Wow, I’ve been remiss… A few days of lost blogging turns into weeks. So far, it hasn’t become a month off but I’m getting dangerously close.
It’s a new year and I’m thinking this needs to be the year of The Project. I’ve been committing myself judiciously to a number of activities (not the least among them being dropping a bunch of excess fat) but there’s this one BIG one I’ve been dicking around with for the past couple of years, and it’s come a lot more into focus over the past few months.
And I’m not going into a lot of detail. Sorry. I’ve learned not to give away my fire, so I’m going to keep this baby in the pressure cooker (yum!) until there’s some real progress.
A cryptic entry… My apologies.
Last week, I attended the “Introduction to Sex Positive Culture” at the Center for Sex Positive Culture, the remarkable organization were RCJ hosts its events. I really felt good about getting my very gay ass into a room where I was in the sexual minority for a change. I’m more accustomed to being my gay self around lots of gay others, either naked at the Jacks or clothed in the chorus.
Have I mentioned that I sing with Seattle Men’s Chorus? Biggest gay chorus in the world? Yeah. I do that. Eleven years and counting.
At work, there are lots of different folk, but I’m just being me—not being specifically homosexual—when I’m at the office… As a rule.
I would come away from this session with a new identifier for myself: Gay-Curious. I don’t mean I’m curious about being gay—that would be like Popeye identifying as spinach-curious—but gay and curious about women’s sexuality. I don’t consider myself innately stimulated by women enough to be actually bisexual, but I’m definitely more than just intellectually curious…
So I was in a place that was all about sex, about approaching it positively and practicing it openly, and here were all the women and men, some queer like me but mostly straight and many kinky. It felt amazingly good to be there, just sitting in the room I have already masturbated in with hundreds of men over the past year, with twenty or so other horny humans on folding chairs, all listening to a Center Ambassador hold forth for an hour on the ins and outs of the organization.
Most of these people were going to stay and play later that night. I was heading home to do laundry and get a good night’s sleep before work the next day…
The session was too long, and way too much listening to one person talk to us (sometimes at us) about the club rules (I could probably offer some tips on improving the presentation, but it’s not my place to criticize, noob that I am). I noted a lot of similarities between CSPC’s Intro session and RCJ’s new member orientation, but theirs takes an hour and a half while ours takes 15 minutes, max.
Ben (names changed as always) went over the very long new member document we all had in our hands, just touching on the salient points (no means no, park in legal spaces, safe sex is up to the people having it, the safe word is “safeword,” ask and obtain permission before any participation in any scene, staff wear name tags, etc., etc.) Just before everyone nodded off, he handed us off to another ambassador (“Barb”) who took us on a tour.
It was a challenge just taking it all in and letting go of my spatial prejudice, having become deeply familiar with every nook and cranny of the Annex side of the Center, having set it up and torn it down for a year, but it was a good exercise letting myself play the novice to a point (I did introduce myself as the founder and manager of Rain City Jacks, so everybody knew that much. Many knew who we are, so I was a person in context, and not a complete stranger—possibly not an advantage).
The genuinely new perspective came when we moved over to the Main Space, the original, more developed part of the Center, with which I was 99% unfamiliar… Now the imagination started cranking… (to be continued)