Sorry to have left you so suddenly...rude, I realize, but the open house was over and I wanted to come home. I'm so fucking tired lately and dragging my ass around town, propping myself up with carbs which is only doing a favor for the companies that make these carbs...but leaving you hanging mid-sex, or rather, pre-sex, is no nice place to be.
So, when I left you last, I was drinking at a hotel bar with Adam who was less interested in hearing my neurosis and calming me and more interested in telling me how his exercise class is the NUMBER ONE class in Beverly Hills on a Saturday morning. If I'd let him go on, he'd tell me about all the women he was fucking in the class, but I cut the conversation to his family and his trip back to New York. I love Adam to death and he was definitely the right choice as a escort to this party, but I really wanted to bathe in my anxiety for just a few minutes and not hear about all the wanton sex goddesses in the gym who were groping him through spandex. I never got a chance, which was probably just as well, and before long, we were off.
I'd been to the venue some years before with friends where I would meet someone who I would later date (and have a rather unpretty breakup with just a few short months later). I liked it--an open area, loungelike and with an open outdoor space that was well utilized for this party. The soiree was called for 10pm, but the hostess informed me that no one would show up until 11pm, but I was free to get there any time I liked. Did I mention that she smartly asked me to be the "Guest Erotic Writer"? She knew about my history with writing porn, but I have no idea what she was expecting.
Anyway, the invitation to the event enclosed a password. I half-expected to be asked for it and rehearsed it in my head a few times and double checked my blackberry. I was in. I was cool. I had the password. I also had sentences like, "Oh, I was invited by ______. We had lunch last week and she asked me to come and be the guest writer." This statement--this pointed name dropping required a hand motion to accompany it, as though to say that hostesses of unusual parties were always lunching with me and giving me important jobs to do at their parties. This statement, and gesture was also meant to say, that I could talk about sex. That I had been around, so please keep your little 'trying to impress me' to yourself.
Being a good 12-stepper, I also opted to use the adage to 'act as if'. I was going to act as if I was comfortable, confident, willing and open--not that I'm not those things, kinda sort of--but, I needed some extra help. The room was barren and Adam and I got our drink on, again. We scanned for attractive people and were unsuccessful. There was an Asian dancer in a platinum blonde wing, and red bra and matching thong dancing on a cube by the bar and it was mundane and she looked like she might be having a better time if she were sitting on a couch, plucking out her pubic hairs. She was followed by a short and thick Colombian man named Francisco who was eyeing the women and later introduced himself to me. I learned later that Francisco got into this gig when a friend tipped him off to it, and seems to be popular among the women for accepting blow jobs. I was, er...unimpressed. I settled into the drinks, and watching Adam make conversation with the couple next to us. I hadn't given up.
It's hard, at parties, to suggest to a man that you are with that you, 'do a loop.' If you go to a party with a girlfriend, they will suggest walking around, but Adam seemed to like to stay glued to the bar and since there was no reason to walk around, we stayed. Uneasy couples were sitting on the couches, watching the bored Asian girl and Francisco dance, and eventually the hostess greeted me, shocked at the good looks of my date and telling me that I didn't seem so shy. Apparently, she'd bought that Talbots-good girlness of lunch the week before and I guess she didn't think I had it in me. I told her that I had expectations of women-ness and she corrected me, like a teacher would correct a child. She directed me to abandon my expectations and let what would be, be. And, she told me that jeans were unacceptable and that I would know for next time. We both knew there would be no next time. She was trying to create a mood that, you know, jeans just undid. She pursed her lips like she'd tasted a bad lemon. With that, she flitted away to greet more of her guests.
As the night progressed, it became less sexy and more anthropological as I met two couples, both who were afraid to venture away from their partners but instead enjoyed the 'atmosphere of sexiness'. One couple was a set of Russian doctors from New Jersey who left their two small children with a sitter and explained to me that the sex parties were really quite vile, people just sort of grabbing onto other bodies with little rhyme or reason, just looking for an orifice to violate. This couple much preferred, over sex parties, to vacation at "adult resorts" which "spiced things up when they got mundane." I must admit that despite how superior I felt to these people, and as much as I wanted to be daring, the only thing that I could muster to do was play with this woman's necklace and see if she even noticed that I was touching her chest. In my fantasy, she put her hand on me, so I knew that I could move forward, and slide down one of the spaghetti straps holding up her dress and reveal a breast which would expose a nipple, but she seemed to not really know that I was there, or maybe she saw my interest in her necklace as a compliment on her taste in jewelry and not a subtle sexual gesture. Her unawareness made the whole party--and this whole subculture--seem less easy to access. I wanted this party to be hyper-sensitive to small movements like that--assuming that everything was sexual. I wanted every assumption to be about sex, leading to something dirty, some violation that would be socially unacceptable elsewhere. But, it was a party.
A gorgeous black woman to my left accepted a set of pasties given away by the Asian stripper and opened her dress with aplomb to reveal a set of ridiculously beautiful breasts and I swear when I tell you that I got confused at how forward I could be--and how intimidated I was and quickly forgot the Russian woman and wanted to fondle her perfect bosom, to kiss them and hold her nipples between my teeth gently. I wanted her for a moment--my hands would not know exactly where to reach--up her flouncy dress and between her legs or back to her breasts where I would have wanted to start, but I got confused because of the lines that we live. In a society such as ours and in a party where were are to respect women, was I, as another woman, allowed to just walk up to another party goer and molest her? I mean, it was a erotica party after all, but Emily Post never wrote a section on this sort of etiquette. I tried to stop staring, managed to get my tongue back into my mouth and tried to divert my attention to other party goers. I'll admit, though, I watched her all night and the only way I'll have her now is through a fictional story that I am to create.
I redirected, and grabbed onto a woman who was walking by. Jessica is from Montana via Utah and at her boyfriend's request, was at this party. She seemed happy to talk to me but made it clear that they weren't ready to explore with other people. They were seated in the corner, observing and holding each other's hands, as though to say--safety in numbers. Adam and I followed them to their couch while the Russian couple when to fondle each other in the corner, and observed. The boys talked and Jess and I, both being curious, talked about what Francisco tells the folks back in Colombia about what he does in America; does his mother know that the money her son presumably sends is earned by showing his cock to strangers at parties and getting paid to get blow jobs. Does she know that her son's fingers explore the insides of strange women's cunts and that money earned buys her papaya? I'm guessing no.
Before the party, I was too nervous to eat, so Jack made his way to my head and the music pulsing, the drums beating, the faux sexiness dancing on blocks quickly got to be too much. There were couples moving closer, a couple dancing with one of the paid dancers, and an ass in the man's face. Another Russian couple engaged Francisco's services and the husband directed him to lick his wife/girlfriend's pussy as she leaned back into the leather sofa, her head back enjoying her mouth and her hand cupping her breast.
And, my dear readers, those two acts--THOSE TWO ACTS ALONE were the only really sexy things that I saw that night. Nothing more than you'd see in Vegas, nothing so shocking and frankly, watching unattractive people get their rocks off, wasn't enough to get me into the mood--and the fantasies about the brown skinned woman who stood to my left weren't enough to excite me. They'd excite me later. The hostess, making her way to check on her guests, asked me how it was going. She could see that I wasn't talking to many people, that I hadn't touched anyone in "that way" and that I felt the party had fallen short. She urged me to stay until 2am, at least, because that's when things really started going. She failed to realize that with a shitload of work at home and a dog that needed to be walked again, my staying until 2am was a longshot--and, that her rules strictly prohibit very active "play". But the question remains....who to play with? The Russian couple that I was admiring when I arrived had left, presumably to relieve the babysitter and then fuck until they had to see patients in the morning and the other woman with the luscious and lickable breasts was flocked with people.
As we left, and wearily walked down 17th Street to the subway, Adam took my hand and said, "hype?!" And I agreed, hoping my buzz would accompany me home. On the train, with a lack of reading material (who really brings an old New Yorker to a erotica party--my handbag was just too small!!!), I thought about the write up that I'd promised about the evening and the fiction. I thought of story angles and what excites readers--and what excites me. The next morning I got a text from the hostess thanking me for my attendance and telling me that just after I left, a "greek orgy" began, as she predicted. Again, I wondered if I'd stayed, whose fingers would I have allowed in my snatch, which person would have played with my breasts, who would have kissed me. But more important, would I have wanted them too--what was more interesting me--the experience or the participants.
It's one thing to go and get fucked in the middle of an orgy, but another thing entirely to enjoy it.
