Redefining the Fucking Subject

I’ve been contemplating how to classify the lifestyle PC and I are living out since the spring of 2010. Why do I obsess over definitions, especially given that the very act of categorizing something – a lifestyle, a sexual practice – limits its horizon of possibilities? If the word, defining, muzzles? Why dwell on semantics in a post-feminist age? Why not adopt a coalitional approach to sexual practices and identity such as the one advocated by queer theorist Judith Butler?

For one, I’m a writer, and this is a blog. From a practical standpoint, search engines work on concrete terms. To reach like-minded readers, I must use the scripted code of keywords to define sex acts, sexual orientations, relationship boundaries, fetishes, kinks, and so forth.

In an effort to stay true to my main objective in writing this blog – the documenting of my sexual evolution —, what follows is a critical assessment of my journey so far.

 

A New Hope: Embracing a New Sexual Horizon 

For those of you who have been reading me since the summer of 2011, you will recall that PC and I initially came out as “swingers.” In having always been monogamous prior to meeting PC, I was little aware of the different sexual communities that exist, or of the terminology that distinguishes one tribe from another. 

In other words, even though I resisted the term “swinger” then, based on my limited knowledge it seemed to describe most aptly the kind of sex we were having with others. To be specific, we always played as a team, and had no interest in forming sexual attachments outside of our couple. At the time, the act of sharing – of having sex with others, together – was both liberating and affirmative. 

The Empire Bites Back 

Whether or not the closing of the old Celeste on Saint-Hubert Street coincided with or actually caused our disillusionment with the Montreal swinger scene is anyone’s guess. At any rate, after spending a glorious summer and fall flash fucking at L’Orage and at the old Celeste, not to mention indulging in a string of discreet foursomes at local love motels, by early 2011 we’d had our fill. 

All of a sudden it seemed harder to meet couples who turned us on in the club scene. We even created profiles on mainstream and lifestyle hookup sites in the hopes of reaching a larger pool of players. At first this new forum seemed promising, but it soon proved to be a huge waste of time. We quickly realized that no amount of online chatting could replace face-to-face contact to determine whether or not there was chemistry. Another key stumbling block: A lot of the people whom we met online were only interested in camming or maintaining virtual, MSN-chat relationships. Worse yet, a good number of profiles not only grossly misrepresented the players in question, but were also completely fabricated (this is especially true of unicorns, a.k.a. profiles of single women seeking couples). 

Finally, even when we did manage to play with our type of people, either at sex clubs or in the privacy of a motel, something was still missing. Even when the sex was hot, I always wanted more. More what? I asked myself in frustration. More intimacy? More complicity? More context? The questions multiplied in my mind. I had no answers. 

Let’s just say that after an expansive first act, we seemed to be stuck in episode two of our sex-exploration trilogy – the part in which everyone gets fucked, and not in a good way. The sexual empire we had conquered over the summer bit us back. Hard. 

(To be continued next Wednesday)