::Shebytches::

It’s difficult to dress for an orgy while single-parenting a growing inquisitive child. Partly because I want a little quiet baking-soda-bath time, a brand-new razor, and time to decide if I will put on make-up, which will come off in the pool or hot tub. Or to go sans makeup. I always end up deciding on no makeup. But I always like the leisure to decide it freshly. So, the local babysitting exchange network is a wonderful thing. As an artist and parent, the issue is not just how do I get time to write, but also, how do I get time to keep feeling like a vibrant human being, to find things I want to write about, to have emotional intensity to write.... then there’s the time, to write, to edit and simultaneously to parent well.

The coolest thing for me in discovering orgy culture in San Francisco is realizing that there are outrageous intense fun situations that allow you to do anything, I repeat, any (mutually consensual) thing, you want to... and obligate you to do nothing at all. As in most alternative sexual communities, safe, sane, and consensual is the mantra. Growing up in Toronto, being in various relationships, I often felt some kind of pressure to perform sexually. Pressure to please, to keep things smooth. Or if I was avoiding sexual encounters, for example while hitchhiking around North America, even then I felt a need to do so with politesse. Sometimes this articulation of gentility was to minimize stress with someone I knew. Sometimes it was to safely get out of a car I’d discovered I really shouldn’t have got into.

Orgies present complete freedom from the demands of anything but the moment itself. This is a good thing. I have had times over recent years, struggling as a writer and single mom, where the knowledge of going to a party was an oxygen line keeping me alive underwater. It was where the tunnel of daily responsibility was broken in such a extreme way that I suddenly and fully realize I am not permanently ingrained in any activities I do, even those I choose to do year in and year out, the keeping a household afloat.

This last orgy was lovely. A six story house in the San Francisco hills, overlooking all the city’s lights and weather. A fireplace, wood dancefloor, pool, hot tub, and steam room all on the first floor, where one wall is a window overlooking the bridges and whole bay area. Very swank. Crowed with very beautiful people. My favourite tourist moment was randomly seeing a tall, model-looking woman, dressed in a snakeskin mini leaned over the rail to the pool, a smiling man in a cowboy hat behind her. A former rock star husband and artist wife throw these parties. This one was a 70’s theme. Everyone in 70’s garb and attitude. Most people there were born in the 70’s.

This time I took a couple who have a 5-year-old. They live by the ocean, about ten minutes from the party house. It worked out that my son could baby-sit their daughter. Then we could go to the party together. While planning it didn’t occur to me that this robbed me of the 3 plus hours of relaxing, napping, preening, chillin’, that go into the composition of the night.

Ended up, a girl called at the last minute and asked my son to go bowling that afternoon. He hung with her through the early evening till I got him for the baby-sitting gig. For the drive across the bay I did up the buttons on my semi-transparent cheetah-print pimp shirt, and slipped on a jacket. That closeness of real-life and play-life created a little less surreal ambiance. I was more anchored in the technicalities of everyday than I prefer.

I choose not to get with anyone at that party. I’m on a bit of a return to choosing love with my sex (kind of like fries with that McMeal at McD’s I think... gives it that extra heartiness). And though several 70’s sweeties did flatter and warm me with sincere attentions, I didn’t actually find love in the fleeting moments anywhere.

The flourish of that night again helped to keep me feeling like an artist, like the possibility of unbalance is always present, and a little like something endless.

Anne F. Walker is a celebrated North American poet who divides her time between Berkeley, California, and Toronto. Her recent book of poetry The Exit Show tells a passionate and compassionate story of romantic and sexual multiplicity. Globe and Mail reviewer Fraser Sutherland has described The Exit Show as "toward pure music and dance."

The Exit Show is available online through Palimpsest Press where all money from sales goes directly into the publication of poetry. It is also distributed through Marginal Distribution, where it is listed under "poetry, contemporary, polyamory."

Look for Sophie Levy’s review of The Exit Show next week at Shebytches.com