Mr Orgy

I received an email from someone who came to the May orgy

I noticed that he had left early and didn't look like he was enjoying. And I was right - but his write up of the evening is a really enjoyable read.

Hi there I wrote this a while ago, and thought you might enjoy it. It's less a review of your orgy than it is some half-arsed attempt at self-analysis, but I had fun writing it.

Hope the orgies are still going well, and maybe I'll see you around one day. Buy a bigger flat!

Last month, I was invited to an orgy. Interestingly enough, it fell on the same night as a friend's engagement party. Being a Gemini, I decided to try and take my multi-tasking skills to a new level and attempt to go to both events - coordinating very different wardrobe changes and man bag contents - in the same night.

The orgy was being hosted by someone who I met on the internet a few months ago (let's call him Mr Orgy), whose profile advertised regular sex parties at his flat in Islington. The party was by invitation only, and limited to around 30 guests. To be invited, you had to send an online message to Mr Orgy, and make sure that your dating profile contained a clear, recently taken face pic. The age range was reasonably open (late teens to late 30s) but preference would be given to "clean cut, boy next door types" and guys who were fit and slim. Well, fair enough, really - if you're going to invite 30 strangers around to ejaculate on your living-room carpet, you have the right to be picky about who's joining you.

I've had a couple of interesting encounters with threesomes before, but I hadn't been in an orgy situation for over 10 years, when I accidentally wandered into the Leather tent at Sydney Mardi Gras in 2000. As I'm now a working professional, I knew I had to approach it with a little more care and diplomacy than when I was a student. Reassuringly, Mr Orgy seemed, sensible, discerning and appropriately middle-class, and had some guidelines to his event (including no photographs allowed, no prior release of names of attendees, and no smoking or drugs) that seemed to be designed to make the event fun AND safe. The invitation specified that the event was mostly vanilla (meaning no kinky stuff like S&M, fisting, piss or being forced to lick cream off someone's knee-high black stiletto boots), and that safe sex would be encouraged. (I'm not sure how our host planned to monitor this, but I imagined someone would get a firm spank on the bottom if there were any unsheathed willies going up bottoms).

So, I put in my invitation request, and a week or two later, got a cheery, Ladies Home Journal-esque message back saying that I'd been invited from a longlist of over 70 people. Well, it wasn't exactly the Booker Prize shortlist, but I was in. Trite though it seemed, we single girls are, all of us, seeking some kind of validations of our own attractiveness, and part of the intrigue of this event was around the challenge of getting shortlisted, Miss World-style, to make it to the swimsuit section (or in this case, the no-swimsuit section).

The instructions in the invitation were extremely detailed. The date was set for a Saturday night, and we were to arrive at Mr O's flat between 6pm and 6.30pm. If we rang the door bell after 6.45pm, we wouldn't be allowed in. While it sounded anally retentive, it also made sense - you don't really want to be answering the door when you're in the middle of a double penetration. Mr O didn't give us his mobile number, so there was no opportunity for last minute cancellation (or, I guess, drunken early morning phone calls months later). We were told that when we arrived, we would need to strip down to our underwear (bags and a cupboard would be provided for storage) and then go into the living room. We were expected to be polite and socialise, not to take a dump on the carpet, and to let ourselves out quietly so as not to disturb the neighbours. We all had to be out by 11pm, presumably so he could fumigate the house sufficiently before sunrise. Most interestingly, we were told that once we'd attended, we'd be welcome to apply to come to a subsequent orgy, but if we didn't turn up without giving a prior apology, we'd be sin-binned forever. Napoleon couldn't have planned a military operation with more cut-throat efficiency.

With two gigs in one night, I was faced with some tricky strategic decisions. Being a weekend, the tube lines were down, including the Northern Line which would've connected me straight from Angel (where the orgy was) to London Bridge and the South Bank (where the engagement party was). There was a replacement bus, but then again, did I really want to sit on a bus covered in dried jism on my way to an engagement party? What was in my wardrobe that I could wear to an orgy, fold and put in a bag for three hours and then pull out and wear convincingly to an engagement party? I decided that it would just be too gross to go directly to the engagement party without showering first, and as the shower at Mr O's house was likely to be filled with naked frat boys, it would be better just to go home. As that plan added at least an hour and a half to my travel plans, I was faced with either doing a quick Suck-and-Go at the orgy and leaving earlier than planned, or arriving very late to the party.

The Day of the Orgy came around, and I felt slightly nervous. The situation felt safe enough, but there was the fear of the unknown, coupled with the omnipresent fear of being rejected in a very open and social situation. Inevitably, I turned to a critical self-inspection in the mirror. Hmmm. Pigeon chest, stick arms, a growing muffin top around my middle, slumped shoulders and skin pale and untanned from a lifetime spent indoors sitting on my ass in front of a computer screen. I'd advertised myself (and presumably attracted Mr O's interest) because I was boy-next-door material, but could I still pull that off at almost 32? (My internet profile photos were a couple of years old, taken after I'd come back from three months travelling through India, when I had the ass of a twelve year old girl). More to the point, would I want to pass myself off as boy-next-door, or anything? I've always assumed I'm kinda cute in a geeky way, but in an orgy situation, there was little opportunity to try and be funny or talk a lot or disguise my own nervousness with my intellect, which is what I usually try and do in unfamiliar social situations. That's what I like about sex - the ability to just react physically and let the intellect take a back seat - but what's terrifying about sex as well, at least with strangers. But I figured that I wasn't exactly in troll territory just yet, and that the feelings of nervousness would probably be common, and that years of drama training and a strategically sucked-in stomach will probably see me through.

By about four o'clock that afternoon, I had a major change of heart. What was I doing, wasting my Saturday afternoon and most of my evening going to a sex party? I was reminded of Quentin Crisp's dictum that if gay men stopped having so much sex, they'd have enough spare time on their hands to take over the world, and wondered - yet again - what I could be doing with my time instead of trawling for stray cock. I thought briefly about emailing Mr O and cancelling, and going to the engagement party with a clear conscience and uncorruptibly clean knickers. Exactly what convinced me to go I can't quite remember, but I suspect it was mostly curiousity, a knowledge that even if it was disastrous, it would make good copy, and that it was an anthropological experience I needed to cross off my sex list before my ass started sagging down around my knees.

I tried to time my departure time so I could get there on time, but not arrive too early. When I made it to the street corner, I saw a couple of improbably pretty looking boys standing nervously outside the pub on the corner. Bingo. I swept by them with a meaningful glance in their direction, went around the corner and rang a doorbell. Sure enough, within thirty seconds they were standing behind me. We made some kind of feeble smalltalk as we waited to be buzzed in about whether or not it was our first time at one of these things. For some reason, I made up a story about having once lived in New York and going to orgies there (a story I borrowed from a friend) so I could try and sound more experienced and less like a nervous shaking puppy, though I suspect just made me sound like a diseased slag.

Our host, Mr O, let us in. He was, exactly as he was pictured on his profile - youngish, boyish, chirpy and with a rather fetching Scottish accent. He ushered us into his bedroom, where he took our names (neatly typed up on a clipboard) and invited us to strip down to our undies, hang our clothes in the closet and "just come through" to the living room to get a drink. He had the smooth assurance of a 50s society hostess in an old Douglas Sirk movie, or maybe a coked up British Airways trolley dolly.

So, taking a deep breath (and tensing my abs) I went into the living room, with the young guy from the street corner creeping nervous in behind me. The living room was packed and very humid, with around 18 men sitting in a circle on the floor in their boxer shorts around a large king-sized white duvet. Everyone raised their heads to look at us, and then dropped their gaze just as quickly, so as not to appear too interested. We headed for the kitchen to get a beer, and then I found an empty space in the circle to go and sit down, sitting rather defensively with my legs crossed in front of me.

Things seemed to be taking rather a while to heat up, and so we sat on and on in our circle of skank, nervously trying to make smalltalk. Scanning around the room, I noticed that most of the invitees were a little younger than me - around 27 to 28, mainly, and most of them were pretty toned and had tans varying from Boots Spray-on Orange to Ibiza Gold. Inevitably, the crowd starting segregating according to body type. The muscle boys moved into the kitchen, where, standing up, their physiques could be better admired, I guess, and drank beer and traded tips about high protein diets. Back in the Circle of Sin, I was sitting next to a very cute Canadian photographer, who fell into the nervous-but-curious category the rest of us seemed to be in.

6.45pm struck. Well, we assumed so - there were no clocks around, and I'd taken off my watch in case someone chewed through the strap and stole it in the throes of action, but we figured it was showtime as Mr O had come back into the living room, this time stripped down to his undies. The drinking and stilted conversation continued, until someone switched the iPod to Madonna's Confessions on a Dancefloor, which was clearly a sign that things were going downhill.

Twenty minutes later, nothing had happened, though the sexual tension (and the room temperature) had risen to feverish levels. Ever the boy scout trouper, Mr O suggested a game to get us more in the mood. He asked us to turn over the big white duvet on the living room floor... to reveal two giant Twister duvet covers. Naked Twister?

Well, it started innocently enough. Left hand on blue, right leg on yellow. As we progressed, it became left leg on green and right hand on someone's arse (you get the idea). After a couple more yoga permutations, we ran out of spots (and arses) to put our hands on, and the whole thing erupted. Everyone pretty much leapt on each other, Madonna kept wailing, and we were away racing.

Through it all, Mr O continued to be a very considerate host, and certainly worked the room. Clothed or not, he certainly had the ability to make people feel welcome and comfortable, without seeming insincere or sleazy, which is no small effort. Mr O has been keeping his own blog about his sex parties, which he's been running regularly for over a year now. They're very wittily written (think Jane Austen meets Playboy) and I'm sure there's probably a book in there somewhere: The Story of O with Twister duvets and Stella Artois instead of soft focus lighting and big 70s Farrah Fawcett hair. I say Jane Austen because the blog is primarily concerned with chronicling some of the more appaling cases of bad manners that Mr O encounters in organising his parties. Despite being very clear about the kind of gig he's organising and what the rules are, he gets some pretty hostile emails, mostly from disgruntled gay boys who hadn't been invited. It's well worth a read.

About 15 minutes into the action, I realised it just wasn't working for me. There were only about three guys who I was really attracted to (none of whom paid me the slightest attention) and try as I may, I couldn't seem to break into any of the little piles of arms, legs, panting tongues and thrusting crotches that were developing around the room. A couple of guys sucked my cock, more out of politeness more than any real enthusiasm. There's something vaguely depressing about someone sucking your cock as an act of politeness. I realise that orgies are supposed to be all about the randomness of the experience and the anything-goes nature of connecting, but for me, this time anyway, it didn't work. I suspect it may have been more about where I'm at with sex at the moment (losing interest in casual sex, possibly moving more towards looking for a partner). In any case, I wasn't having the kind of frenzied, I-have-to-have-you-now-on-the-Ikea couch sex that seemed to be happening all around me. Strangely, I had a flashback to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, commenting to Mr Darcy about their being the kind of people who don't expect to say anything unless it will dazzle the entire room. I'm with you, Lizzy. What's the point of being at an orgy if you're not the centre of attention?

I never expected to have this kind of revelation (or a Jane Austen flashback) at an orgy, but there it was. Standing in the hot sweaty room with my undies around my ankles, it was basically the same as when I was six - I was in the sandpit but noone wanted to play with me.

I extracted myself from a ham sandwich of sweaty 20somethings, and took myself into the bedroom to change. Three boys were on the bed, about to get down to a very noisy butt-fucking session, so I grabbed my clothes and crept into the bathroom. There was a knock on the door, and a Permatanned Israeli with a Pamela Anderson barbed-wire tattoo on his bicep asked if he could come in while I was changing. It seemed no more insane a suggestion than the one I was already in, so he sat on the toilet and peed and chatted away while I put my boots on. He was one of the muscle boys who'd been hanging out in the kitchen, and I think I'd chatted to him on the internet months ago, where he'd blown me off derisively for not having a six pack. In the (weird) intimacy of the bathroom, he was, surprisingly, rather nice. He asked me if I was ok, which I was, despite being locked in the bathroom in Islington with a peeing stranger. He told me that I was cute (a little ego massaging always helps) and suggested I stay and see what happened. Like Blanche du Bois, I have always relied on the kindness of strangers, and I appreciated his little gesture of support. It's encouraging to think that gay men aren't the pack of vicious bitches we expect them to be all the time. But by that stage, my brogues were on, and the toilet boy had already started kissing someone else and getting his arse fingered, so it seemed the perfect time to leave. I let myself out, and paused briefly to listen to the grunting and panting inside. God knows what the neighbours were thinking.

I walked out into the sunset, and realising that while I'd been inside in a naked sweatshop, the rest of London was getting on with their Saturday night. The walk to the bus stop felt a little like a walk of shame from my university days (before I started working and got to work my way up to a taxi of shame). I felt the mixture of embarassment and smugness I usually feel when I've been doing something filthy. Then at the bus stop, I started to cry. If my life was a movie (which I often imagine it is), this would be the moment of breakthrough, where I see the error of my ways and turn back to the path of righteousness. My realisation wasn't as black-and-white as that. It wasn't that the party was sleazy (which it was, in a good way, which I think was the fun of it), or degrading (which it wasn't) but that it was - for me, anyway - a non-starter.

By the time I made it to the engagement party, the whole evening had become an anecdote, complete with punchline, that I enjoyed entertaining and pseudo-shocking my liberal straight friends with. With enough fine-tuning, the most awful of evenings can become a cocktail party filler. This is one of my coping mechanisms - to take life's lemons and turn it into comic lemonade, and hopefully still be able to laugh at myself.

So what, if anything, did I learn from this slap-and-tickle session? Well for starters, I'd definitely recommend Mr Orgy's gatherings to any other horny boy-next-door types who are keen to play nude Twister with strangers on their weekends. I'm vaguely reassured that, as our host proved, humour and good sense can co-exist along with a good hard spit-roasting. And I'm also pleased to report that public transport in North London is frequent and reliable, despite Tube repairs. With the benefit of hindsight and a freshly laundered pair of pants, I can happily admit that had I left some of my neuroses at the door and "mucked in" a little more enthusiastically with the rest, I may have had more fun and not been left crying at the bus stop. Then again, maybe I needed to. A wise (if somewhat depressing) friend of mine once told me that I have rivers more to cry yet before my lifespan is over, with a bit more laughter thrown in as well. So, maybe I should look on this as a cheap alternative to therapy, and get on with crying me a river.

Maybe I'll make it back to the orgy. Maybe I'll fall in love with a hairy-chested neurosurgeon and become a trophy wife. Maybe I'll move to New York and become a pole dancer. Maybe I'll become a Proustian recluse and sleep in a cork-lined room and collect my pee in milk bottles. Who can tell?