Episode 64 – Through vanilla eyes

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are I hope you have blue skies. Welcome to That Other Lifestyle podcast. I am your host Jayson, leave Vanilla behind as we talk about lifestyle events through vanilla eyes.

This podcast is for adults only. We’ll be diving into adult and sexual topics with plenty of colorful language, so it’s not safe for work. If you’re under 18, this isn’t the place for you. This show is all about exploring the lifestyle and ethical non-monogamy, and it’s open to everyone no matter your background, gender identity, expression, or personal truth. While I do my best to use inclusive language, you might hear terms like husband, wife, or partner for simplicity’s sake. This show is for everyone, lifestyle, vanilla, or the curious.

Want to connect? Send me an email to host@thatotherlifestyle.com, visit my website at thatotherlifestyle.com. Everyone is welcome here because the lifestyle is about so much more than you think.

I did a thing. I did a really cool thing that inspired this episode. My vanilla friends came to Risque. I realized how desensitized I had become after going to lifestyle events and parties. Bringing this other couple with us to a Risque party was eye-opening for me. I got to see an LS event through their eyes, like it was our first time again.

How did this happen? Did they enjoy the party? What the hell? Did they do anything fun and frisky? Questions. So many questions. Let me set the stage and tell the story. I know a vanilla couple who we will call Rob and Diane for this story. Withholding their real names, not that they would really care if I said their real names. I want to respect their discretion, and I don’t know who all they told in their social circle why they flew to another state that weekend.

I have known Rob and Diane for a while. I met Rob out in the vanilla world at a previous job, and we have stayed in touch. When I started the podcast, I reached out to Rob for business advice on how to do all the business side of content creation. Side note, if you know a fucking social media manager that works for cheap and/or dick pics, let me know. I am great at talking, doing the posting and the social media is exhausting.

Anyway, Rob knew about our hobby and over the past year, I have been sharing information about the lifestyle with him and his wife. He has watched my show grow from the beginning. Finally, after over a year of hearing about how awesome Lifestyle events can be, Rob and Diane decided to check it out.

Two weeks ago, there was the Risque Lifestyle Parties Glow party in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. If you want more information about Risque, their website is risquelifestyleparties.com. The next big event will be Back to School, the last weekend of August, Labor Day. Risque is also doing a new event in Destin Florida at the end of September. It’s called Puslify and I am running an ad with all the details. This is one of the only or maybe the first hotel takeovers on the beach.

My wife and I told Rob and Diane about the glow party. We had to explain what a glow party is. Like a rave with better lighting and air conditioning. One of the best-selling points, for Diane, who loves to dance, is that she could dance. My wife verified that at these kind of parties, a woman can dance all night long and not have to worry about random guys trying to grind up against them.

That’s a weird selling point. Normally, if you tell a vanilla person, oh we are going to a swinger party, they are going to think, nudity and orgy. And really, it’s more about enjoying a safe Lifestyle space than anything else. The freedom for a woman, any woman, to simply be without worry about harassment. I see it as harassment in Vanilla nightclubs. Women are living their best life, and someone wants to intrude on their personal space. Lifestyle spaces doesn’t happen like that.

Another selling point for Diane, she got to dress up. My wife and Diane collaborated on outfits and shoes and websites to get outfits and shoes. It made my heart happy to see them connecting about such an innocent thing. It wasn’t, oh this is the best dildo and strap on for fucking. I’m saying that because we hear that shit from the vanilla crowd who thinks that the only connection we can have with people is sex related.

It’s not true. My wife helped Diane design her outfits, gave her pointers on what to wear, and what shoes to wear. That is cool. That is something missing from the vanilla world I feel. Two people connecting over something relatively innocent and that is fucking beautiful man. The world needs more of that. Humanity, connection, putting effort into a moment to make you happy.

This whole story is about defiance. Defiance of expectations. Living your best fucking life in the moment. Being real with yourself at 2am in the middle of a raging crowd. Being real with yourself and saying, yes, I am going to wear this neon green outfit because it makes me feel good and sexy and real. Passion damn it. My passion is coming out.

I digress. The Risque party, it was in a hotel ballroom. Another reason I love hotel takeovers. The temporary nature of them. Sex clubs are fine and fun. But there is an ethereal quality to a takeover I love. 200 swingers and 2 vanilla-ish people crammed into a ballroom on a Saturday night and Monday morning, that same room is used for a corporate bullshit seminar or team building exercise. I want to go there during that seminar and let everyone in that room know, that in that spot over, there was a woman wearing a rope with her tits and vagina out. Blow their fucking minds.

The Risque party is two nights. Ya’ll have heard me talk about these parties before. The first night was Area 69, so sci, space, aliens. The second night was the glow party. Neon lights. Oh, the effects. My buddy owns Tech D Productions, techdproductions.com. Go check out their stuff. Husband and wife team known as AEfx. It was wild. Fucking holograms dancing around. Ever seen the light effects on side of buildings? Giant projection mapping effects. Yeah, they did that, inside a hotel ballroom. Link for their site is in the show notes.

Back to the story. Rob and Diane got in on Friday night. My wife and I wanted to take them out to dinner. Walking out to the car, I got jumped by three unicorns. Two came running out of a car and the third snuck up on me. Each one took turns jumping into my arms. Rob was blown away and asked me if that was normal. My wife, never missing a beat, said yeah with Jason. Totally normal.

We go to dinner. And I couldn’t resist. The server, nice lady named Kae, see I remember her name. Asked if we had any plans tonight and I blurted out, we are going to a rave. She just nodded along that it was a normal thing to hear on a Friday night.

Went to dinner, got back to the hotel, and I had to have an uncomfortable conversation with them, that they took like champs. When you dig into another couple’s rules and safety procedures, I call it the unfun conversation. And I needed to have an unfun conversation with my friends.

I asked them, what were their rules for the night? I ask because they are at a swinger lifestyle party. They may be approached by a couple who is interested. It could happen. It does happen. It happened to me.

They were honest and direct, they had no plans on swapping with anyone. Okay. Fair enough. Follow up question, what about kissing? They said no. I said okay fair enough. And then I asked y’all going to stick to that? How flexible are your rules? They were ready for this line of conversation which made me so happy they had already talked about it. They planned on sticking to their rules and I wanted to know their rules for two reasons.

One, to make sure they had these conversation and could give me clear answers. These are not conversations anyone should have in the moment. My wife and I, we check in on the way to the event. We decide ahead of time if we are going to do anything, what are we going to do, who are we going to frisky adult behavior with. We make all these determinations prior to the event because you don’t want to have a secret conversation using telepathy in the hotel elevator up to someone’s room.

Two, the other reason, I wanted to make sure their answers were in the correct vernacular for the Lifestyle. We have our own language and if you speak our language, we understand each other a lot better. If they could state their rules clearly to me, that means they could state those rules clearly to another couple who might be interested.

Look, they are a vanilla-ish couple coming into a Lifestyle space. They were under no misconceptions about what they were walking into. I respect the space, and I am not going to ask anyone to change their behavior to accommodate someone else. That ain’t right. I’ve told them before, no one is going to know just looking at you, that you are vanilla or know what your rules are without asking. People will ask and you need to be able to provide a concise answer. Not correct. Correct is relative to the couple making the decisions. I want concise. Something you can yell over the loud music at the party. Easy and quick.

Do I sound like a dick for doing this? I could see that a vanilla person listening to this would think, why are you pressing them? Let them have their own rules. They don’t need to share that. To that thought and person, I say fuck you. This couple, these friends are my guests at this event. This is their first LS event.

To me, a couple having these conversations and being able to articulate their answers, is a sign of respect for the Lifestyle. It is showing respect to the community to acknowledge that this is how we operate, this is the standard we operate at and what we expect from other people.

Yeah, there are couples and people in the Lifestyle, you ask them a straight question of, hey I want to bury my beard between your legs. May I? and they can’t answer you. Rambling, incoherent, unsure. Not acceptable.  The answer is going to be yes, no or maybe later. Three options.

I wanted to make sure my friends were better equipped than that. Better equipped than my wife and I when we started out. So, if a random person walked up and said Hey lets go back to our room and get naked, they had an answer ready. That shows respect for our community.

And another thing. I told them to get tested. If they wanted the true Lifestyle experience, they needed to get tested. Plug right here. I told them to use STDHero. They had never done an STI test. Why would they? Monogamous couple, been together for 30 years. Nope, I told them to have the true Lifestyle experience, go get tested. Us in the community, we get tested prior to events so we know if we are all green to fuck around at these takeovers. STDhero.com. Use my promo code TOL15 for 15% off your order and experience painless STI testing.

This was Friday night leading up to the party that started at 9. We all got dressed and headed to the fun. At this point they were excited. I asked Rob if he was nervous and he said he had no reason to be nervous has they had no idea what to expect. I admit I was nervous. I convinced this couple to fly two states over and go to this party. I genuinely wanted them to have a good time.

 The Risque Glow party was the perfect introduction to the Lifestyle for Rob and Diane. Big thumping music, nice crowd. Crazy visuals. We get in the ballroom, and they are wide eyed, taking it all in.

This is when I realized how special this moment is. I asked them if it was what they expected and they said no. When you say swinger party or lifestyle event, the vanilla world thinks it will be this giant orgy and nudity and body juices.

There was none of that. Hate to spoil it for the vanilla crowd listening. That’s not what this is. This is a group of adults who gathered, wear wild costumes and dance. Yes, there is fuckery going on at this takeover, up in their respective hotel rooms. No one is doing the dirty in the middle of this ballroom. People are mingling. People are talking. Nothing unusual. If a person stumbled into this, yes, they would be confused, but nothing screams we are swingers.

For me, I feel I have become desensitized to all this. We go to so many parties and events, this is all second nature to me. If a woman walks past me in nothing but a thong and nipple pasties, I don’t even turn my head. This is the normal that we operate at.

Seeing my friends experience all this for the first time, damn near magical. I pulled Rob aside and had to ask if this is what he expected one more time and he said no. He laughed so hard as he said it. Because it is the defiance of expectations that makes the Lifestyle special.

We defy cultural norms about monogamy. We defy the cultural norms about communications and sex and body positivity. This is a group of adults, 21-70, having a fun time on a Friday night.

Let me spin this another way. You may have kids. I don’t. I know people with kids. Let’s say you have children. How many of your social engagements involve kids? Now granted I should not be talking about kids during a swinger podcast. There is a reason. How much of your social life involves your kids? Sports, clubs, bands, whatever the hell tweens are into now.  How many times do you have to listen to Brenda at the PTA meeting whine and bitch about her kid not getting picked to play football? How many Saturdays do you have to give up for stupid kid shit at their school?

Here, in this space, at this Risque party, that part of your identity doesn’t matter. You don’t have to pretend. You don’t have to pretend to give a shit about someone else’s kid. You don’t have to pretend to give a shit about selling raffle tickets or cookies. Here you can be yourself, without that identity of parent or coworker or responsible fucking member of society attached to you.

It does not matter to this crowd what you do for a living. It does not matter your income bracket or your salary or any other identifiers the vanilla world wants to force on you.

I often talk about Lifestyle spaces, how they are special and sacred. I truly believe that. A lifestyle space is anywhere that a person in the lifestyle, even lifestyle adjacent like my friends, can experience the Lifestyle freely and safely. What makes a gathering a lifestyle space?

Let me compare the Risque party to a standard old swinger meetup at a bar. At the Risque party, everyone has to buy a ticket. Means you have to commit to attending this. There is a barrier to entry. At a fucking random bar, there is no barrier to entry besides walking in. I know everyone who is in this space at Risque, is part of the Lifestyle or aware enough of it, to find this party. The bar, no you are mixing freely with vanillas who may judge you, hit on you, hit you, or just be general shit heads.

At the Risque party, I feel safe. More importantly I feel safe for my wife. That is a huge distinction. In a bar, I ain’t leaving my wife’s side. Don’t twist this. This is not because I don’t trust her. Which is fucking stupid. No, I stick close to my wife to protect her. And again, don’t get this twisted. I am not possessive or jealous of my wife. If she wants to flirt with a dude, go for it. I am protective in the sense that I want to know she is okay. I want to make sure that the most precious person in the world to me, is safe from men or women harassing her, touching her without permission. You have been to a bar or nightclub you know how that crowd acts.

At Risque or lifestyle spaces, I feel okay leaving my wife to go to the bathroom. In a bar, nope we go as a group. I know that men will respect my wife in that space. Jason, you can’t assume every man in that room will do that. Okay, I can give you that. Yes, there may be one random jackass dude who tries something with my wife, and I know that there will be seven guys who step in to stop him. Not in a violent manner. Not in a confrontational manner. They will step in to defuse the situation. They will watch out for my wife, just like I will watch out for everyone else’s wife in this space.

If I see someone has too much to drink, I will step in and find their spouse to help remove them from the situation. If someone gets handsy with another person, I will call them out. And I know other people in this room will do the same. That is safety.

Also, the guy who runs Risque is seven feet tall, 300 pounds of muscle. He watches his event like a hawk. I’m telling my friends before they showed up all this about the safety and the community we are in. I don’t know if they believed it. I think it finally hit them, when Diane was able to go dancing and no one tried to grind on her. No one tried to force themselves into her space. No one did that.

People were welcoming to Diane and Rob. I watched it. I kind of knew I wanted to talk about this leading into the party, so my writer hat was on Friday night, observing, making mental notes. People walked up, shook their hands and introduced themselves. Different than a bar. When was the last time you talked to a sober stranger in a bar?

Diane danced all night. Rob lit up all night. Seeing his wife be free. That’s another quality of Lifestyle spaces. Women, calling out women here or those who identify as women, in Lifestyle spaces they are able to relax. As I am writing this script, my wife came in to offer a different perspective.

For women in modern society, we need to acknowledge however uncomfortable it is to be stared at, they are always on guard. In public women are on guard. Not to say men are not. In certain cities, my head is on a swivel too. I get it. For women, who may be constantly hit on, harassed, having to defend themselves mentally, emotionally, forbid physically. I get it. You get it.

In a lifestyle space, women can drop that guard. However much they feel comfortable. I respect the line. The magic of a lifestyle space is that women are able to enter this state of divine feminine. Callback to something I have not talked about in forever. Divine femininity, being able to simply be a woman, feminine creature. The less woo woo definition, be able to fucking relax for once.

When women are able to achieve that divine feminine state, what the fuck do men do? Someone is asking. Men, we are able to go to the divine masculine state. We are able to be the protectors; the guardians of these space that allow the people we love to be their true selves. It’s a beautiful thing. I am not doing it justice. Rob and Diane experienced this that Friday night in Baton Rouge. Rob got to see his beautiful wife, the love of his life, be happy. Diane got to exist in this space, free from pressure and expectations and societal norms. She could dance.

That was Friday night. Saturday night, the next night. This was a glow night. If you are new to the LS, a glow night, it’s like better organized rave, with blacklights. Anytime you see glow as a theme for a party, think neon. Think bright colors. I wore neon green shorts, purple shoes. I got a custom sleeveless jacket made for this party. I looked like a neon Viking. And the coat was amazing because I could sweep women, consensually, into my coat and hug them. They liked that.

Outfits. Outfits are great. Leading up to this party, there were conversations with Diane about her outfit. She ordered a custom cute blue and orange outfit from the same place I got my coat. The giddiness of these conversations contrasted with the fact that Diane is a badass. Corporate juggernaut badass. And for me to have a conversation about her glow outfit and the colors and my wife chiming in about the cut and fabric. That is so cute. She couldn’t remember the last time she got to dress up like this.

Diane had this sexy blue body suit with orange frills. To see in Rob’s eyes, and I need you to start noticing that. Notice the love and admiration and adulation and adoration that a person has for their spouse, the eyes will give it away every time. Look for couples that always give each other that look. Even if it is six am and they are hungover and trying to choke down hotel room coffee, which look of love is there and it is pure and it is good.

My wife. Since I am recounting outfits. My wife found thigh high six-inch platform neon boots with three sets of laces on each boot. It took an hour on a Sunday afternoon before the party to get all those laces to fit right. She went with a neon swirl body suit with these huge wizard style sleeves, they were dragging the floor. And we matched. My coat and her body suit.

We partied all night. I think Rob and Diane crashed around 1 and we made it till 3am. I did see Rob and Diane the next morning before they left the hotel. They were tired and they were happy. The whole weekend had subverted their expectations. And I hope this story may subvert your expectations.

If you are vanilla and listening to me, hi welcome. Thank you. If you go into this with an open mind, if you are educated on the LS, you can call yourself no swap or LS adjacent I don’t care. You are welcome in these spaces. When was the last time you got to go with your spouse, feel from any bullshit and have a good time. Have the kind of night you remember fondly from when y’all were on your honeymoon.

What is the takeaway here? Go into these events with an open mind. If this is your first LS event and you decide to be no swap, fantastic. If you have expectations of what an LS event will be, I promise they are wrong. Until you experience a real LS party in an LS space, everything else pales in comparison. No rinky dink bar meet up can compare to the freedom of 300 swingers in a single room, vibing.

I would be remiss if I did not address one other point. There will be a contingent of people out there, the true swingers, who have a problem with what I did. I can see it coming. I, someone who is in the lifestyle per their criteria, brought a new couple who had no intention of swapping with or fucking around with anyone into a lifestyle space.

That I was wrong for doing this. I don’t know if my friends will ever open up their marriage. Not my place to ask or care. If they want to, I here to guide them but I will not push them in any way. That is 100% their decision, or any couple’s decision for that matter.

There are people who believe that we should not allow no swap couples or vanilla swingers as some call them into lifestyle spaces. For reasons. I slapped a pineapple sticker on Alan’s arm as he was dancing with his wife and yelled out over the music welcome to the club. I did that. And I would do that again for any of my vanilla friends who want to experience these spaces.

To put up artificial barriers, to say that someone is not a true swinger or someone does not belong in this space, I will call it what it is, gatekeeping. People want to make imaginary criteria for what is a true fan or participant of a culture.

To tell you a story. I was once accused of not being a real Marvel fan because I have not seen the movies. I think the last one I watched was Endgame, however long ago that was. Talking to a dude at a vanilla event, he said he was a Marvel fan. I said I was too. He was talking about the movies, and I was talking about the comics. I think he was jokingly trying to riff on me or maybe trying to neg me around other people.

I have read thousands of Marvel comics. Just about everything from 2000 to 2024. I can give you the entire backstory of Wolverine, from memory and that Wolverine or James as is his real name, it ain’t Logan, can’t even do that. That is gatekeeping in action. Because I did not consume the same media as he did, in the same way, I was inferior and not a true fan.

Or if you mention you like a band, and someone demands you name 20 songs by the artists or you are not a real fan. You aren’t a real fan of baseball unless you can name the stats of the Braves pitcher from 1999. This is gatekeeping and I ask the Lifestyle community to be better.

However newbies decide to join the Lifestyle, be in through a fantasy or someone hard selling an experience to them, we need to embrace them, wherever they are on their journey, even if they never progress, embrace and respect the choices they made and where they are.

Look if all you ever want at parties are couples willing to fuck other couples, those parties are going to get smaller and smaller every time. I would not bring any vanilla or lifestyle adjacent friends of mine to a house party. The possibility of fuckery to happen is a lot higher. I don’t know if they would be comfortable with that. I don’t know if they are equipped properly to have conversations about that. I would be derelict in my duty as a friend if I did that to someone.

A lifestyle takeover or event in a public venue. Yeah, this is a good way to introduce people to our spaces. Less pressure. Subversion of their expectations. Freedom. No pressure to do anything with anyone.

For my wife and I, when we started, I think there were events and takeovers, but we didn’t go. We didn’t really know about them. Know as in what the fuck they where not know as in they exist. I feel our runway into the Lifestyle was not as gentle as some people or could have been. I wish we had someone bring us into the Lifestyle in this manner.

And the other factor is that there is a problem, and no one will talk about, and I am going to talk about. Money motherfuckers. These takeovers and events are businesses. They need to make money to keep doing them. The owners of these events work hard. I know the owner of Risque works his ass off to put on good productions. I respect the hell out of that man for what he has built on his own and the community he has grown.

It's a business and the ones who gatekeep the worst, who say oh no you can’t come in because you don’t meet these criteria, are the ones who forget that somebody has to make money and profit. Yeah, if you want to start an event for only true swingers, go for it. But in business you must be able to provide the best product possible for the most consumers possible.

If a couple buys a ticket to a takeover, they know the deal. They know what they are walking into. No one, especially not the owner, is going to check for their pineapple certification when they walk in the door. Takeover and events attract a lot of people from all the different flavors of Ethical non-monogamy because they want to experience the space it creates. The freedom of the space, the respect of the space. Would you rather have a crowd of ten swingers or 100 people from all the flavors? Yes, you may have to have more conversations to find someone to fuck that night. If you are looking for a space of just true swingers, throw your own party.

Appreciate these public, relatively public, events for what they are. A gathering of like-minded people. Usually when my wife and I go to takeovers, we are not there to fuck around with anyone. The reason is, for me, I am paying money to party, and I want to party. Same concept I put on theme parks. I am paying money to be in theme park, and I will squeeze every fucking cent out of them. Sunup to close.

I am not judging anyone who goes into a takeover with the intention of getting laid. Go for it. I can’t tell anyone what to do or what to get out of an experience. Maybe you are the kind of person who goes to a theme park for just a single roller coaster, and I say go for it. But you can’t judge someone who doesn’t want to ride the same roller coaster all day. And you can’t tell a new person at the park what to do.

The whole Risque party weekend, for me, was a subversion of expectations. I know I said it before, and I truly believe I had become desensitized to just how awesome Lifestyle events are. I brought new people, and I got to experience a lifestyle event, for the first time, again.

I always appreciate hearing your feedback and comments on episodes or suggestions for topics, so feel free to reach out to me at host@thatotherlifestyle.com. My website is thatotherlifestyle.com.

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. Remember STI testing is important and takes a community to make a difference.  Go to STDHero.com and use my promo code TOL10 for 10% your order.

Whatever you may do today, I hope you have a fantastic time doing it. Know that you are appreciated and loved. Have a great day.