A Day at the School of Sexuality
Pursuing sex as a hobby
Imagine you decide to take up salsa dancing. You’ve done it a bit at home and seen it in movies but you are too shy to go to a club and dance with a partner because you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re scared to look stupid.
What do you do?
Do you practice with your husband in the living room and hope to get quietly proficient, or do you go to a lesson or two?
Do you learn the vocabulary?
Learn that the Clave is the rhythmic backbone of the music, the Compas is the beat of the music, and that the Embrace is one partner behind the other, crossing their arms.
Do you only do it with your husband or do you try dancing with experts who can show you the practice as well as teach you the theory?
Likewise, if you want to get serious about painting or swimming or woodworking… Sure, you can do it for fun with friends, but if you want to make real progress, you talk to the people who dedicate huge amounts of time and energy to becoming specialists.
Why should sex be any different?
There are sex experts.
There is a thriving subculture of sex theory, education, and practice. In fact, there are many.
There are sex therapists, masseurs who specialise in lingam and yoni massage, and BDSM experts.
These are people that commit themselves to the study of human intercourse and its many variants in order to help others maximise their pleasure.
And most of the time, it’s not free. Fair enough, right? You wouldn’t expect a salsa lesson to be free. Even going to a salsa dance club would probably have an entry fee.
Lately, I’ve been getting interested in sex education. For adults.
So, last weekend, I dragged my partner along to Assfest, a celebration of all things erotic organised by the
(ASS).We paid around AUD200 each to go to a full day of workshops followed by the Temple of ASS, which took place on Saturday night.
Workshop 1: Embodying Dominance
This was a bit like an improvisation class. A certain Mistress Lotus Eros walked us through how to channel our inner boss, to control a situation and other people, and own our power, skills that have clear benefits in the real world.
I liked learning about the different roles in the BDSM world:
Doms/Dommes are in control. They do what they want and don’t say please or thank you. We went through archetypes and role played dialogue ideas.
Subs are submissive. They put themselves in the hands of a Dom in total servitude. There is an expectation of being looked after, although there can be humiliation, punishment, and restriction of movement involved.
But those aren’t the only two roles.
When a sub plays up, resists, or is naughty, it’s called being a brat. They may, consciously or otherwise, be testing the Dom’s authority. Seeing if he (or she) has what it takes to put them in their place.
Then there are tops and bottoms. Different from Dom/sub because it’s not about the power dynamic, but rather who is giving and who is receiving.
Someone may just be a masochist and want another person to hurt them in ways that she (or he) defines. What she needs is not a Dom, but a service top.
All of this plays out in scenes. Short bites of action where the players work from a slow, soft entry to a powerful climax, followed by aftercare.
It has a lot in common with the theatre, except that people are embodying these roles without the audience. It’s purely for their pleasure and that of the other participant(s).
Workshop 2: Partial Suspensions for Sexyfuntimes
The next workshop we did was on Shibari - the Japanese art of rope tying for bondage.
This is a practice with a wealth of theory, history, and technique to learn. The knots have names similar to in sailing or scouting - we started with the single column tie, which moved to a double column so wrists or ankles could be bound to each other and then suspended from a point above.
It only felt slightly sexy. I enjoyed the sensation of being suspended and powerless, and also watching the others in the room interacting with each other. There were less giggles and more butt slaps than in the Dom workshop.
Workshop 3: Sensual Flow
The sensual massage session started with an explanation of how it differed from therapeutic massage and erotic massage. It falls somewhere between those two. No touching of genitals or breasts, but less deep tissue and more long strokes than a remedial massage.
We started with self massage, and t-shirts and pants started to come off as we closed our eyes and let our fingertips tap, glide, and press into the flesh of our different body parts.
When we paired up for the next part, the instructor demonstrated how even movement like shifting the sarong that covers the body can be pleasant, and encouraged us to maintain a physical connection with the subject when moving from leg to back or getting more oil.
The connection piece was similar to the lessons in knot tying. When you’ve reached the maximum number of knots, you don’t just stop and untie the person. You spend the same kind of time in undoing your work as you did doing it, thereby keeping the tension and excitement raised.
Temple Night
That night there was a Temple night. The description from the website:
A Temple Night occupies liminal space, tapping into ancient histories of public exploration of erotic connection. Drawing from stories of erotic ritual within ancient Goddess temples, Temple Nights are framed with reverence, intention and curiosity.
In short, we had had the theory and now we got to do the practice. There was an opening circle with some ice-breaker games, like getting into groups of four and taking turns saying how we would like to be touched for a given amount of time. The other three would then oblige of course, before getting their turn to make the same request.
Then the main room was divided into play space, kink space, cuddle corner, massage corner, etc., while another, smaller room held some beanbags in front of a huge screen showing arthouse porn. There were live performances in both rooms, and there was food and free condoms but no alcohol.
I’ll tell you my adventures behind paywall, cos it’s not for the more sensitive readers (or those who know me too well haha).
I hope I’ve convinced you that sex ticks a lot of boxes for a fulfilling and interesting way to spend time on the weekends and evenings, but I admit that it is also pretty loaded with subtext and meaning.
I can think of a couple of reasons for this:
People associate other people’s sexual choices with reflections on themselves. What you want is a direct comment on what I am.
People who pay for sex are seen as desperate and deviant.
People who sell sexual services are perceived as desperate and without options.
Basically, it’s an exchange that is as old as human civilisation itself, involving activities that are literally necessary for our continued existence, that has somehow become so taboo that we’d rather our kids watch death and violence than learn about sex. It’s something they need to be protected from.
I readily admit that it can be traumatic and inappropriate, but does keeping it veiled in secrecy help that? One guy I spoke to said that men have a lot of trouble participating in this kind of activity because they don’t have the right education behind them.
There are certainly cases where our sexual choices speak to our past trauma, but there is also an argument for paying someone who is experienced to teach you different ways to explore your physical being .
I wouldn’t expect my partner to be able to lead me in a tango or a salsa, and I wouldn’t expect him to be mad if I suggested I’d like to pay someone to teach me how to do it.
But if I say I want to pay someone to teach me how to tie someone up, or bring any man or woman to orgasm with my hands, he may not like that.
And what if my employer knew I was interested in these things? Would that make me tainted forevermore?
Maybe having these conversations in public can help. I saw a Note the other day that said something like…
These are topics I’m not afraid to look at and I’m perfectly willing (and eager!) to go and explore this world and share it with you. Next on my list is to go deeper into the world of BDSM.
That probably speaks to some mental issues I have, and maybe I’ll explore them as I get to know my mind and body even better. It will also feed my characters’ arcs in my novel, Journey to Kyron, especially that of Josinda. I’ll tell you more about how her journey parallels mine soon.
But for now, here’s what went down for me at the Temple night….