Screengrab by Various Today in Nerve's film blog: Holiday special - 35 people, places and movies we're thankful for.
The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Michael Phelps indulges Anderson Cooper in some watersports and Dexter makes a 'bitch move.' Plus: the secret of Tina Fey's scar, revealed!
Dating Advice From . . . Engineers by Steph Auteri Q. For optimal functionality, what should go into a first-date emergency kit? A. Fine wine, road flares, a snake-bite kit and Ghirardelli chocolates.
The SM scene we witnessed between the Bettie Page look-alike and the marvelously ugly Tomato-Man was not animalistic. It was passionate but so organized — no animal is capable of putting on that kind of show. (And these people hadn't practiced, they said afterwards — they were just a regular couple who had come to this sex club for the first time, like us!) What they did was like an opera, except not boring. I think the spectacle of it made Dave and me question our own relationship. At least it made me question our relationship. Dave thinks things through more slowly than I do, so I decided to distract him immediately after the couple's performance, hoping he'd forget to realize that we came up short. I rushed him out of the dungeon to the bustling lobby, and you'll never guess who had just arrived. If I was making these diaries up, I'd never include them because no one would believe me: it was Moira and Enrique, the couple we co-copulated with at our first swing thing in January, two states north!
I thought about ducking, but it was too late — we'd been spotted. Moira and I embraced like people who had once been bridesmaids in a disastrous wedding and never expected to see each other again. Moira looked beautiful. She had lost her baby-fat and wore shimmery makeup and a black feather dress. Most attractive of all, she was not falling-down drunk. I discovered that, sober, Moira has a sharp wit and is streetwise — not at all the impression I had of her when she was lolling around naked in my hotel room. We talked about Mexico and I thought, My breast was in your mouth. She was head and shoulders above the gaggle of librarian swingers and their slump-shouldered husbands nervously nibbling the cheese cubes. Yet she was not desirable to me this time (nor to Dave, who had nothing to say and kept wandering off to the bathroom). The thrill for me is in breaching strangeness. Once you've slept with someone, there's nothing left to unveil except for the psyche stuff, and once you start lifting those veils, well — that's a relationship.
When Moira's attention shifted to a tall woman in a white pleather skirt and go-go boots who was holding forth on the "hickey wars" fought on her fair flesh, Dave and I slipped away and joined a group of ten people on folding metal chairs who were observing a futon orgy. We all frowned as if it were a documentary we'd be quizzed on later. A bearded man to my left stood up suddenly and moved like a zombie into the orgy, unzipped his jeans and pulled out his half-stiff cock. A mouth rose up, sucked it for a while, then the man put his cock away and returned to his seat.
The single men had gotten more forward; one leaned against my chair and thrust his erection into my shoulder blade and sort of tickled me with his hand. Dave could see, and liked it. I found it interesting and gross and sexy all at the same time that Dave actually enjoyed watching a man rub against me. But I couldn't stand the weird tickling move."Excuse me," I smiled to my anonymous thruster, and dragged Dave over to the "Little Girl Room," where the Bettie Page lady was getting an intense pounding. Tomato Man, her lover, must operate a jackhammer by day. Either that or he's the Devil. Bettie stared the spectators down as her body jiggled and the bed creaked like crazy. "I-I-I like to g-g-get fucked!" she said. "D-do . . . you . . . like to watch me get . . . fucked?" She sounded like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. There is an invisible screen between exhibitionist and voyeur, and by addressing us directly she slashed right through it.
She didn't come, but she was clearly enjoying herself. I think she was stocking up sexual excitement to be taken out later when she and Tomato were alone and in more orgasm-friendly conditions: no choreography to distract her, no uncomfortable leather dress. I was impressed that she wasn't faking: most women on display sexually are more concerned about the appearance of pleasure than pleasure itself.
The spectators included two dumpy couples who had formed a train; they were
all standing up, humping into each other, while eight arms did the
locomotion. Tomato didn't let up.
"Uh, do you take suggestions?" I asked.
"Yeah — if you come in here and kiss her," Tomato said.
So I French-kissed Bettie, then I pulled back and went in one more time, so
she'd know I wasn't doing it just because he told me to. "Suck her tit," he
said. I did. I sucked her nipple into my mouth through my teeth. It was
pastel pink and on my tongue it became a tiny little rock.
"My request is," I said to Tomato, "turn around the other way so we can see. And slow down. Pull all the way out and push it in slowly, inch by inch,
then all the way out again, please." I withdrew back to the crowd, and
Tomato did what I said.
"Man, that's one beautiful penis you got there!" said a small,
Italian-looking lady.
"Nice ass, too!" cried a single man.
This probably amounted to more compliments than Tomato had ever received on
his physical form before. The slower Tomato got, the faster the dumpy
couples' train rounded that final bend to ecstasy. Then Tomato stood up on
the bed and jerked on his long cock while Bettie turned her face up to it.
"Here comes the money shot!" cried the single men. Tomato came and Bettie
licked it up quickly. And then she rushed, blushing and giggling, to draw
the curtain — a different girl now that his orgasm had occurred.
I noticed that everyone was touching someone except for Dave. He smiled a little and I could see that he wasn't in any hurry for something to happen. I was! I pulled him into the coat closet; within sixty seconds, he was inside me. Sixty seconds more, and he came! We hopped about looking for tissues; there were none, and I accidentally dripped semen on several coats. I did not feel very ladylike in the aftermath.
The night had begun with such promise — flogging, Saran Wrap, toe-licking. But, in the end, Dave and I did the same exact thing we've done at more intellectual and clothed parties — have a quickie in the coatroom and slink away. I grabbed a coffee and a couple of brownish grapes on my way out.
"Just lean back and let the coffee-ed girl drive," I told Dave. With him
unconscious, I'd be able to go as fast as I wanted (Dave's always telling me
to slow down) and choose which songs to listen to (Dave's always saying,
"Don't change the station, this is my favorite song!" about every single
dreadful song that has ever come over the airwaves). I listened to a
toothless man sing about getting honey from a rock. It was a song about
Jesus, but I decided it was also about finding true romance in the seediest
of locales. My heart felt like it had been hit with the same wrecking ball
that got poor Tomato's face. I was crushed with love for my peaceful,
sleeping husband who chose me tonight, out of all the ladies I would have
let him have.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
