EuROTICA

I grew up at a beach town in whose ancient caves?numerous grottos on cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean?the hippies came to mate every summer. As a result, I became familiar from an early age with organized orgies. A neighboring Club Med resort, manicured and Eurotrashy, exposed me to more impromptu orgies. I was too young to grasp that this was not typical holiday sex; and I still have to remind myself that for most people orgies are not only exotic sexual fare but nearly unattainable.
     They don't need to be. As any aficionado will tell you, an orgy is nothing but a great party. It's a fun activity, it's an occasion to unwind and relax, it's safe and confidential. The secret is knowing how a. To get in the first time, and b. To perform well enough to be invited again. If you have no personal contacts or introductions, you may have to make the rounds of less evolved, cruder events (organized by sex-themed clubs and advertised on fliers or the back pages of alternative newspapers, or organized by housewives and advertised on their websites or personals, or organized by you at the apartment of a friend who has a hot tub) before you graduate to the topnotch fuckfests. You'll earn your future invites by mastering the finer points of orgy etiquette.
     The rewards are plenty: you can experience new bodies, sensations, techniques, desires. You can gorge, amend, refine your sensations, techniques, desires. (At least one other person in an orgy of ten will try just about anything you suggest. Note: if you're 86'd from an orgy, chances are you're truly heinous.) You can learn and experiment without threat of punishment, commitment, moral judgment?without pressure. You can watch and perform simultaneously, allowing both the voyeur and the exhibitionist in you to thrive. You can fuck your brains out.
     An orgy is also a clandestine civil experiment in defiance of a society that promotes looking sexy rather than being sexual. Orgies originated as socially sanctioned fertility festivals and empowering rites of frenzy dedicated to the worship of Bacchus, Baal and similar gods. They are now seen as symptoms of a depraved civilization. Don't confuse 'primitive' with 'degenerate': an orgy answers a primitive urge (to copulate widely). It also answers the modern need to take charge of our physical needs and not depend on one partner to satiate our appetite nor suffer the frustration of not having a regular sex partner.
     What makes a good orgy is good ergonomics (the science of regulating human endeavor to maximize the satisfaction of worker, manager, and consumer). 'Ergon' (meaning 'work') is the root in Greek of 'orgy,' which literally means 'more at work.' For an amateur, group sex can be more work than it's worth. So go prepared.
     The first rule is to respect people's privacy. If you run into celebrities, don't stare at them or mention it. That's your foremost task as a member of an inner circle: never betray confidences and jeopardize lives.  Orgies are not dating services or occasions to initiate friendships and career alliances or to fuck your best friend's wife and at last make her love you. Any emotional agenda is death to an orgy. The second rule of comportment is: erase all thoughts of profound human relations. The third and last rule is to be a giving, memorable lover. You don't join an orgy to test your machismo. If you come across as too possessive, too hungry, too sleazy, nobody will be anxious to ride you. Don't joke compulsively. Don't advise others. Forget yourself and go with the flow. The mere sight of naked people engaged in mutual euphoria will make your endorphins kick in. A good opening line is, 'Tell me what you want.' And take people on their word. An orgy can actualize wishes that can't be commonly expressed.
     The North American Swing Club (NASCA) estimates the number of active swingers in the United States to be over five million. (Swingers are heterosexual, mostly married couples.) They swap partners at sex houses, public baths, nudist colonies, intimacy workshops, Lifestyles conventions, special cruise-ship excursions, fetish clubs, private homes. Due to the plethora of oddballs out there, when invited to a binge I follow this guideline: Avoid extremes. Avoid the informal (seven people or less, most of whom know each other well), and the formal (200 strangers who've paid an entry fee to get into a club on a designated 'orgy-night'); the offhand (midway a cocktail party some people stand about eating hors-d'oeuvres and discussing retirement plans while others fornicate in the corner and others food-fight), and the controlled (you have to sign release forms, use gloves and dental dams, not exchange bodily fluids, and at one venue attend a sensitivity class before being allowed in), and the very limited (say, S/M-only). If you don't want to slog at the mines of all and sundry, pick your venue carefully.
    Orgies are exhaustingly democratic: you can't say 'Let's all fuck except for Clarice and that obese dentist she brought along.' When they happen among friends ('We all love each other and need to show it, so let's get naked' or 'We all love each other but something's missing, so let's get naked'), you don't have the option of saying you'd rather watch?you're seen as a spoilsport or an exploiter of those near and dear. At communal venues you're freer to abstain, or masturbate alone, without being viewed as repressed or weird; as at a singles' bar, you may leave without getting laid. The merit of strangers is that you can be ruthless about whom you will and won't screw and what sex acts you will perform or have performed on you. While it's hard to ask your boss if you can come on her face, you can fistfuck a giggly tourist with impunity.
     You can go alone and be your own judge, or take along a like-minded date so that you can refuse anyone you don't fancy and still not sit around unoccupied; and you can proposition anyone you both fancy without having to take a rejection personally. Consult with your date beforehand about when and if you two will go separate. Make sure you each get to pick a partner to share without needing the other's consent. The most harmless orgy is the type run by a couple in their home once a week, where monogamous couples watch others have sex or have sex themselves while others watch. (It does wonders for stagnant relationships.) The typical home offers one room where people socialize clothed; one with a fireplace or sunroof where people undress; a group sex room, with mattresses, joined together, cover the floor; and a couple of semi-private sex rooms where mattresses are arranged separately. House rules restrict anyone from joining a couple without their invitation (in the semi-private rooms), or their permission (in the group sex room where a couple can be interrupted with requests from others). Being touched can be used as a substitute for a verbal request; it's your responsibility to say 'no' or gently push suitors away. People who refuse to take 'no' for an answer or become too aggressive are asked to leave. (Generally, men are not allowed to engage in genital contact with each other?though women are encouraged to experiment with same-sex.) Sometimes, group sex is foreplay while people surreptitiously choose partners. This is the better type of orgy, since most people gravitate toward specific individuals anyway, not everything that moves or is closest. Respect the protocol of choice: don't permanently blockade a few gorgeous molds, and don't be so sure less attractive females aren't better lays; given that they're confident enough to get naked amidst a herd of prettier women, they either have extraordinary sexual appetites and talents or they can be convinced to perform extreme services. You'll learn to recognize the red chipped nails or quivering genitalia or animal cries of the type of girl who takes it in any orifice in cold blood and ejaculates buckets. She's one of the reasons you don't refuse a well-run orgy.
     It also helps to be a connoisseur of sexual smells and glandular juices and oral trafficking. You'll encounter, for instance, pubic hairs of many a hue, texture, length (from new-chick down to rabbinical beard) rubbing against you. A purist's orgy will eventually develop into a Daisy Chain, with the revelers attached mouth to genitalia, in a circle, each grazing or bobbing for apples on the person in front of them. (Gravity being what it is, chain-players lie on their hips, so that you don't only face and contact genitals but sniff an equal number of assholes and feet; this is why Mazola oil got famous: if everyone is covered with oil, they slither along each other and the floor more easily, and they smell better; nowadays aromatic essential oils are partysavers.) The idea is that you orgasm at the end of the circle with the person you began with, forming a sexual uroboros (a snake swallowing its tail in wholeness). A Chain will gradually break up into Mongolian Clusters: groups of more than three people satisfying each other with oral, genital, anal, and tactile stimuli, often made up of more men than women, with several men groping or penetrating each female; each typical cluster is formed around two women, who split between them the basic sex acts according to what they each enjoy. A Cluster will eventually become a Row Boat, where a woman sits on a reclined man's penis and fellates two men standing on each side of her. Avoid being the first to come or the last, unless you orgasm like a champion. If you run the risk of coming so soon that your performance will be like high-school fumblings, whack off earlier. The heightened sexual energy of that environment will get you going again without the worry that you'll shoot your cannon in less than an hour. Try not to break the chain and leave behind an empty space across from some poor girl who must play with herself or stare into space while her neighbors wail and fingernail the walls. You can, inconspicuously, peel off any roiling mass of flesh you've helped concoct, with one or two people.
     In short, the key to success is good taste. Some people throw orgies for kicks?on Halloween, New Year's Eve, May Day, on their birthdays or anniversaries, on All Saints' Day. Some go to great expense?they rent villas, charter yachts, travel to France to buy wines, arrange courses of aphrodisiac sit-down meals, assign themes and decorations, and make sure you won't dislike the nudity of anybody present. Sophisticated hosts offer videos, mirrored ceilings and walls, see-through dance floors, strip teases, pubic hair trimming, massages. Some charge money with the RSVP, and a few turn a profit, but nobody minds paying for pleasure. A good orgy is like going to a spa.
     The best one I've attended had about 70 people, thoughtfully selected by the organizers for what they could each contribute, gathered in a softly lit estate home sprinkled with a maze of clean, minimalist couches, loveseats, beds, thick rugs, swings, showers, saunas, flowers, candles. There was open air, an open bar, live music (drums and chants, whose musicians later joined in), TV screens, tennis courts, golf, fountains, a waterfall, an Olympic pool. There were paths, gardens, woods, guest quarters, and rows of portable white tents, with curtained entrances that could be tied open or shut. Both indoors and outdoors the lighting was dramatic: we were lit from the bottom up like trees by a landscaper.
     I liked it as soon as I walked in (after being frisked and assigned a locker which contained sheets, towels, condoms, lubricants) and found myself mooned by a leggy blonde in a merrywidow bending over a guy in jeans whom I recognized as a locally famous yoga instructor. Glowing girls carried trays of sex toys, drinks, edibles, guests squealed happily and looked around and exchanged greetings. A line of hugging, groaning couples was already forming outside the playtents waiting to use them. I know well the qualitative difference between a Brazilian stripper and a Brazilian Victoria's Secret model, between a pushy drunk and a drunk romantic. I saw no fake tits, aerobicized butts, bored or panicky looks. I heard no blithering idiots go by. I decided to stay, unbuttoned my shirt, unzipped a slit, approached a charming threesome, and waited, flesh popping out, for the right person to say, "Is there something I can do for you?" He did, or close enough, I directed him to a willing bodypart, and all tensions vanished. In my mind I wasn't with a man, but with the milling crowd, whose excitement was contagious and energizing. That's why it's easy to change partners: people are merely representatives of the crowd. Two-person sex can't generate the intoxicating stimulus provided by a writhing, panting mob (ochlophilia). But what turns me on in an orgy is the freedom I see all around, the freedom to be bodies first and foremost. The sensation is incredible.