The Fall and Release of My Sexual Inhibitions: How Group Sex Has Changed My Life

Note: This post originally appeared on In Our Words.

It’s no secret, I’m pretty slutty. But I used to be a lot sluttier. I want to tell you a story about the Fall my number of sex partners rose from “can count on one hand (and definitely know all their names)” to double-digits in the space of a few months.

There have been two major revolutions in my sexual life. The first was when I was 20 or so and realized that I can orgasm during intense meditation, which helped prove that sexuality is so very spiritual, and helped me dispel any last bits of shame I had about being religious and wanting to be slutty. The second was in the fall of 2010, when I got to experience sex with two or more partners at once.

As a kid who knew I was poly by puberty, long before I had the language to describe it, I’d been dreaming of threesomes and group encounters for quite some time. Sure, it’s kind of a default fantasy, but I don’t pretend to be anything but vanilla. I remember one time, I was in the Italian Alps, on the most miserable vacation of my life, plagued by a bossy German 12 year old and unable to breathe in the altitude, and so I just spent a whole day in bed. Didn’t even bother to go eat. I was 18 and petulant, okay? But in between naps, I wandered through some of the most vivid fantasies I can remember, and I was amazed at the bisexual group nature of all of it. I was just coming into my attracted-to-ladies-too identity, and was still a virgin, but that set of fantasies just felt so comforting and natural and was much nicer than trying to deal with my real life at that moment.

Fast forward a few years, and I’m on OKCupid, and I get a message from a girl asking if I want to have a threesome with her and her boyfriend. I’ve had at least 7 or 8 male sex partners at this point, but no women. I leap at the opportunity. They were the kind of punk-artist couple that’s a dime a dozen on OKC, and it wasn’t their first threesome. They were having some kind of anniversary dinner that I showed up on the tail end of, and we walked back to their apartment, and sat around awkwardly for a while. Finally, after I had offered to just leave at least once, we made our way over to the bedroom. She got up and left at one point, and he started making out with me. I was a little worried about her, but she came back soon enough, and she decided she wanted to go through with it. I don’t know how it was for the two of them, but that first threesome opened up so much for me. Getting my mouth on a woman’s clit was exactly as sublime as I had dreamed about. Having two people kissing you at once is better than just one. Somehow all the talking-during-sex that I can’t stand with just one partner makes a lot more sense when three of us have to figure out where we’re going and what we’re doing. Riding the bus home in the middle of the night, I was walking on air. I never saw that couple again, but they remain in my mind like a country song about losing your virginity.

A little while later, I met this girl who lived just two blocks away from me. She was one of those people I think of as sexual extroverts, the kind of people who really care about all their sex partners, and yet seems to have an endless stream of them. The first time she and I hung out, another girl was coming over later that evening, and we decided to just keep hanging out. All three of us had sex, and two more people showed up later, although they just slept over. A few weeks later, I went back to her house, straight from a Quaker worship. Feeling all centered and spiritual, I borrowed a fishnet body stocking from her (this was long before my porn career provided me with a drawer of my own silly-sexy underwear) and soon found myself the center of attention in a fantastic orgy. I still don’t know how many people were there, or who most of them were, and I had to leave fairly early in the evening (I had work in the morning). It was one of the most empowering nights of my sexual life. Most of the way I feel about sex with strangers come out best in group sex. One-on-one, there’s still this story in your heads, this thing where you’re trying to see if it’s secretly True Wuv. In a room with 12 other people, there’s too much going on for that. Some guy may have given me his number that night after I let his cock out of my mouth, but I certainly never texted him. In that room, in that pre-centered spiritual mindset, I was pure sex. Literally interchangeable bodies helped me search for the Archetype above. I didn’t even come that night, but I still left on a sexual high.

I had another threesome or two that Fall. Nothing more transformative than really good sex and a little kink exploration (which I decided was too much pomp and circumstance to get to the stuff I really want). And then, I don’t know, I was falling in love and work got stressful and I haven’t quite managed group encounters since. I went and edited my OKC profile to ask for more threesomes recently, which shot up the number of offers I got, although I haven’t been able to actually schedule any of them. But who knows what this summer will bring?

Let’s Talk About Sex

Note: This post originally appeared on In Our Words.

My boyfriend’s first wife got married this weekend. It was the first time our little poly clan was together and consciously trying not to be too obvious. I mean, the big ol’ marriage shuffle is obvious: the four of them who live in a house together and raise kids together and just signed a lot of paperwork to change who gets to file taxes with whom. But I showed up (at the last minute thanks to a delayed train), promptly inspired the cat who loves me to leave wherever he was hiding and wind his way through the assembled guests in the backyard, and got mauled by the kids the moment the ceremony was over. So all those poor friends and relatives were surely left to wonder who I was through the rest of the reception.  We simply left them in the dark.

I open with this story because it’s unusual for me, these days. Sure, I still keep the fig leaf of a pen name while writing about the gory details of my sexual life, but, like I said way back when, that’s mostly so potential employers don’t google me and get “slut.” (According to Google alerts, I share my real name with some lady who’s doing some good writing for Time these days. I’m okay with being confused for her.) Otherwise, my sex life is an open book. I talk about in bars, on the train, in quiet suburban restaurants while my boyfriend and I have lunch. I talk about it in seminary classes, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I one day peppered a Bible study with my own sexual anecdotes.

So why the overshare? I’m glad you asked! It comes down to a few basic reasons:

I’m an iconoclastic libertine who likes to think I can shock people. I’m not proud of this reason. But somewhere in me, under the critical reflection and feminist values and other stuff I learned in college, is a snotty teen who wants to be So Alternative It Hurts. So if I can sit at Taco Happy Hour talking about orgies, maybe someone in another part of the bar will overhear me and envy my sexy, confident life. And that will reflect well on my hipster karma. This reason is also why I don’t worry too much about closing the blinds before walking around my apartment naked.

Being honest is so much easier. I’m not a bad liar. I’m a really good liar, actually, and sometimes I just lie for fun. But ever since I started coming out to people I care about, I wanted to come out completely. Not just say “I love a man who loves other people and we’re all okay with it, and don’t worry, I’ve got other irons in the fire,” but go ahead and also say “and sometimes I just fuck random people because it’s fun.” I don’t have to come up with other excuses about what I did on my Tuesday night. I don’t have to keep track of who knows what pieces.

My honesty lets other people be honest. I can’t even remember how many friends have brought their sexual confessions to me. I can say that I love gossip and I want to hear what all they’re getting up to, and if spilling my own beans make them feel comfortable, I’ll happily knock bean-cans all over the place. I’m bad at jealousy but great at compersion and the more people I can make tell me about their sexual joys, the more second-degree joy I get.

It’s a great way to learn. If we never talk about sex, how are we ever going to find anything out? I’ve done most of my sex ed by reading things on the internet, like a good introvert, but sometimes word of mouth works! At the very least, I can hear about the books and blogs other people like, and go privately read up on new ideas. My Ministry & Humans Sexuality class was a great place for learning from other people’s sexual experiences- the more open we were, the more we got to see all the glittering beauty of human sexual diversity.

It’s fun! Sex is one of the most fun things I do, and I talk about the other fun stuff I do, right? If it would kill your party for people to get into a long conversation about fisting, you’re at a really lame party. I’m not going to keep a whole interesting and enjoyable topic of conversation only for closed-door back-room smoky gatherings, although you know it’s gonna get talked about there, too.

So quit bein’ such a prude and get out there and talk about how you’re doin’ the nasty! Even if it’s mostly just “in the shower by myself thinking about Paul McCartney.” Own that, too! Unless it’s Mustache Phase McCartney, no one wants that image in their head.

The Three Cs of Healthy Sexuality

Note: This post originally appeared on In Our Words.

I’m in this class called “Ministry and Human Sexuality” this quarter, and it’s so weird to be talking about sexual ethics with a bunch of nice, monogamous, mostly-liberal, (straight and queer) religious people instead of the sluts I’m used to. I’m openly poly in class, and no one’s given me any shit for it (because I’m damn articulate), but I’m finding a lot of the ethical material we’re reading doesn’t quite address my experience. So I sat down to name my own requirements for ethical, loving sexual practice and I’m proud to present David Chastity’s Three Cs of Healthy Sexuality:

1. Consent
2. Communication
3. Caring

These three cover everything you need to live out a healthy, loving, ethical sexual life with yourself and others, and they avoid the accusatory and prescriptive nature of many sexual ethics that imply only certain behaviors are acceptable (and only when performed by certain people).

Under “consent” comes not just “if someone says no, stop what you’re doing,” but also the ideas about power dynamics. In order to freely give consent, all parties must be on relatively equal footing. This means that certain sexual relationships are inherently more difficult to actualize ethically–relationships across races where one race historically (or currently) has more power than the other, relationships across age divides, relationships where the parties involved have a professional relationship that is not on equal footing, etc. These sorts of relationships are more vulnerable to consent being exploited, and those who seek to start such relationships should try to be aware of these issues and address them.

Even in fairly balanced relationships, we have different sexual wants and needs, and it’s essential that all sexual activity be grounded in consent. Consent is always action-specific (“Just because I said you could put your finger in my vagina doesn’t mean I consent to you putting your strap-on there.”) and time-bound (“Just because I consented to marrying you and having sex on numerous occasions over the past 30 years doesn’t mean I consent to sex right now.”). There’s a lot of debate over how verbal consent has to be, and while certainly, when in doubt, say something, I still tend to fall on the side of people who don’t talk a lot during sex. I don’t like talking, it distracts me, and I hate all the words for sex actions, and I’m super-good at nonverbal communication. So me and my partners don’t normally talk about a ton of stuff, we just go with the vibe and make noises and I’m chill with saying “no wait stop” if something’s no good. This takes a lot of trust. When in doubt, use words.

Consent isn’t just about sexual boundaries, either–a lot of the boundaries I need to establish with partners have more to do with things like “at what point in the relationship can we eat breakfast together” and “it’s not really okay to call me on Saturday mornings” than “you can put your finger here but not there.” Proper consent requires that all parties have a decent level of self-knowledge and self-love in order to identify what we really want and be able to communicate it.

Communication is a little more straight-forward and obvious. If you don’t tell someone what’s going on inside your head, the relationship isn’t going to get very far, is it? You gotta communicate both the stuff you want and the stuff you don’t want. I’m always amazed when I see those survey results where when you ask a bunch of people if they’re in an exclusive relationship, some big percentage of couples don’t agree. ‘Cause they never sat down and talked about it. So many of the problems in relationships come from mismatched expectations- if people would just say “I would like you to call me twice a week,” they’d avoid the fight three months later when Shmoopy fails to call. Don’t assume that just because you ask for something, your partner will automatically grant it (or vice versa): there’s an element of negotiation here, too. Healthy relationships give and take, and part of the excitement is working out how to best meet the needs of everyone involved.

I’m also using this to touch on all forms of communication, not just the verbal. Especially in sexual relationships, touch is such an important part of communication, and we should celebrate the state of being so in tune with a partner that we can convey whole conversations with just our eyebrows. I can name like 7 country songs about a marriage that’s falling apart because the husband and wife don’t take the time to pay attention to each other any more, which I assume is country-song euphemism for sexytimes. If you like someone, don’t just say it, do the other stuff that shows them.

Finally, I bring in caring, which is both a way to say love that keeps it in my C-based scheme and a way to get around some of the baggage we’ve stacked the word “love” with in a sexual context. I’m not talking just about whatever romantic notions abound (some of which actively violate the requirements for consent and communication!), but about the broader kind of love religious folks tend to espouse for all of humanity and/or creation. It doesn’t matter if you’re religious or not, every person you interact with is of equal worth to you, and contains an equal divine spark. You need to honor that, and meet that equal person in loving care.

I’ve previously laid out my life-giving, ethical approach to anonymous sex, which I do think is a different kind of caring for/about a person than what we do in long-term relationships. No matter what, though, we need to care for and about ourselves and our partners, so that our sexuality can be a place of salvation for us. Caring for and loving other people heals them and us, and makes our world a better place. If you’re sexing someone without caring, you may not be doing anything wrong, but you’re certainly not increasing the good in the world.

I struggle with all of these Cs at some point or another in my sex life. I’ve been known to learn my own boundaries only after someone breaks them. I’ve been routinely awful about opening my damn mouth and saying something. I’m a frequent misanthrope who’s had to work hard to figure out how to let people down gently. The best was to try to get better at them is to apply them to yourself, in reverse order. Start from self-love (jerking off and otherwise), then learn to communicate with yourself, to name the things you love and crave. Finally, you can set your own boundaries, and ask for the things you want best, in a consensual relationship with someone else. You can’t have healthy sex without meeting some basic minimum of these 3 Cs. with yourself and your partner(s), but they also call you to a higher, better ideal.