Sex-positive ENM intentional community mixer protocol

What to expect from your first event

If you’re too busy juggling your many relationships to read, you can listen to an audio recording of the text below:

If you think you’d enjoy being aggressively hit on by a person whose spouse is standing right next to you, smiling at you like you have just given them freshly baked banana bread, you may enjoy attending a sex-positive ENM intentional community (SPEIC) mixer. If you spend enough time in Brooklyn, it is highly likely that you will at some point be invited to a SPEIC mixer, which is like a normal party only a lot more awkward. This guide will help you make the most of the 38 minutes you manage to stay at the event before panicking. 

The invitation

You will receive a link to the invitation from someone - whose name is bookended by flower and sparkle emojis and punctuated by the symbol of their astrological sign - with whom you accidentally flirted in a WhatsApp literary group. Whereas normal party invitations have a few pithy lines and a location, a SPEIC mixer invite will be just a bit shorter than the Declaration of Independence and use words that you can tell are English but are probably not in the English dictionary. You will refer to the Intentional Community Glossary to help you to decipher the words, which in sum essentially forbids you from touching anyone unless you first ask for their explicit consent.

The invitation will also require that you dress in such a way that will compel you to make an excuse to your doorman on your way out and will embarrass you when you run into a tertiary friend on the street, who will ask you where you are going dressed as “your deepest, darkest Scorpio fantasy.” 

Getting there

When you Google the address of the party, you will see that it is located in a part of Brooklyn you have never been to and is accessible via a subway line that you have never heard of. Getting there will take between 45 and 53 minutes, which is definitely long enough for you to rethink your life choices. 

The venue

SPEIC mixers are never at traditional restaurants or bars, because they lack intentionality. SPEIC events take place at Brooklyn Tiki bars, townhomes that look like there are captives being held in the basement, and, more recently, dedicated SPEIC bars that were funded by the proceeds of tickets to sex parties play parties. If your SPEIC mixer is at the latter, you will walk by the entrance 16 times and ring the buzzer at the wrong building. Someone who sounds very old and very armed will yell at you unintelligibly just as you notice another person dressed in their deepest, darkest Scorpio fantasy walking through a nearby door that in hindsight definitely looks a lot more intentional than the door from which you are quickly backing away before the owner of the voice emerges with a makeshift weapon.

Once you are inside, you will be struck by how terrifyingly few people are there despite the fact that there was an entire paragraph on the invite dedicated to the importance of arriving by a certain time, which was about 20 minutes ago.

Before you take in the human wildlife, you will observe that the decor is reminiscent of a Moldovan strip club in a Bruce Willis type of movie from the early oughts. You will seek out but fail to find any surface that is not red velvet, burgundy fleur-de-lis, or pink neon. You will notice that the bar menu is displayed above the bar on a large, brightly lit screen, not unlike the presentation of entrees at Murray Hill Chinese restaurants. You will remind yourself of the promise you made to yourself many years ago to never enter a bar that had illuminated menu screens, but you will quickly realize that this is the least of your concerns. 

The guests

Guests at SPEIC mixers come in all shapes and sizes except for tall and hot. You will notice that you and the person who walked in just before you are the only ones dressed as a deep, dark Scorpio fantasy. Women will be dressed mostly in tight, black mosquito netting on top and in denim colored paint on the bottom. Younger men will be dressed either as moody urban lumberjacks or will be wearing provocatively worded t-shirts, and older men will be boxed in suits made of the fleur-de-lis velvet material draped over the emergency exit, which you will consider emergently using. 

Most of the people who are there and are now suddenly flooding through the entrance are couples, and they will appraise you hungrily but also bashfully and without any direct eye contact. You will remember that most of the kinkiest people you have ever met are on the spectrum.

Breaking the ice 

Striking up a conversation with someone at a SPEIC mixer is not possible without a facilitator who is a very short but surprisingly loud licensed social worker (LSW), who also teaches somatic breathwork and has almost completed the coursework that will yield a certificate in tantric healing. This facilitator will suggest that the handful of people, who stand in a loose circle fiddling with the plastic cup surrounding their very strong margaritas, each state their chosen name, their pronouns, and a fun fact about themselves. You will notice that all of the fun facts are related polyamory, so you will make something up about having recently broken free of a toxic throuple. You will receive many knowing, empathetic mmmms. Everyone will take a long sip from their margaritas. 

Sustaining conversation    

You will not be able to have a conversation with any guest unless you have read The Body Keeps the Score or its “less triggering” derivative, Waking the Tiger. A great topic to raise after the facilitator has left (to either facilitate more introductions or provide impromptu breathwork) is childhood trauma. Another appropriate conversation catalyst is to ask which sign - sun, moon, or rising - best represents their most authentic self. You will not be surprised to hear that each sign actually represents a unique facet of their unique self.

There will, however, be no more permeating topic at a SPEIC mixer than labyrinthine poly relationship configurations. You will try earnestly to listen and comprehend the many minutes a that a perfect stranger will spend explaining to you the various people they are dating and the nature and node positioning of each partner, but after about 90 seconds this person will begin to sound like a clarinet, and you will have wistful, emotional thoughts about the simple monogamy of your couch, which has only one partner. 

SPEIC mixer activities and games

Unlike traditional parties, which do not require activities and games for people to engage with one another, SPEIC mixers totally do. These activities and games will be related to astrology, which is to say that you will be grouped together with other guests who share the same astrological sign. You will be instructed by a 40-something woman wearing large, square porn-director glasses to talk about whether or not you really relate to the attributes commonly associated with your astrological sign, which is a topic that everyone will have already discussed prior to being prompted but will still gladly talk a lot more about.  

Just as you start to actually reflect on your relationship with your astrological sign, you will be instructed by the porn dictator to find, as a group, your astrological opposite. If, for example, you are a pride of Leos, you will seek out a puddle of Aquarians. You will then be told to find commonalities between your opposing astrological identities. You will be totally onto the ploy of the porn dictator, who is clearly trying to prove that opposites attract.

This will have the opposite effect on you, though. You will find yourself repelled from this conversation with the force of a electron leaving a fission atom.

Making your exit

You will smile and brandish your empty plastic cup to the group and weave nonchalantly through the astrologically opposed poly-gangs towards the water cooler, which is thankfully on the way to the exit.

You will be abruptly stopped by the libidinous married person you met when you first arrived and asked pointedly if you are leaving. Incapable of lying, you will tell her that you had a huge week but that you were charmed by the time you spent hearing about how she and her husband have made their very drafty marriage work. She will take your phone from your hand, hold it in front of your face to open it, and then text herself to ensure that you can continue exploring your connection.

Other people with whom you have talked will see this exchange, and you will see in their faces that they see that you are leaving. You will hold up your plastic cup, assuring them that you are just hydrating, but they will know. They will see you. They will see that you were just a tourist collecting anecdotes. But will they nod and return to conversing with their sun sign opponents, and you will slip out into the night and push a button on your phone, which is still illuminated from a text from a new 347 number, and you will treat yourself to a Toyota Camry that will return you to your couch, which is definitely not velvet.