Return to writing- sex positive community and friendships

It’s been a while since my last post. My writing here seems to go in fits and starts, but this was my longest period away since I got started. A combination of life exploding, in mostly good but busy ways, and some other things that had me questioning if I wanted to keep this blog going. But last night I had the kind of wonderful experience that got me started with this blog, that got me started wanting to write about sex and connection and friendship and spirituality.

And I didn’t even get laid.

I was out at a bar, at a gathering of sex bloggers and activists and perverts and assorted good people. The whole night was a lot of fun, I saw old friends and chatted with new people. The best part though, the part that has me smiling the next morning, and remembering why I started this blog in the first place: Three of the people I spent the most time talking to, three of the people who I spent time chatting with, and catching up on life with and making deeper friendly connections with, were all people I’d met at sex parties.

How many times have I heard that sex ruins a friendship? Here were three people, three people I’d consider good friends or quickly becoming such, who I met by having sex with.

The first, I met at a party many years ago. We hooked up, had a lot of fun, and that was that. We then ran into each other a few years later, and re-connected. She’s since become a valued friend and occasional play partner.

The second, was someone I met and played with at a wonderful event documented here and here. Since that time, we’ve played once or twice, but more importantly talked many times and really build a strong connection. I don’t get to see her often, but every time I do it’s like running into a long lost friend. Her face lights up when I walk into a room and I always get a warm hug and for a few minutes everything else stops as we catch up and hear about what’s been going on in each other’s lives. She was telling me about hew new crush and how well it is going and I remembered talking to her some months ago when things weren’t going so well and I just felt how happy I was for her. Those are the kind of moments of friendship I treasure.

The third is someone Emma and I met at a sex party we went to for my birthday and wound up having a deliciously wicked evening with that I hope to document soon. We chatted and flirted and wound up in bed with her, along with a few other friends we’d played with before. Then yesterday she and I wound up hanging out before the bar meet, and it was one of those conversations that makes me feel, wow, this person gets me, this is a person I could really connect with. I have no idea if she and I will fall into bed again, and though I’d love to, more important is that it doesn’t matter. Either way, it was clear by the hug I gave her at the end of the night that she warmly returned, that I’d found a new friend.

Why does all that matter? For me, one of the things I so treasure about the community of perverts and freaks and weirdoes I’m a part of, the communities I discover in part through the blogs I read and that I write about on these pages is the utter lack of sex negativity. The idea that sex is a beautiful thing, but it doesn’t have to come with all the hang ups and baggage. That sleeping with someone on a first date doesn’t have to change how they think about you, or that you can’t have sex with someone and stay “just friends.” That sex can be one of many things you share with someone, and it doesn’t have to fundamentally change your relationship, and that the sexual connection can come and go but not change the friendship.

As I write this I realize I need better friend vocabulary. I’ve found so many different words to talk about sex and God and so many of the things that this blog focuses on- and yet I find I use the word “connect” so many times above, till it sounds like a cliché. But it’s the best word I know.

Last night reminded me of one more way sex can be beautiful. It can start a new friendship, a new connection.