Imagine you get 350 people who have consistently hidden, ignored or marginalized a similar, crucial part of their lives. Then imagine you’ve put these 350 people in an enormous space together for three days, given them power, and let them play.
Floating World was not a culture shock. Floating World was a culture validation. An absolute, no questions asked validation, warm as a big gooey oven, warm as my hands deep inside a gorgeous girl. I come out of the weekend, back to the shock treatment of database software and street meat lunches, with four words to claim. Four words that I have made and will make my own.
The first word is pansexual.
“Pansexuality is a sexual orientation characterized by the potential for aesthetic attraction, romantic love and/or sexual desire for people regardless of their gender identity or biological sex.”
I was walking down the hall of the convention center, 6pm on Saturday night, and Jen and Blaise were cuddling by a wall. I had just gotten out of a panel I was speaking on about labels. I had mentioned briefly that I was struggling with the identity of bisexual versus the identity of pansexual; in essence, caught between the two words with no visceral understanding of either one.
I popped up to them, put my chin on Jen’s shoulder, grinned. It was mid-event; I was already high and climbing.
“Do you want to do a fisting tonight?” Blaise asked me.
“Who’s getting fisted?”
“This one,” Blaise smiled as he pulled Jen closer to him, “has requested a group fisting. So far it’s Tyler, me, Corey, Calico, you, and May. And I asked Kate Bornstein and Barbara Carellas too.” Jen was turning a ripe peach color.
I grinned wider. “What time?”
Jen is one beautiful half of a remarkable couple. Tyler is the other half, and she is smaller, but no less beautiful. It took me ages to recognize their kind of beauty. It is full of softness and permeated with sexuality and humor. They laugh when they’re fucking. They giggle and tell jokes and seem to have sex as naturally as I breathe.
That night we gathered in the corner of the mixed gender space, a wide curtained room off the main dungeon. We pulled a futon up to a sex swing in the corner, and made piles of bodies while Jen settled herself in the swing, her dress around her waist, leather boots in the air. Tyler was gathering lube and paper towels. “Okay guys, we’re going in order of hand size,” she said. She leaned over Jen’s body and they whispered together while on the futon we pressed palms together, comparing the lengths of our fingers and the thickness of our palms.
The cluster of people stayed on the futon while Tyler went first, making little theatrical motions in the air that sent us into hysterics. But soon, as Jen’s breathing became louder and more regular, we gathered closer. Jen is mesmerizing; we were all drawn into the magnetism of her skin. She pulled her top down, flung her arms over her head, and closed her eyes. I knelt beside the swing and grazed my lips along her neck. “Hi,” I said. “Hey you,” she answered back.
We changed places slowly, tapping out as each person drew their hands into her. Everyone in the group wanted to touch her; I would pull her hardened nipple into my mouth and smell the bootblack on Blaise’s hands as he caressed her from the other side of the swing. When we weren’t touching her, we stood close and watched.
“I’m trying to practice your breathing techniques,” she said to Barbara at one point, drawing her breath in deliberately through small moans. That got a general laugh from the sex-drugged peanut gallery.
My hands are small. When my turn was coming up I pulled on rubber gloves, dropped lube over my hands and began rubbing it to warm it into a soapy mess. As I took my place at the foot of the swing, I watched Calico pull her hand out and marveled that it had gone in so easily. Clearly in the world of penetration I am tightly lagging behind my fellow explorers. “So Jen, dear, should I mention that I’ve never fisted a girl before?” I smiled at her, fighting down the little bite of apprehension.
Jen’s pussy, as she lay with her boots sprawled upwards, was wide and slippery soft, that peach color all over again. I eased three fingers inside her, pushed a little, and jumped as my hand slid past her labia and was enveloped.
Her pussy was hot; I was reminded of fever kisses. I pushed deeper and marveled as my wrist bone touched her ass. Blaise and Tyler started giving me directions, making turns and twists in the air that I would mimic inside Jen’s body. Jen was vibrating with every motion by now, fingers grasping into Tyler’s sides and her throat all thrown back and trembling.
I piled more lube on my palms, cupped one hand around the base of the other and slid back in. With a hand and a half inside her I went exploring slowly. I couldn’t pound away, leaving that to more experienced hands than mine. Instead I made deep thrusts. I watched her body. I poured myself into her. Fucking hell, I was thinking. I want immortalize you. I want to to carve you in white marble like a goddess and paint you all in pink.
When I drew out she let out a little kitten moan and then swelled up again as Blaise’s hands replaced my own.
As I looked around the circle magnetized to Jen’s presence, I was struck, shot, paralyzed with wonder. Half the dozen-odd faces were people I’d never met before that morning. I felt a little shy when Kate turned to me and smiled; its seems that Kate is like that, at first. Barbara too. These people have so much passion it’s hard to process.
I was paralyzed so suddenly because everything was so fucking easy.
The space was easy, the people friends already. The sex was gorgeous. When Jen screamed the second time, gushing outward in a frenzy of relaxed tension, that was easy too. Easy, sexy, gratifying, and perfect.
Once Jen had struggled her liquid bones up from the swing and was standing in just her boots by the futon, I took the time to collapse and look at her. Christ, girl, you look amazing naked. I wish we could stay here forever.
The next morning in a class on male bisexuality Jefferson asked the class for a show of hands of people who identified as bisexual. I started to put my hand up, and stopped. I was thinking about the night before.
I didn’t want that space divided by gender. The “bi” in “bisexual” wouldn’t touch even half the people that stood in that circle. Do I use language for what I am or what I do? And are they different, in the end?
I raised my hand. “Can I make a distinction between bisexual and pansexual?”
“Sure,” he answered.
I am pansexual. It was time to say it out loud.
In the comments string on this post, Juliet (f’ing brilliant, by the way) and I have been having a discussion about the nature of the word “pansexuality” as it relates not only to gender but to activity. I like the word for several reasons, I have not touched on them all here, and I suggest that as further reading you explore the comments thread. And go read Juliet’s blog.
