Episode 100

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are I hope you have blue skies, a breeze on your back and sand between your toes. Welcome to That Other Lifestyle podcast. I am your host Jayson, leave Vanilla behind as we dream of Arcadia. This show is for adults only. We will talk about sex, relationships, the lifestyle, and Ethical non-monogamy in an honest way with lots of real talk. If you are under 18, this is your only warning to go find a different show right now. Around here, on the beaches of sex freedom, consent, education and good times, everyone is welcome, lifestyle, vanilla or the curious. Whatever your gender identity, expression, truth, flavor you are welcome here. I do my best to use inclusive language, though you may hear words like husband or wife or man or woman to keep things simple. My email address is host@thatotherlifestyle.com. My website is thatotherlifestyle.com. Really like what I do and want more? Join the After Party at patreon.com/thatotherlifestyle or maybe buy me a cup of coffee, send me a tip at buymeacoffee.com/thatotherlifestyle. I could say do not weep my friends for Arcadia, that place we go when we lose ourselves in glorious lifestyle liberation. Do not sift through memories of past lovers looking for meaning or reason or even longing. Do not breathe and sigh the scent of lovers lost and gone. I could tell you do not mourn the touch of passion’s embrace, the heavy hand around a throat, or a soft hand around a waist. Do not greet the sunrise with sadness after a night of glorious physical intoxication. I could warn do not let words not spoken freeze your heart. I could say not to dwell on the words spoken in heavy moans. I could say all that. But I won’t. I will say do not let Arcadia be forgotten. Know that golden land still waits for us over the mountains, across the ice and south of great seas. Arcadia. Today we speak of Arcadia friends. The phrase I dream of Arcadia has been circling my thoughts for months and I still don’t know why. I don’t know where the phrase came from. Those four words have been floating around me for a while. For this my 100th episode, I decided to let it free and see where it wanders, follow their wisdom, follow their trance through the red door, up the stairs into a soft room waiting for a good fucking. No clue where this will go and frankly my dear I don’t give a damn. I dream of Arcadia many times because I have known that land, that feeling, soul shaking, right and good and heavy and horny. I dream of Arcadia because I can and I remember. Arcadia is our metaphor for that good fucking, that wild abandon, wild eyes, cock drunk and stiff, the kind of freedom you find in a room full of blacklights on artificial substances, with your face buried between a woman’s legs. The kind of place where I yell sit on my face and a woman says yes sir. The kind of place where reality gets crunchy and we want to live forever but for us suffering bastards we can’t. A phrase to be rough shorthand for a feeling we never quite name, we circle. Like compersion, we know what it is but can’t explain it without more words. 100 times I have turned on this microphone and 99 of them were stories, advice, rantings and ramblings. I honestly have no idea how many episodes I have published though I have taken some down, lost media and all that. Figured there are some stories that are too hard to listen to, some stories I would rather no longer exists, some stories that did their tasks and now must sleep. I have written 99 episodes, maybe. Possibly the count got knocked off. This episode is different than all the others. It gestated for months, surging forward today, right now, demanding I talk about it. I have tried many times to write about Arcadia. Three half written scripts sit on my computer named Arcadia 1, 2 and 3. Each script influenced by an event, a date, a woman, an argument, a conversation, a feeling. Each time the words fall apart halfway through and I move on to easier stories. Each time the script fights back, refusing to be cracked and documented. 3 times I have tried to write about Arcadia and what it means to me. It is a feeling. The lust, the power, the trance. Losing yourself in the eyes of a woman you barely know or the caress of a woman you have known for years. The heat of her skin, the drowning, the dying, the good vibrations of the universe when the beat drops and the lights flash. Fuck me till I am gasping please. Ride me to glory damn it. Send me to Valhalla so I can kick in the great doors of that hall and hear the cheers of my ancestors. Break me so I can remember Arcadia, write about it on an early spring morning in darkness. Dawn always comes though and sharp memories will get muddy in the light and I am left hollow again, dry tinder in the soul wanting to burn again. I have dreamed of Arcadia. I have known Arcadia in the arms of beautiful women. The women that confuse, hypnotize, drive and give. The women that take and laugh, the women that smile, the little lies and the bright eyes. Warm hands, warmer moans. I have laid in the f ields of Arcadia many times, naked bodies twisted together, some I remember, some I have forgotten, some I choose to forget. And all those times left marks upon my soul. We can lie to ourselves and say every engagement doesn’t matter, doesn’t leave a residue but that’s a lie and we know it. Every insertion is a story. Every kiss is a reason. Scars, burns, little rips of radiant pleasure, we are a people of fiending ghosts, either haunted by the past or chasing the next bump of novelty from the end of a spoon or a dick to ease the pain of memory. We are people chasing dragons, chasing the ever-running sun, desperate to stay in the light of a passionate night, an embrace, a conversation or simply a look. A people who dreams of Arcadia, knowing it can never last, knowing the party ends, the lovers leave and all we are left with is the scent of life and crusty dried juices lingering on our skin. I dream of Arcadia. I am not sure where that phrase came from in my mind. Maybe a lost poem, maybe a movie. Today it seems appropriate, not as a summation of 100 episodes but simply a place to lay down and rest until the next story comes along. Until I spend another weekend looking for a story to share. After 100 episodes of That Other Lifestyle, I can say confidently that not every weekend leads to a story worth sharing. Some weekends, their stories are too big for one episode and other Saturday nights, there is regret in even leaving the house. After 100 episodes, you are here. I am here. We are here together. For a year I have pondered what this 100th episode should be. Maybe something special. Maybe my wife would join me on the microphone. Maybe a controversial episode looking at gender identity in the lifestyle. Finally confront the beast of bisexuality and male erasure. No not that, not yet. A heavy episode then, heavy truths we all deny, not in the mood for that. Or a love letter, a cry, a roar or maybe another story. There will be more stories, I promise. The lifestyle is very ready and needs an interconnected narrative about couples and our experiences told from inside the furnace. All of that to say, I kept coming back to Arcadia, wanting to write about that feeling. There is history to this. Arcadia is a region of Greece that is known for it’s pastoral beauty and mountains. During the Renaissance painters and poets latched on to this idea of simple beauty, quiet living, no strife. It was the place of rest and ease. A near mystical place for the weary and travelers to find comfort for a night, immortalized, fantasized and longed for. It lives on in myth, a shorthand for fictional stories of longing, fantasies about youth and happier times. What is more simple and happier than good sex? And I dream of this place. Dreaming denotes that I have been there and I can remember it and that I am not there now. That is the tragedy of Arcadia, the moments of passion we feel in the lifestyle, the fucking, the fun, the shenanigans, we can’t stay there. How many nights have we stood on hotel balconies hoping the party inside never ends? How many nights did we dance till dawn, wanting to push the sun back down? How many days have we spent in fast hurried sexually charged texting conversations? How many times we wish we could go back? How many times do we look to the future, hoping that it will all happen again? How many times do we try to rub those memories back to life in our own bodies, hands contorting into arcane symbols on our flesh, trying to find an orgasm in the lost songs? I hear my friend’s stories. I hear the nights they eulogize, share, elevate. I hear the times they went hard into a pile of bodies. I hear the times they fall softly into another person. I hear the stories of parties long ago, learning with every telling a new revelation about a party that happened at my own house. I hear desperation in some, sadness in others. Sadness that they can’t be at every party, every event, they won’t be a part of every story. That is the Arcadia of legend. Not a place but a feeling. A feeling the lifestyle creates in all of us. Adrenaline surging, mind altering, genitals engorged with blood, that feeling is the cause of my lament and the motivation of our search. There is tragedy in Arcadia. Not in the act, not in the place or the feeling. No Arcadia itself is beautiful. The tragedy is both when it ends and when we are diverted. The ending is there. It will end. It will either end in orgasm and happy people or frustration. The little slice of time and reality occupied by furious fucking, frantic fellowship and fiery friendships, that will end. We have all stood at the ending wondering if we caused it. We did not. It simply must end so the story can go on. No one can stay in Arcadia forever. The other tragedy is diversion. When there is so much buildup and then nothing on the other side of the mountain. So much hope and desire and want and then nothing. We clamber and crawl our way, fighting the whole way and then nothing happens. Can’t close the deal. Well things happen, they happen in the way that causes nothing to happen. When confronted with these nothings, all we can do is laugh it off. No resentment, no pleading, no begging will change it. Stand up and try again. I can tell people how to avert the diversions. How to navigate all this, close the deal but what few who have been to that place will tell you after they have been ejected is that it was meant to end. The greatest secret of the lifestyle is not who is in or out, or who is fucking whom or even anyone’s real age or names, no the greatest secret is that the fun will always stop. Either by choice or force, it will stop. Sure there are memories to keep the fires burning, little nuggets of passion that burn and melt their way deep into the core of the cerebellum. Keep them if you have them. You never know how long you will need to survive off their warmth. That great secret is hidden from newbies, that great tragedy is held close to the breast by those who have lived this story before. I think our greatest enemy in the lifestyle is not moral panic, is not being outed, is not being judged by the vanilla world. No our greatest fucking enemy is time. The elusive bastard of a clock always ticking by, always forcing change, always forcing us out of Arcadia, second by second, minute by minute. But I guess the clock ticking can also bring good. It can bring us one second closer to the next adventure. One second closer to a new lover, fuck buddy, friend. One second closer to f inally catching that dragon by the tail and waving it as a trophy. 100 episodes in, I share honesty dressed in the robes of nihilism, I guess. Share the law of the land to the boos of the crowd. I hate clocks by the way. I hate thier persistence. I hate the way a clock will pull us out of the tangle of other humans. I hate my watch always there, reminding me that a good night will end. Ever tried to look at a phone to change the music while refusing to read the time? I have. Doesn’t work. I hate how time will leave us hollow and dry on the side of the road, the domain of beggars looking for a ride back to ecstasy. I hate that clock taking us out of our happy place. Maybe a more well-adjusted individual could have compassion and understanding for that two handed thief, but I am not well adjusted. I am the one standing in the elevator, dreading the ride downstairs, dreading sobering up, dreading the shower that will wash a woman’s scent off my skin. Why do I hate it so much? Because I have tasted fire and I liked it. I have stood in the swirl of neon people on a ship in the middle of the Caribbean, a techno-colored dreamscape set to shitty music. I have been whisked up in an orgy only to stumble into another one. I have been fucked so hard I can’t breathe and loved it. I have been cut, loved, fucked and drunk. High, lost, confused and determined. I know better and every time I fall smiling into fuck me eyes. I know exactly where that story will end and every fucking time, there I am, ready to go. I have been many things over the years and each week I write these episodes to share my own journey. And still that clock ticks. I refuse to have analog clocks in my house for that reason. The ticking. The reminder. The reminder of leaving Arcadia and not knowing when I will step into that land again. Arcadia is not a place to us. It is a feeling. Freedom, an abandonment to the wild side that exists in everyone. To stand in the feeling is to feel alive. I have stood on stages; I have been cheered. I have lifted millions of pounds of weight in my life. I have been congratulated by strangers, bosses and friends and there is none of those sensations can compare to the pure majesty of fucking. Two or four or ten people gathered to engage in the most primal pure expression of our fucking humanity. When we are told every day that we will be replaced by the digital, artificial intelligence, our digital footprints sold and used against it, I say there is no place more human than in the arms of another. As much as I miss that feeling and I dread the comedown and ejection, I will still seek it. I will still try to reach it because what choice do I or we have? A warning to the newbies out there, the lifestyle is addictive. That first amazing sexual experience, it will fry the neurons and get a person addicted. Trust me, if you have not felt it yet, just wait. It’s coming. Some lucky bastards are able to touch the live wire and walk away. The rest of us, no we are chasing that dragon hard. Not every sexual adventure is going to be life altering but the one that does alter a life, that is what we will chance again and again. It is not just the act though. It is the people we connect with, the human connected to the genitals that matter in this. That’s another lesson I learned the hard way and share now easily. The humans matter. Sure the one-night stand people or the sport fuckers don’t really care about the human and that’s fine. They can have their ways and wants. If you stop though and see the whole person, it opens a new dimension to Arcadia. No longer is it a place where you stop for a night then skittering back to safety, but a place that exists out there, you know it is there and you can visit more often, longer. There is a paradox about Arcadia. The shorter the stay the more it hurts to leave. A one night stand, brief, flash in the pan and it will either sear the soul or be forgotten in a day. If friends are made in Arcadia, then the pain of leaving does not hurt as much because there is a way back. Connections give us a way back to that feeling. Instead of wandering through the fog of a hotel takeover hoping to get lucky, we can have friends we fuck, friends we care about that matter. They can guide us back to Arcadia over and over again. Our visits no longer confined to one night, once a year. With friends, we can visit on a Tuesday night every week then go get tacos. Here is a heavy truth we need to hear and share. The friendships we make in the lifestyle can exist independent of sex. What? That’s crazy talk. The crazy talk of a wandering hermit no one likes. It’s true. I know it is true. The best friends we make may be the ones we don’t fuck. The best friends we keep are the ones we wait to fuck. Relationships can transcend the confines of a bed. This community has the best people. The most loving and caring people who will drop everything for a friend in need. We need more of that in the world. At some point those people you fuck every weekend become your friends. Now this shift could be resisted but it’s hard. Eventually the conversations will turn from fuckery to life, mundane boring life. Vanilla life. Kids, jobs, hobbies. Eventually these people you fuck all the time will let the lifestyle mask crack and you can see what is underneath, the human underneath it. Their hopes and fears and concerns and needs, the very essence of what they are. I have known women in the most carnal way possible and never really known them. I know women in every way possible except the carnal. I know others that I will sit patiently and wait for the carnal to return. To know another is not a requirement to enter Arcadia but I have learned the shorter the trip, the less I want to return. If I am the odd one in the room of swingers then so be it. Tired of pretending otherwise. A kiss on a dance floor is not the same anymore, it is not enough to ignite my passions. Deciding to value connection, quality over quantity, can fucking hurt. Yes leaving Arcadia after a one night stand can cause feelings. Weird feelings. Brief bright flashes of what could have been. Wanting more. It is a dull ache on the soul that is quickly soothed by the vanilla world and distraction. You get dressed, leave and process it. Feel good about it after or regret it. So the pain there is longing, wanting another round. It is the sinister desperation of an addict needing another hit. Not because they value the drug for what it does but the relief it can bring. Told you good sex is addictive. The one and done kind of people, they want this to numb, they want the new and the novelty. Another hit, one more and that’s it. They will feel better. They don’t care who goes to Arcadia with them, all they need is a willing body. To make a friend though and knowing that friend will never return to Arcadia with you, that hurts more. Losing friends in this, losing connections, losing the time it took to build something, fucking hurts. If a person decides to become more focused on connections, the risk and reward are both high. When we find long term fuck buddies, the sex gets better. So much better. We learn their rhythms, what they like and what they want. That is damn near magical. It takes investment and time and conversations. All the building blocks of a friendship right there. We could deny that a relationship forms, even accidentally but it still does. Even accidentally, it is there. There is beauty in hanging out on a Saturday afternoon with no expectations, four people talking and no one gets naked. There is a price though, the risk is the loss. To lose that friend, lose that connection for either stupid reasons or external factors, that shit hurts. It is grief and regret having an ugly baby together. It is knowing you can’t catch that dragon in Arcadia ever again with them. Losing friends in the lifestyle sucks. And it doesn’t have to be because anyone did anything. We are adults. Some people move to the other side of the country. You could meet an amazing couple who live on the other side of the country or the world on a cruise. Spend six days getting to know them and then poof they are gone. Life gets in the way. Kids do dumb kid shit. Most of us are over 40 so health issues can happen. And sometimes dumb shit happens. Text messages get misinterpreted, someone says something in the wrong tone, social circles shift. Or the ever-dreaded drama rears it’s deformed mutated head. Yes, I have lost friends in the lifestyle. Friendships that lasted years and then poof they are gone. It sucks. It hurts. I grieve. I grieve for what was and can never be. I grieve knowing I won’t ever walk those golden fields of joy with them again. Oh the refrain don’t be sad for what you lose, be happy for you had. Whoever said that never got a really good blowjob. I know what they mean and yes it is true. I have said that phrase to comfort people, knowing damn well that it doesn’t help. If the time in Arcadia is always temporary then the experiences we have will always be contained, bottled and put on a shelf to be admired and stored. It is the nature of the lifestyle. Temporary containment of pleasure surrounded by the paperwork of vanilla life. The other tragedy of Arcadia is what it does to us after we leave. Not immediately, not while we are picking up used condoms and making the beds. No days after, weeks after. After the drive home, after the unpacking, the way work slaps us in the face Monday morning. The way group chats go quiet. We look around and wonder what happened. One minute we are warm and safe and good and the next we are not good, we are bored, we are whipped by the normal. The way paradise stains the ordinary now. That is the second tragedy because to live so brightly for an hour leaves the rest of the world dim. What joy is there in grocery shopping knowing that an orgy happened three days ago? What joy is there in going through the motions when all we really want is to get naked and fuck someone? Slap the mask back on, pretend we give a shit at the school dance recital. Pretend we give a shit about whatever asinine nonsense all those coworkers are rambling about. Never ask me what I did this weekend, you can’t handle it. That was a hard realization I had about Arcadia. We can’t live there forever but damn it we want too. Daily life feels thinner. And that thinner feeling, that’s how we know we were there. That’s how we know what we experienced mattered and was special. The fact we can look back and say we enjoyed it so much that the lack is now noticeable. That’s the measurement in case anyone is wondering. If there was a good round of fucking on a random Saturday afternoon that we wish we could run back to, yeah that was Arcadia. That was the feeling I am rambling about. If there is a pop of sex so good, we wish we could repeat it again and again, there was your Arcadia. Is Arcadia just about fucking? No. I can say Arcadia is more than that. It can be felt without fucking. Wild concept, just like it’s wild I spent my 100th episode rambling about four words that popped into my head randomly months ago instead of doing a big blow out with past guests and a party. Very on brand for me. Look Arcadia, that feeling of contained happiness is not just when we are fucking. It can really be anything in the lifestyle. Being surrounded by good friends on a boat in the ocean while you find out the hard way you are allergic to the sand fleas that live on the barrier islands off the coast, yeah it is very itchy but still fun. Feeling the good vibes emanate from others during a rave. Having a good conversation should count for something too. And it does. Arcadia can be found in many places in the lifestyle. 100 episodes in, I sit here drinking coffee at 3:44 am writing. Bart the cat making the typing very hard with his constant need to be in my arms. My hair is greyer now than when I started the lifestyle. Maybe the lifestyle ages us, living faster than most, our bodies take longer to recover, random patches of sore muscles arguing with me this morning. Time moves differently in Arcadia. Every minute there is an hour out in the real world, our mind slow while our bodies age in real time. Why do this? Arcadia. That’s the answer. When I can stare into the super nova and smile as it washes over me. When I can drink deep the cool waters of release. When I can hear a simple yes. When I know I am wanted and chosen. When I lock eyes with a woman who will gladly take my hand and walk into Arcadia with me. That’s the reason. That’s the answer. There is no guiding grand philosophical motive besides wanting to fuck and get fucked. Wanting to fuck off, out fuck and say fuck it all. Arcadia is fucking defiance. To say to the world, yes I know I cannot stay here but I choose to go anyway. Defiance in it’s purest form knowing victory will be temporary and fleeting. Enacting our freedom of choice knowing that the story will end at 2am. Knowing we have to return to our vanilla lives tomorrow. Never knowing when we will have our next grand adventure but still trying, still raging against the ticking of the clock. I want to talk about two events coming up and since I cannot think of a good transition or a way to weave them into this whole script we will all pretend together that I did a very subtle and deft segue and I will be proud of how smoothly I did it and you will nod at my accomplishment of transition. April 30-May 3 is Luminos, presented by Risque Lifestyle Parties. This is an epic two night glow party takeover. It is on Okaloosa Island which is between Destin and Fort Walton Beach. No other event like this in the country. The resort is beautiful is on the beach, you walk through the lobby and there is the ocean. We went to Pulisfy last year at the same resort and loved it. My wife and I will be there, glowing and being heathens all weekend. It is worth the drive or the flight. Glow party is my favorite lifestyle event theme and we go all out for it. Go all out with us. Full details are available at Risquelifestyleparties.com. If you decide to go, tell them you heard about it here. What I like about this event, it is outside our normal geographic area so it pulls in people we would not normally meet in our travels. If you are from a different geographic area, don’t let distance stop you for a party. Getting outside of your comfort zone helps so much. Meeting people from other parts of the country helps. You never know the friends you will meet and make and possibly fuck unless you step outside. There is a new lifestyle event coming later this year. Big. Fucking big event. It is called Sultry Spirits and I will talk about this one more as we get closer to Halloween. It is a three or four day hotel takeover in New Orleans for Halloween. Most people know New Orleans for Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street. There is a whole different side of Nola as we call it that oozes sex, dark corners, sultry vibes and you really only get to experience that during Halloween. The city of mournful vampires and voodoo comes alive for Halloween. Nola is the perfect city for lifestyle folks because nothing shocks the locals anymore and Sultry Spirits lets you experience everything that city has to offer. You can experience Bourbon Street with swingers at private bar takeovers. What? Get the fuck away from the tourists and really feel the pulse of the city. Hotel parties every night. If you have ever wanted to experience Nola and Mardi Gras seems a bit much, this is a great option. Plus the weather that time of year is not balls hot and unbearable. Summertime in Nola, fucking hot, it rains every day. You will sweat in places you did not could sweat on your body. October though, that’s the nice time of year to visit. Full details are available on risquelifestyleparties.com or lsevents.llc. There is a third event I will talk about next week. This fucker is epic. I have never seen or heard of an event this big, this insane. Being vague on it this week. Next week we will talk about it. Thank you for listening and tuning in every week. Make sure you tell a friend about the show. Thank you to the love of my life, my wife who is on this wonderful lifestyle journey with me. Thank you to my patreons, Jenn and Chris. Did you know I have a patreon? Support the show, check out the extras I put over there. Patreon.com/thatotherlifestyle If you want to reach out, ask a question, suggest a topic, send me an email to host@thatotherlifestyle.com. My website is thatotherlifestyle.com. Send me a tip if you want at buymeacoffee.com/thatotherlifestyle. My personal disclaimer, I am not a medical professional nor a trained and certified educator of any kind in any way. I am a guy with a microphone, sharing my personal experiences with you. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only and please join us for the next episode. Go to STDHero.com, use my promo code TOL15 for 15% your order and get tested. Whatever you may do today or tonight, I hope you do it with enthusiasm, consent, curiosity and a little bit of spice. You are appreciated, loved and I will see you for the next episode.