Velvet Rope vs. Club Sesso

I realize that I have written a formal post on New Horizons in Seattle, but that I have not done the same for the clubs in Portland- Velvet Rope and Club Sesso (I did write a description of Sesso for DatingAdvice, but did not explicitly name Sesso in the article. You can read that description here).

So if you are looking to explore a swingers club in Portland, and are trying to decide which club to try out, my bottom line advice is:

Go to both.

They are categorically different clubs and offer different experiences. I have only been to Velvet Rope twice, and Sesso countless times, and so I recognize that I am not the most qualified person to compare and contrast the two (and, I obviously prefer Sesso).

But like I said, the two offer different experiences, so it’s important to try both out, especially if you are new to the swinger scene and don’t know what to expect.

I like to describe Sesso as a sexy night club and VR as your neighborhood bar with a sexy twist. While Sesso has been built to emulate a night club and has a dance floor that you can watch from the upstairs balcony, VR feels like a converted office building and the space has random rooms and spaces. Sesso is loud, especially on the weekends, and VR is quiet. While the crowd and music at Sesso makes it feel like a crowded and social space (because it is), it means that you can’t often have good conversation with people you don’t know, because you have to talk loudly or yell to be heard. VR has an advantage here, because you can actually talk with people. Other compare and contrast characteristics: VR has hot tubs; Sesso doesn’t. VR has a smoking patio; Sesso doesn’t (smokers have to stand outside the front of the building). VR offers a more inclusive feel (they often have drag queens and male strippers perform); Sesso has a more heteronormative feel. VR is cheaper; Sesso is more expensive (and just raised its prices, which I am hating, and is actually a reason we have not been going as much). Both offer food, but Sesso has a full buffet (dinner at first, changed out to breakfast later on), while VR’s offering is much smaller and less appealing. Sesso’s aesthetic is more consistent and new than that in VR, making it feel cleaner to me. In both you are responsible for cleaning up your play areas, but at Sesso volunteers spray down each play surface before new folks use it, while at VR just the sheets are traded out. The crowd at both venues is pretty body-positive- there is a wide range of body shapes and sizes and ages present. At Sesso, though, more people get dressed up (as there is actually a dress code loosely enforced), while at VR it’s much more low-key, clothes-wise. Both play porn, both have non-private orgy spaces, both have rooms with doors that close. Both have condoms everywhere.

I know there is a community that frequents VR that absolutely loves it, and prefers it hands-down to Sesso. I think the fact that it is a more mellow, quiet space and is a smaller core community makes it feel homey for people. I think it is awesome that it offers a more inclusive space for sex-positive people of many identities.

I prefer Sesso overall, though, because I like socializing with people, and there are just more people at Sesso to socialize with. I also really like getting dressed up when I go out, and being around others who get dressed up- it makes the experience feel more sexy and glamorous to me.

Want a handy chart of how I view the two? Here it is:

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Have you been to both clubs? What is your preference? Do you disagree or agree with anything I wrote? Comment! Especially so that others exploring their options can see different perspectives on the two clubs :)

Body Catharsis

We were standing upstairs, and I was watching the women dance in the cage below. I want to do that. But I feel so unattractive. After watching for another 20 minutes or so, I felt an adrenaline surge and my arms and legs start to tingle. I’m going down there. I’ve got to.

I got in the cage with two other women and started dancing. I felt self-conscious. I kept my eyes closed for almost the entire twenty minutes I was in there. It felt like twenty hours. Stay in here, keep going. I even let my dress come up, revealing my neon blue thong. Every so often I pulled my dress back down to cover my ass. Just keep dancing, please.

After a while I started feeling better. Opening my eyes a little more. Taking up more space. Smiling more. Feeling more grounded. And happy. For the rest of the evening, I felt a bit more like myself.

The next day at work I felt pretty good. The crowd and money were slow, but for the most part, I had a fantastic time dancing and watching myself move in the mirrors. I still noticed the extra weight, but it didn’t feel quite as devastating.

Movement is important for me, especially how much I can be in my head. On Friday night at our club, I told J I just can’t get out of my head. It is near impossible for me to shake myself out of obsessive thoughts. Dancing is one of the only escapes I have found.

What do you do for cathartic release?

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Three Ways To Get Into the Lifestyle

My most recent post for DatingAdvice went live today. My editor asked me to write a post “for men” on how to to get into the lifestyle. It reminded me of the question I received a while back from a single man wondering how the same thing; that post is also worth checking out.

Here is the first part; please go read the rest if you are so inclined! :)

“I have had men ask me before about getting into “the lifestyle,” which to me denotes ethical non-monogamy.

The lifestyle is often the phrase used by swingers to talk about the swinging lifestyle, but I’ll expand the use of it here.

How can they get into it without seeming like an uncaring dude? How do they broach the subject with a current partner? How do they find like-minded people?

1. Know yourself.

Get to know your reasons and motivations for exploring non-monogamy. Be brutally honest with yourself.

The only way you will be able to engage in ethical non-monogamy is if you are able to articulate your reasons to yourself and any partners you have. Don’t be embarrassed or scared to admit to yourself what you really want and why.

Do you want to explore particular kinks or fetishes? Do you simply want sexual variety? Do you fall in love easily and want the freedom to love multiple people?

Write down some of the pros and cons you see in having your ideal relationship structure and let it percolate. This is a process, and your desires, needs and wants will change and can change often.

As long as you are able to be honest with yourself, you have taken the first step in communicating what you want to others and making it happen.”

Eroticization of People of Color

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for a while. It’s such a huge topic and I am aware, that as a white woman, I can never do it justice. This also isn’t an exhaustive or academic-type post. This post includes only my personal reflections and perspective.

While I grew up in a pretty white town, it also had a sizable Hispanic and Hmong population. My first, longest, and most serious relationship in high school was with a guy who was of mixed race (Mexican and Filipino). I found our color difference sexy, appealing, intriguing, erotic, exotic. I was attracted to him for many reasons, and I know that his skin color, the shape of his eyes, his hair were all attractive to me because they were different that mine. I am sure that larger cultural messages surrounding the eroticization of people of color had impacted what I found sexy and desirable. There are so many examples of this, they are too many to count and name. And these messages have a long history, from colonization and the white people conquering “exotic” lands. (Black men are dangerous to white women, Black women are either the mammy or Jezebel, Asian women are frequently infantilized and sexualized, etc.) In any case, those attractions have not gone away for me.

I find many Black men (and women) attractive (let’s just stop me there for a minute. Because given where I grew up and where I live now, it’s not like I have large numbers of Black people in my social network. I don’t have a large number to go off of.) Because of our involvement in swinging and hotwifing, I have frequently thought about my personal eroticization of men of color in particular. I don’t know if I have any specific thoughts, except that I find myself wanting to make sure that I am still engaging in the same level of communication with my partners who are of color; I want to make sure I am not treating anyone differently because of their skin color. Because I have frequently lusted after Black men, I am hyper-aware of how I interact with my partners of color versus white partners: how much time do I want to spend talking versus fucking, and am I able to be communicative about my desires? I don’t want to become a white woman who only seeks “big, black cocks” (BBC). (For the record, BBC doesn’t seem to play into my attraction to Black men. It’s the skin color contrast. And, if I’m being totally honest, it also has to do with the fact that Black men are exotic to me in my white bread life.) I don’t want to disregard any potential for more-than-a-fuck-buddy type relationship simply because this partner is Black, and while he is sexy as hell and perfect for my sexual fantasies and desires, I’m not so sure I want more than that with him.

I remember reading this article about a year ago about cuckolding culture, and this piece is relevant to my post:

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“Other sites feature images ranging from semen dripping over wedding bands to ethereal caucasian goddesses standing next to black men in mirrored shades. The race thing is one of cuckolding’s more uncomfortable aspects. On most cuckolding sites, such as blacksonwives.com and myslutwife.com, there is an overwhelming preoccupation with “Mandingos,” or well-endowed black men. Similar racial parameters exist in the swinging community, as highlighted in Details magazine’s March article on “Mandingo parties” — interracial orgies arranged for single black men to have sex with white wives in front of their white husbands. The popularity of the orgies is buttressed by a two-prong fantasy: the white couple’s fetish for a “BBC” (big, black cock), and the Mandingo’s fetish for having sex with rich, white wives. All participants get something out of it, and a Mandingo even argues that interracial orgies are a by-product of multiculturalism and tolerance. But bigotry — and a dose of white guilt — lie at the heart of any racialized fetish: black men, despite their “superior” sexual prowess, are debased and eroticized, and believed to pose less of a threat because the wives would supposedly never date them.

The cucks I interviewed denied having a preference for Mandingos, but would eventually admit some sort of racialized, if not racist, baggage. Bob, a forty-seven-year-old caucasian male, says he found a relationship through an online ad posted by a woman pursuing black bulls. “I emailed her because I was hoping to fall in love with a sexual white woman who does black guys,” he says. “We hooked up and it was really wild.”

“In American cuckold culture,” he adds, “it’s the white couple that has black bulls. There’s a notion that black men are better-endowed, and the whole idea of white men getting off on feeling sexually inferior to black men.”

A Black-Puerto Rican bull I interviewed does not answer white couples’ ads because “they tend to be more rigid in terms of what they look for in a bull,” he says. “If you’re a black bull, you’d better fit the mold of what the stereotypical black guy is. To them, he’s a cornrow-wearing thug or basketball player. They’re more into the fantasy — the big, black Mandingo.”

“Most black men are not offended by the stereotype that they’re well-hung,” he continues. “But what gets on my nerves is when the ad says, ‘We want a gold-toothed, baggy-pants type,’ or, ‘We want you to look like Allen Iverson or Usher.’ You know what? The typical bull on Craigslist is not going to look like Usher, so get over your stereotype and deal with it.”

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My most recent encounter with this topic, in the reverse, went along the lines of:

I was giving a private dance to a Hispanic man from CA, who happens to be from the same area I am from. “White women are the best.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Black women, Hispanic women- they don’t even come close. White women- they’re the sexiest.”

I was speechless. I didn’t know what to say. It was my first intimate sexual encounter with racism. (that I can remember)

It’s one thing to me to notice particular attractions and erotic fantasies based on race. It’s another to classify entire groups of people as “sexy” and “not sexy” based on their race. But then I ask myself: is that what I have done? Can I help it? How do I ensure that I have equitable intimate relationships informed both by a sense of desire and lust and fantasy, and by a sense of social justice and explicit communication?

PS: I am nervous writing and publishing this post. I am aware that this topic (racism, sexualization of people of color) is deep and sensitive. I also think I will never get it quite right. So if you read something that offended you or struck a nerve, please let me know as I want to continue to learn and right my mistakes.

Satisfying Connections & Emotions

I had a really fabulous weekend reconnecting with lovely people!

Not too long ago in counseling, I was telling my therapist that it sort of seemed to be the nature of having an open relationship that I experience loss often: Well we used to date them, and then we didn’t, and then we were friends, and now we haven’t seen them recently, and I miss seeing them. Oh, and I was dating her and it was an amazing experience, and now that relationship is just gone. And they live further away and we just don’t see them very often. Etc. etc. It makes for a dynamic social network, with people changing from new friends to play partners to close friends to romantic partners to close friends to more distant friends and back to close friends. It can be a lot for me to keep up with emotionally.

But this weekend we got to spend time with a lot of the people that I hold extremely close to my heart. Out dinner with some amazing friends that we haven’t spent much time with this fall; catching up, laughing, and eating felt so good. Some social and sexy time with our other sweet friends who we see a couple times a month; comfortable, relaxing, and satisfying social time and group sex always feels connecting for me. And our other besties over for dinner another night: real conversation about our real “stuff” made me feel totally in tune with them once again. Having some real social interactions with the people who I/we have gone through so much with in the past couple of years was deeply needed I think. And so I am so grateful that this weekend opened up and gave me all of that.

Now to switch gears for a minute:

J and I were at our swingers club on Friday (when I/we had social and sexy time), and it was the first time that J played with another person without me. And I was totally fine. I kept scanning myself for negative reactions and emotions, and I simply didn’t have them. There were pieces in place that allowed me to feel so comfortable, and hopeful that he had a good time. Our sweet friends were there, and I am so comfortable with them, that I just folded myself into them. If they hadn’t been there, I think I may have experienced some social anxiety. Also, J’s slight ambivalence about the situation helped me feel completely non-threatened by the person and proposed play. So, it would have been a different story I think if I didn’t have friends to be with and if J had fallen in love with this person at first sight. But as it was, it was totally relaxing to experience the compersive and easy nature of the situation.

This weekend was full of things to make my heart full and grateful: amazing friends, real connection, and pleasant, loving emotions. Happiness. Love. Sexy times. Yummy food.

(Not a bad way to kick off a week that will be full of family- I’m sure I’ll be writing on various things sparked by the holiday coming up. It’s really awesome to have so many positive connections and emotions salient before I embark on family time.)

Zero Sum?

In my previous post about competition among women, I did not talk about the assumption of sexuality as a zero sum game. If I have sex means that you don’t get to, then of course the pursuit of sex and sexual/romantic partners and the policing of sexuality becomes a hyper-vigilant and competitive dance.

Another interesting illustration of this was an email J and I received recently from a couple we had met a week or so ago. We had met them for drinks, and decided that although neither of us were attracted to either of them, we would definitely socialize with them more at our swingers club. They were on a trip to Portland and were only here for another week or so. After a few days and another email to them, they finally got back to us saying that they didn’t want to have an awkward time with us: they were uncomfortable thinking about “just” socializing with us, us introducing them to some of our sexy friends, and then what might happen if they hit it off with our sexy friends… wouldn’t that make us feel bad?

Reading their email made me cringe, laugh, and feel badly for them. To go through life assuming that sex is a zero-sum game is sad to me. I have experienced this in other areas of my life, too: money, good luck, love, happiness. The framework of a zero-sum game doesn’t make me feel good. Ever. It creates anxiety, frantic stress, and sadness.

And the truth is: life is not zero sum. The more we give, the more we get. Sex included.

There are always loving people in the world who will be there for us, but only if we plan on it. Expecting less love and competition in romantic and sexual partners means we will act in accordance with that belief and inevitably have interactions that prove to us that life is a competition. Expecting a flourishing of love and sex, of happiness and real wealth in human interaction and connection, means we will experience all that those connections can offer.

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Follow up: Poly Mecca?

I am so stoked that I was able to co-auther that piece on Portland as a poly mecca- it even was mentioned in Poly in the News (woot woot!).

I shamelessly promoted the piece on my FB open group as well, and I was so glad to read a comment someone in the group made, which went along the lines of: Portland is lovely, but do we really have the numbers to constitute a mecca?

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No, I don’t think so. I think it’s a strong word choice. I’m sure it’s easier to find partners as someone operating from a poly worldview in SF or NYC or Seattle. But, like I mentioned in my comment back to her, for someone (Louisa) who grew up in the UK and living in Sweden to view Portland as a “poly mecca” says something about the buzz Portland receives.

I do think Portland has a pretty amazing sex positive scene, but after the trip J and I took to Seattle, it’s more and more apparent to me that we have a much smaller community than other metro areas. Perhaps, though, we have more sex positive/open/poly/kinky people per vanilla capita than other metro areas. And maybe that’s what makes it so noticeable.

Any other thoughts? For those of you living in Portland: does it feel like a sex positive mecca to you? For those of you living elsewhere: does your community feel like a safe space to be yourself out in public, or not? Why?

What Does Non-Traditional Relationship Utopia Look Like?

I am so excited to announce that I have made another amazing connection- with Louisa Leontiades, of The Husband Swap. (See my post about her book here.) She also hosts several amazing websites: MultipleMatch, The Vagina Times, Postmodern Women, among others. She also writes a blog for the Huffington Post.

I recently co-authored an article with her about Portland as a poly-mecca, which is now live on MultipleMatch and will be published soon on HuffPo (I’ll be announcing that when it happens- I am so excited!)

Definitely go check her stuff out; I am thrilled to be in connection with her!

Here is the beginning of the article about Portland; please go read the rest!

What if you could be openly welcomed with both your lovers at the local chemist… what if coming out as trans, queer or poly was simply one of many choices during adolescence… what if going to a dungeon to play kinky games on a Saturday night was as accepted as going out for a curry… What would the world look like?

Welcome to Poly-Mecca, Portland OregonPowell’s is Portland’s claim to bookstore fame. And it was there that I bought the book which was to change my life. It was – predictably – Sex at Dawn. Because although my partner and I met in Berkeley, California which seems to outsiders to be a liberal, bohemian heaven, we didn’t open our relationship until we had moved to Portland for graduate school. Portland is my idea of Poly-Mecca. A city with the social capital to support my wildest explorations and adventures.

Oregon boasts laws that protect some sexual expression as freedom of speech; thus, walking around naked is legal. Even if most don’t… most of the time ;-)

This also allows for an amazing number of strip clubs to exist. In fact Portland stands as the city with the highest number of strip clubs per capita in the country – most of which are fully nude clubs. Establishments are allowed to have both nudity and alcohol which attracts visitors from neighboring states to enjoy both booze and bums. This also means that Portland has the legal and social infrastructure to support two swingers’ clubs, both of which offer the ability to imbibe and have sex onsite.”

New Horizons Adult Social Club

J and I are in Seattle this weekend for many reasons (one big one is to meet our close sexy friends’ lovers!!!), but we just had to check out the main swingers’ club up here while we were here.

While Sesso in Portland has the traditional night club feel and the Velvet Rope is like your neighborhood bar, New Horizons acts like something in between. A massive house situated on massive grounds means there is a huge amount of space to socialize. The play areas are a relatively small portion of the house, but are reminiscent of the “cool” forts I tried to build when I was little. There are many levels and bunk beds and beds you have to bend down and crawl onto, beds sunken down into the floor. There is a room with fun house mirrors on all sides and the ceiling. A room with a black light and glory holes.

Pluses for this place:

-You are not allowed to wear street clothes in the play areas. We thought this probably makes the transition from socializing to playing more smooth. J also commented that sometimes it is weird to be playing at Sesso with people wearing nice/club-y clothes watching.

-You can be barefoot anywhere. No more sore feet!! So nice.

-You are able to spend the night and stay til the morning, when they serve another hot breakfast (the first is at midnight). This is included in your door fee.

-The dinner party atmosphere sounds neat, as opposed to a raucous night club or dive-y bar.

-The long orientation really helped to build potential new members’ sense of community, self-monitoring, and accountability to rules.

Minuses:

-You must rent towels to use on top of play surfaces (beds, couches, etc.). Staff does not change the sheets or spray down surfaces for members.

-It’s a smaller group of people that utilize the space (on average Saturdays attendance is between 125-150 people. On big parties it can get up to 500).

-The staff here, like at the Velvet Rope, did not specify what the exact rules were for using the hot tubs (and we forgot to ask).

My favorite aspect of this club? Its history.

It is the longest running swingers club. We got to meet one of the founding members, Norbert (his wife, Lorna, passed away not too long ago). The wife directed the club’s founding principle: that it was to be a safe space for women, especially single and solo women. Apparently she was disillusioned with the swinger movement during the 60s and 70s and the traditional key parties in which women were not given much agency in saying “no” to a prospective partner. So she was adamant that this new club be founded on the ability to say “no.” Pretty awesome. Norbert was pretty rad (and he’s almost 83!).

Among the small crowd that was there last night, we were definitely the youngest there (not a new experience). It was also like Sesso, in that the vibe was very straight-couple oriented (during the Speed Dating activity we participated in, men met with women. Men did not meet men and women did not meet women), and there was a lot of couple and marriage privilege: the primary dyad is sacred. In fact, while J and I were sitting in the hot tub, a woman asked if she could put her feet in, and we both said that it was fine. When she realized he and I were together, she was aghast that she “split us up”- by mere inches, mind you. And was adamant that she switch me spots: “We share, we don’t split up couples!” she said. The entire 90 minute orientation and the brief meeting with the founder and his second wife was centered around the importance of communication between the dyad. True, communication between couples is essential to having happy and fun swinging experiences. But I get kind of irked when all we hear about are couples (again though, swinging is very couples-oriented).

And while it is cool that the foundation of this club was built on women’s safety and right to say no, the fact that men are given less ownership over their sexuality and assumed to be treacherous bugs the shit out of me. Women can be just as lecherous. And, while we were at the club last night, I listened to explicit conversation among members that the “double standard” for men and women’s behavior was a-okay. Women can touch men without asking, but vice versa will get the dude kicked out.

I’m glad we checked it out, and I think we’ll probably build the club into our next visit, especially since we can stay the night there. Score! :)

Frustrated Coming

J was fingering me- rubbing my clit, reaching inside my pussy. Kissing my neck. Rubbing furiously. My mind was racing:

Come dammit! COME!! Why am I not coming?? Have I been using my Hitachi too much?! Is my clit calloused? Have I damaged myself? I want J to get me off! I’m a bad partner if I can’t come with my partner! Right?? What’s wrong with me? Come! COME! COME!!
Needless to say, I didn’t come. Talk about performance anxiety. It all felt so good, and yet my body was just aching to come and couldn’t. My legs started twitching and aching and kicking, and I started to cry. I just want to come, I whimpered.

J offered to tell me a story. What do you want to hear about? he asked.

I want to have sex with a girl, I said softly.

First of all, J is the master of dirty talk these days. Second of all, a lot of my masturbation fantasies lately are about women. Long story short, I found out that my clit is not broken after all! (Whew)

J’s story took me to our swingers’ club, where I met a super hot girl. We make eye contact, we start dancing in the cage together, slowly taking finger tips to touch each other. Bam! I came once. And as the story progressed, I came like five or six more times. I don’t even think J finished the story! A testament to his story-telling skills. And just generally him being an amazing lover.

Last night, J and I went to our swingers’ club and while it was kind of a weird vibe there and not very many people in our age cohort, we did end up meeting a new, cute, young couple. The woman and I ended up kissing a little, which I loved. My big mistake?! Not giving them our email address before we left! What the heck?! Who does that? Apparently me, when I’m a little buzzy from both too much wine and kissing a girl.

So, if you’re out there, cute girl, I hope I see you again.