When I told my friends and colleagues I was going to a festival of sex, they were quick to jump to salacious fantasies. Most assumed I was going to a mass orgy – a weekend of rampant debauchery. Others had visions of Sexpo – strippers, pole dancers and porn stars. Me? I had no idea. Yet as I arrived at the inaugural Sydney festival of Really Good Sex, I realised this was going to be like nothing I’d experienced before.

The whole scene was just like a normal Saturday morning in picturesque Rushcutters Bay, but as the time clicked closer to 9:30am, the anxiety built inside me. The venue became crowded as the 150 or so participants began to arrive. Young, old, male, female, big, small and in between – a real mix of people. I watched them all, wondering who they were and why they had come.

The festival comprised of a series of workshops. Some were theoretical discussions of sexual topics, while others were more physical — an opportunity to explore and practise sexual techniques. It was the latter that I was both most interested in and anxious to explore.

Before I knew it I was entangled in deeply sexual embraces with people (mostly women) who I had never met Simon Copland

I started with what I thought would be an easy entry. My first session was called “Hold me tight” – essentially an exploration of hugging. It began with the instructors – two sex practitioners who had travelled from Germany and Austria – talking about the value of holding in sexual play. It’s something we do so often, yet rarely think about. Then it was time to put it into practice.

The session required us to experiment with holding people in different places, showing resistance to being held, “crushing” your partner and finding their limits. Before I knew it I was entangled in deeply sexual embraces with people (mostly women) who I had never met.

In the final exercise, we practised holding each other while lying down. I was paired with a woman and for a few minutes we rolled around on the floor playfully trying to get on top of the other. It was like the play-fighting I often engage in during foreplay. It was both sexual and nonsexual, intense and yet so easy, enjoyable and also confronting.

Next I went to a session titled “A radically inclusive approach to really good sex”. To boil it down, this workshop was based on the idea that if you let go of some of your prejudices about who you are attracted to, then maybe you could explore new, inclusive, and enjoyable experiences of sex. And what better way than to practise?

At the end of the session we were paired with a partner we didn’t know, told to strip down to a level of clothing we felt comfortable with (my partner and I both stripped to our underwear) and then to touch each other for five minutes. I focused on touching my partner’s arms, chest and head, while he took a full-body approach, starting at my legs before working his away across my torso, arms and head. I was able to experience joy in exploring the bodies of people I probably wouldn’t have glanced at in a different scenario.

Other sessions I attended were more theoretical, including the “Mono versus poly” debate where about 30 people discussed the challenges of different types of relationship structures.



Participants at a workshop in the Sydney Really Good sex festival. Photograph: Tyler Saunders/The Guardian.

In another session, titled “A journey into vulnerability”, we explored the parts of ourselves we are uncomfortable with and tried to bring those into the fore. We did this by answering questions that may be considered difficult (ie what sort of sex would you like to explore more, or what was the most difficult moment in your life?), challenging us to publicly express ourselves.

On Saturday night we were treated to performances with acts with titles like “Orgasmic solo intimacy” and “Feasting the body”.

By Sunday I was feeling more adventurous and ready to give anything a shot. I started with “Loving play with rope”, but it wasn’t until the session titled “Interrogation play” that I started to really realise the value of the weekend. The session started with us by splitting into two groups. Everyone got to take turns interrogating the others with the basic question: “Who are you?” The idea was to explore how power play, even when it is “nonsexual”, can be a strong part of sexual play.

Before I knew it, I was standing over my subjects and screaming at them, abusing them, demanding they provide answers to questions I had just made up. With one partner we made up a scenario where I was interrogating her over expensive art she had stolen. I stood over her demanding she tell me where the art was or face severe consequences. I became very aggressive and was turned on by the whole experience. Within a few minutes I had discovered a part of my sexuality, and my personality, I hardly knew I had.

It got even deeper in “Objects for sex play”. Here our facilitator asked us two simple questions: “What body part do you use most during sex” and “What object do you enjoy using the most during sex?” It took me a moment, but I finally answered with “my brain” and “a blindfold”. A moment later I realised the connection. I can get anxious during sex, overthinking things in a desire to control the situation. This is a bit like my life in general – I am an anxious overthinker. A blindfold takes that away, however. The moment I lose power my anxiety goes as well – I am no longer able to control things and therefore have nothing to get anxious about anymore. Maybe that’s why I got so aggressive during my interrogation – it was the loss of control that turned me on.

If sex is metaphor then this was the perfect one for my life. Just as I have a desire to let go in sex, I realised, I have the need in life. One I still haven’t fully appreciated. In a moment of play I discovered something very deep about myself.

That was the thing about this festival. Sex is such a strong part of our lives, yet we have so little space to actually explore it. We contain it to our bedroom, rarely spreading out beyond those four walls. And that’s a problem. I think Janet Hardy, keynote speaker and internationally renowned sex educator, explained this best. In an interview with her, she said: “You just can’t say ‘sex is here’ and ‘the rest of your life is here’. You breathe sex in, you exhale it, it goes in through your pores and you sweat it back out.”

At the festival it didn’t matter who people were, what their gender, size, age or even sexuality was. I played with people young, old, queer, straight and of all different genders. And I didn’t care. Each new person was just another opportunity for exploration. Another opportunity to find out more about myself. While that sounds confronting and weird, there was something exciting and empowering about it.

That’s the contradiction I was feeling on the first day. The whole weekend felt strange because we tell ourselves talking about sex has to be strange. Yet it felt everyday because that’s where it should be — sex is of the everyday.

Sex is such an integral part of our lives, yet for some reason we think we have to hide it away, learn about it completely on our own and never broach the topic if something goes wrong. To me that seems far more strange than going to a festival of really good sex.