s environments to lesbian orgies and see how they are similar to and different from hetero or bisexual groups. Gay men seem to feel safer with anonymous sex, and gay male cruising at baths or clubs is often nonverbal. One man might catch another’s eye, smile, walk across the room, touch a shoulder, and then embrace, with little or no verbal communication. Lesbians are often more cautious and tend to talk for a while before moving into the play room and getting down.

Women in all group sex environments tend to be less open than men to anonymous sex and to prefer some communication and personal connection first. When a woman seeks to realize a fantasy of anonymous sex with a number of people, often one of her friends or lovers will act as emcee, doing traffic control and whispering into a stranger’s ear, “She doesn’t like anything that tickles” or “I think she’d like it if you fucked harder.” The emcee takes the responsibility for safety and limit setting so the star can feel utterly free. This respect for caution is probably because women have had serious reasons to feel less than safe around sex with strangers and need some support to feel safe enough to let down their guard. There are no rights and wrongs to this situation—or what wrong there is exists in our history, which
we can’t very well change. What is important is that everyone—male, female, or transgendered; straight, bi, or gay—has a right to feel safe in order to get free to enjoy sex.

Consent is an absolute requirement. Naive people sometimes assume that when two or three or four people are already having sex, it is okay to just join in and start fondling somebody. Well, it isn’t, because you didn’t ask and because you don’t know what these people want or what their limits are. So you might do the wrong thing, and the people you tried to join will have to stop whatever they are having so much fun doing to deal with you, and they will be justifiably angry. At you.

How are you going to get consent from people in the middle of a hot fuck? Tap them on the shoulder and say, “Will you please stop a moment so I can ask if I can join you?” There is just about no way to join a sexual scene that has already started unless you are already lovers with all the people involved, and even then you should be careful. When we wonder if it’s okay to join friends of ours who have already begun to play, we usually watch from a respectful distance till somebody catches our eye and either beckons us over or doesn’t. Respect for boundaries, as we have said before, is mandatory if everyone is going to feel safe enough to play freely and without constraint. Don’t be the person who makes the environment unsafe.

If you are playing at a party and someone invades your space, you are quite right to tell that person to move away. It is also appropriate to let your host know about intrusive people and pushy come-ons—party hosts develop skills to talk with people about appropriate behavior and explain why the etiquette is as it is, and if the person will not learn, the host has the power to remove that person from the guest list.

Most people approach their first group sex party in a mental maelstrom of fears, fantasies, and wild expectations about what might or, worse yet, might not happen. We strongly recommend that you get a grip on yourself, acknowledge that you actually don’t know what is going to happen, and go to the party with the expectation that you will be proud
of yourself if you manage to walk in the door. If you stay for an hour and watch, you get a gold star. If you manage to introduce yourself to someone and hold a conversation, give yourself a medal of honor.

Going to an orgy is very challenging. Expect to be nervous. Expect to worry. Expect a fashion crisis, and allow at least two hours to get dressed. Helpful hint: build your outfit from fabrics that feel sensual—silk, leather, latex—so you feel sensuous too. Avoid fragile antiques or pricey designer clothes if you want to fuck in them. Dress to feel hot, look good, and be comfortable—it’s bad enough to have your stomach churning, you don’t need your shoes pinching.

Many parties specify when doors are open and when they’re closed, because otherwise all these nervous people will arrive late after spending hours working up their courage and their outfits, and the party hosts will never get any time to play.

If this is your first party, take it easy on yourself. Promise yourself, and each other, that you will leave if either one of you gets too uncomfortable. Establish a signal, perhaps a hand on the elbow, to let your partner know that you need a private place to talk or that you need support. Use another signal—Janet uses “Calgon,” from the old TV commercials that said “Calgon, take me away”—to communicate to your partner that you’d like to leave soon, with the understanding that a partner who’s happily cruising or flirting or fooling around may need some time to wrap up whatever’s going on so that you can leave.