All my life, I’ve wondered what it would be like to be an “orgy guy.” Even back in high school — when I couldn’t get one girl to sleep with me, let alone several — I fantasized about ménages á trois, á quatre, á cinq. Having seen Caligula and read Gay Talese’s Thy Neighbor’s Wife, I just figured more was better.
Even after I started screwing regularly, my interest in group encounters continued unabated. One-on-one relationship sex was great, but it was intertwined with obligations, emotional baggage and trips to the flower shop. Sex seemed most appealing in its rawest form — anonymous, unencumbered.
After college, I moved to San Francisco and recast myself as a sexual adventurer, trying to find the switch that would turn off my overactive brain. I went to S&M dungeons, bondage bars and ecstasy parties. I attended sex-toy lectures and Radley Metzger film festivals. I dated dominatrices. But nothing really worked. I was too shy, insecure and prematurely balding to participate in any public kinkiness.
Then salvation arrived. A friend told me about “Darkness Falls,” a San Francisco sex party that took place in a pitch-black space. The website billed it as “a sex party, a happening, maybe an orgy, maybe just a bunch of people freaked out in a dark room.” The prospect was thrilling. With the lights off, there would be no comparison shopping, no awkward conversations, and no shame. This was my chance for anything-goes, emotionally unfettered fucking.
There were, however, plenty of rules: all men must be accompanied by a woman; don’t converse socially; don’t take drugs; don’t wear glowsticks around your winkie; crawl, don’t walk, to avoid crashing into people; ask before touching; place condoms in the proper receptacles; be prepared for homoerotic contact. And I still had questions. Did everyone get naked right away? How exactly did you approach someone you’d like to fool around with? Would people actually fuck, or would they just grope each other? Should you leave your shoes on?
But my biggest question was whom I should bring, since I was horribly single.
I asked a few female friends, who turned me down flat. Getting naked together would be uncomfortable, they claimed. “That sounds really interesting,” one said, “you should go and tell me how it is.” One acquaintance seemed interested until she read the warnings on the website, which included, “We can’t guarantee someone you absolutely detest won’t be there,” and “If you are concerned because this is a ‘family affair’ (and you know your sister/brother/first cousin/dad will be there), glow tape with the word ‘sibling’ will be provided.”
On the day of the event, a girl I knew from the local music scene instant-messaged me, asking what I was doing that night. Even though we’d only hung out a few times, Lisa agreed to be my date. She said she’d try anything once. Her only worry was that it would be like high school, where no one she liked wanted to make out with her.
I figured there was a decent chance I would make out with her. She was attractive enough, and I assumed that not kissing your date at an orgy was rude. But I knew I shouldn’t — if given the opportunity — have sex with her. I was going to this orgy for a purely visceral experience, and the next time I went to a show and saw Lisa, I didn’t want either of us to feel uncomfortable.
That night, Lisa and I drank steadily at a bar, mostly to calm my Hooksexups. I learned where she was from, what she studied in college. As we left, I felt like I was vibrating at a different frequency, emitting an “orgy buzz” that only dogs could hear.
We walked to Darkness Falls, which was held in a nondescript building near a bunch of bars. After showing the doorman the tickets I’d bought online, we entered the reception area, which was bright and empty, save for a solitary table that held fruit juices and some aged vegetables. The place looked clinical and sad, like a run-down doctor’s office. I was so nervous that I wanted to turn and run.
We headed through the room into an antechamber, which was both mercifully dim and terribly crowded. Three thin, young guys lounged naked and spread-eagled on plush theater chairs, as if they were taking part in some porno dating game. To alleviate my lingering fears about the event, I had emailed some questions to the party organizer, a local comic named Sean Kelly. He’d written that many of the people wore robes and used noisemakers to call each other from across the room. (Kelly donned a bunny suit to one event and was reportedly a big hit.) I’d followed suit, buying a flimsy robe and a whistle, which I dropped into my pocket before getting down on all fours and following Lisa through a curtain into the main room.
Right away, I couldn’t see a thing — not my date, not the other thirty-five people the doorman said were there, not my own limbs. All traces of alcohol fled my body. Crawling forward on the carpet with Lisa’s hand clutching mine, I came upon a steep ramp and tumbled down it.
Lying there in the dark, I listened. Usually, the sound of strangers’ fucking didn’t do much for me, but here, strangers were fucking right next to us — and behind us and to the left and to the right. The fact that I couldn’t see anyone made it even more surreal, the moans and groans and slaps and slurps seemingly disembodied. Soon, I had an erection, which my robe did little to conceal. “I guess I get to have you first,” Lisa murmured. At that moment, I was probably hornier than at any time in my life, maybe even more than when I was seventeen and a girl grabbed my penis for the first time.
I kissed Lisa. It felt like I wasn’t just kissing her, but everyone in the entire room. My flimsy robe had become a hindrance, so I shed it. In the dark, I felt bold. I was naked with a woman I barely knew, I was lying on spongy carpet of unknown cleanliness, and strangers were starting to stroke my legs. It was wonderful.
The stereo played Air, a French band whose music is languid and sensual and a little bit cheesy. It’s porno music for people who get the joke, and it fit perfectly there. At one point, a man yelled at his loudly groaning partner, “That’s right! Tell it to your daddy!” and the whole room cracked up. Later, a woman called out for Bob, and two confused guys answered, eliciting more laughter. After searching for a condom, I returned and found a man on top of Lisa. When the guy’s girlfriend appeared and scolded him — “There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you!” — he apologized sheepishly. “I thought you were someone else,” he said. Sure, I told him, that’s what they all say.
If Lisa were my girlfriend, I’d probably have felt a twinge of jealousy. Instead, I welcomed these encounters; hell, I encouraged them. When a person touched Lisa’s arm, I guided him down her leg; when a man reached for her breast, I pressed his fingers into her flesh. I felt like the Mother Teresa of Sex, helping others to help themselves. (It was odd how little verbal communication there was. When someone touched me and I wanted them to continue, I did nothing; otherwise, I edged away or removed their hands. It’s like we were all horny mimes.) I was getting off on watching other men stroke Lisa, but she wasn’t that interested in them. She wanted me.
By then, I was so ready to move beyond foreplay that any fears about future awkwardness had been banished to a small closet in my brain. I was worried, however, that the sex we’d have would be embarrassingly short. Also, what did one do afterward? I really didn’t want to go outside and stand around the wilted-celery table; I wasn’t ready to face my peers in the harsh light. So I concentrated not on the sex I was having but on my surroundings: on the music, which had shifted to ambient techno; on the faint light strips on the used-condom buckets; on the guy’s hand that was suddenly slapping my ass. Whoops, better stop.
That’s how it went for the next hour and a half. Lisa and I initiated sex, someone joined us, I stopped before coming. Rest, repeat. Over time, my eyes adjusted and I could discern people’s shapes. It wasn’t always easy to discern the men from the women, especially when they were skinny and had soft hands and long hair. Occasionally we took a break and laid there, breathing in the hot, muggy air and trying not to think about the fluids being spilled around us.
One thing I kept coming back to was how couple-oriented the event was. Some duos stayed off by themselves; others skittered away when I approached. Such rejections stung me, but not as much as they would have in the light.
After a while, I felt like exploring my surroundings. We’d been staying in one spot, taking on whoever came to us, and I wanted to see what else was out there. But I wasn’t exactly sure how to tell Lisa, whom I’ve just had sex with — and who made it possible for me to get into the party — that I wanted to crawl around the room. Especially since she seemed a bit unHooksexupd by the prospect of being left alone.
I couldn’t do it, so I headed to the bathroom, which meant climbing back up the ramp and out into the antechamber. (Thankfully, there was no one sitting outside this time.) When I returned, Lisa reattached herself to me. As we lay there on the carpet, I considered the irony: in the middle of an orgy, I’d found a mini-relationship.
But when Lisa headed to the bathroom, I made my move, reaching out to a man and a woman who were near me. Touching a guy for the first time, I felt more like a FDA inspector than a sexual partner. “Hmm, yup, kind of tender here, a bit hairy there, wait, this is strange . . . “I expected something more to happen — a light to click on in my brain that said, “Whoa, you’re gay,” or, “Ick, you’re straight.” Instead, it was like I was in one of those near-death documentaries where a guy says he floated above his body, fully aware of the surgeon operating on him.
When the guy’s partner disappeared, I pressed on. I figured I had to go all the way and see what another man’s penis felt like. Oddly enough, it was different from my own: rubbery and squishy and somewhat stiff, like an octopus with a spine. I felt like I was at the frozen-fish section of a deli. Then Lisa returned; she started caressing me and the other guy, and I finally felt like I was at an orgy.
Too soon, some guy yelled, “Last call! Last call for orgasms!” As I withdrew my cramped fingers from Lisa, I mumbled a “thank you” to our new friend, who was pulling his nose from her groin. The sleazy techno soundtrack cut off, and I fumbled in the dark for my robe. The aroma of rubber, sweat and semen was overwhelming, like the odor of wet dog in a car. Exhausted, I crawled toward the one light I could see — the light above the exit door. I felt like smoking an entire pack of cigarettes, all at the same time.
In the dressing room, I sneaked a peek at the other participants. They looked normal — mundane, even. In the darkness, we were shrouded in sleaze and mystery, but in the light, we had acne, thinning hair and ballooning waistlines. (And pens and paper, apparently: our friend offered us his phone number and future services.)
I’d gone to “Darkness Falls” to have a no-strings-attached sexual experience. What I’d really wanted was simplicity. But now I had questions about my sexuality, my interest in Lisa, and the best way to clean shag carpeting. If inside “Darkness Falls” everything was hidden, outside all was revealed. As we walked through the reception area this time, I felt compelled to turn around and run back in.
This article originally appeared in Hooksexup’s Personal Essays 2003.
