Change of Plans

Well, as much as I might have liked it to happen, it appears that playing with Konrad and Susan is not in the cards.

They were initially out of running when Estrella admitted to me that she wasn't particularly keen on the idea of exchanging oral sex with a lady. I felt more surprised and disappointed than I probably should have. She had, prior to decided she might like to sleep with Susan, always held that she didn't like girls. However, she seemed to have had some change of heart there, and so I was very much looking forward to all sorts of fun sharing and swapping. I should have realized that the change of heart was temporary, but I didn't. So, the disappointment.

I took Estrella's statement of sexual preference, and agreed that we'd just have to be busy when they called us up. This was mainly because I believed that Estrella had led Susan on enough that it would be unfair to schedule a playdate, and then inform her that Estrella actually wasn't interested in touching her.

I reopened the conversation last night, saying that I wanted to sleep with them still, and perhaps we could work out precisely what she needed to feel enthusiastic about the situation. We determined that Estrella mostly just didn't want to go down on Susan, but might enjoy making out with a woman and playing with boobs--I have no idea her feelings on fingering a woman. So, with this straightened out, I decided to wait for Konrad to get back to us and set something up.

He text messaged me not long after the conversation, with an invitation for dinner. I started to work with Estrella about a time, but quickly noted how unenthusiastic she felt about the situation. Total and immediate turn off. So, we discussed why she didn't feel it.

It turns out that Estrella had some pretty complicated feelings about the situation. I'm not certain that I'm doing them justice, but a breakdown was something like this:

• She knew too much about them, thus bringing into play the advanced female mate-finding sexual attraction heuristics. With people about whom we know next to nothing, she can apparently operate purely on physical attraction.
• Susan didn't seem particularly into it. (I think she's just of the more reserved type.)
• She doesn't feel interested in sex unless she's actually aroused, and so doesn't feel much drive to work on finding and grooming partners. That is, our discussions about the tricks, scheduling, hanging out, etc. had no sexual charge for her, and so are just sources of strife.
  
• She was creeped-out/intimidated/appalled by "the chase". Specifically, she didn't find these people especially interesting on their own merits, and so the time spent as we courted them was mostly just boring.

I never really dated, mostly just winding up in relationships with friends of friends. As such, I've never really experienced dancing around chasing somebody with a mutual interest. I was rather enjoying the slow play. I guess that's something I actually want out of swinging: the anxiety and risk-reward of attempting to sexually interest new people.

I feel really down about our prospects of happily playing with other people. Single dudes seem pretty manageable, as we've successfully pulled that off with one partner at least. But, with a single dude, there's no worry about internal dynamics of a relationship, power imbalance, or coercion. Likewise, the both of us only need to agree that one person is attractive--finding a couple where both are attractive seems way more than twice as hard.

It would be a lot easier if we were interested in simply swapping partners. It doesn't interest me as much, however, to go play with those boundaries in place. I don't feel like traditional swinging has much to offer me, other than female sexual conquests. While individuals have their own techniques, sex with a woman is roughly sex with a woman. So, aside from simple vaginal novelty, I don't feel like a pure swap adds anything over same-room-sex. I want everybody to at least have the potential to provide some sort of sexual pleasure to and derive it from everybody else. I want a libertine orgy of four people more than I want a traditional swinger's foursome.

I don't think the swingers are even really the population to look to for this sort of behavior. It's more likely to be the pansexual freaks. There aren't a lot of them in the world, and once we meet a pansexual freaky couple, I'm going to want to hang on to them. And I'm afraid that we'll get too close for Estrella to be comfortable fucking them.