Out of the Frying Pansexual

Life is an amazing adventure. Since beginning this journey, I have found myself in situations and experiences I have only dreamed of, and even a few I couldn’t conceive of at all. What surprises me most of all, and I don’t know why, is that I find great people regardless of the situation. Yes, I have met a very few jerks, but for the most part, douche-baggery is not encouraged in nonmonogamy lifestyles.

I attended a party some months ago, with a group which has struggled a bit. I could not attend their first party, and the next two parties, to which I dedicated blocks of time including a vacation day, were cancelled due to lack of participation. Finally, a meet and greet was scheduled with play time afterward.

Now, for anyone who does manage these kinds of events, you have my appreciation and my sympathy. I cannot imagine a more thankless task than trying to get a group of strangers together with the intention of fucking. I can’t help but think of a quote from Christopher Hampton in Dangerous Liaisons,” I think there's something degrading about having a husband for a rival. It's humiliating if you fail and commonplace if you succeed.”

Having said that, a miscommunication placed the meet and greet start time when the play party was supposed to begin. By the time I arrived, quite a few of the attendees who had looked the room over and said” Nope… not doing it!” and headed for the door. I had barely enough time to walk in the room when it almost immediately emptied. For a moment, I thought I might have forgotten deodorant (joke). When the smoke and people had cleared, there were three women and about a dozen men left for play. One of the women was a trans person named Alex. Alex was tall, over six feet, and not so much well-built as expertly constructed. She would say she is not pretty, but her personality appeared beautiful to me. I felt she lit up the room with her spirit, and the more we talked the more I liked her.

A small group of people headed into the bedroom and Alex was among them. She was sucking on this other guy’s cock and motioned over to join her. I was a little hesitant at this point, we had not talked consent or safety that much, certainly not the elevator speech. Also male bisexuality in swinger circles is still something I am figuring out. After a bit of looking around, and once again thinking that nothing is going to happen unless I make it happen, I joined the 5 people on the bed, Alex, her male lover receiving and a lovely woman with 2 other guys. I didn’t really know protocol at this point, I was invited and consent was implied if not explicitly given, so I started feeling Alex under her skirt and started rubbing her cock. She nodded, I guess everything is ok after all, and then I began to go down on her. How strange it is, having never strayed from my monogamy for almost a quarter century, and now I am in a hotel room, in group sex with a trans person.

I have changed.

I won’t bore you with all the details (but they were exquisite), but I became friends with three of those participants that night. That event raised my awareness to many of the issues trans people face, as well as some outright prejudice in the swing community. One group that I have enjoyed in the past gave a rude and downright bigoted response when Alex asked to join a party event. It upset me that there could be no room at the inn for trans people when it comes to swing parties. Alex and I have spoken and met up again. I consider her my friend and I hope to see her again in the future. She has opened my eyes to a world previously invisible to me, and for that I thank her.

Some months later I set up a profile on OKCupid. This is something of an experiment for me. I have recently attended a class on Poly, and I am dipping a toe into it. I was recommended a person, 90% plus match, local, and he identified himself as FTM (female to male) trans. We wrote back and forth, and I told him of my limited experience with trans persons, but if he was willing to be patient with me I would like to meet. Let’s call him Ellison.

We met at a local restaurant, still some distance from my home. I decided I would approach this “date” as a bisexual man dating another bisexual man. I know… I know… gender and orientation are two separate things, but please remember I am still new to this, dating as well as trans relationships. I really am making most of this up as I go along.

Ellison and I hit it off quite well, he and I both shared career trajectories, political views, and a few interests. We talked local events, of which he was actively involved, as well as my journey and family. We agreed to go back to his place at closing.

Ellison is very direct, and not at all afraid to tell you what he thinks. He also has closely cropped hair, a hint of a mustache, and in loose fitting cloths you can’t easily detect the curves underneath. We undressed and my own brain kind of short circuited.

I had deliberately tried to place Ellison in the male category in my head. While writing back and forth he had mentioned challenges he faced with people trying to make him “a girl” in their heads. I tried not to do this, but now, lying before me was Ellison (with his male-ish face) and exposed genitals that I would consider to be female. My mind tried to upshift and downshift to fit this experience within a priori reasoning. I find myself floundering in definitions of reality I had assumed to be true my entire life.

I am afraid I stood there for a few seconds too long, and looking back on it now, a complement of some kind would have really been appropriate. I was not repulsed, mostly flummoxed, because I do like him, but a little lost on what to do or say next.

We did play, but I was pretty quiet throughout, though not from shame (I think). At several stages, Ellison asked me if I was ok and I was… I am, but the gender thing became even more confused in my own head. How can I think of Ellison as “him” when I have had been inside his pussy (there a sentence to consider). We talked a bit afterwards and he told me he doesn’t even think of himself as either gender. He also doesn’t think of his parts as lady bits or man bits. “I just think of them as mine.”

He told me that people often shoehorn him into gender roles, using pronouns inappropriately and this can be very uncomfortable. I tried to imagine someone trying to do the same thing to me, unmanning me, so to speak, in the middle of play, and how that would affect the sexy time. It was not a situation I would be at all comfortable in.

I would like to thank both Alex and Ellison, for opening my mind to a different world view.