I have a secret that I am very ashamed of, but I’m ready to come clean and share it with you. Despite my image as a carefree, wanton sexpert… I am pretty vanilla when it comes to sex parties/orgies.
I know what you’re thinking: Zoe, that’s crazy, you’re an ex-party girl-burning-man-addict! You must have had multiple experiences of varying degrees of spice, at sex parties – and you are right, but I didn’t like it. Though I am far from traditional in any of my beliefs in any aspect of my life, I know for certain that I don’t want to be an apple-mouthed pig on a spit roast for ten people to feast on. There, I said it.
The problem is, in the rapidly aging NYC social scene I’m part of, the people who haven’t gotten married or had children yet are such profesh party people that they are becoming more and more jaded, leaving the party organizers scrambling to find anything that could possibly titillate them. So more and more events I go to just to dance at, are adding “sexy” elements: cuddle puddle sections, Shibari performers, roaming dominatrixes and flogging stations. For those of you not in the know, this kind of cuddle puddle heavy play parties are places that should be full of pillows and Teddy Ruxpins, but instead smells of old dick soup with a side of sadness.
What confuses me, even more, are the cult of the super sexy, eloquent, educated people that are experts at convincing me that I’m not sexually enlightened if I don’t participate in their Illuminati initiation ceremonies. Drop dead gorgeous women wearing what appears to be a couple shreds of black leather held together with a safety pin and sheer determination hand you glasses of punch with spirals in their eyes, their dulcet voices cooing softly that you should “relax,” and “go with the flow.” Listen, sexy zombie, if I could, I would! I promise you.
If something feels good to me I usually have to go to a support group to stop it. But my problems are prismatic and mostly centered around the fact that I hate sharing, and watching other people have sex makes my tummy angry and makes me contemplate sewing up all my holes to make certain this could ever happen to me.
My most memorable failed attempt to be a super cool, enlightened, rockstar sex journalist, was when I went to go check out the Burning Man orgy dome. My first problem was semantics based because the “dome” is not a dome, it’s a series of interconnected army tents, all bathed in creepy crimson light; with hundreds of twin mattresses haphazardly thrown about the floor. When you get there you have to take a deli counter slip of paper with a number on it and then wait for approximately 139 years. By the time you actually get in the orgy tents, I had had enough time to sober up and really think about what I was about to do (mistake).
Walking through the tents makes you understand what the Bible was always preaching against. Devil-eyed gentleman with appendages that looked like carrots at a Chernobyl farmers markets gyrating on top of a plethora of snake-eyed women. My ability to hyper-focus on the variance in labia despite the lighting, was a real surprise. From the angriest little hermit crabs, to full-on Katz’s pastrami sandwiches, (at least it wasn’t a Reuben) I couldn’t believe what actual group sex looked like. I don’t want to body shame anyone, because everyone’s body is beautiful in its own way; that is until you see it get devoured by a swarm of human piranhas on extasy, everyone’s mouths moving around like a camel chewing gum.
I ended up being pulled in a pile of pixie chicks wearing debilitated fairy wings who all probably should have had tramp stamps that said “Mercury in retrograde made me do it,” and proceeded to have a very short, but terrible no good very bad time because I felt like I was trapped in an outtake from a 2002 Girls Gone Wild Spring Break video.
It was noisy and boring because there’s one gaping problem when you have a bunch of bi-curious burner chicks baked on drugs…no one is actually gay enough to bite the bullet and eat the two-day old lycra covered party vag that’s been marinating in the sun and sand. I assume you have to really love pussy to do that. Have you ever seen straight ladies try to finger blast other straight ladies? It’s god damn hilarious. #blindleadingtheblind
Also, are Melissa Ethridge and I the only ones who must be the center of attention at all times during sexy time? I’m concerned that I may set a bitch on fire that was getting more attention than me. How do people not get jealous? I would cut someone so fast, ending up in a jail cell, singing Johnny Cash alone to myself.
I bet it was fun in the 70s when people had pure drugs being carried in briefcases by badass Pan Am stewardess, no STDs, and great orgy music on pressed vinyl. But these days where the drugs have had a Flamenco dancer level of stomping, Adam Levine, and Ed Sheehan are celebrated musicians, and one out of four people have a stash of Valtrex in their bathroom cabinet – what’s the fucking point?
I mean fine, maybe I’m a Jewy worry-wort who is terrified of STDs and hates the idea of bros who are not rubbing my toes after a long night of dancing being able to see my ovaries. Shouldn’t they have to earn that?
Am I a prude? Maybe. I certainly don’t feel like it. It’s so hard to know anymore what the barometer of normal sexual behavior is. Furthermore, what my boundaries are within them, and whether or not I always feel comfortable communicating them to others, and myself.
I want to try everything, I want to be the kind of girl that could lay on an Aztec alter and be sacrificed to the gods, letting the masses feast on my innards. But I can’t do it. I can’t even get close to it without turning into a weird hybrid of Larry David and Mel Brooks, nervously oversharing, making observations about how expensive the backsplash tile of the bathroom looked. I occurs to me that I’m all talk, and as a super curious sex journalist, this is particularly painful.
Let me be clear. If you, unlike me, do not have a tiny Woody Allen spermatozoa that lives on your right shoulder whispering statistics about STDS into your ear; sex parties can be really fun! Imagine the fun of thousands of termite people munching your box like it’s made out of wet pine…Sadly, it’s just not for me. I wish I could do it, because in my mind I am this sexually fluid, open-minded sex goddess ready and willing to participate in any and all adventures. In reality, I’m like a leaf shaking in a hurricane whenever I have to leave my comfort zones and try this fucking fad. For now, I’m gonna stick to wintery Saturday nights with N.P.R (hot jazz Saturday nights!) A stack of old New Yorkers, a glass of full-bodied red and my sweater-clad elderly dog. I’m happy to say that I think the days of me pretending to be a deviant sex goddess are behind me…but I’ll probably still show up to your party.