A Funny Thing Happened On...

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to a Wedding


My girlfriend phoned with the news that we’d been invited to her best friend’s wedding on a cruise ship in Vancouver. “I hate weddings,” I muttered to myself. But knowing there was no way out of this one, I suggested we leave Chicago a few days early to explore some of the great northwest. We never did make it to the summit of Mt. Rainier or arrange tea and crumpets in Victoria with the Queen. But, to our great surprise, we wound up instead exploring our most intimate sexual biases.

“When you drip hot wax on the naked body,” Jennifer, the enthusiastic workshop facilitator and head of Vancouver’s “Libido Events” said as she demonstrated, “start with the candle held high, like this, so the wax has a chance to cool down a bit before it hits.” “YOW!” I lunged into the air as a few drops of molten wax splattered across my back. If that was “cooled down,” I didn’t need to find out what it was going to feel like up close and personal.

Neither Debbie nor I had ever before experienced any form of sexual “pain for pleasure,” S/M, bondage or the like. But here we were, naked among naked strangers being scalded, frozen, tied up, whipped and beaten – well…“paddled.” We felt a little guilty at first – not getting it – failing to connect with the potential erotic thrill of it all. But instead of being pressured by the group to go further until we felt “it,” we were made to feel appreciated for trying something new. The new activities continued to seem strange, but the strangers surrounding us soon began to feel like friends.

Debbie and I had stumbled onto what the workshop leaders called a “sex positive community.” Apparently unique to the northwest from San Francisco to Vancouver (a Google search of “sex positive Chicago,” LA and New York revealed nothing), sex positive communities are comprised of individuals who identify themselves as hetero, gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-gendered, she-male, swingers, polyamorists and/or fetishists of all stripes who come together to learn from each other, play together and explore their erotic/spiritual potentials.

“In the early days, nobody trusted anybody else,” offered Allena and Jim, poly life-partners with Jennifer and founders of Seattle’s “Wet Spot.” “The gays wouldn’t mix with lesbians or bisexuals let alone straights. The swingers wanted nothing to do with the hard-core S/M folks. Everybody held on tightly to their own particular labels and group identities to the exclusion of everyone else. Nobody yet realized the political strength in numbers.”


Allena told us that early on, she had owned a coffee house which attracted, among others, sexual adventurers of several varieties. When the coffee house went out of business, those who had begun to dialogue over java and across sexual orientations refused to relinquish the opportunity they had created to explore and play together. Subsequently, a string of new locations were tried and abandoned until the Wet Spot was born.

“But even after the various groups began sitting down together,” according to Jim, “resistance continued with everybody defining themselves in terms of what they wouldn’t do. ‘I’ll attend a meeting or tie somebody up but I don’t do any of that gay stuff.’ There’s still resistance, but the labels and barriers are slowly coming down.” Continued Allena, “People came and loosened up and tried things they never thought they would ever try, simply because the environment was so friendly, safe and inviting.” “In a lot of cases,” Jennifer added, “they found that some of what they had been shutting out actually held erotic potential for them.”

Debbie and I marveled at what we saw as we looked around the smoke, drug and alcohol-free room, noticing two women of different racial backgrounds snuggling in one corner; an older male/female couple enjoying sex with a much younger woman; two men sharing a rope, a whip and a rack; a young “man” discussing the stages he was going through on his way to becoming a woman, and a dance floor filled with partially clothed and naked bodies of various ages, shapes and designs, revealing tattooed torsos and branded behinds.

Nowhere did we see people “coming on to” others or being offensive in any way. People politely brought each other lemonade and candy from the free community stash and demonstrated respect for each other in a hundred other ways. The activities people chose to participate in were those with the greatest potential for satisfying their particular sexual desires while all around them, others with differing sexual interests, were pursuing far different sexual pleasures. Everywhere we looked, people were busy going about the business of maximizing their own erotic/spiritual potential while respectfully acknowledging everyone else’s right to do the same. It was as if Debbie and I had landed in a little corner of sexual heaven. I surmised that in a world of erotic harmony, the only label needed would be “sex positive.”

After three days of amazing sexual exploration, we finally made it to the wedding which of course turned out to be a bigger challenge of my endurance than anything Jennifer had to offer. But now, better able than before to access my spiritual core, I placed everything in loving perspective, and as a result, was able to rise nicely to the occasion. Later that evening, drawing on all we had learned, Debbie and I made love spectacularly for what seemed like hours. As we held each other in the afterglow, I couldn’t help but wonder if the newlyweds were having it this good.

Copyright 2006 Craig
Reprint with permission