Other events have taken the more concise route by clarifying the type of guest that isn’t welcome - namely, cis men. Some events have billed themselves as being for “women, nbs, and trans femmes.” This language shifts as our concepts of gender and sexuality evolve. “Women and femmes” was a term I heard for a while, though this erased nonbinary and transmasc people. Often, these parties might describe themselves as “WLW” or “sapphic” to cover the range of identities at such an event. There is no quantitative data, at least none that I can find, on the state of lesbian sex parties there’s only the sense of a vibe shift expressed by the people I’ve gotten to know intimately over the years through my own queer and kink networks.Ī quick note: When I refer to lesbian sex parties, I am talking about parties for women who love women, though not everyone who attends is a lesbian.
#GAY MEN SEX FUCKING FULL#
And yet, as restrictions eased, and nightlife returned, sex parties for queer women didn’t return in full force. In March 2020, as COVID-19 rampaged through the city and the rest of the world, the parties Michelle was attending came to a complete halt. I’m like, ‘We must have ice,’ and people are like, ‘We wanna fuck,’ and I’m like, ‘Ice!’” she said. She tried hosting her own events, but struggled with, in her words, “cultivating a sexy space.” “I just get in my own head about the logistics of a party. Michelle broke up with her partner and stopped attending the parties they organized together. Interpersonal conflict played a role, as it often does. Some people moved others got sober and didn’t want the pressure of hosting. They spread the word through kinky social network site FetLife, and hosts would vet new guests beforehand, usually through coffee dates. Some Michelle helped organize at her partner’s art studio. Several were part of Pride, or hosted by groups like the Lesbian Sex Mafia, the legendary women’s BDSM support group founded in 1981 by Dorothy Allison and Jo Arnone, but her favorite events were the more intimate and reliably hot ones hosted by her own friends - “a sapphic dreamland,” in her words. Soon she started to attend events that were exclusively for women and nonbinary people.
#GAY MEN SEX FUCKING HOW TO#
“It’d be like, ‘No, you as a dude don’t get to show us how to use this flogger - this woman will come in and knock your damn socks off with it. Many of these parties were coed, although femmes and queer women vastly outnumbered other attendees in what Michelle called “a total matriarchy.” “Sometimes it felt like a release, because we all have to deal with patriarchy every fucking day,” she said. What followed was more kink parties, more sex events, more space to explore. She ditched the dude but met the people she would be friends with for the next decade. Sex and play parties are often refuges for queer people in search of community, and that’s what happened for Michelle. “It was night and day, where I went from not being able to find any queer women, to suddenly being inundated with them. And third, while the event was open to all genders, plenty of women were there with each other, tying up their partners in artful rope displays, or spanking each other with impact toys. (Many sex parties that allow nudity and penetration happen in semiprivate clubs that require patrons to become members or bring their own alcohol restrictions and laws on what is and isn’t allowed vary from state to state.) Second, she felt embarrassed to be there with a man.
First, she had to leave her clothes on all night, because she wasn’t wearing underwear and nudity wasn’t allowed at New York clubs. Michelle remembers three things about it. (“Later I was like, This is the trashiest space I could have been in, but at the time it was really cool to me,” she said.) Surrounded by exposed brick wall and plush red couches, attendees wore lingerie, formal wear, fetish gear, or steampunk attire.
Lovecraft–themed bar at the time, its main feature was a gap in the lounge wall that used to hold a fish tank and was now a suitable place to fool around in. The club was in a basement in the East Village that would later be converted to an H.P. Michelle had never heard of play parties before, but she knew she was kinky and was excited to attend. One of her early dates invited her to a BDSM play party in Manhattan.