Naked In a Palácio with All My New Friends

Volunteer Meetup for Shame LESS Society,

“A Mata” cafe,

8pm.

Five days before the event.

Oh I've burnt out multiple times, like, literally. I had a heart attack!

The woman in front of me is telling me a story about who she used to be. Clearly something drastic had changed. She has the aura of a butterfly, not of a stressed out office worker. All night long she floats around the room spreading her infectious smile to me and all the other volunteers.

After my heart surgery I started taking less clients and surfing a lot more. I'm much happier now.

She looks to be in her early thirties and she already went through heart surgery. I’m shocked, but not too surprised. She is me, and I am her. We stand at the same point in the same journey. Finding happiness, freedom and lightness after chasing “Career Success” failed us. But it isn’t our disillusionment with how society tricks you into selling your time and health for money that brought us into the same room. It’s our shared interest in ethical hedonism. This is a volunteer meetup for a giant sex party.

An organization called "Shame LESS  Society" is throwing their second ever Sensual Soirée in Lisbon and we are the volunteers who are going to make it happen. Just a few months ago I didn’t even know that this sort of party existed outside of movies. But when a friend of mine from the ethically non-monogamous community asked me if I wanted to volunteer at a sex positive event, I thought to myself “I have to see something like that at least once before I die”, and I said yes.

I leave the cafe to get some fresh air and see Elnora, the founder of Shame LESS Society, outside smoking a cigarette. I recognize her face from the volunteer group chat, the Shame LESS Society Instagram, and also from feeld, a dating app for kinky people.

This is her second time throwing the event in Lisbon. In Berlin, where she spends half the year, events like this are expected. Even people who have nothing to do with the sex positive community know that in Berlin, there are sex clubs. Lisbon has its own sex positive community too, if you know where to look, but nothing at the scale of the Sensual Soirée.

300 people in a palácio dressed like sex deities flown down from heaven with open minds and soaring hearts. At least that’s what the Instagram is giving. I’ll have to see for myself in five days.

At the Palácio in central Lisbon,

Saturday,

9am.

The day of the Sensual Soirée.

I arrive at the palácio and recognize a few faces from the volunteer meetup. I shake hands with five or six people I don’t recognize and pretend to memorize their names. I’ve always been terrible with remembering names. Faced with so many new people, I don’t even try. But they don’t seem like the kind of people to take offense. They’re warm and genuine. They hug me like they really want to embrace me. They smile with their teeth.

I am assigned to the volunteer care team. While every other team is in charge of setting up the event, making sure nobody is too drunk and consent is being respected, setting up the art installations or preparing the food, our job is to take care of the volunteers that make everything happen. Elnora’s thoughtfulness shines through in details such as this. My team exists only to take care of the other teams. To remind them to drink water, make them coffee, and feed them cute little sandwiches.

I find the work really enjoyable. Bit by bit I get to know everyone as I bring them what they need. Sometimes, when time allows, I sit down to chat with them in the volunteer care room. It’s during these little conversations between one thing and another that I really get to know them.

I’m making some coffee for the volunteers as a new face pops in. We make some small talk. I ask her where she’s from and she tells me she’s from California, but now she lives in Amsterdam. She’s flown in for this event. She goes on and on about how much she loved LA, so I ask her why she left. I expect her to say something about the cost of rent, or Trump being president, but she surprises me:

Well, I was an architect. But there’s just no creative freedom for architects! I couldn’t express myself the way I craved. So I moved to Amsterdam and started making art and doing exhibitions. I’m living off savings until I figure out my next move.

Another ex office-slave for my mental list. As an ex office-slave myself, I know the type. It seems like the more you suffer under the tyranny of what society says a happy, successful life looks like

(Great job! Great marriage! Big house!) the more likely you are to seek out a new society. In this case, a shameless one.

The hours pass quickly and there is always something to do. Suddenly it's nearly time for the guests to arrive and people start to put on their outfits for the night. At an event such as this, everyone is dressed as sexy as possible to feel as sexy as possible. Lace, leather, and latex conspire to make everyone’s hearts beat a little faster as they feast their eyes on themselves and each other.

I only knew my fellow volunteers in their plain clothes. They were dressed for comfort, which made sense because there was a lot of work to be done. One by one, they all disappeared into the rooms upstairs, put on their carefully planned outfit for the evening, and came back down transformed.

I stare at them and it's like staring at the sun. I can only glance for a second before being overwhelmed and darting my eyes elsewhere. Whatever part of my psyche that is responsible for holding and handling beauty fills to the top, overflows, and spills onto the floor. My bisexual brain is in a state of sexy panic. I still go on making sandwiches, serving coffees, and small talking, but I’m also aware of the growing sensation of heat in my pants.

Shamelessly, I’m loving it.

I compliment everyone’s outfit. Tell them they look amazing, gorgeous, fabulous, grand, and it’s true. It feels good to tell them and see their faces light up with a smile. Still, I’m starting to get overwhelmed in a big way and the soirée hasn’t even begun yet.

My volunteer shift ends and I call an uber back home to walk my dog. On the way I reflect on what just happened. When everyone put on their sexy outfits it was like they were different people. There was the day time version and then the sex party version. I knew the two people were one and the same, but living in a society that completely separates the sexual from the day to day, my overwhelm made sense. My brain had to expand to see the two versions of everyone as the same person.

Once I’m home, I quickly walk and feed my dog, Sweetie. I make sure she has enough water, say sorry for being gone all day and hope she understands me. I promise to give her lots of attention when the event is over. Then I go to my room, lay down on the bed and have a quick orgasm. Not for pleasure but for precaution. I was so horny when I started to see peoples outfits that it was hard to act normal around my new friends. I wanted to return to the party a little more human and a little less feral. Finally, I shower and put on my sexy outfit for the night. I throw some plain clothes over it so I don’t get any strange looks in the uber, then I zoom out the door.

Back at the Palácio,

7pm.

I stand in the exhibition hall, one in a crowd of maybe 100 party goers, watching a man referred to only as “slave” be given various commands by two mistresses. The man is dressed as a gladiator and built like one too, but he’s given all of that power away today. He’s having a great time because he loves to make his mistress happy. She’s having a great time because she gets to humiliate this big strong man in front of a crowd of people. The energy in the crowd is split. Some people are like me, wide eyed, fully engaged, extremely curious. Other people seemed as if they were watching re-runs of the same old show. I look to the windows and realize the sun is still out. If the night is starting like this, I can’t even imagine what will happen once the sun goes down and things heat up.

Once the show is over, I walk from room to room to stretch my legs a bit and chat with my fellow volunteers. Some of them are still working, some of them are off like me. During the party the awareness team floats around to make sure that consent is active and enthusiastic, to hand out condoms and lube to anyone who needs it, and to contact security in case of an emergency. They are tasked with solving any and all discomforts that might be brewing before the issue goes from bad to worse. This is the hardest team to find volunteers for because it requires the most training and emotional intelligence. Most of the volunteers on the awareness team are trained or licensed in some psychological field. This is one of many details that sets Shame LESS Society’s Sensual Soirée apart from other sex positive spaces. It’s part of why I chose this to be my first sex positive party. In a room of 300 self-proclaimed hedonists it’s impossible to guarantee that nothing will go wrong, but Elnora and her team seem to have thought of every way to make the space safer. There was even a free STI testing room.

The sun finally goes down, the DJ starts mixing techno, and the vibe in the room shifts drastically as if somebody had flipped an emotional switch on the whole crowd.

I’ve never seen someone else have sex except on my computer. That changes as soon as the bass drops. While most people are talking, dancing, or cuddling, to my surprise I spot a man receiving oral from who I assume is the woman he came with. His dick is quite large, quite impressive. I imagine myself shouting “Hey! Nice dick!” and giving a thumbs up. I’m not sure how he would react.

I want to keep staring, but I’m a bit shy. Also, I’ve learned from the other volunteers that it’s best to ask if you want to watch. I calculate that I don’t yet have the courage to ask this man if I can watch him get a blowjob, so I walk over to the dance floor instead.

The dance floor is packed and filled with treasures. On the left hand corner there is a BDSM wall with all the tools of the trade. There is a stripper pole in the back-center that professionals and amateurs can use as they like. In the center of the room on the far wall there is a stage with a DJ booth, as expected. Then, not so expected, on the right-hand corner of the room there is a sheer tent with a mattress, pillows, lube, condoms, and plenty of dildo’s. I peek inside and see a man laying down on the mattress, getting a blowjob from a woman dressed in white lacy lingerie and large bunny ears. The man is wearing a leather harness, leather pants, and eyeliner. I get the feeling that they do this sort of thing a lot.

Then, just as they notice me staring at them, I ask my nervous question,

Do you guys mind if I watch?

They both smile and the man says,

Yeah! Please come in.

So I step into the sheer tent and away from the dancefloor. Out of one reality and into a new one.

With all the sexy multicolor lighting, the god-tier outfits of lace and leather, the genuine smiles on everyone’s faces making me feel like we’re all in one big sleepover, and sexual tension so thick in the air that I could swim in it and touch the ceiling, it just doesn’t feel real. This has to be a dream.

That’s what I think to myself while I watch, without shame, this man get properly sucked off by the woman he came with. She stares into his eyes with such an intensity as her mouth lifts up off of his dick and she catches her breath. Every so often she looks over at me too, the smiling spectator. As I lay on the mattress about half a meter from the man, I pull down my pants and start masturbating. I want to enjoy every second of this, I could wake up at any moment.

She goes down on him again, but this time she stops after just a few seconds. She lifts up her head and looks over at me,

Can I suck you?.

I calmly reply “Of course”, but there are fireworks in my brain.

I was already enjoying myself to the maximum and I didn’t think I could reach greater heights of dopamine. She crawls over to where I am on the mattress until her body is parallel with mine, her head just above my crotch. I let go of my dick and she takes hold of it. Her mouth approaches the head in slow motion, or maybe that’s just in my mind. It’s getting harder and harder to tell what is real. The techno music playing, the people passing by and poking their heads in to see what’s happening behind the sheer curtains, what I did earlier and what I have scheduled for tomorrow, they all fade away. I’m sober but I’m not. The energy in the tent puts me in an altered state. Time is moving slower, but also faster. Time is irrelevant. I’m locked in to the moment. By the way she looks me in the eyes, the same way she looked at him, I can tell she is too.

The man masturbates as he watches us. Then he grabs my hand and puts it on her ass. I’m starting to better understand the dynamic between them. They came together, they’re probably in a relationship, he likes to share and she likes to be worshiped by two people at once. Okay, got it.

A few minutes later, he lifts from his lying position over to the table of toys. He slides a condom over a glass dildo, covers it in lube, and slowly slides it inside of her while she continues to suck me. I can’t tell where he put it, in her ass or in her pussy, but her muffled moans suggest he found the right spot.

Some time passes and the man puts the glass dildo away and opens a new condom. This time he puts the condom on his cock, covers it in lube, and slides into her from behind. She stops sucking for a moment to focus on the new source of pleasure. I don’t mind, I was happy just as a spectator. Every moment since I got into this otherworldly tent, this strange portal, has been something to be grateful for. Some more time passes and the woman says,

Okay, I think I’m good now.

I imagine she’s starting to get sore from all the penetration. They thank me and I thank them. We all hug and kiss goodbye. We part ways for the night.

In the porn I unfortunately grew up watching, sex only ends when the man finishes. Only through a lot of conversations with a long term partner of mine was I able to unlearn that. Up until now, a lot of what I saw at the soirée was very porn-like. All the leather, lace, and chains. But I was glad to see that in the ways that really matter, things are different.

I’ve never seen someone put a condom on a sex toy in porn, or use lubricant. Porn doesn’t teach you how to ask for consent before touching, watching, or penetrating. It doesn’t teach you to check in to see if things are still feeling good once you’ve started. Some people think that all these extra steps take the fun out of things. For the safety of my new friends at Shame LESS Society, I hope these people never find out about the Sensual Soirée.

To buy a ticket for this event, you must go through a zoom interview. Depending on your answers, you may not be allowed to buy a ticket. This isn’t to keep the event secret and exclusive but to keep it fun and safe. If it wasn’t for little details like that I would have never felt comfortable enough to attend the Soirée. Now that I had met all the wonderful volunteers, each with their own heroic backstory that led them to this community, I realized I’m one of them.

I am still new to these events and still getting to know the types of people that frequent them. I know that no community is perfect so I’m careful not to romanticize the sex positive community. But I can’t help noticing a beautiful thread among the people I met at Shame LESS Society and it has nothing to do with sex.

We all decided, against the influence of the cultures we were raised in that we wanted to be happy, healthy and free now, not later. Not after we grew old and retired. So many people that I spoke with had a past life that sounded so similar to mine. They chased the obvious path, climbed the obvious mountain. The one that everyone: your parents, your teachers, the movies you watch, tell you that you should climb because at the top of that mountain, there is happiness. But there wasn’t. So after a mental breakdown or two, we all asked ourselves what we really wanted to do with our time here on earth. We kept asking ourselves that same question with more and more bravery until it led us all into the same room. Naked, in a Palácio, with all our new friends.