[Greta Christina] My Very First Orgy, and What I Learned There
I know. The title makes it sounds like a third- grader’s report on their trip to the planetarium. But you know, except for the third- grader part, it was sort of like that.
And I thought you might be interested to hear the story. I mean, who doesn’t like a good orgy story?
My very first orgy happened when I was in college. Surprise, surprise. I call it my first orgy, but in a sense it was my only orgy: I’ve been to a decent number of sex parties since, but this was my only “puppy pile of bodies co-mingling more or less indiscriminately” that we tend to think of as a classic, Capital O Orgy.
It happened more or less spontaneously. Or at least without any planning on my part. My boyfriend and I were hanging out on the steps of the student union, when these three girls came up to us, said they were putting together an orgy, and asked if we wanted to join them. The girls were sort of renowned on campus for being what I would now call “sex positive bi-dykes” but didn’t have a term for back then (hi, ladies, I still remember you fondly, if any of you are reading this drop me a line) . . . and it only took a couple seconds for me and my boyfriend to arrive at an enthusiastic Yes.
They said they needed a couple/few more people, and asked if we could round anybody up. So I raced off to one of my best friends, and spent half an hour unsuccessfully trying to convince him that the obviously most sensible action would be for him to blow off studying for his big math test and come to the orgy instead. (I was arguing that in twenty years he’d never remember the math test, but would always regret having passed on an opportunity for an orgy. An argument I still stand by.) Alas, my rhetorical skills failed me; so I finally gave up on my friend, and headed back to the dorm room where the festivities were being held.
There is nothing quite like walking into a dorm room with six naked people having sex together in a pile on the floor. Especially when one of them is your boyfriend. I had a brief moment of — well, “shock” is too strong a word, let’s call it “sudden adjustment” or “category error” — as the reality of the situation was rather crudely borne in on me. Then I decided, “What the fuck, this is what I’m here for,” hurriedly shucked my clothes, and joined in.
And I learned two very important life lessons: lessons that stay with me to this day.
Important Life Lesson Number One: I really and truly do like having sex with other women.
I’d known that I had sexual feelings about women for a long, long time. But apart from some childish experiments that could only be considered borderline sex at most, I’d never done anything about it, except swipe my dad’s Playboys and fantasize nonstop. I’d been calling myself “bisexual” ever since I’d heard the word (at about age 12); but I also couldn’t really be sure that the word was accurate. I had serious Nancy Friday/ My Secret Garden damage, and had been persuaded that having fantasies about something doesn’t mean you really want to do it. Even when you have said fantasies constantly, every hour of every day, and have had them for years. (Note to Ms. Friday: No, having sex fantasies doesn’t necessarily mean you want to do that thing in real life . . . but it sure as hell means that sometimes.)
This orgy was the first time I had actual, unquestionable sex with another woman. The first time, to put it crudely, that I put my tongue on another woman’s pussy. And the moment I put my tongue on that other woman’s pussy (hi there, L., if you’re reading, I remember you too, and very fondly indeed), my core sexual self- identity was transformed, from “woman who has fantasies about other women but isn’t sure what that means in her real life” to “dyke.” It took no time at all. Tongue hovering above the pussy, not so sure; tongue on the pussy, dyke.
So. That’s Important Life Lesson Number One. Pussy: good. Sex with girls: good. A lesson with very great impact on my life to this day, what with being married to a woman and all. Important Life Lesson Number Two:
I learned at that orgy exactly what, for me, jealousy was, and why I had it, and what I should do about it.
At the time of the orgy, my boyfriend and I had been having ongoing problems with monogamy. The problems being that he persistently cheated on me, and I was unhappy and pissed about it. At the time of the orgy, we were supposedly trying non-monogamy . . . but it was that half-assed version of non-monogamy that translates as “one person in the relationship wants no limitations on their sexual behavior, so they unilaterally declare the relationship non-monogamous, cat around carelessly with no regard for their partner’s feelings, and insist that any problem their partner has comes from un-evolved possessiveness.” (With the addendum, “And then they get hurt and angry when their partner tries to screw other people too.” But I didn’t find out that part until later.)
Needless to say, this turned out to be an unsuccessful experiment. It’s a miracle that I stuck with non-monogamy. Hell, it’s a miracle that I didn’t get the clap. I felt threatened, abandoned, anxious, insecure, disregarded, unwanted . . . all those things that add up to raging, festering jealousy.
But I felt no jealousy whatsoever at this orgy.
I watched, up close and personal, as my boyfriend got his dick sucked by another woman . . . and I was totally okay with it. I actually kind of enjoyed it.
I did feel a twinge of something, something other than simple enjoyment and general okay-ness. Surprise, perhaps, is the best word for it. Sudden adjustment. Category error. But the closest I came to jealousy were a few passing moments of, “Shouldn’t I be feeling jealous about this?” I kept expecting to feel bad about what I was seeing . . . and it kept not happening.
And it occurred to me: My problem with my boyfriend cheating on me wasn’t a problem with him having sex with other people.
It was a problem with me being left out.
My problem was with him spending his time chasing other women at the serious expense of time spent with me. It was with him making major decisions about our relationship unilaterally, and then making me feel guilty that I wasn’t okay with it. It was with him blatantly trying to seduce other women in front of my face, even though he knew it upset me. It was with him spending nights with other women without consideration for the fact that I might be worried and wondering where the hell he was.
This was the problem. And therefore, the orgy wasn’t a problem. The orgy was an experience we were sharing, a decision we made together, a sexual adventure we were having as a couple. None of the “being abandoned and disregarded” stuff that was going on with the cheating was going on in that puppy pile.
And that lesson has stuck with me to this day.
The specifics of what I do and don’t need from non-monogamy have changed a lot since then. Mostly, they’ve loosened up. I don’t need to be in the room if my partner is having sex with someone else; I don’t really mind if they flirt with other people when I’m around; I’m okay if sex with other people takes time away from me, as long as that time isn’t vast. I just need to feel like my feelings are being taken into consideration; like I’m involved in the decisions; like my major triggers will be worked around even if they’re not rational. I just need to not feel left out.
And I figured that out at the orgy.
So here are my study questions for the rest of the class: What life lessons have you learned from your sexual adventures? How have you applied these lessons to your life? Have any of these lessons been relevant to your life in areas other than sex and relationships? The class is now open to discussion. There are no wrong answers.
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on Friday, 10 April 2009 at 12:33 pm Blake Stacey wrote:
Life lesson the first:
It is a somewhat dispiriting experience to find yourself, on St. Valentine’s of all days, the seventh person in an orgy made for six.
Life lesson the second:
I will probably never be as enthusiastic about any political figure as the (perhaps godless?) young woman who in a moment of passion called out, “Oh, oh, OH — OBAMA!”
Life lesson the third:
Sexual orientation might not matter so much when you consider yourself basically undateable and discover that you’re enough of a stand-alone that you’re only occasionally angsty about it, but damn, doubling the enjoyment of a James Bond movie is awfully nice.
on Friday, 10 April 2009 at 12:46 pm Chris Hallquist wrote:
Oh my science, thank you for this post, Greta. This has given me new hope for life. You don’t know how much it means to a straight male like me that there are sex-positive bi-dykes arranging orgies by walking up to people on the street and asking if they’re interested. Thank you so much.
on Friday, 10 April 2009 at 5:56 pm PW wrote:
What life lessons have I learnt? Well for one thing, I agree wholeheartedly with the sex with women thing. I’ve also always thought of myself as bisexual and love having sex with men, but women are a whole other, wonderful proposition. Corny as it may sound, I don’t think I really understood what it was about until I had sex with a woman. It’s like the world suddenly righted itself.
The jealousy thing is interesting. I wasn’t jealous in my first non-monogamous adventures but when it hit, it came entirely out of left field. What made it harder to deal with was that I wasn’t expecting it at all. We were both already seeing other people and it had never bothered me, but when my partner told me about a possible interest, I freaked not just because there was (potentially) someone else but also because I was freaking out about it in the first place and felt that I shouldn’t be. It took me a while - and a few other crises - but eventually I figured out that what triggered me was, as you put it, feeling left out. I don’t mean I wanted to participate directly - it was the sense that my feelings weren’t being taken into account that bugged me, not the specifics of what my partner was up to. It was how and when I was told, which I suppose wasn’t anyone’s fault because I didn’t know I wanted to be told any particular way in the first place until it happened. I learned that what I’d been saying all along about jealousy being insecurity was true - as long as I know (ie, feel and am told that) I am loved and valued and am getting the attention that I want, I not only have no problem with my partners’ other involvements, I sometimes find myself getting something of a contact hight off them.
There are other life lessons I’m still working on figuring out. Such as my extreme, violent (emotionally, not physically) reaction to perceived breaches of trust (I say perceived because they’re relatively small things and specific to the way I conduct my relationships). I have ended relationships in an instant because of these, and in only the latest instance have I actually been able to pause long enough before reacting that I was able to conclude that there were other ways of dealing with it. Like, you know, actually dealing with it. But then again, I can’t say that I have - if I can’t forget it, chances are I haven’t really forgiven it either.
on Friday, 10 April 2009 at 6:13 pm Greta Rocks My World « Periodical Writing wrote:
[…] Greta Rocks My World As usual, Greta Christina’s latest post on the Blowfish Blog is…well…’awesome’ is accurate but it’s an annoyingly vague thing to say. Anyway, it’s called My Very First Orgy and What I Learned There. She divides it into the two major life lessons she learned that day and I found both wonderfully affirming. I want to cut and paste both punchlines here, but I think reading how she came to her conclusions is just as important as reading the conclusions themselves. Published in: […]
on Friday, 10 April 2009 at 7:39 pm Lynet wrote:
Here’s one from each of my few sexual encounters so far:
1. It’s not worth the bother if you’re not attracted to him.
2. Making out with someone you trust is worth so much more than doing more with someone you’re less close to.
3. For all that, random sex can be fun!
4. Semi-random sex when you’re not sure what the relationship is supposed to be doing is, however, not so fun.
I can’t wait to see what I’ll learn next.
on Friday, 10 April 2009 at 7:42 pm Rick wrote:
I would have been this best friend. I had an opportunity in college for a three-way (the only one so far) with a former and current girlfriend. They were both eager, but I declined because I had to take the Graduate Record Exam the next day.
To this day, I still wish I’d taken them up on the offer. I did really shitty on the GRE, and I’m sure that I would remember every detail of that encounter 20 years later.
on Saturday, 11 April 2009 at 6:48 am Jon wrote:
@Rick — if you’d had the three-way, you would have still done badly on the GRE, but you would have assumed to this day that it was because you had the three-way rather than studying, and it would have put you off sexual experimentation permanently, and you’d have ended up all embittered and depressed and sexually frustrated. So be happy it went the way it did.
Just trying to help.
on Saturday, 11 April 2009 at 9:50 pm erin wrote:
I’ve had three threesomes. I should have learned from the first one that I find them to be bumpy and not that enjoyable. (All three were with two straight men and myself, a straight woman. Maybe it would have been different if they had been bisexual? I do love watching guy-on-guy action.) I’ve now learnt that I prefer one-on-one attention, in the bedroom and in my relationships, and that’s okay.
on Sunday, 12 April 2009 at 11:03 pm usagi wrote:
Oh, where to begin…
There are good three-ways & bad three-ways. The clearest indicator of which type it’s going to be is if there’s someone who you’re less attracted to or someone is indicating they’re going along with it to please their partner. If either of these conditions is true, walk away (on the other hand, if you’re all three clicking, go for it–note there is not a mediocre three-way category).
If it’s not working, stop. Act like an adult, acknowledge it’s not happening for you, and don’t waste everybody’s time out of a misplaced sense of obligation. If possible, do this before someone’s spent an hour tying you up.
Learn how to discern when you’re not compatible with a potential partner. My most obvious style incompatibility is with doms who feel the need to set the sub up to fail in a task as a context for the rest of the scene. Sorry, not interested, not even a little (this is especially frustrating with tops I like and respect but realize I’ll never have an enjoyable scene with).
Those (and others) have led me to the Grand Unified Theory of Happiness:
on Sunday, 12 April 2009 at 11:05 pm usagi wrote:
Oh, where to begin…
There are good three-ways & bad three-ways. The clearest indicator of which type it’s going to be is if there’s someone who you’re less attracted to or someone is indicating they’re going along with it for their partner. If either of these conditions is true, walk away (on the other hand, if you’re all three clicking, go for it–note there is not a mediocre three-way category).
If it’s not working, stop. Act like an adult, acknowledge it’s not happening for you, and don’t waste everybody’s time out of a misplaced sense of obligation. If possible, do this before someone’s spent an hour tying you up.
Learn how to discern when you’re not compatible with a potential partner. My most obvious style incompatibility is with doms who feel the need to set the sub up to fail in a task as a context for the rest of the scene. Sorry, not interested, not even a little (this is especially frustrating with tops I like and respect but realize I’ll never have an enjoyable scene with).
Those (and others) have led me to the Grand Unified Theory of Happiness:
These can be with people, food, work, leisure activities, exercise, you name it. The relationship may be of vanishingly short or very long duration. Most importantly, it can change over time in either direction.
on Monday, 13 April 2009 at 8:38 am Devysciple wrote:
Same here, a young lady I shared a few courses with, and her best friend, made the offer. I politely refused, and I don’t regret that. The reasons are quite simple: a) one was smokin’ hot, while the other was so not my type of girl, and b) I wasn’t emotionally attracted to either of them.
Other random things I have learned (in hopefully chronological order): girls and women can be nasty; boobs are less important than initially assumed; emotional attraction is way more important than physical attraction; eating out a woman is more fun then receiving a blowjob; longer periods without sex (sometimes even without masturbation) are survivable (barely); and certainly a lot more that has become just so natural to me that I don’t even realize I learned it some time.
on Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 5:24 am David Ley Ph.D. wrote:
The deal with sexual fantasies is that some people have fantasies they wish they didn’t have (women who have been abused and fantasize about rape, people who wish they were not homosexual, etc.), some people have fantasies that they love, but that they never really want to have come true, and some people have fantasies that they can’t let go of until they come true. It was easy for Friday to say fantasies are just fantasies. I think you’re right - it’s a lot more complicated than that - sometimes, sexual fantasies are a window into a person’s unresolved needs, around orientation, monogamy, kinkiness, or emotional/personal needs. Unfortunately, society responds very negatively when people disclose fantasies that are socially inappropriate or unacceptable. Historically, fantasies about group sex have been seen to reveal significant issues of personal insecurity, boundary problems, personality disorder, etc., especially when these fantasies are expressed by women.
But, society picks and chooses - the fact that most men fantasize about threesomes with two women is now simply accepted as part of the nature of men, and assumed to reveal nothing. Why?
on Friday, 17 April 2009 at 4:00 am One Woman’s First Orgy Experience « Sex Secrets wrote:
[…] One Woman’s First Orgy Experience Posted on April 17, 2009 by Svetlana Ivanova Greta Christina, in her latest post at The Blowfish Blog, describes what it was like to take part in her first and only orgy. I know. The title makes it sounds like a third- grader’s report on their trip to the planetarium. But you know, except for the third- grader part, it was sort of like that. […]
on Saturday, 18 April 2009 at 12:20 pm Lessons learned from orgies « The Official Early to Bed Blog! wrote:
[…] Check out “My Very First Orgy and What I Learned There“. Five minutes well spent, I’d say. Reading the blog, that is, not having an orgy. Orgies should be longer than 5 minutes. This isn’t freaking Burger King, people. […]
on Friday, 1 May 2009 at 10:48 am What She Learned At The Orgy - ErosBlog: The Sex Blog wrote:
[…] You’ll enjoy Greta Christina’s account of her first orgy: My very first orgy happened when I was in college. Surprise, surprise. I call it my first orgy, but in a sense it was my only orgy: I’ve been to a decent number of sex parties since, but this was my only “puppy pile of bodies co-mingling more or less indiscriminately” that we tend to think of as a classic, Capital O Orgy. […]
on Friday, 1 May 2009 at 1:59 pm Vance wrote:
I never turned down an orgy invitation when I was in college and afterwards until I got married. I had some that were problematic, usually due to jealousy leaping up and causing a guy to get weird or a girl to cry. For the most part, they were fun and I got to have sex with a few women who completely surprised me by (1) being there, and (2) being awesome sex partners.
Most orgies were spontaneous but a few were planned. If you get the right people, and a good place, nothing beats a well-planned orgy. I’m in my 60’s now and long past this activity, but I remember with great happiness tasting a particular pussy, or getting a sloppy blowjob from a woman I’d met 10 minutes earlier, or giving it good to the wife of an English professor of mine who was hotter than a two dollar shotgun. She later would come to my apartment with her girlfriend and we’d have very private threesomes that no one else knew about. There were very nice downstream effects of partaking.
on Wednesday, 10 March 2010 at 4:53 pm Blog Leituras Favre wrote:
[…] Please note: This piece discusses my personal sex life and my sexual history in quite a bit of detail. Family members and others who don’t want to read that, please, absolutely, do not read this one. This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog. My Very First Orgy, and What I Learned There […]