The Boredgy

That time I went to an orgy where you weren't allowed to show pleasure.

Our host entered the room, hips swaying. She was Silvia*, a striking American woman in her early forties. “Hi,” she said, flashing a mischievous smile. “Great that you’re here. We’re going to have so much fun. I mean, we’re not. But that will be fun. Maybe?” She let the question hang in the air, enjoying the awkward chuckles it elicited. “I should probably start at the beginning, right?” Her grin widened. “Many people,” she began, “they discover kink, go to a few orgies, have an amazing time at first, but then they get bored. They reach a kind of ennui and think, well, what’s next? What’s left? How am I going to top that?”

I gulped. I’d never attended an orgy. In fact, if sex were a shop selling ice cream, I’d only ever ordered a single scoop of vanilla, hold the sprinkles. I felt conspicuously out of place and hoped that the people around me, who surely were fearlessly sexual, wouldn’t notice. I vowed to stop gulping.

“This is what’s next,” Silvia declared, lifting her arms dramatically. “After the orgy comes the boredgy.”

A few nervous titters rippled through the room. I scanned some faces and felt a small measure of relief when I saw that they looked as afraid and confused as my own.

“I think boredom in sex is the last great taboo, you know?” Silvia continued. “Like, I’ve had some partners to whom I’ve said, ‘Do you mind if I read a book while we fuck?’ And you know what, they were fine with it. I think that was a kindness, you know? From me to them.”

Laughter filled the room, nervous edged. “I want you to look around,” she instructed, letting her gaze drift among us, “and notice which people you’re attracted to, so you know who you’ll not be allowed to hook up with in a minute. Because it’s like, why should we have sex with people just because we’re attracted to them, you know? Like, why should that be a criterion? A boredgy is an orgy where you’re not allowed to show pleasure. Okay?”

A hand rose. Not mine. I didn’t feel confident enough to interact with her directly. She seemed so shameless and uninhibited—the two great demons I was here to do battle with.

“A question?” she said, cocking her head. “Great.” Her grin faltered as, apparently, she remembered the rules. She firmed her face and flattened her tone. “I mean, fine. Whatever. Go ahead.”

“S-so,” a young woman said, her voice catching in her throat. “Like, if we see someone we want to play with, or rather, don’t, then we would just go up to them and say, ‘I don’t like you, want to fool around anyway, sort of, maybe?’”

More nervous laughter.

“Well,” Silvia said. “There’s no need to insult them. But other than the first part”—she flashed a sly smile—“perfect. Or, another position that’s good for this is one I call the starfish.” She lay on her back. “Cindy, come over here?” A woman slid over, mostly on her bottom, legs out to the side, mermaid-ish.

“We’ve played before, and we do actually have chemistry, but we’ll pretend we don’t. Can you just dry-hump me, Cindy?”

Without hesitation, Cindy climbed on and humped Silvia mechanically, with all the passion of someone completing algebra homework.

Silvia lifted her head to address the room. “And so, yeah, I just lie back and do nothing, see? I’m consenting, of course. That’s important. We all know why we’re here and what we’re exploring.” Silvia’s voice softened. “The rules of consent still apply. We’re just playing with consent. We’re bending it. Okay, get off, Cindy.”

Cindy obeyed, without fanfare, returning to her spot by the wall.

“Okay,” Silvia said, clapping again with a kind of grim finality. “Condoms and lube are over there.” Her hands snapped together like a clapperboard. “Let the boredgy begin.”

The room buzzed with nervous energy. Quite a few people fled for the exit. I felt a sense of pride; I wasn’t one of them. Instead, with a deep breath, I shed all my fear, anxiety, shame, anguish, embarrassment, inhibition, mortification, self-doubt, insecurity, guilt, regret, panic, cynicism, scepticism, self-loathing, social awkwardness, self-consciousness, fear of rejection, dread, self-sabotage, envy, bitterness, distrust, apathy, loneliness, inadequacy, pessimism, self-criticism, fear of intimacy, self-pity, existential dread, humiliation, sense of inferiority, abandonment issues, chronic worrying, perfectionism, procrastination, emotional overwhelm, nervousness, compulsive thoughts, mistrust, body-image issues, and general spindly wimpiness and stepped forward.

Oh, who am I kidding? They came with me, that whole neurotic parade, banging their drums and blowing their horns and doing their very best to sabotage me before I’d even begun. It was a wonder there was space for anyone else, yet there must have been because about twenty people moved into the middle. Ten stayed at the edges.

I lay down, feigning boredom while secretly dying inside. My mind whirred. What did success look like here? Did I want someone to pick me? Because if they did, wouldn’t it mean they didn’t find me attractive? Wasn’t it actually better if no one came to play with me? But if no one picked me, everyone would see that. I’d just lie there, alone and rejected.

It was a mess in my mind.

Before I could neaten it, a figure was looming over me. The person was a woman, twenty-five, perhaps, wearing a blue vest and black velvet trousers, her brown hair tied loosely in a ponytail. She peered down at me as though she were a scientist examining a moderately interesting specimen of gnat. “I suppose,” she said, with an accent that was either soft Australian or hard Kiwi, “I could …” She tapped her chin. “That floor space free, is it?”

“It would appear so,” I said, mustering an air of indifference that didn’t match the giddy relief surging through me. I was thrilled. I was chuffed all the way up. Even if she didn’t find me attractive, she had at least found me, and that meant I was no longer alone, which is almost always the worst thing to be.

She lowered herself onto the floor beside me with deliberate sluggishness. She propped herself on one elbow, mirroring my pose. Our faces were angled away from each other but close.

“You’re there now,” I said, while staring a bit at her, but also over her, and out into the room.

“It seems so,” she said. “You’re here too.”

“Well, I was here first.”

“Show-off.” She looked me up and down. “That’s it then, is it?”

“It would appear so.”

She ran a hand languidly up her front, brushing her stomach and breasts. “People touch, sometimes.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“Should we, do you think?”

“I suppose it is an option, yes.”

I liked that she was very clearly in charge. I wasn’t physically attracted to her but because she had picked me, I guessed I wasn’t hers either and that was confusing, but everything is confusing, and, blessedly, at least this interaction was happening quickly, fast confusion trumping slow confusion.

She wriggled closer and clamped onto me, sideways and all at once. She ran her hand slowly and dispassionately up my leg.

“It’s a leg,” she noted.

“I’ve always thought so.”

“How many have you got?”

“Two at last count. You?”

“The pair.”

“Predictable.”

“I aim to disappoint,” she said.

“I don’t even have to aim to disappoint,” I replied, and we broke character briefly to laugh. “Can I check?” I said, about her legs.

“If you absolutely must.”

I stroked her lower leg, which she hadn’t shaved.

“That’s not good.”

She stroked my calf.

“They’re very large,” I said.

“No, they’re not.”

“I’ve terrible trouble buying trousers.”

“I’ve terrible trouble caring.” She let go to grope herself. “You probably want to see my breasts?”

“Err … if I must,” I said, which was a lie. I wanted to see them very much.

“Here they are,” she said, sitting up and removing her vest and bra, which unclipped at the front. She clamped back onto me, harder, her bare chest warm and solid against my side. A lot was happening, and I didn’t really know how to deal with any of it, so I decided the best approach would be to just keep swimming along with it, and see where it would spit me out.

“You probably want me to take my clothes off?” I ventured.

“Not particularly,” she said, but she detached herself to let me undress down to my boxers. Then she reattached herself, her movements crisp yet sad.

“Starfish?” she asked.

“It is the best fish,” I said.

She climbed on top of me then went limp, her body simply flumping on top of mine, her face turned away, to the left, mine looking to the right, which gave me a good view of the many similar pockets of equally pitiful dry-humping happening around us. Three women were standing and fondling themselves. A man in a wheelchair who was dressed as a nurse was masturbating alone by the door. Her hand went around her back and found its way to my groin. It lifted my penis and gave it an indifferent squeeze before letting it drop.

While I wasn’t aroused, I certainly wasn’t bored.

“This is boring,” she declared.

“Yep,” I lied.

After a while, she clasped me on the shoulder. “I’m ending this interaction.”

“I thought it would never end.”

She got up. Her eyes met mine. “You did disappoint me.”

“At least there’s that, then,” I said. “At least we’ll always have that.”

She moved on to a different man. I sat up and looked around at the room, full of people with blank faces engaging in not only loveless but also passionless erotic interactions, and even the occasional act of robotic copulation. I wondered how those men were staying erect. Actually, I kind of worried about those men.

No one else came to play with me, and I didn’t have the confidence to initiate. The crushing awkwardness of the whole thing grew to be too much. I became dizzy with it.

Steadying myself on the wall, I got up. After getting dressed, I left, more confused than when I’d entered but having had an experience, having done something, of that I was sure.

This is the part where there's supposed to be a satisfying conclusion—it gift valuable, wrapped neatly, bow tied.

I could offer you that, I could gift you that, of course I could.

I could talk some more about the woman who'd approached me. I could say how in that brief moment before the awkwardness set in, there was something real in her eyes. Not desire exactly, but at least curiosity. Recognition that we were both explorers in a strange territory. And that it was a connection both meaningful and wonderful, and something I keep. Something I revisit.

I could do that. I could say that. Maybe I even believe that.

Or, I could say that subversive ideas don't need to succeed to have value. That their subversiveness is justification enough for their existence. They're like intellectual crowbars, prying open the sealed boxes of conventional wisdom to reveal what's actually inside. Their job is to break the box. That's it.

I could do that. I could say that. Maybe I even believe that.

Or, I could write about how in a world that keeps dangling the shiny promise of More while make Less affordable, at least the boredgy was willing to admit that many of our sexual encounters are performances.

I could do that. I could say that. Maybe I even believe that.

But really, I think, mostly, in a world that constantly asks us to make neat sense of everything, to do the work, arrange, package, and share the insights gleaned from every experience—to optimize even our confusion into productivity—there's something meaningful about creating spaces for magnificent, purposeless bewilderment. To resist the tyranny of the takeaway.

And so I'll conclude here, yet conclude nothing.

*For discretion, I’ve changed the names and indentifying details of everyone.