Though I knew him to be a business executive and samba instructor, the poised man who came to the door in his t-shirt and pyjama bottoms, with his well-tended white beard and faint air of naughtiness, looked more like the sensei at an erotic dojo.
I was a little out of breath. The house – tall, with wooden decks around it – stood on the side of a pine-covered slope on a street on the edge of Portland, Oregon, and I’d had to climb a steep drive in inappropriate leather footwear to get there, being met at the top by Cliff, my host.
He ushered me inside – my crew followed behind – and I took my shoes off in a cloakroom, then ventured into a large kitchen where little Indian statues of couples in coitus sat beside generic holiday snaps of Cliff’s children.
Trays and bowls of food were arrayed on countertops – a buffet of the type you would find in the business lounge of a regional airport: grapes and apple slices and small slabs of cheese – but there was cling film over them. It wasn’t yet time to eat.
The kitchen filled up: couples, a handful of singles, male and female in roughly equal measure, most in their thirties and forties.
Many of the guys were in plain collared shirts, and the women in knee-length dresses – they might have been at a church mixer. But there was also a sprinkling of more flamboyant partygoers. A bearded man in a blue sarong, his shirt unbuttoned to show a huge blue pendant resplendent on his hairy chest. Another, older, dreadlocked man, in black leggings and a little leatherette waistcoat. A heavyset lady in an orange kimono that was open to reveal a generous helping of cleavage.
A woman, probably in her thirties, was smiling at me with a daffy air of free-spirited bonhomie that seemed to invite further inquiry.
‘Are you excited?’ I asked.
‘I’m so excited!’ she replied.
‘Are you nervous too?’
‘Nuh! Why would someone be nervous? It’s just a night of fun and freedom! It’s all about the pleasure.’
‘Yeah, the pleasure – of the food,’ I added hopefully.
‘Yeah! Well, you know, the food and . . .’ Eyes wide, she trailed off.
‘Have you been fed food before?’ asked a grey-haired older lady with dangly earrings. She placed her hand on my chest. ‘I think you’re going to really enjoy the experience. You’re pretty safe. We’re a good group of people.’
‘Oh, it’s good to hear that,’ I said.
At Cliff’s direction, we separated into three groups. Group one began loading up plates with food and pouring drinks into plastic beakers with sippy-cup lids. Then we all made our way downstairs to a basement where mats were laid out and gentle music was playing.
‘As those who have been to my events before – the massage-à-trois, the tantra events – know, I’m really into putting together events where you learn something about yourself,’ Cliff said. ‘You learn to connect more deeply. This is an L2 event, so genitals stay covered. No genital touching. But whatever else you would like to take off, feel free to take off. If you don’t have any underwear I’ve got plenty of my sarongs you can wear.’
Group one sat down with their plates and beakers next to them. Some took their tops off.
‘If you like what’s happening, say yes. If you really like it, say yes please,’ Cliff said. ‘If you’re feeling overwhelmed and you need a pause say “ground”.’
Then, at Cliff’s command, group one put eye masks on, and the rest of us – groups two and three – set about massaging, stroking and feeding.
‘Givers, feed slowly,’ Cliff said. ‘Feed off part of your body, but do everything slowly. Slow is always better.’
It was a little like a starter’s pistol had gone off but, instead of running in a straight direction, the masked athletes had begun swaying and groaning with their mouths open like little baby chicks. I was immediately feeling a little out of my depth. Oh Christ, I thought.
I circulated slightly aimlessly, trying to stay in the orbit of receivers who already had a giver next to them, to take the pressure off me. But even with a two-to-one ratio, it still occasionally happened that I was left alone with a receiver, which induced mild feelings of panic, having the sole responsibility of imparting profound feelings of connectedness and emotional well-being. In a way the feeding was the easy part: you pop a chocolate in someone’s mouth, they go ‘mmm!’ But you can’t just keep feeding and feeding, and it wasn’t totally clear what the next move was: you squeeze the shoulders, massage the arms a little bit, but then what? I was running out of ideas. A bit more chocolate? A strawberry?
As the minutes passed, there was a palpable escalation in the groaning and gyrating. Cliff was keeping up a patter of encouragement. ‘Find connection on a deeper level,’ he intoned as he paced up and down. Across from me, a long-haired woman, who I knew to be a doctor, was squirting whipped cream onto one of her breasts and with a big smile on her face feeding it – the cream and possibly portions of breast – to her receiver. Meanwhile the man in the leatherette waistcoat was moaning and spasming in ecstasy. I looked over at my director Arron to try to gauge his reaction: was this what he’d been expecting? His eye was fixed to his camera.
And then it was my turn: group two was called. And what, after all, was I doing here if I wasn’t going to get involved? I loaded my plate with some chocolate, some strawberries, slices of apple. I’d heard someone recommend a combination of savoury and sweet, so I added a couple of slabs of cheese. I took my shirt off, and I put my eye mask on, noticing a strange sense of liberation as my vision was obscured. I felt invisible and some of my self-consciousness ebbed away.
‘Human connection is one of the most precious things we can experience in our lives,’ Cliff was saying. ‘This is an incredibly safe space to explore touch, to explore sensuality.’
Strawberries and cream were tickling around my mouth. I was aware of a low throaty sound and a soft face pressing against my cheeks. Then a warm hairy body was at my back – I had the impression of a pendant and then more flavours: chocolate, whipped cream. I was saying my ‘yeses’ and ‘thank yous’; there was the sensation of other bodies and bits of chocolate and more strawberries entering my mouth and cheese – possibly a little too much cheese, though I didn’t like to mention it because I thought it might spoil the mood – and above all there was a growing feeling of connectedness, the faint echo of the tingling sensation of a first kiss with a new lover. I had to admit I was enjoying it.
And then it was all over. I took my mask off to see Cliff sambaing up and down in a transport of satisfaction at the tableau he had created. But for a moment the idea of a community in which the currency of sex and love was more free-flowing made a tiny bit of sense. I rubbed my eyes at a world that felt a little friendlier, a little closer to home.
A little later I said my goodbyes and drove back to my hotel with the crew. In the minivan I felt slightly sheepish at how far I’d gone with my commitment to experiencing the workshop. I had the familiar sensation of being assailed by multiple ironies, of having been in control of an experience and at the same time out of my depth. I thought about my wife, Nancy, aware that the scene I’d told her we’d be filming – involving me being fed a couple of strawberries by scantily clad women – had turned out to be more outré than I’d expected. I wondered whether she would be upset and annoyed.
And I thought, here I am, aged forty-seven, still making a fool of myself for the purposes of a TV show, creating connections in unlikely places, in a spirit in which the boundaries between silliness and seriousness, sincerity and role-playing, self-exposure and canny journalistic revelation weren’t always clear even to me. Here I am, telling stories, using myself, my feelings, for real – after so many years, still doing it.
