sweat (the black lesbian swing series) (THE BLACK LESBIAN SWINGER SERIES)

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On Thursday night it launched in Melbourne, welcoming about 50 women for an invitation-only evening of bubbles, burlesque by Ferri Maya, and a chat about “the ancient art of women pleasuring women” from sexpert Ruth Ostrow.

Afterward, I had lunch with Dana and some of the other Olivia staffers and asked them about it — why not make the Public Posts more prominent, MichFest style? Especially since the younger people at the first Gen O event had explicitly asked for more sex content. Olivia had run sexuality and intimacy workshops before, and at the lunch, the staffers floated the definite possibility that they will again. I know for a fact that a lot of my queer friends would be way more likely to book a future Olivia cruise, uncool as cruises might be to cash-strapped millennials, if they knew how likely they’d be to get some action.

I would worry about which of the many friends my ex-partner and I shared I would lose in the dyke divorce. I’d have to come to terms with the fact that I can’t control how other people feel, can’t hold out for universal approval. Though I would also seek constant reassurance from my closest friends that I wasn’t a bad person for putting myself first, for a change; that, even after blowing up my life, they’d keep on loving me. We spent much of the day exploring the beautiful scenery with our friends, reaffirming that the bond between swingers extends well beyond the bedroom. I’m determined to do something showstopping, but our offerings are comically limited. No Sheryl Crow, no Michelle Branch. Not even “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” In my relationship, I often worried that I was taking on the femme role to my partner’s masc — the Wendy to their Peter — in ways that weren’t always positive or healthy. My partner got frustrated when I mentioned what I thought were our gendered roles; they thought I was projecting straight bullshit into a queer space where it didn’t need to be. We were lesbian and nonbinary dykes; we were supposed to be beyond gender.

When I kissed Lynette goodbye at our appropriately miserable reentry to the real world — Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan — I still wasn’t exactly sure what the hell I was supposed to do next. Then there are the fake swingers. These couples tend to be younger. They attend all the big events, and if there's a stripper pole in the room, you can bet they'll be the first ones on it. But when it comes down to the actual swinging, they're more into the exhibitionist aspect of the lifestyle and ultimately are not looking for sex with other couples. But Moon says that the women at Skirt Club were just as enthusiastic as women at the more queer parties she’s been to. When she was a guest speaker at one of Skirt Club’s full-fledged sex parties in New York and finished her talk on female pleasure, she expected the attendees to proceed with caution. My partner was patient and kind. But as time went on, they got frustrated — understandably — and they suggested, as a reparative measure, that we open up our relationship. Later, we attended a masturbation workshop, which would be better described as a meditation on self-pleasure.

I said as long as he could get me showered and out the door in time for my second date with the muscle-bound guy from Thursday, then he was welcome to have me. As an example of that communication and trust, here's a story one couple we met early on shared with us: I come from a queer universe where traditional butch/femme identities seem old-school and retrograde, second-wavey, practically heteropatriarchal. There’s a lot wrong with that perspective — for one thing, a lot of the modern queers who shit on butch/femme dynamics aren’t from the working class, where those identities were born — but it’s one I still sympathize with, especially as someone who’d previously been hesitant to claim femme identity as my own.

Lynette is 53 years old, though she looks at least 10 years younger. She was born and raised in London to Jamaican parents. She’d recently separated from her wife, whom she’d been with for 21 years. This cruise was the gift Lynette gave herself in the aftermath. She was starting over. These choices are homophobic,” I tell my new friend Dana. She’s technically my press handler, tasked with making sure I see the best that the tour operator, Olivia Travel, has to offer. So far, she’s more than delivered, but the weak karaoke selection — not Dana’s fault! — is a rare low point on a trip that, four days in, has already slowly but surely begun to change my life. Of course, having the kind of sex most people only get to fantasise about didn’t hurt either. Friday My wife and I are a typical heterosexual couple, but we have a dirty secret: We're swingers. No, we don't twirl and flip to music from the 1940s; we meet other couples and have sex with each other's partners. Due to our conservative careers and even more conservative families, we keep our sexual practices to ourselves. Only a few close vanilla friends know what we're into ("vanilla" is the term swingers use to refer to anyone who isn't a swinger ... and also other swingers who happen to be covered in vanilla).WHEN women started jetting into Sydney from interstate and overseas for exclusive, risqué women-only sex club parties with dress codes like “lace and latex”, the Skirt Club knew it was time to spread its wings. Skirt Club has strict approval, membership and confidentiality requirements: The first rule of Skirt Club is you do not talk about Skirt Club.