BDSM and Swinging

In the summer of 2008, I left my life-in-law and felt inspired to write down my “sexcapades” as a legal outlaw.

Perhaps my inspiration was this escalating sensual life with my new boyfriend, Leonard. Escalating? How could my sex life possibly be escalating?! Until I met Leonard, I thought I had hit my peak, or rather bottom, of my lust barrel. He made me look like a prude! Is that why I fell in love with him? Finally feeling like a virgin again. Until meeting Leonard, I was naive about the world of kinky sex. With all his sex parties, Craigslist personals and BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Sadism, and Masochism) equipment, I felt like a newbie. His extensive sexual experiences had the positive effect of minimizing all my promiscuous years.

I married Leonard twice during 2010; once in Brooklyn at an artist loft known for hosting sensual events, and once in Costa Rica at his parents’ country home, amidst his extended Catholic family. These were such diametrically opposed environments, yet they fed two distinctly powerful elements within my psyche: the Madonna and the whore. I guess I wanted to prove my husband’s love for me was real. Real to whom? My life with Leonard was a constant barrage of sex, sensuality, kink, love, and lust. I agreed to enter into a swinger lifestyle with Leonard since his so-called lack of sexual experiences, was his only stop in marrying me. Curious for sure about this swinger life, but mostly, I wanted to please my man, so I could keep him. Thus, a resistant swinger was born.

Beside lots of kinkiness, we had a good dose of laughter and frivolity thrown into the mix. After nearly 30 years of transformational work under my belt (ten of those years geared specifically around sex, sensuality, dating, and relationships), I quit my corporate life, in 2008, to join forces with my newly unemployed man to become relationship coaches. Leonard had also spent many years studying in these transformational realms, though mainly in the sensual arenas. We felt we would be a great, working team and could offer people some “out-of-the-box” coaching that would enliven their romantic lives. Though we mainly kept our kinky lifestyle private from our coaching clients, some of our clients came from the “kink” worlds, were aware of our lifestyle and welcomed our experienced coaching.

We were originally known as The Tantra Warriors. Clad in tights and capes, we styled ourselves as relationship superheroes and flew around our perfect Gotham, here in New York City. Leonard created these superhero outfits to attend a Fourth of July sex party in 2007. Although we were undiagnosed sex/love addicts, we were clear about our costume addiction a.k.a attention addiction. By 2011, we had two closets full of costumes to add to the party trail. Some costumes were made for “Burning Man” art parties and others for sex parties. In 2009, our Lady Gaga-like costumes attracted the notice of a major TV network, and by the summer of 2010, we appeared as the season finale of a popular reality show. We changed the name of our coaching practice to “The Transformational Warriors” as Tantra had too much of a sexual connotation for prime time. I was delighted to shirk off some of this overt sexual persona and be more of the vanilla heroine that I longed to be. I had gone from supermodel to super slut to superhero, and I was flying high on my attention drug of choice!

When the show aired that summer, we were both intoxicated by our 60 minutes of fame but we still had no fortune to warm the stove. However, Leonard did make sure we had plenty of bedfellows to warm our loins. One day, I had a brilliant idea to combine what Leonard wanted (lust) with what I wanted (loot). I signed up on several sugar daddy dating sites, looking to trade sex for cash. Hey, it was technically legal. I wasn’t a prostitute per se. I was merely embracing another level of my legal courtesan. Besides, I was in a relationship with these men, or so I told myself. Why not? I thought. Hell, I was giving it away for free anyway, why not make some money for my time and effort?

I met with a number of very interesting wealthy men through these sugar daddy websites. Typically, I’d meet each sugar daddy two to three times a month for dining, dancing, and dalliances, like any other dating couple, except I was married and they were handing me handsome allowances. I justified my new life as a legal courtesan by the emergency financial relief it gave us. I needed to care for my dying mother with Alzheimer’s, who was being abused by my alcoholic father. I had absolutely no time for a 40-hour a week job. What about my husband? Oh, he was too busy with his sexual addiction to work either. Of course, at the time I did not know why he could not come up with employment. I assumed it was the recession. We even tried to sell him to sugar mommies and sugar daddies, but a mid-40’s, out-of-shape man didn’t make the cut.

Photo: ©Shanti Patty Owen