Swinky Life at Naughty N’awlins

After returning home, we wanted to write a team blog post about our experiences. Myrina and I both wrote our own blogs first, and then began to work to blend them. We quickly realized we both have our own voice and opinion, and chose to each publish our own, and point our readers to the other. Please read her awesome writeup from our experiences on their site, The Accidental Swingers.

Intro

After two years of trying, we finally made it back to Naughty N’awlins. It was an amazing roller coaster ride. All of our hard work over the last two years paid off amazingly well, and we had an incredible experience. We were there for a full week, giving ourselves a couple of days in advance to get ready, and a couple of days at the end to chillax and just enjoy The Big Easy.

Early Arrival

We flew into New Orleans Monday morning. The fun of packing all the play toys, outfits, our normal shit, and tons of goodie bags and rope for our workshops took the entire previous weekend. We were right on the edge with our weight for all of the suitcases but had distributed everything meticulously, so we made it through check-in unharmed. Then it was drinks in the airport bar to officially get the week started. The flight in, drive from the airport, and arrival all went great (although, we were surprised we got all of us AND all of the luggage into that taxi), and our rooms were actually ready when we arrived, so we got all checked in and threw the suitcases into the rooms, and then it was time to hit the town.

Prep and Early Fun

The first couple of days, we did final organization of stuff for our classes, and enjoyed New Orleans. Our first day in town was actually the 4th of July, so our goal was to hangout, do some shopping, eating and drinking, and then go watch the fireworks at the river. There was supposed to be a rather informal gathering of Naughty folks there, and we wanted to catch up with them. After a great lunch at Felix’s (Tristan and I loved our oyster shooters) we did some fun wandering around the French Quarter, looking for the group. We never found them, and ended up at a great place called Curio for dinner. The drinks and food were amazing, and it got our vote for best traditional Cajun food of the week. The fireworks started as we were closing out, so we stepped out and watched some of them. Then it was back to the hotel.

Tuesday was another day of wandering around, eating great food, (Beignets and Café au lait at Cafe Beignets) and hosting an unofficial podcaster meet and greet at The Carousel Bar, where we met some fellow adult podcasters for casual drinks and discussion about the trials and tribulations of running a podcast with an adult-oriented theme.

Something else happened on Tuesday, that became a running theme for the week… we were recognized. Of all the surprises of the week, this was the biggest. We were completely unprepared for how many strangers were going to walk up to us over the next 5 days and tell us how much they love the podcast, and our work, and how they follow us on Instagram. We were blown away. It was humbling, and we are so grateful that people find our stories and our journey to be interesting, and in many cases, influential to their journeys as well.

Meet and Greets with The Accidental Swingers

On Wednesday, the tempo began to pick up. We had a lovely brunch with a collection of folks from the Discord group who had already arrived, and then, of course, more great food throughout the day. Prep work for our workshops was all complete, and we hosted our “Meet the Accidental Swingers” party for the Discord group we had created at The Bourbon Street Drinkery, followed by the Meet and Greet for The Accidental Swingers VIP group. These were both great events, we met more amazing people than we will ever remember, and just had an awesome time. We began to bump into more familiar faces from years gone by as more people began arriving, and the overwhelming sense of “Welcome Home” really began to sink in for me. (SPOILER: By the end of this, you will see we actually were able to reconnect with almost no one… I am not saying we bit off more than we could chew, but we were definitely very very busy. And I think we all agree, we would not have done it differently… but maybe fewer workshops next year.)

The Meet and Greets were amazing, and not only did we meet so many lovely people whose lives we have touched, but of course, other people would just wander through and ask what was going on, so we had the opportunity to introduce some new folks to ourselves, our lifestyle, and our podcast. To everyone who came, thank you!

The final meet and greet, Thursday evening, was for all of the podcasters who attended Naughty and was a great chance to talk with many different podcasters, make connections, and trade war stories.

Classes

On Thursday, things really kicked into high gear, as we began our schedule of workshops. We were really uncertain how our workshops were going to be accepted and attended since we were not sure how much a swinger convention would be interested in kink stuff. We were blown away. The attendance at our first class, ‘Why Don’t You Just Fuck? Kink 101’, was standing room only, and the group was very participative and fun. We covered tons of stuff, had interactive volunteers, encouraged everyone to work through the exercises with us, and in general, just had a blast. When we got to the rope part of the class, everyone jumped in enthusiastically, and it was awesome to look around and see an entire room full of couples happily tying one another up!

This was eclipsed on Friday by the ‘Beginner Bedroom Rope Play’ class, which was wall to wall people, and everyone having a great time learning all the new tying techniques we taught. It was awesome, humbling, and fulfilling all at once. It was standing room only, and everyone was fully engaged, laughing and working together and asking questions… from the perspective of a team whose primary goal was to create the best, most informative workshop, where people would actually learn something, and feel like they got their times worth, this was an amazing experience for us, and we are so happy with the crowd’s response.

Those were our two hands-on workshops, and I was personally very proud of them; from the beginnings of our conversations, this was the core of what Swinky Life wanted to bring to our audience, and it was very fulfilling to see them go so well.

But over the last two years, our offerings have expanded as our lives have continued to evolve, and an equally important part of our mission now is to educate people and help them understand, and overcome, the differences between the swinging community and the kink community, and to be able to fluidly navigate both. To this end, we also did two other workshops, ‘More Than Swinging: Building Loving, Lasting Relationships’, and ‘Swinky Life: Bridging the Gap Between Swingers and Kink’ (at 10:30 on a Saturday morning at Naughty, we were convinced no one would attend this last one) These were also fabulously received, and we love roundtable conversations where we actually listen to other people share their stories with us and the audience. More Than Swinging focuses on our polyamorous dynamic, and we had the privilege of meeting another wonderful 4-some in the class, who shared some of their stories with us, and showed us all their matching tattoos as well! It was great to meet another quad who is making it work, taking the risks, and reaping the rewards, while honestly discussing the challenges of our chosen lifestyle. While ‘Bridging the Gap’ was more lightly attended, it was still a good crowd, and a very lively conversation where we explored differences in communication, consent, and negotiation between swingers and kinksters.

Sex Positive Podcasters Panel

On Thursday, Myrina of The Accidental Swingers also hosted a Sex Positive Podcasters Panel to talk about relevant issues within the community of podcasters who focus on the lifestyle and related topics. It went great, and there was strong diversity on the panel in terms of how long any particular team had been podcasting, as well as the content and presentation of the material. The interaction was top-notch, and it was a wonderful opportunity to see a huge cross-section of opinions and experiences in a community where we are very challenged to succeed (adult-themed podcasts have extra challenges with Google bots, SEO, Sponsorships, Ratings, and Censorship issues), and to build one another up and encourage each other that what we seek to do is valid, relevant, and important.

Play

Ah, the magical memories that come from meeting someone new, getting to know them, having great sex with them, and coming away forever changed from the experience. Sadly, that happened much less than we hoped, considering this was our gloriously triumphant return to Naughty N’awlins.

So, I was a consultant for about 10 years, a one-man consulting firm and software company. As such, I am very familiar with doing the trade show circuit, hawking a product, doing presentations, the whole thing. And one thing that experience taught me was this… your life is not your own when you are in that mode. You think you have a presentation from 1 – 2:30, but the rest of the day is yours? HA!!! You spend 11-12 reviewing everything, 12-:1230 walking through it in the mirror, 12:30 – 1:00 dragging your shit to the room and setting up, 1:00 – 2:30 presenting, 2:30 – 3:00 talking with everyone (while you try to pack your shit up) 3:30 dragging all your shit back to your room, and 3:30 – 4:00 having a drink and wondering where the hell your day went. In short, being a presenter, vendor, promoter… it consumes your life, and I already knew this. Sure enough, that, coupled with the unexpected inability to walk across the lobby without being recognized by someone who wants to talk to us, completely rewrote our schedule for us in unexpected ways. Bottom line… much less time than we wanted or expected to just relax and be social. So our playtime was greatly curtailed. To the one couple who rode that out with us and hung in there for an amazing night of 6-way play, god bless you, we loved every second of it. For the other few people we played with in the dungeons and playrooms, it meant the world to us, we love spreading our kink around, and those moments were special. And to everyone we wanted to play with, but could not make it happen… we will never do four workshops and three meet and greets and a panel discussion in one event again. Meet us next year! 🙂

Hello Covid

As if all of that were not challenging enough, Covid came to the party also. Late in the week, we got the news that someone we had been close to was positive. We immediately tested ourselves, and when one of us turned up positive, we made the choice to no longer play with anyone else for the rest of the weekend, and to do what we could to socially distance ourselves and wear a mask for the duration of the event. One thing we do really well is pivot, and so with group play being off the table, we doubled down on just having a nice New Orleans vacation, and we shopped, drank and ate, kept our distance, and wore our masks. Not the end of the week we wanted, but we excel at making lemonade out of lemons.

A Few Quiet Days

And so, those last few days after the last class and the last night in the playroom were quiet, subdued, and slightly self-indulgent. We embarked on the great Bread Pudding Quest of 2022, which was satisfied at Piere Masperos, as well as the quest for the best Old Fashioned in New Orleans (My vote, by far, is the Plantation Old Fashioned at The Carousel Bar in The Hotel Monteleone). While we certainly would have loved to have had one last great epic night in the playrooms, the truth is we were exhausted beyond belief, and riding an endorphin high from all the results of our hard work.

Finally, at Home Now

I could write for hours and never cover all of the amazing moments. We are so very proud of ourselves, we survived many challenges to get to this point, and while parts of it were really tough, and sometimes we did not agree or get along well, at the end of the day, we had a goal and a mission, and we feel like we achieved those and so much more. It is more than a week later as I am writing this… we have not unpacked yet at all. Life continues along its merry, insane, path. But we are still in touch with the Discord group, and with the entire Naughty Events community. We are aware of the successes and challenges of other people who were involved as well. And we are filled with a quiet sense of success, and happiness, and camaraderie, and belonging, as we all continue to discuss what a great, wonderful, imperfect, awesome event it was, and what we can all do, working together, to make it even more amazing next year.

We hope to see you there!

~ Phoenix