I Hosted the Saddest Tinder Orgy Ever and I Can Only Blame Myself (and Millennials)

Millennials are going through a bit of an identity crisis right now. We aren't quite as addicted to the internet as middle-schoolers being raised on iPads, but we're not completely free of the sometimes soul-sucking grasp of social media either. We're equipped with the same idealism and emphasis on self-exploration as our hippie parents, but we don't really have the economy to all turn our dreamworlds into a reality.

Most people in this predicament drown out the dissonance with designer drugs and binge drinking. I tried a slightly different route, but I didn't have that much company from people my age. My brief introduction into the kink and alternative party scene in Montreal has mostly seen me encounter baby boomers and Gen Xers. Maybe it's the natural progression of things, or maybe our generation is more comfortable taking risks chemically than doing so on our own two feet. Whatever it is, there's a distinct lack of us out there, and it can be somewhat isolating.

When two of my Tinder matches and I went to a swinger's club on Valentine's Day, we were the youngest people there by a few decades and felt somewhat out of our element. So my two matches, Rose and Daphnee, decided to throw their own private sex party with younger people and asked me to co-host. To be honest, I was a bit orgied-out, but I've always been curious about what it's like on the organizational side of an orgy. And, really, what's the harm? So I agreed.

We started a Facebook thread to bounce ideas off each other and came up with a skeleton for our party. We decided we would have 25 single guests who we all agreed were open-minded, fun, and reasonably attractive. We decided on a two-to-one girl-to-guy ratio since more girls seems to put everyone at ease. The first floor would be candle-lit with a dress code of underwear and lingerie, with snacks, drinks, and a live DJ. The downstairs would have three beds, with new sheets and enough condoms for everyone. We'd have guests come around 10 PM and whatever happened, happened—as long as it was done with consent and respect.

After we'd laid out our ground rules, we hunched over our glowing rectangles and began the invites. Our collective recruitment effort was going well, and within a few days we had about 20 people reply yes, as well as a handful of maybes.

Rose ordered a value pack of 100 condoms off Amazon and got one of her friends to agree to DJ, while Daphnee picked up some cheap booze from the States. On the day of the party, all that was left to do was go to Costco and pick up the sheets and snacks.

After Costco (which is fucking insane on Saturday by the way), things started to crumble. We were in the back of a cab, squished in between bags of fruit and cookies, when Rose threw down her phone on the leather seat.

"DJ's not coming," she said.

Apparently he was afraid of losing his last shred of innocence and bailed. Several more guests ducked out while we were on the way to Daphnee's house, by which time Rose was visibly pissed off. She organized the cookie tray in silent irritation as I set up the bar and Daphnee set up the beds downstairs.

It was 10 PM and the scene was set. The food and drinks were out, the blinds were drawn, and the candles and fireplace were giving the room a soft orange glow. It smelled like candles, and the sound of bass-heavy Drake tunes drifted around the room. Rose and Daphnee paced around in their lingerie, adjusting things here and there.

I took my shirt off, since stripping down to boxers seemed a bit aggressive just then. We sat on the couch with our glasses of whatever and waited. It was tense. We spun the ice around in our glasses and didn't say much. It was obvious our minds were on the night ahead, except for Rose, who looked like she was still fuming from the cancelling guests. The light from the fireplace was dancing off the girls' rosy cheeks and mascara, and I noticed we were all posing more erotically than usual. I realized I was flexing, and stopped.

The buzzer rang and we all looked at each other. A tall guy with long blonde hair strode in confidently, looked at us for a moment and turned to the bar. This was Noah, Rose's match. Apparently he was a cool DJ with a big dick. He said hi to Rose, introduced himself to Daphnee, and turned his back to me. He finally turned around after pouring his drink and I began to introduce myself,

"Hey, I'm—"

"Shirts off, eh?" he said, mildly amused with himself, before taking off his own. He had these grey eyes and peach fuzz facial hair above his lip. It seemed like he resented me being there, but it was a pretty intimidating atmosphere, so I didn't hold it against him. After standing there together self-consciously for a moment, he walked past me and sat on the couch beside Rose.

I sat down on a chair across from Daphnee. I thanked god my whisky buzz was starting to kick in. We all sat there glancing around the room, making small talk and praying for more people to come. I peeled off from the raging awkwardness and nibbled on some strawberries in the corner of the room. Why was it so dark? You don't need romantic lighting to talk about how the iPhone 4 was actually better than the iPhone 5. I reminded myself that this whole creepily seductive setup would make a lot more sense when the room was filled with people in their underwear.

The buzzer rang again and we all launched out of our seats before Daphnee motioned for us to sit down. It was 11 PM.

"Oh, yay, it's Martin," she said, looking down at her phone.

Martin was friends with of all of us. He was one of those "good vibes" guys that everyone knew and liked. We'd worked on some projects together and I knew he was a good dude. He walked in and laughed, which is what we should have all been doing, come to think of it.

He sat down with a drink, skipped asking why no one was here and shot me a friendly grin.

"How ya doin', man? I haven't seen you in ages."

We caught up like two guys at a high school reunion as Noah started nibbling on Rose's neck, red-faced and drunk as she tried to hold a conversation with Daphnee. He'd stop once in a while to say something like: "From a producer's point of view, it's just not worth it to do small gigs."

I started to think I didn't like this guy anymore. He had a weird predatory energy like he was there to conquer, and Martin and I were irrelevant obstacles in whatever rampage he had planned. He'd draped his long, pasty body on the couch and was whispering in Rose's ear.

I could have blended into the background if there were more people, but I couldn't hide as a host with two guests. Everyone was looking at me like, "Well, you're the pervert that started this whole thing, let's see whatcha got." Still, it was only midnight and a lot of people show up late to parties, so I had faith things would turn around.

At around midnight Rose and Noah slipped downstairs, leaving Daphnee, Martin and me by the couch.

"You know what, I think I'm putting my shirt back on," said Martin, "I think it's weird."

"Yeah, shirts on, totally, yeah, good idea—definitely weird," I said as we scrambled our arms through our sleeves.

It was 12:30 now, and we couldn't really blame the empty room on how early it was anymore. I looked at my phone for the first time and saw about four new messages from guests who had decided it wasn't for them or who suddenly couldn't make it.

"Any luck?" said Daphnee, looking over my shoulder.

"No, you?" She just shook her head.

Noah and Rose came back and sat down out of breath. Noah draped his sweaty body on the couch and took a big gulp of his drink.

"K where the fuck is everyone!?" Rose shouted out loud what everyone was thinking. We all looked at each other but just put our heads down, like parents who didn't know how to explain that the goldfish had died.

"Everyone's a pussy," mumbled Noah in between sips of his drink. I looked at him with growing hatred. He lay there with a sweaty arm around Rose, crooning out these entitled one-liners like he was some kind of sex god. His conical, moist nipples stuck out obnoxiously into the firelight like two hairy pink traffic cones. Fuck this guy. I hated him and I hated his nipples. I didn't want to be in the same room as them.

I took my drink and went downstairs. I lay on one of the twin mattresses on the floor and took a time out. It was 1:30 AM and I could hear Rose delivering a heated rant about how nobody showed up even though they confirmed with her, how people's word meant nothing anymore, and how she'd lost faith in women. I put my hands over my face and drowned out the noise until she sounded like a teakettle.

Daphnee came downstairs and gave me a look like she was glad to see an old friend. Things lightened up a little like we had our own secret spot down there away from the tragedy of the night, and I took her picture by the bed.

Just then the stairs thumped loudly and we turned to see Noah holding Rose, looking at the bed. Noah started taking off his pants and I got the fuck out of there.

I sat with Martin and tried to hold a conversation while the sound of violent sex drifted up the stairs. We held a scattered banter but we couldn't ignore how loud it was and eventually fell silent, catching each other's eye once in a while and raising our eyebrows as we crunched on icecubes.

Drake's droning, pitchy tone was starting to piss me off. It was 2 AM and everything in the room was a sharp reminder of the slow, embarrassing onset of failure. The untouched vegetable wheel, the unwrapped sausage, and the unopened bottles of booze all glared at me like artefacts of our collective rejection. I couldn't play it off like we had thrown together a casual night and were "cool" with whatever. Oh no. We had enough shit for 30 people, and none of them had shown up to have sex with us except for a good friend and a predatorial DJ.

Everyone came back up and we sat there for a while in a drunken haze, waiting it out and soaking in the collective failure. Nobody really wanted to be there anymore, but you got the sense that it was too much to bear alone. We sat there huddled in a circle like we were on a life raft out at sea, trying survive this thing together.

Noah decided he needed to "get up early" or something, and I was happy for him. We watched him go, and went back to our weird underwear sex cave. It was 3 AM and the subway wasn't running anymore, so I realized that I was stuck there.

Daphnee ran her hand up my leg and looked at me playfully but with a subtext of sadness.

"You haven't participated yet…"

I looked at Rose and the three of us went downstairs. They started taking off their clothes and making out. I was just happy to be downstairs but I guess I could have sex, too. We ended up having a reluctant threesome on the big bed and passing out in different parts of the room.

I fell asleep on the twin bed on the floor, and woke up to Daphnee curling up beside me,

"Noah keeps trying to have sex with me," she said, nuzzling into the pillow and nodding off. I set my alarm for eight to go to work in the morning and we fell asleep breathing whisky onto each other.

I scrambled up as my alarm went off a few hours later and went outside into the piercing sunlight. I shuffled to the subway with a pounding headache and tried to make sense of what just happened. Realistically it couldn't have gone much worse. I think the problem was with how we framed the whole thing, and how we misunderstood the attitude of our generation. Millennials might love numbing themselves with amphetamines and alcohol, but they still want sex to be a fun, special thing that grows throughout the night, not rammed down their throat with Costco cookies and Drake music. Maybe this is what we got for treating sex like a circus.

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