How to hit on people

I just listened to an excellent episode of Polyamory Weekly about hitting on people. The show gives some good philosophy and methodology for flirting, and it's flexible enough to get easily used for nonsexual flirting by romantics and aromantics alike.

Sexicon

At my housemate's insistance I rolled out to Sexicon, which was this kink art show at a leather store in SOMA (South of Market, an SF neighborhood.) There was all manner of sexually themed art on the walls, people in their cute little dominatrix clothes spanking one another and cages and erotica readings and whatever.

I was all set to have a ball, when I realized that ALL of my friends were event staff working the bar or the door or the coat check in their little corsets and wrestling outfits and the whatnot. Generally when I have no one to talk to I'm pretty adept at making friends, but here I felt a bit too disconnected.

This used to happen to me all the time. I'd show up somewhere that was drenched in sexuality and feel completely out of place. Sexuality is scary when everyone else is fixated on it and you don't have an internal reference point to understand what the frak is going on. What's a boy to do?

After pacing around the room for a minute my head started to hurt. Trying to make sense of all of this sexuality felt like high-order calculus, so I grabbed a pen and a cocktail napkin, found a corner and got to work.

Once both sides of the napkin had been filled with nerdy little notes a snap went off in my brain and I could get up and enjoy the party. The piont wasn't that this was an erotic party, the point was that it was a celebration. For the most part people weren't actively getting off, the event wasn't about sexual pleasure it was about sexual empowerment. It was a room full of people who had all had significant struggles in their lives to become sexually empowered getting together to celebrate and reinact that empowerment, it's the sexual equivalent of cake. And I may not be into the eroticism thing, but I can definitely relate to a good celebration.