I Am Completely Serious

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PS: When people hear about a biology study, what are some things they can ask themselves to check for gender bias in the study?

JH: The first step is always to say, 'Does this finding replicate?' Because we've so many of these flash-in-the-pan things where a study gets tons of publicity and there's so much competition in biology to be first with your breathless finding. So that's the first question to ask, 'Has anybody else gotten this?'

There are certain phrases that tip people off about gender bias. For example, if people do some kind of neuroscience study, let's say it's an MRI study with humans. These researchers will often say, 'This is a hardwired difference between males and females.' Well, if these are adults [who are being studied], it's not hardwired at all, right? They've had 20 to 25 years of experience that has shaped their brains. Typically, you don't find good neuroscientists using the phrase 'hardwired' because they know how plastic the brain is. Differential experience between males and females could account for brain differences as easily as any kind of brain differentiation that depends on hormones or something like that.

—PopSci has an interview with Janet Hyde, a psychologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison who helped spearhead the school's new fellowship [PDF] in "feminist biology," our new collective major. (PopSci has more words on the "hardwired" issue here, too.) [PopSci]

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Posted by Heather Havrilesky

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Dear Polly,

Love your column. Can I throw something at you? Apologies for being vague with certain details.

I'm a 43-year-old woman who has spent my whole life in one industry, got pretty far, and then descended back down the ladder to the place I started from. One day my whole outlook on my career changed and I wanted out. The problem was I didn't know how to do anything else. I was unconsciously sabotaging job after job but without an exit strategy, so it was a rough few years.

Finally I ended up at the entry level of my industry, hiding my experience and qualifications so I could be a worker bee. In exchange for giving up a great salary and high pressure 24/7 job, I got over a hundred hours of my week back, and for the first time, started to have a life. Materially, it's spartan compared to what I had, but I'm at peace and happy way more often than I was before.

Now that my job is so undemanding and I have a lot more time than I've had, I've gotten back in touch with my childhood dreams and have started to do what I really wanted to do. It's in arts/entertainment.

This is where my problem comes in: Having any actual success was far from my mind when I started my new work. I was just happy to finally have the time to be doing what I always wanted to do.

Things rather rapidly became serious with rather serious people and organizations as soon as I focused and treated my new "work" like real work. I got opportunities other people struggle and train for years to get, and sometimes never do. I am COMPLETELY aware of how incredibly fortunate I am. Friends and peers in the same world can't believe my rate of progress. I feel like I'm finally on the right track.

But then I just stopped. Hearing about other people's dreams are the worst, but this dream is my story in a nutshell: I was driving a champagne colored convertible down a gorgeous open highway of gold on my way to Beverly Hills. The road was clear, the sky was blue, I was on my way. Then I just pulled over the car and got out, walked away, and suddenly I was in the bowels of the 42nd Street Subway station. I woke up terrified.

The days are ticking past, and the serious people waiting for me to get on the bus will eventually stop waiting—or else find a replacement.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why I'm so resistant to finishing what I started. Imposter syndrome, fear of success, all of these things hit really close to home, but I can't pinpoint why I'm finding it so difficult to reach out and grab the brass ring in front of my face.

I don't think it's stage fright necessarily, because though I won't say I don't care what people think, I have an uncanny ability to shut out the world and compartmentalize feelings and memories to the point of amnesia.

Possibly relevant: I grew up in a home where I was invisible when I wasn't being abused, and none of my accomplishments of any kind garnered the slightest notice. I left home as a teenager and haven't had contact with anyone in my family since. Over the years I collected family figure substitutes, but I don't really keep or maintain relationships for very long. The truth is I lack trust in people for anything beyond the superficial. I just think it's easier to limit my exposure to myself, basically.

This is my shot at my new life, exactly as I always wanted it, but I'm not pulling the trigger. I know all kinds of freedoms are waiting for me at the end of this road, but I can't take another step toward it.

My procrastination feels sickening. Yet I'm already letting myself play with the idea of mourning my missed opportunities in the future. The reasonable part of me is horrified. When I try to create new synapses and imagine a happy ending for myself, I can't bear it.

Got anything for me?

Avoiding The Future

Dear ATF,

Well, you did it. You went and hit me in my own blind spot.

That means I'm not going to give very good advice, probably. But there's so much to unearth here, and maybe even more to AVOID unearthing—to sidestep, circumnavigate, ignore. This may be one of the big moments in your life when you have to do two different, contradictory things at once: 1) dig for more information about what's making you so afraid, and 2) set that shit aside most of the time so you can GET 'ER DONE.

It's easy enough to draw a line from feeling invisible and never being recognized for anything, to now being afraid that if you ARE recognized for something, it will STILL feel like nothing. You will still be invisible. Or somehow it will kill you. Does being recognized mean dying? Maybe your survival as a kid felt linked to invisibility, and this is why you don't want relationships and don't want anyone being close to you or needing you or criticizing you or giving their honest opinion about what's right or wrong with you. Somehow, whenever other people get involved, the stakes always get too high. You want to stay safe instead. Safe and invisible.

A happy ending—or a happy turn in your path, toward success—would make you visible, and maybe it would also make you responsible for whatever unhappiness might remain. As long as you're unsuccessful and invisible, you have an excuse for feeling mildly depressed and mildly dissatisfied. So you tell yourself stories about what would be BAD about doing something you really love. You tell yourself that recognition and coexisting with other talented people would be harrowing. You are a fraud, after all. You don't really deserve to share a room with other smart people. You deserve to remain invisible. IT'S WHO YOU ARE.

I think many of us feel like we should remain partially hidden, and to do otherwise will magically transform us into major league assholes. We've seen recognition and wealth ruin other people, or we've IMAGINED that it was ruining them. Or we simply didn't like the choices someone made after he or she became wildly popular or rich—even though, 9 times out of 10, that choice boiled down to bad taste and nothing else. We treated it as a moral, a lesson about success, when there were plenty of tasteless moves and shitty choices in the mix before and after.

BUT—and this is a little freaky, so pay attention—maybe at some level we consider success itself, or wealth, or even happiness, as reflective of bad taste. Maybe we loved the words someone wrote down on a page somewhere, and we weren't prepared to see the annoying face associated with the brain that produced those words. Maybe we're just dicks who don't like that many TYPES of people, and we can only admire someone if we don't really know what TYPE OF PERSON he or she is. Once we can associate a person with a TYPE, it ruins everything.

But this is all about prejudice. And you know who thinks this way about "types"? People who hate themselves.

So ok, fine, we hate ourselves at some level. What else is new? The new part is that we don't believe that ANYONE really deserves success or happiness, except for maybe children and puppies and Choire Sicha. We don't realize that we believe this, of course, because that would be absurd. Instead, we walk around, blindly hating the successful and the happy and favoriting every fucking thing Choire Sicha tweets, without understanding why.

To us, having a little money might be fine, but having lots and lots of money, so much that you can not only gaze at cool stuff but actually PURCHASE IT AND OWN IT? And then other people come over and they go, "Oh shit, your stuff is fucking AWESOME?"

That's just embarrassing. If I not only craved money, but also had the bad taste to go out and get some? My mother would be appalled. It's actually a big fear of hers that I might someday stumble on a giant pile of money, because that would instantly render me a big asshole, plus I'd be really unhappy. I think I've internalized this warped view to some extent. So instead, I earn just enough to keep my head slightly under water. Perfect.

Why is this starting to sound like a graphic novel?

The point is: Many of us in the world are afraid of doing exactly what we love for money. We might have lots of reasons to do what we love, but we're also afraid to do it. At first we're afraid to do it because it seems like a big, stupid risk. How will I pay the rent? Later, we're afraid to do it because it's not important enough, or because we're too old, or because we're unlikely to succeed and even if we DO succeed, succeeding will turn us into dickheads overnight.

All of the potential pitfalls of success cloud our vision. We get scared and weird and want to hide again.

But THEN: Oops! Someone real in the real world wants to talk to you about your secret shamefully awesome project that reflects just how talented you are? And now you have to have real conversations like it's a real thing? Oh god, that's a little tacky. And maybe you have to eat… lunch? At a restaurant that's nice? And someone might say something about how big this thing you do might be, at which point you're like FUCK YEAH WHY NOT? But you're also OH JESUS I CAN'T DELIVER THIS I WILL FAIL and also I DON'T BELONG HERE and also I'M A STRUGGLER, HOW CAN I MAKE THIS A STRUGGLE? And THIS IS GROSS, THIS IS ABOUT SELLING SHIT, AND SELLING SHIT IS EMBARRASSING AND SHAMEFUL.

And then you go home and you think, "That real person just mistook me for another real person, but I'm not a real person. I'm an imposter. I'm invisible."

And ALL YOU HAVE TO DO to stop feeling conflicted and afraid is shut it all down and return to the status quo of hiding and hesitating. And then, when the idea of following through comes up? You feel a little sick. You can't possible work on anything. You should, but you can't. You're too conflicted. You're too unsure that this is really for you. Maybe tomorrow. Not today though.

Each day it gets worse. And eventually, you're already saying, "Well, that was sad, wasn't it? When I tried to do that thing and then I just STOPPED doing it because it was too real? Or I stopped because I'm a failure, an avoider, a crazy person who can't really do anything, who deserves to remain invisible?"

BUT LISTEN UP: This is why there are so many simple-minded shitty products in the world, ok? Because simple-minded shitty people, who don't mind how dumb and lame they are and don't mind making stupid-ass things and don't mind earning giant piles of money for them, are the ones who make all the fucking STUFF out there. They make shitty stuff, and then they get to buy the really awesome stuff (which is expensive, because so few people make non-shitty stuff out there). So that's why you associated awesome stuff with shitty people. And that's why, when you walk into a place and you say, "Fuck, your stuff is fucking awesome?” You're actually thinking, "Oh, maybe you're simple minded and shitty, actually." EVEN WHEN YOU'RE THE ONE BEING SIMPLE MINDED AND SHITTY AT THAT MOMENT. Striving starts to look like bad taste. Succeeding starts to look unsavory. Envy warps your vision, and you can't take people at face value anymore. And there's always a reason not to try.

So basically you're a neurotic in a cave for the rest of your life, while all the dumb people run around drinking champagne and fucking each other on yachts.

I like this as a graphic novel, a lot. But I don't like it as the plot of your life. So listen to me, ATF and listen, all of you other weirdos with shitty attitudes about success and money: Let's stop stigmatizing ambition and start imagining ways of being ambitious and speaking to and collaborating with ambitious people without hating ourselves and everyone else. OK? Because I want to read our stuff and buy our stuff. Yes, we're already tremendously privileged. Can't we acknowledge that and become even more privileged and buy a few awesome things and then give most of our money away to people who really need it?

Here's where I always land: I don't want anything that much. I like cool t-shirts and really good aged cheese, yes. But money doesn't seem like a good enough reason to do anything, even when I'm underwater. If money is the real aim, fuck it. So I get confused. Because money is NOT the real aim, ever. The real aim is writing great stuff, that I feel proud of. Money might become involved down the line, but that doesn't make the whole thing POISONOUS.

The point is, for some reason, your mind is basically looking for any excuse NOT to do the thing you love the most and want to do the most. When your thoughts demand drawings by Chris Ware, you know you're in trouble.

So at some point, you have to STOP. JUST STOP. You have to stop and say, “I am going to do this thing. That is all. I am going to do it. At long last. No more avoidance. I am going to act. One foot in front of the other. THAT IS ALL.”

Yes, you have permission to enlist a therapist. Yes, you have permission to call a friend or acquaintance or whoever and complain about the lameness of the REAL LIFE HUMANS who do lucrative creative things for a living, those unsavory people who take your talents and harness them and hammer out practical ways to squeeze money out of your work. People will say things to you about your brand, and you might just vomit straight into your hands. Or you'll be asked to have a social media strategy, of all horse shit things, and it'll feel like you've been asked to pull your pants down in the middle of the high school cafeteria.

You might even picture being way too busy, and having to fly places and talk to people about what you're doing. Ick. I always picture that. My husband is about to fly to China to give a talk and all I can think is, "Thank god I'm a common hermit and not an accomplished academic, so I don't have to do shit like that, ever." He can go out into the world, and I'll stay here and eat Cadbury creme eggs instead.

But you can't let fear and avoidance win, ATF. You have to forge ahead. You SIMPLY MUST. This story is not over.

SO: Make a list of concrete tasks that need to be completed. Here, I'll help. Number one on the list should be "Make a fucking list." Number two on the list might be, "Call X and tell him everything is moving forward as planned." Number three on the list might involve sitting your ass down and producing something concrete. List every single thing you need to do in order to forge ahead. Put a date on each task. Tape it on the wall next to your bed. Vow to do two of those things TODAY. TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!

Day one is crucial. If something else has to slip through the cracks to make Day One a reality, so be it. You're reading this today, so this is the day you have to do the first two things on the list. OK?

Make the list. Tape it to the wall. Are you done? Is the list on the wall, next to your bed? Good. Now cross "Make a fucking list" off the list.

Now do the second thing. Then cross it off.

Don't wonder why you feel weird when you actually try to pick up the phone, or try to sit down and get 'er done. No. DON'T THINK. JUST DO. Don't call someone to talk about how strange it is that you feel so avoidant about this thing, and maybe it's because you don't really feel that good about these sorts of pursuits in general. Most of these types of products are so shitty! Why would YOU want to make something shitty, like all of the other shitty things?!! Or maybe most of them are amazing, way better than anything YOU will ever do.

Shut up and work. If you work hard enough, your thing won't be shitty. I promise.

But don't talk about that now. No phone calls. No anything. DO WHAT YOU NEED TO DO RIGHT NOW, TODAY. OK? You don't have to do everything. Just do something. And tomorrow? Two more pieces of the puzzle. Two more small accomplishable items on the list.

Will you need a therapist once you succeed? Yes. Do you need one now? Clearly. Will you have more avoidant episodes? Yes. Will you give in to those feelings? No. You will get up early in the morning, and go to bed early, and stick to your list.

Here's another important piece of advice: Don't run around telling a big story about how you're doing this thing now and it's great. You're really doing it! Yeah! But then when someone wants to hear more about it, you'll admit that it's making you super confused and stressed out, because you're ambivalent about this or that aspect of it. You will want to talk that way—victorious at first, then slowly more and more self-doubting. Instead, try to make your free moments organic, low stress, regular, devoid of analysis. You go on a walk, you take a nap, whatever. Don't change everything just because you're moving forward with your thing. Keep working on having the same balanced life you had before. It's not one or the other. You can exercise and eat well and not be an ambitious ball of nerves.

I'm 43, too, by the way. You and I are old enough to do shit just because it's interesting now. There's no reason we have to feel like the world splits into two paths, and one involves hiding in poverty and the other involves driving a champagne-colored convertible down a gorgeous open highway of gold. You don't have to be invisible OR glamorous. You can just be productive and normal and happy. You can do things simply because you haven't done them before. You can get on a plane and see what China is like without feeling afraid, or feeling like a fraud. You are not either a rock star or a fucking loser who writes stupid songs for no good reason. You are not either a funny person or a failed comedy writer or a megastar of the hit television series SPRAYPAINT HUFFERS. You're not a hot young woman or a gross old lady. You are a human being who wants to do stuff.

So go do some stuff. Also, ATF? Learn to be vulnerable and lean on people. Learn to let people into your life. Dare to forge intimate friendships. Open your heart. You can do all of this at once. In fact, write STAY VULNERABLE at the top of your list, above everything else. Vulnerability doesn't have to derail you or hurt you. You can be vulnerable and also forge ahead. You can make things and insist that they not be shitty. (And sometimes you can't insist on that at first, but you'll be able to insist on it as you're more successful.) You can take this one step at a time without freaking out every few seconds, or convincing yourself that you'd rather have nothing.

You can do something without signing on to EVERYTHING. You can do something. Doing something is better than doing nothing. Loving your craft and getting better and better at it? That's a big part of what makes most people happy. This isn't just a means to an end; you have to remember that. This is the same thing you've always loved doing. This is the same low-key thing that you love. No matter what anyone else says it means, no matter what noise might build up around your craft, it's still just a craft. It's just what you love to do. It's simple. You are better, and happier, when you get to work at something you love. If you need to write that down and tape it to the wall, too, then do it.

And if this thing you're doing fails? You can try it again. You can try something new after that. There are always things to do, things you will love doing.

Stay vulnerable, ok? But do something. Don't think. DO.

Now go make that list.

Polly

Do you hate making lists? Write a haiku or limerick to Polly today.

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

Photo by Mike Baird

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Posted by Jia Tolentino

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Fiona is a woman in her late twenties who lives on the East Coast with her husband Eric and their three-year-old.

So, we’re talking because you recently had a new experience.

My husband and I went to a swingers club for the first time!

How long had you guys been throwing around the idea?

A couple months—we talked about it a lot, but stopped short of making it an actual possibility. Then very recently my husband was just like, “Let’s just do it, we keep talking about it, I found this place in Atlantic City.” And we decided to go for it, and we went on Friday, and it was awesome.

And you’d never done anything like this before.

Not at all. I had experiences of being drunk and sort of fooling around with a friend and a boyfriend, but I’d never had sex with more than one person at a time, never really had sex with strangers. I only had one one-night stand ever and it was awful. So the idea had crossed my mind in fantasy, but not as something I actually wanted to do.

How long have you and your husband been together?

Married for almost four years and together for just about five.

So what was that transition moment like, from fantasy to all of a sudden you’re staring at each other like, “Okay yeah we’re gonna do this.”

Well, I should say here that my husband and I both have pretty serious trust issues, which is a big reason why this seemed like a potentially bad move. We’ve both had issues with being cheated on, and that stuff sticks to you forever. And he’s quite a bit older than me and has a lot of experience that I never had, and for a long time I was pretty protective of my fantasies: even if I expressed them in the moment and it was hot, afterwards he’d feel weird about it, so I kind of shut stuff off.

So oddly this wasn’t even on the table as a fantasy until I embarked on a bit of an emotional affair with an ex of mine. Afterwards we were working through it and trying to be really honest with each other about sex, and it opened up a new door in terms of what we were willing to talk to each other about.

Like what?

Like me saying, “I actually might be attracted to women.” Aside from making out with friends I hadn’t had any experience with that, so the realization came slowly. And I told my husband and the next day he called me at work and was like, “I want you to know that, if this is something you want to explore, you should be able to do that.”

My first thought was, Oh, that’s cool, and my second was like, Very sweet of you but that’s insane that you think a woman being bisexual is this very specific, like…

Yep. Never met a guy who wasn’t like, “Sure, bang your friend, that sounds great.”

Like, you’re not asking me to explore all the men I haven’t fucked. I don’t think they realize there could be an actual emotional threat.

So he says this to you and where did your mind go?

Well, I shut it down. I didn’t want to go outside my relationship, but my husband wasn’t really getting that picture—in accepting these things he was learning about me, he had a hard time understanding that he was included. But my whole fantasy life includes him. Or at least, once I opened up to him, it made it much easier for him to be part of every narrative. Some of the more self-destructive things embodied in certain fantasies changed once I told him.

Anyway, I’m in therapy, and we’ve gone to couples counseling, and eventually he did understand that he was part of this. We were able to be on the same page, and articulate sexual fantasies that surrounded each other.

For you, how much does wanting to have sex with other people have to do with wanting emotional things from other people?

I don’t see my sexual desires as in any way separate to my emotional desires. I also feel like I have sex and self-destruction pretty well tied together—my sexual history is typically complicated, full of wrong people and wrong reasons, and I’ve got this desire that my husband doesn’t have at all, to keep tabs on people, to know that I’ve had some impact on their life. Which is messed up.

And totally natural. So you guys get on the same page, and?

We talked about swingers clubs, but we thought it’d be too much too soon. Our sex life was getting incredible anyway—we were going to a lot of sex stores, trying new things. But then after awhile my husband was staying stuck on the swingers club as definitely something he wanted to try, and after awhile it had just come up so much that we needed to try it.

And it was obviously not like we had to go all in. There was so much talk about open communication and saying what we’re okay with and we’re not. Either of us could stop it and leave any time. We talked about ground rules—no getting anyone’s phone number, no doing anything without asking the other person. We both had the idea that maybe this would not really go far, and either way we’d end up sleeping with each other at the end of the night, and that’s what mattered.

All right, so night of. What happened? What’d you wear?

We have a three-year-old; she was already set up to sleep at my friend’s house for the night—my friend takes her once a month, which is the best thing ever for a friend to do—and the anticipation was great. We went to this thrift store that doesn’t have a dressing room, and I found three little black dresses, and my husband picked the one he liked the most, a little tank dress that flares out at the waist like a ballerina dress or something, way shorter than anything I’d wear in real life, with a scoop back. Luckily it fit when I tried it on at home. Black heels and a chunky necklace and that was my deal. My husband wore, like, whatever. Jeans. They have it easy.

But also boring.

True. So the club opens at 10—my husband wanted to go later, which is, you know, the normal thing; I was nervous and wanted to scope it out. So we went early. And the club is BYO, I think that’s sort of standard—and we waited till Atlantic City to go to a liquor store, and my husband doesn’t drink anyway, and by the time we got to a liquor store we could only get wine or beer, so I got some shitty-ass bottle of white something, so I was already like, “This is terrible,” and we pulled up and we see this couple outside in their fifties and the guy has a full-on ‘70s mustache, and I was like, “Well, this is exactly what I imagined.”

You were already expecting you’d be on the younger end.

Yeah, I think the general age is usually thirties to forties.

Do you have like a mental cap of what age of dude you’d be comfortable having sex with?

Not at all, I didn’t think it would really get to that point. I figured maybe I would have sex with my husband in this weird public place and that would be hot and maybe there would be a lady and that would be great too.

Okay, so what was the club like?

We were immediately greeted by a receptionist, a much older woman who looked very much like she did not want to be there. You have to sign a release form, it costs like $75 for a couple.

What are the rules about that kind of thing?

Single women get in free, single men have to pay $100, and they only allow 10 single men on a Friday night. No single men on Saturdays.

Makes sense. 

Yeah, they’re strict, everything is written out—at any point if someone says stop you really, really have to stop, and if you do anything untoward you’re getting banned. They are very aware of the potential problems. And there are essentially club bouncers walking around the whole night.

God, what a job that would be.

So we walk in, there’s a big TV behind the bar playing porn, a dance floor and a DJ who is only playing songs that are very literally about sex, just totally hammering it in.

“HAMMERING IT IN" LOL 

There were maybe two other couples when we walked in and I was trying really hard not to make eye contact, but then I felt guilty, because I was like, I should check people out—and then our bartenders (male, which I wasn’t expecting; I was expecting boobs) made me feel really comfortable. One of them showed us around all the rooms upstairs, all these rooms with beds and swings and stripper poles and those things you can bind people’s arms and legs to, and a locker room, and this room with a big bed and a contraption you can attach a dildo to, and this room with like bench observation seating, a room with a mirrored wall. In every room there’s a corner with a cart with towels and sheet sets and a bin to throw the used stuff in, and condoms.

So the idea is you meet someone at the club and move upstairs.

Yeah, I think there’s no nudity on the first floor. It’s more like a regular club down there.

Did it feel like that?

Well, it was pretty empty when I showed up, and the porn and the bad DJ made it more sort of like a bad idea of a regular club. And as the couples started filing in, all the men looked either old and creepy or serious New Jersey meatheads, not my type: the women were much more diverse in their appearances but even then it took me a long time to see anyone that I was remotely interested in.

My husband, on the other hand, was totally into it as soon as the bartender showed us around.

So how’d you ease into things?

We sat on the side of the dance floor, I had a glass of wine, we hung out for awhile. A lot of people knew each other already, it seemed. I was pointedly not making eye contact with anyone, and then finally this one woman—the one I’d thought was most attractive—started dancing for her husband, and finally a Prince song came on, and she and I and this other women got up and danced like it was high school, and then more people came in, and my husband just suggested we go upstairs and fool around.

We scoped the scene out—you know, lots of people having sex, lots of people watching—and we started making out in one of the side rooms. Then my husband was like, “Let’s go out where the people are,” and we sat down in the main room and started fooling around and I started giving him head in front of a bunch of people, and then I got on top of him—I actually kept my clothes on then, and all night too—and anyway, this woman I’d danced with downstairs came in. She was really cute, this light-skinned African-American woman with a bit of an accent, and her husband was this giant black man, like a friendly bear of a human. They came in and she was like, “Would you like to suck my husband’s dick?”

I liked that she approached me, rather than her husband. And I looked at Eric and he was like, yeah, go for it, and she went and got him. And we just started doing things—I actually ended up going down on her, which was the first time that had ever happened for me. And then she asked if she could do stuff with my husband—I think they tried to have sex but he hadn’t used a condom in so long that he couldn’t make it happen. And then another guy came in—he was wearing a hat, which I did not appreciate—and asked if I would suck his dick, so I was going back and forth between these two guys for awhile.

I am loving this story. Very rapid acceleration just now.

In the moment it was just like, “I’m doing this with my husband,” and the ideas I’d had about which people I’d want to do things with sort of went out the window. All I cared about was how they approached me. So then we sort of finished, went downstairs, got another drink.

Did it feel as chill as it's sounding?

Yeah, nothing felt weird about it. The ladies were joking around, every one was so positive, complimenting each other, you’re running into people in the bathroom.

True sex-positivity seems like the absolute only way for this to go.

Totally, but I have had really little actual experience with people who are like that. I grew up in a really Christian home, my husband grew up Catholic and with all the guilt in the world. I feel like I’m just now learning to talk to some of my friends about sex, even if I’m personally progressive.

Okay, so you go back downstairs, I imagine you’re just like on fire.

I was giddy. It was crazy. My husband went outside to smoke, and I talked to a few people, and then my husband and I went back upstairs and this is when it gets even crazier.

DOES IT NOW

So we went into the weird torture room, and it was just the two of us and we started having sex in there. My husband was behind me and this guy showed up and stood in the doorway watching, and I didn’t want to look at him but my husband was into it, and then a couple more people started watching and we were like, “Okay, I guess we’re performing.”

Then my husband was like, “Does anyone want to get his dick sucked? Wanna do that, babe?” And so the random guy who had been in the doorway just whipped it out. He was actually really wonderful and very gentle and polite. And also he had a pretty big dick.

Excellent, good for him. 

And then another guy came in, and so I was doing that too—and like, I think my husband finished, and asked one of them if he wanted to have sex with me from behind. So I think I wound up giving head to three guys, and two of them had sex with me for like a minute each. Finally I was like, “I’ve been giving head for an hour and I’m going to tap out now.”

And that was definitely the most insane series of events of the night.

Your ethos here is inspirational. Just like, all in. So you didn’t have to verbalize these finer points of consent you’d talked to your husband about?

In the first room it was like that. “Do you want to do this, is this okay, can they do this,” etc. But in that last room we were just like, we are just doing this. After he finished, I took a second and was like, “Are you done?” And he said, “Are you? It’s up to you, it’s totally fine with me if you want to keep going.” So I did keep going for a bit, and then I was done too.

And then I hadn’t gotten off at that point because I have to do it myself.

HAHAH oh my god. I can’t imagine how horny you must have been at that point.

Yeah, so we went off into a room, and then I got myself off there, and we had sex again, and another couple was doing stuff next to us—and then a girl joined in, and she was going down on the other girl and her boyfriend was having sex with her for behind, and we were like, “And this is how our night is ending.”

And so you were never uncomfortable?

There were two different guys who approached me asking me to fool around with their wives—I wasn’t into it, I didn’t like being approached by the husband, and I don’t think my husband was feeling it with them either. But those things were totally fine and comfortable. More like, “Maybe later, we’re doing stuff by ourselves right now.”

What did you talk about on the drive home?

We’re driving home at like 2:15, and my husband is having that feeling where you finish watching porn and you realize you’re sort of disgusted and you feel a little bad about it. He finally was like, “Are you okay with the fact that I offered you to give head, without asking you beforehand?” And I was like, “No, that was super hot."

I wanted him to call the shots—I was into that. It’s part of our fantasy.

He thought that you didn’t really want to do it?

Well, to be fair, I generally have a hard time saying no. We’d talked about how if I didn’t answer a question he asked me it would mean no. But he did really read me correctly, even if he was worried he hadn’t.

After that, for the next couple of days, we went at it like teenagers. Just days of having flashbacks every half hour, of like “Holy shit, we did that.” It was wild and awesome. We’re both still dealing with these residual feelings of guilt, like Is this normal, should we have been that comfortable with it, but also who cares, it was great. Eric was like, “It was really awesome to see you as your own sexual person that is independent of me.” And I loved that. We pretend that our sex lives before didn’t exist, or you block that out about our partner, but seeing your significant other in this way was really awesome.

Are you going to go back?

Definitely. There’s one actually right in our neighborhood.

It still doesn’t feel like a demographic I “belong” to—in whatever subculture I’d be placed into, this doesn’t really seem to exist. Or maybe this is just across all subcultures. The club was racially mixed, a diverse range of ages and looks. But the dominant theme does seem to be older married couples.

And I’m also still thinking about aspects of this. I know it’s a little reckless, that you can’t be completely protected sexually. But you do crazy reckless shit when you’re single, and the idea that once you’re married all this stuff just goes away and you’re a wholly responsible person…

Yeah.

I think we were responsible in all the important ways within the context of our relationship, anyway.

Any helpful tips you want to leave people with? Tips for first-time swingers?

Communication is the most important thing before, during and after. You cannot try and have your partner be a mind reader. Also, if you drink, you should, but do not get drunk. I was worried about that, in terms of consent and inebriation, but no one at the club seemed out of it. Just do whatever you can to mentally prepare yourself for all of the possibilities. Any ground rules that you need to set, set. Just know that you yourself can change those ground rules in the moment, too, if you find that you need to—and make sure you’re clear with your partner about that, and vice versa.

Those sound like good rules for life generally.

I guess they are!

If you have recently had a first-time or otherwise notable group sex experience and would like to talk about it anonymously (or not!), or if you know someone who might be interested, please get at me on Twitter or at jia@thehairpin.com. 

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