The Whole Lesbian Sex Book (41 page)

How to Have Fun at a Sex Party

How can you have a good time at a sex party? Lower your expectations. If your goal for the evening is to have sex with a particular individual or to meet the woman of your dreams, you may go home disappointed. Set a reasonable goal for yourself. For instance, just showing up and watching a scene, or saying hello to one person you don’t know, is a reasonable objective for a first play party.

Play parties can be great places to learn how the principles of negotiation and safer sex work in “real” life. In your everyday life, you might feel awkward asking for sex or turning down an offer of a date. Being surrounded by women who boldly state their erotic interests and preferences gives you support for asking for what
you
want, too. You can practice saying “Would you like to…” and “I’d love to…” and “No, thanks” in an erotic context.

Give yourself permission to seek out any form of pleasure that feels right to you. You can get a foot rub. You can be fed strawberries as you watch women engage in sex. You can try new sexual activities, experiment with roles and costumes, and have sex with six women—if you find willing participants and have the stamina. You can play with women or men, or both, if you so desire.

Don’t do anything that doesn’t feel right to you. Attendance at a pansexual party doesn’t necessarily mean you’re interested in having sex with men—regardless of whether you identify as lesbian or bisexual. In fact, going to a play party doesn’t obligate you to have sex at all. You may be wholeheartedly appreciated as an enthusiastic voyeur.

Don’t want to go to a party alone? So take a friend or lover—just be sure you discuss your expectations for the evening
before
you get to the party. Will you be having sex with each other? With others as well? Is it OK if one of you goes off on her own to engage in sex play? Can the other watch? What happens if one of you wants to leave?

What if you witness a scene so erotically compelling you just
have
to join in? Can you join a group engaged in sex? You can make your presence known
subtly
without interrupting or crowding the scene. Wait until you have an opportunity to make eye contact. Smile. Let the women involved in the scene initiate communication. If there’s no interest, move on. If there is, ask: “May I join you?”

Where to Find Play Parties

You may have to hunt to find a play party if you don’t live in a big city—or if you’re new in town. Your local S/M organization or sex toy boutique is the best place to start when looking for sex parties. If that doesn’t work, get online and ask members of your favorite sexually oriented email discussion list if they know of any parties in your area. (See the resources for suggestions.)

Play Party Etiquette

Don’t…

• Don’t touch anyone without asking permission.

• Don’t crowd scenes. If someone asks you to back off, do so graciously.

• Don’t try to join a scene unless invited.

• Don’t interrupt someone’s scene or play or talk loudly in the play area.

• Don’t gape judgmentally. Don’t snicker.

• Don’t borrow toys without asking.

Do…

• Respect the party rules regarding safer sex—even if you and your date are fluid-bonded. Why? You’ll set a good example and encourage others to practice safer sex.

• Clean up after yourself. Wipe down surfaces. Pick up your used gloves and condoms and dispose of them properly.

• Be generous with your compliments.

• Bring food if the invitation requests it. Real food—homemade bread, veggies and dip, and organic juices—will be appreciated by tired souls at 2 A.M.

• Respect the anonymity of your fellow partygoers. Your erotic tales will be just as spectacular without names or identifying details.

• Thank your host. Giving a sex party is a big risk.

How to Throw a Safer-Sex Party

You can host an erotic event of your own. Be forewarned that hosting a play party will require more work than you probably can anticipate and will stretch your sexual self-confidence—you really
are
putting your desires out there when you host an explicitly sexual event.

What kind of party would you host? An intimate evening of group sex? An S/M play party? An erotic cabaret with strippers, dancing, food, and sex? (You could even organize your event as a fundraiser and raffle off sex toys and erotic DVDs.)

Are sex clubs legal? Will you get arrested for hosting a private play party? A public play party? Is it legal to charge admission for the event? Can you advertise? Laws regulating sex businesses vary from city to city and country to country. In some cities, nudity isn’t legal in an establishment that serves alcohol. In other cities, sex clubs are legal if the patrons purchase memberships. In many places, no such business would be tolerated at all. You can ask the proprietor of a local sex club or gay bathhouse or your local civil liberties organization for information on regulations in your area.

Whom would you like to invite? Will you limit the party to close friends and lovers? Or will you send an invitation to every known lesbian within a 30-mile radius? Talk to your friends as you plan your party. What kind of event would
they
enjoy?

Your invitation can reassure your friends that participating in erotic play is entirely voluntary. Encourage them to bring their favorite food, beverages, and music—people often feel more comfortable at an event if they have a role to play. You can also invite your most gregarious (and least threatening) friends to take shifts at the door.

Don’t forget to remind your guests not to wear scented cosmetics or perfumes if any of your guests may be chemically sensitive. Also let your guests know what kinds of safer-sex supplies you’ll provide. Will you have Lollyes dams? Plastic wrap? Latex gloves? Water-based lube? Will you have latex-free alternatives, like nitrile gloves and polyurethane condoms? Glycerin-free lube? If not, say so—let your guests know that they need to bring these supplies.

Will your space be accessible to disabled guests? Say so on the invitation, and be specific. Don’t say “wheelchair accessible” if there are three steps up to your front door or if your bathroom door isn’t large enough to accommodate a wheelchair. State whether or not your event will be ASL interpreted. What other accessibility issues might you address in your event planning? Here’s a prime opportunity to consult with disabled lesbians and bisexual women in your community. Ask what would make the event feasible for them.

Where will the party be held? Will it be big enough to accommodate your guest list? Is there parking? Public transportation? Make sure the space is adequately heated (or cooled, depending on the season) and
clean.
(There’s nothing worse than grabbing a sticky lube bottle to find it’s coated with dust.) Will you borrow BDSM equipment? Futons? Cover mattresses and other upholstered surfaces with plastic sheets and then with cloth sheets. Make sure you provide plenty of paper towels and trash receptacles.

Carol Queen on Voyeurs and Exhibitionists

Voyeurs who bring love and appreciation to their watching are another species altogether. In a sense, everyone in a public sex environment is both voyeur and exhibitionist—if not, they’d probably prefer to stay home. But dyed-in-the-wool voyeurs are the glue that helps a party cohere. They add sexual energy instead of taking it away; their rapt and watchful presence can turn up the heat on any scene.

If voyeurs add glue, exhibitionists add kindling. Many times, my partner and I have fueled a sluggish, slow-to-start party by placing ourselves in the center of the room and beginning to do something explicit or outrageous. First we attract the voyeurs. The next thing we know, couples and groups have formed all around us. The party has ignited.

You can employ a few tricks to get things rolling. You can “seed” your guest list with a few exhibitionist friends whom you can count on to ignite the rest of the crowd, as Carol Queen suggests, above. You can start the evening with a ritual, erotic performance, or a game, such as passing sex toys around a circle—hands free.

Soon you won’t have to worry about stoking the action—even your most introverted guests will be happily occupied. And you’ll be so busy restocking lube and safer-sex supplies that you’ll hardly have a minute to wonder what’s become of all those shy friends who swore they’d be too nervous to “do” anything.

Suggested Web Link

SOCIETY FOR HUMAN SEXUALITY—ENJOYING AND HOSTING EROTIC EVENTS

www.sexuality.org/ehee.html

SOURCE OF SIDEBAR

Carol Queen,
Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture
(Cleis Press, 2002), 71.

chapter seventeen

Sex Toys and Accoutrements

My silicone dildo has wonderful ridges that rub my G-spot just the right way. If I was stuck on a deserted island, this is the one sex toy I would take with me.

ONCE UPON A TIME there were few places to buy sex toys other than porn shops catering primarily to men. In those days, sex toys were hardly designed with lesbians in mind. Marketed as novelty items, many toys were quite shoddy. Along with silly floppy dildos, you could find battery-operated vibrators so cheaply made they’d land in the trash quicker than you could say “preorgasmic.” Of course, classic porn shops are still around, and while you may get a kick out of the corny displays of toys in lurid packaging, many women find these shops truly awful.

Now you can find women-friendly sex toy boutiques from coast to coast in the U.S. and Canada, and in some cities in the U.K. and Europe: Good Vibrations in San Francisco and Berkeley; Toys in Babeland in New York and Seattle; Grand Opening! in Los Angeles and Brookline, Massachusetts; Smitten Kitten in Minneapolis; Early to Bed in Chicago; A Woman’s Touch in Madison; Forbidden Fruit in Austin; Good for Her in Toronto; Come as You Are in Toronto and Montreal; Womyn’s Ware in Vancouver; Sh! in London; Tiberius in Vienna, and many more.

Quite a few are staffed by lesbian and bisexual women, as well as gay men and queers of all genders and proclivities. Some specialize in S/M and fetish gear, others in women’s sexual education. A few even have started branding their own lines of lubricants, toys, and other supplies. (A review of sex toy store websites will reveal toys turning up with different names on different sites, which can complicate comparison shopping.)

Many sex toy stores offer educational programming, from evening presentations to day-long workshops and ongoing classes. Check the resources chapter for stores with websites. You’ll find their calendars of events online.

Online sex toy sources seem to multiply daily, some with quite elaborate websites. You should have no trouble finding retail and mail-order sources for well-made, attractive dildos, vibrators, harnesses, and other toys designed with you in mind. You can get accurate information and helpful advice, along with books, magazines, videos, toys, fetish gear, and safer-sex supplies.

What are the most popular toys and accoutrements among lesbian and bisexual women customers of sex toy boutiques? Happily, women’s preferences are so varied and so individual that sex toy popularity contests are worthless.
So what
if seven out of ten lesbians prefer that 8-inch silicone wonder—all that matters is whether it feels good to
you
. Still, a casual survey of toy saleswomen yields some interesting information.

The biggest recent innovations in sex toys are in materials (Cyberskin dildos, silicone lubes, glycerin-free lubes), in design (beautifully proportioned, high-end—pardon the pun—chrome and acrylic butt plugs and dildos), and in function (Fukuoku finger vibes, remote-control vibrators, and other techie delights).

Many women say Cyberskin (also called softskin) feels just like skin. Made from a mixture of silicone and PVC (polyvinyl chloride), Cyberskin dildos feature a hard core with a softer outer layer. “Not only does Cyberskin quickly warm to body temperature, it’s also very resilient—it can be stretched and pulled and will ‘remember’ its original shape,” say the folks at Good Vibrations in San Francisco.
¹

“When Cyber Cock landed on our shelves,” say the women of Come As You Are in Toronto, “it quickly became the must-have dildo. Its hyper-realistic look and feel made it the centerpiece of at least one dyke party we heard about. And the stampede began.”
²

The downside of Cyberskin is that it gets dirty—fast! The slightly tacky surface attracts lint and other particles of dirt floating about your play space. That means that you really have to clean Cyberskin toys thoroughly after use—or use condoms, though a condom will cover up the skinlike feel of the material. Since Cyberskin contains silicone, avoid use with silicone lube. (See “How to Care for Your Toys,” below.)

Silicone lubricants like Eros Bodyglide, ID Millennium, and Wet Platinum are remarkably silky. They’re slipperier than water-based lubes. They don’t dry up or get sticky. They’re never stringy. They can be used for massage, a plus when erotic massage includes the entire body. No wonder they’ve become so popular. They’re condom compatible, too; they contain no oils and won’t destroy latex. Since they
do
last and last, you’ll have to use soap and water to wash them off—which is why I don’t recommend them for vaginal penetration. Don’t use silicone lube with silicone toys—the silicone in the lube may bond with the silicone in your toy, disfiguring your dildo. Silicone lubes are much more expensive than water-based lubes—but a little of it goes a long way.