Check out the winners! So exciting!
I love that Ouroburos and Fuck split the Best in Show!
HUMP! 2013 Winners!
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HUMP! 2013
My life is complete! For now! Because we have now been to HUMP! 2013! :D
Here is/was the line-up (the festival is in Portland next weekend):
My favorites/points of interest/etc.:
-I voted The Legend of Gabe Harding as Best Humor (J voted this way as well). I love that it featured male porn stars’ performance issues remedied via a male fluffer. Other favorite “humor” pieces included Mouthpiece, Japanese Catholic Lesbian School Girls in Love, and Raiders of the Lost Arse.
-I voted His as Best Kink. It was fucking spectacular. One, I absolutely adore “Crave You” (Adventure Club remix, obvs); the movement in the piece was beautifully synchronized with the song. Two, rope = sexy. Three, the D/S component to the relationship was represented gorgeously. I can’t say enough lovey things about this one. It gave me shivers. Second runner-up for Best Kink was Fun With Fire. Both J and I enjoyed this one because it showed the real interactions between the couple, including shock, laughter, hesitance, trust, and comfort. It was also pretty great. J voted for Fun With Fire as Best Kink.
-For Best Sex, I voted Sex House. I loved the raunchy, sweaty, drug-filled atmosphere and the desirous, hot sex between the two lesbian couples. Surprising to J and our sexy friends, I also loved Daddy’s Dolls. I thought the lead person was hot as fuck, and the sensuality radiating between her (using female pronouns because I don’t know what is most appropriate) and the other person was super hot for me to watch. I almost voted Ouroboros as Best Sex, but then decided to vote it as Best in Show; J did vote Ouroboros for Best Sex.
-Best in Show: Ouroboros. It was such a well-done piece. After showing the sex scene between two gay men, the film rewinds scene by scene, back to the hallway and the club and the drinking and the dancing and finally back to a scene of one of the men laying down to masturbate to porn featuring him and the man we see him with at the beginning of the film (a little confusing to relate via text, but it was breathtaking).
[Consider the definition of Ouroboros, in case you weren’t aware (from Wikipedia):
“The Ouroboros or Uroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The Ouroboros often symbolize self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things such as the phoenix which operate in cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. It can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished.”
Love it!]
J voted for Raiders of the Lost Arse as Best in Show- he thought it was really clever because of all of the movie and copyright references it made.
Other pieces that are so noteworthy but just didn’t make it into my voting:
-Fuck: Also phenomenal. Slam poetry about fucking narrates over gorgeous images of Black women in the nude. I loved the representation of women of color and the representation of fat women. And, the slam poetry itself was powerful.
-Art Primo: I loved the sensual and slow nature of this one. It reminded me of ArtPorn- the stylized nature reminded me of boudoir photos.
-Inspired Surreality: Yay! We totes know these rockin’, smokin’ porn stars! Well done, you two! Super sexy.
This year’s bonus props were bowling balls, butt plugs, and Hillary Clinton, so there were quite a few pieces with those props. Other common themes: come shots (soooo many come shots this year). And there were two pieces that featured instruments (Mouthpiece and Beethoven’s Stiff). There was also quite a bit of both gay and lesbian sex. And, I was impressed and happy to see the number of pieces that showed condom use.
Yay HUMP! We even got Dan Savage as our MC and I EVEN bought myself a HUMP! shirt. Because I am cool like that ;)
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! :)
Sexy Friends: Meeting People Online and In Person, and Building Community
J and I are natural homebodies. We don’t drink and we never were into the club or bar scene. You can imagine how the past few months have been so different for us given that meeting with new people often involves a dinner out, meeting for “drinks,” (J editing: Shirley Temples!) or going to a sex club. Frankly, we love our new-found social life. We love that we all of a sudden have so many down-to-earth, funny, sexy, open, honest, thoughtful, intelligent and all-around good people to hang out with. Sometimes we feel like there aren’t enough nights in the week to see everyone we want to!
We have corresponded online with probably around 100 couples and met 20 couples in-person initially (at our local club), met with about 15 for drinks/dinner, and have played, to varying degrees, with five couples and two singles. My point is: we love good conversation and intelligent, scintillating encounters just as much as we love awesome play encounters. Creating a community of open people that we can talk to infrequently or on a regular basis has been incredibly important and meaningful for us, especially since we have very few vanilla friends and family that can relate to our experiences, give advice, ask good questions, and reciprocate with similar stories and sentiments. Making good friends with the people that we meet through online and on-site venues has been just as important to us as finding great sex partners. Just because we don’t have play chemistry with everyone we meet and talk to doesn’t mean that we discount those encounters; they are in fact so of the most important as they have given us more to consider and talk about!
We look for sexy friends through Craigslist and websites that cater to “swingers” (Lifestyle Lounge and Swing Lifestyle are the two we use). We also like to meet people through our favorite “swingers” club. We often look for people who are intelligent and educated, funny, who laugh and smile a lot and aren’t afraid to be expressive and open with their emotions, and who are fit and take care of their bodies. We like sharing ourselves and getting to know people who have similar values: openness, straightforward honesty, respect for their bodies and others’ bodies, an eagerness to learn from others and to experience new things. We also look for similar social and political leanings, mainly because we honestly cannot imagine clicking with folks who don’t believe in the equality of marriage or with people who are homophobic or transphobic. This isn’t about the political party that someone identifies with but just about how they treat people, including us, and how they feel others deserve to be treated.
Because we often meet sexy friends through “sexy friend” venues (online and in person), a transition of some kind often needs to be made: will we stay platonic friends who can openly talk about our sexual experiences? Is there good chemistry? Is play an option? What are everyone’s rules, boundaries, and comfort levels? What are the reasons behind these rules? Are they rules that we can agree to follow? Is it our ideal encounter or something that we think will be fun? Saying “no thank you” to potential playmates can be tough, but I think we have both become better at being direct with people to avoid any weird ambiguity. Perhaps even more difficult is learning to ask for what I (and we) want, both in and out of play. Being assertive with what works sexually and platonically is what makes play and get-togethers fun, and is definitely something that we both have gotten better at.
I love that we are building our own little Pacific NW network of sexy friends, and through this blog, we have actually made connections throughout the country! Also a big thank you to our international readers! We get such a kick out of everyone who reads this blog, and we are so excited to continue to build community through open communication and willingness to bring sexual desires, likes, dislikes, fantasies, and kinks further out into the open!