How Going to a Gangbang Made Me Appreciate Monogamy

"And for the women who don't want to participate in the gangbang, don't go in the 'hard room'—you're not gonna like it."

It was a fair warning. Jean Hamel, president of the Quebec Swingers Association (QSA), addressed a crowd of masked swingers, voyeurs, curious couples, and single men eager to dip their toes and other appendages into the warm, murky waters of anonymous group sex.

But first, there was a short political rant by Hamel about Canada's puritanical sex laws, which prohibit orgies and public sex in any place with a liquor license. Because of these laws, Hamel said, the main attraction will take place in two private apartments across the street from Montreal's Unity Club, the gay club we were housed in.

Thanks to a colleague (who shall remain nameless) who signed me up to a weekly gangbang newsletter on my work email and a curious editor, I found myself at the QSA's 15th annual Eyes Wide Shut evening. It promised to be"an evening without constraints, without taboos, but at the same time, full of respect" and this year's theme was "Black and Red," meaning that everyone had to wear a mask and black and red attire.

Inside Unity, women are hanging from the ceiling in bondage rope and a very obedient male sub is being tied up by a female dom on an elevated surface. On the dancefloor, masked middle-aged men swarm around young, naked female dancers to grab, lick, and suck whatever body parts they can get their hands on.

Finally, our host lays down the ground rules for the evening: the "soft room" is for couples and single women only; participation is optional and voyeurism is encouraged. The "hard room"—the only room that can be attended by single men—is a gangbang and participation is required by everyone, hence the warning.

I am joined by my girlfriend, with whom I am in a monogamous relationship. She insisted on tagging along out of sheer curiosity and I figured that a female perspective couldn't hurt for this particular assignment. Would we cower at the sight of uninhibited sexuality? Or would we too become swingers, swept under a clammy torrent of group sex?

First stop: the soft room. The doormen told us to follow the red glow coming from a door. What we saw inside shocked us: five empty mattresses and full Kleenex boxes on the floor of an otherwise empty room. There was neither gang nor bang.

We looked nervously at the two other masked voyeur couples in the room, hoping that someone could break the awkwardness, like the brave middle school couple that starts slow-dancing before everyone else.

Luckily, the 50-year-old version of that couple set up shop on a swing, and it wasn't long before the woman was being eaten out by another woman in a ballerina costume and fingered from behind by a tall bald man. Swing lady's date masturbated enthusiastically as he watched his partner swing back and forth between anal and vaginal penetration under the dim red lights of the soft room.

Next to the swing was a bound woman being bullwhipped and a man inserting his dick into the ether of a glory hole that had no one on the other side.

One mattress over, a muscular black guy wearing a gold mask was having sex with his female partner, who looked like Fred Flintstone wearing Wilma's dress. He never spoke to her, broke a smile, moaned, or really even acknowledged the woman beneath him. Was he even having a good time? It was impossible to tell. He just mechanically fucked his lady while aggressively staring at other women in the room through his golden mask.

On the same mattress lay a man with all but the thumb of his left hand inside a woman's rectum. It looked like a hand trying to fish change out of a sofa. She began making out with Wilma and, before long, they were in full-blown foursome territory.

In the middle of all of this, a good-looking young man—there were not a whole lot of young people, good looking or otherwise, present this evening—came up to us and asked, "Yo, I can't find my date, have you seen her anywhere?"

Before I could answer, a woman being pulled on a leash crawled past our feet, at the mercy of her dom. Not exactly sure where to look anymore, we decided to follow leash lady into a smaller backroom. There, on the orders of her master, she performed rimjobs on three men who were thrusting away and freely exchanging partners—none wearing condoms—all to the tune of Springsteen's "I'm on Fire."

The soft room was no longer soft.

Of course, journalistic integrity dictated that I take a look in the hard room. After being warned that women who set foot inside should expect to participate in a gangbang, we decided that it was best if I scope it out on my own.

Before entering, it had never really occurred to me what a huge difference there was between an orgy and a gangbang. It's all in the ratio and, mathematically speaking, this was definitely a gangbang. Whereas parity was the rule in the soft room, it wasn't even close inside the hard room.

Mattresses overflowed with men grabbing, fingering, fucking, and getting head from women. The floor was littered with condom wrappers, used condoms, and used tissues. Naked men walked around masturbating as they waited in line for their turn with the brave women of the hard room. Every body type, penis size, and form of penetration was on proud display. There were 60 to 80 people in the hard room and, at the very most, a dozen women participating.

One mattress had attracted so many male participants that the two women on it could only be heard—not seen—from the outside. They were rudderless vessels in a mighty sea of cock. Further on, a woman sat up on a mattress naked (except for her knee-high tube socks), looking blankly into the distance with the thousand-yard stare of a dazed soldier. Minutes later, she was back at it.

The hardest thing about writing this article was to describe the smell of dozens of people having sex in a confined space with closed windows. The stench, in case you were wondering, is awful. Think cheap cologne and ass (not genitalia) in a hot car with the windows up in the middle of summer, parked inside of a giant kimchi jar.

Surprisingly, nobody was wearing a mask in the hard room. Would any of these people ever bump into each other again, in a less literal way? Did anyone recognize friends or family? Did that add to the excitement? I definitely recognized an Uber driver from a couple of weeks past. It did not excite me.

But then again, fucking with a mask on seems really annoying; a bit like having a condom on your face. And having a mask on during anonymous sex is a contradiction anyway. This gathering was celebrating shameless behaviour in the truest sense of the word, so why hide your identity when you are at your most raw sexually?

It's worth mentioning at this point that every sexual act I witnessed, from the tenderest to the most depraved, seemed entirely consensual, enjoyable even. Despite dire warnings of mandatory participation for women, there was a huge respect—even in the hard room—for those who did not want to get in on the action. The mood was aggressively sexual, but not hostile. There was no unsolicited flirting, touching, or grabbing of women or men, which is more than what you can say about the decorum at most "civilian" bars.

So I did what any responsible boyfriend would do and ran back outside to get my partner to bring her into the gangbang. Once we got back in, I could see her eyes squint and mouth drop behind her mask at the sights and smells surrounding us. For her, the next 20 minutes became a Matrix-like exercise in dodging the erect penises of roaming gangbangers. Still, no one approached us or even mentioned mandatory participation.

Wondering if she was at all horny, or at least contemplating the sexual parameters we had set for ourselves earlier in the night, I looked over at my partner. Before I could open my mouth, she answered, "I want mozzarella sticks and beer."

It would be our last gangbang. For now. Call me old-fashioned, but at this point, even mozzarella sticks and beer were more sexually appealing than hooking up with the bold, beautiful, sweaty people around us. Plus, I'm a food writer. What the fuck am I doing at a gangbang?

We went home, removed our masks, and had missionary sex with the lights off.

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