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I’m sitting in a plush chair, swathed in black lingerie and stay-up stockings, drinking in the scene before me. My partner Sarah is going down another woman while our hostess is having her bare nipples teased by two women at once.
My first orgy started at a book launch and ended with a deeper understanding of my lovers (no, the plural isn’t a typo). My partner Sarah attended the launch along with her out-of-town lover, Ellen, and my own in-town lover, Diana, who I was looking forward to catching up with. We’re a polyamorous gang; we all know and like each other, sharing each other’s love when we can.
But this night would be something special: my book editor invited us to her nearby apartment for a “play party”, a sex soiree with whips and other nasty toys. We didn’t hesitate.
These affairs always begin chastely enough. You arrive with snacks and booze, you sit and chat for a bit, then one by one (or more often two by two) people head to another room and get the real party started.
The term “orgy” conjures Romanesque images of writhing bodies bathed in oil and spilled wine. What happened in that room paid its respects to that image, but was a good deal more precise and elegant. There are always rules; you ask and tell; you gain consent; you check in; sometimes you just watch.
My primary partner, Sarah, was in the eye of the storm, stripped naked and eagerly making herself a canvas for the painterly sexual attentions of nearly everyone in the room. Her primary focus was Ellen, who took to her new-found dominance with gusto, raining a hail of spankings and slaps on Sarah before grinding her labia on her thigh.
Meanwhile, Diana and I undressed each other, one bit of clothing disappearing every so often. A bra here, trousers there, tights somewhere on the other side of the room. We were kissing and exploring each other, “catching up” in every way that mattered. Looking for a break, however, I retired to the kitchen for the kind of casual conversation you can only have while half-naked and drinking wine out of a mason jar.
Then Diana joined us, naked but for scant panties. God, she was a vision. Her dark, thick curls; her graceful curves; eyes wide with invitation. I always found her beautiful but the atmosphere of this evening left us more naked to each other than we’d ever been – and not just because we were in our underwear.
It was an unseemly place for romance: an unfamiliar kitchen with cold floors and harsh fluorescent light surrounded by the soiled dishes of a long night’s revel. But in that moment, when our eyes met, there was only us. Somehow, in that strange little place, we saw each other for the first time. We were kissing before we knew it and everything fell away in that make-out session. My fingertips travelled down the valley of her back, teasing all the way, before slipping beneath her colourful panties and clawing that lovely backside. Our liquid heat fused us together.
It was the beginning of something more: a new confidence in our relationship that matched that of the play party. We’d long been intimate colleagues who, despite living in the same city, only dated through far-flung conferences. And there was always something special in that: a sense of never being alone, no matter how far I travelled. But she and I built something more that night in our shared indulgence: a sense of certainty in our feelings for one another. I had never felt more desired by her than I did that night, and that moment in the kitchen remains one we talk about more than a year later.
It was a stark reminder that love isn’t a finite resource; sometimes sharing it simply produces more of the same.
