Progress in HIV research

STIs are a major concern for many people in the lifestyle and HIV is probably the most feared. After several years in the lifestyle my ex-wife and I had our last sexual contact with others at a Memorial Day weekend party in 1983. We stopped because of the concern about HIV. Once or twice a year we cautiously, with condoms, played with others who had also “taken a break” for a long time. It wasn’t until 1995 that lifestyle things sort of returned to normal. Condoms were required except for “closed communities” of select couples who also restricted themselves to playing within our “community”.

Now there is some significant hope for a HIV vaccine  and perhaps cure:

Scientists have engineered an antibody that attacks 99% of HIV strains and can prevent infection in primates.

It is built to attack three critical parts of the virus – making it harder for HIV to resist its effects.

The work is a collaboration between the US National Institutes of Health and the pharmaceutical company Sanofi.

The International Aids Society said it was an “exciting breakthrough”. Human trials will start in 2018 to see if it can prevent or treat infection.

Coming out

The O Face Podcast  just released Episode 13: Coming Out. I left a comment there but I thought it was appropriate for a blog post as well:

I’ve been in the lifestyle for over 37 years now but for some reason I have always been a little bit reserved about coming out to friends and family even though the experiences have all been fine. My last parent recently died and I’m now at the point of I don’t care anymore. I’m not going to broadcast it on my vanilla blog or Facebook, but the extent of my openness is going to be determined by the comfort level of my girlfriend. And since she recently brought her brother to the club that is a pretty low threshold.

My two daughters “figured it out on their own” and confronted my ex-wife about our lifestyle choices. They just bluntly asked, “Are you and Dad swingers?” They just wanted to know. My ex told them yes and they said it was fine if we did that sort of thing but they would never do it.

Over the years I have come out to about a half dozen friends and co-workers with zero negative repercussions. But those were pretty carefully chosen people. I wouldn’t have come out to someone who I didn’t think was going to be receptive to the idea, so it is a biased sample.

The scariest time was when swinger friends of ours got divorced and there was a child custody battle. The woman getting divorced claimed she was forced into the lifestyle and my ex and I had to testify in court. Our kids were still at home at the time and we had concerns there might be child welfare visits to our home or something. It didn’t happen but those were some of the nightmares we had about that experience.

Zoning, EMTs, and puritans

When creating a sex club there are some issues unique to the “industry”. Probably the biggest problem sex clubs have is zoning. This case from Arlington Texas is a typical example:

The operators of a swingers club at an upscale north Arlington home say they will fight the city’s efforts to shut down their weekend parties.

On Wednesday, Arlington officials sent the owners of the house in the 2400 block of North Cooper Street a letter telling them to shut down immediately, accusing them of illegally operating a home-based business.

The clubs in our area tell me they work with local officials and generally have no problems of this type.

Aside from zoning there are things of importance that need to be thought through and have some sort of plan in place for the operators and patrons of the clubs.

The biggest issue that I know of which happened at Club Pyrite is one time a woman had a medial emergency. The ambulance EMTs had what seemed to be a rather large escort from the police. We suspected it was because they wanted to see what it was like inside the club but we don’t really know for sure.

I was at the club at the time. While someone was calling 911 other people were notifying people in the club the EMTs, and probably police, would be showing up soon and to leave if we didn’t want to be there. We were welcome to stay and were told the path the emergency responders would be taking. We were asked to stay out of the area so they could have room to get the stretcher in and out. It was suggested we might want to be dressed, but again it was our choice.

I was sitting in the hot tub and the time which had a view of the locker room entrance where the woman collapsed. I elected to stay in the hot tub and see how it all went down. I watched the EMTs and police arrive, the woman leave on a stretcher, and then the police leave after asking a few questions of some of the people who witnessed the woman collapse. It seemed to be handled professionally as near as I could tell.

Jo and I saw the police at the club one other time when some guy got upset about something, was asked to leave, and things didn’t go as smoothly as they should have. The police arrived in the parking lot and made sure the guy left the property.

I have heard of cases in other states where there have been police raids on clubs. Sometimes there have been accusations of sex for money and other times alcohol and nudity issues. But people in the lifestyle always have the suspicion that it’s really a puritan issue where the authorities are afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun.

New Years Eve

On New Years Eve Jo and I went to the club with the new facility. I’m going to name this Club Topaz just to make it easier to refer to in the future.

We saw some couples of interest but for the most part they seemed to be already “attached” to other couples. We talked to one very nice looking couple but thought they were a bit on the young side and probably wouldn’t be interested in us. As it turned out I think we were probably mistaken on that issue because of the longing looks he gave Jo in the orgy room later.

I was talking to Trevor when someone came up behind me and put their arms around me. I continued talking for a few seconds think it was Jo. Then I realized the feel of there body wasn’t right for Jo. I turned around and found to my big surprise it was Darcy. Darcy and I used to be very close. Her husband had stopped going with her to the clubs. My wife didn’t go with me to the club so in essence we became a couple and would meet at the club twice a month. That progressed to us getting together outside the club sometimes too. She told me she loved me but there was never any interest in splitting with her husband Kenny for me. And then when I split with my wife Darcy told me she would like it if I would be her second husband. As much as I enjoyed her company it wasn’t a good match. She and her husband lived too far from where I worked and her husband was sometimes uncomfortable with our relationship as it was.

After I split with my wife Darcy coached me some on finding a new partner and I would discuss the dates I had with women who were potential partners. As I was leaving my first date with Jo I sent Darcy an email saying I was in love. Ten days later I took Jo to the club to introduce her to the lifestyle and also so Darcy could met her and give me her opinion. When we had a few moments of privacy she quietly told me, “She’s a keeper!”

After that meeting in September 2012 I think we saw Kenny and Darcy just once more until New Years Eve. There hadn’t even been any email back and forth. Kenny was pretty sensitive to the relationship I had with Darcy at the time. And also Jo wasn’t comfortable with me spending time with someone I had been that close with while the relationship between Jo and I was still so young. So we just didn’t have contact with each other.

With that as background… Darcy and I kissed, hugged, and then talked for a while. We got caught up on each others lives and then went back to our spouses. Later I found Kenny and talked to him for quite a while about non-sex things that we had in common.

Jo and I ended up just playing with each other and watching others in one of the orgy rooms. We went home early and I think we were in bed before midnight.

First post

My first sex club visit was decades ago. I attended with my wife and another newbie couple. Let’s call them Jan and Van. My wife and I had never had sex with anyone other than each other and we were very scared. Jan and Van seemed to be just as scared and I later found out Jan didn’t want to go there. She was just doing it to make her husband happy. (We now call that “taking one for the team”. Don’t do that.)

It was a disaster. My wife had sex with Van and I had sex with Jan. Van kept going and going and going. It went on for an hour or more. My wife kept asking him to stop and he didn’t. Jan didn’t want to be there. She didn’t like Van having sex with my wife. And she wasn’t really interesting in having sex with me.

The worst part was that we had carpooled to the party and now we were riding back home, an hour away, in a car with people we didn’t want to be with. Then the next day I went away on a business trip for a week. My wife and I really needed time to talk and recover and now we were apart.

Lessons learned.

The club scene didn’t work out for us very well at the time. So we found other playmates (swingers as they were called then) in contact/swinger magazines. We met some really nice people and had great fun. We also met some sketchy people and had bad experiences. More lessons learned.

Eventually my wife went crazy. It was independent of the sex parties but the symptoms showed up in that aspect of our lives as well.

The crazy keep getting worse and ultimately, after years of insisting we see a counselor and her refusing, I filed for separation and divorce. I haven’t seen or talked to her since then.

A few months later I met my girlfriend Jo on match.com. I was immediately very impressed with her. Her history of living with a crazy person for decades matched mine. She was really smart. Her social-economic status matched mine. Physically we were a good match for each other. She was a good mother to her kids. She was accepting of my other, somewhat outside the mainstream, hobbies. She seemed very interested in sex but her sex history didn’t match mine. I took her to her first sex club 10 days later. That was about a year and a half ago. It’s been working out really well.

These days we go to the local sex club once or twice a week. She says, “I’m not really horny all the time, but I’m always ready to be a willing participant.”

This blog is a diary of our visits to sex parties. I hope to share with you the lessons learned and the incredible pleasures experienced.