I asked my girlfriend Courtney, whose shaved head makes her much more obviously queer than me, if she’d be interested in going. “When your man is not enough, seek adventure outside – where men are not invited,” the video urged. In the background, behind a table with a bottle of champagne, the curtains are conspicuously drawn. Glitter-rimmed mouths oh soundlessly, long legs circled with garter belts stretch into the frame, taut bellies emerge from black panties and breasts are suspended in BDSM-reminiscent bras.
Hot, feminine women in four-inch heels with artfully mussed hair strut like models, dance alone in feather boas and masks, gyrate desirously and mount each other for suspenseful kisses. The result, at least according to the video on their website, was somewhere between Eyes Wide Shut and a Victoria’s Secret commercial. Skirt Club Founder Genevieve LeJeune had been to such parties, too, and was inspired to create a sex party where women, in particular, could focus on their sexuality “away from the prying eyes of men.” I’d never heard of Skirt Club, or a bisexual women’s-only sex party, though I’d certainly been to a number of “play parties,” where people across the gender spectrum did everything from cuddling to coitus. I received the invitation to Skirt Club’s San Francisco launch party on a cold Saturday in January. It’s lesbianism: our little secret, for women whose bi-curiosity has become too overwhelming to ignore. It’s “lesbianism” that lesbians will recognize, but have a hard time endorsing without some irony. This is the kind of awkward, lighthearted, lesbianism many women either had – or wished they’d had – in college. This is Katy Perry singing “I kissed a girl and I liked it.” This is an Agent Provocateur window display. The invitation to Skirt Club, a women-only, bisexual and bi-curious sex party, tells you one thing, loud and clear: This may be a girls-only orgy, but it’s not lesbianism as you know it.