I cuddled with strangers at a Cuddle Party, San Francisco's latest wellness trend

Participants take part in a cuddle party and give each other shoulder rubs at a home in Marina Del Rey, CA on Monday, November 25, 2013. Participants take part in a cuddle party and give each other shoulder rubs at a home in Marina Del Rey, CA on Monday, November 25, 2013. Photo: Digital First Media/Orange Count/Digital First Media Via Getty Im Photo: Digital First Media/Orange Count/Digital First Media Via Getty Im Image 1 of / 59 Caption Close I cuddled with strangers at a Cuddle Party, San Francisco's latest wellness trend 1 / 59 Back to Gallery

I had been dreading my trip to the Cuddle Castle for the past few days. I'd set out, in the spirit of inquiry, to attend a Cuddle Party, a gathering I'd heard whispers about but had never seen up close.

Unlike most parties, I had to pay for this one. Thirty-six dollars covered four hours of cuddling at a secret location in San Francisco's Richmond neighborhood. I was instructed to eat beforehand, bring water and "soft fluffy things" to "enhance" the experience, and to wear comfy clothes, such as pajamas. Pajamas seemed too intimate for me; the entire enterprise, which at this point I knew virtually nothing about, seemed too intimate for me. I settled on a non-porous pair of pants, which friends in the past had pointed out looked "witchy."

Not one cell in my body was in the mood for cuddling once I walked up the steps and opened the door to the Cuddle Castle. I was greeted by the Cuddle Party facilitator, Yoni Alkan. A bearded man who looked to be in his 40s, he had a wrestler's physique and kind, confident eyes. I noticed he was wearing a fuzzy Cookie Monster onesie. "Hello!" he says warmly. "Would you like a hug?"

I say yes. I figure it's a good place to start.

____

The first Cuddle Party took place in 2004 and was hosted by Marcia Baczynski and Reid Mihalko, relationship and sex educators living in New York. The idea was to create a safe space for people to experience non-sexual touch, practice boundaries, and feel more comfortable expressing consent.

The belief that touch is essential — a biological and social need — but often difficult to find without an intimate relationship is a guiding principle within the cuddling world, which in recent years has emerged as a major commercial industry. There are professional cuddlists who offer private cuddling sessions for as much as $100 per hour. Cuddling has pushed into the retail market with vigor.

Cuddle Parties take place all over the world, and all follow the exact same script. The first part of the evening is mingling, often over snacks. The second part is the informational portion, where the rules of cuddling are outlined. The third part is, naturally, the most amorphous: "free-range" cuddling.

A group of about 30 trickles in over the course of a half-hour. The cuddle area is a carpeted living room with two large airbeds, a futon, and a large couch. Blankets and pillows coat the floor. An apple cake goes untouched for a startlingly long period of time; food doesn't seem to be the most pressing thing on anyone's mind.

People are chatting in different corners of the room. Somehow, everyone intuitively knows not to cuddle — yet. One man I chat with, with piercing blue eyes, tells me he's new to San Francisco; he moved here two weeks ago from Virginia and has been going to events through Meetups every day to "find like-minded people." He mentions two events called "Ecstatic Dance" and "Circling," the latter I find out is a gathering in which people sit in a circle and experience "being seen."

Another man, a shy computer scientist, tells me he's never done something like this before. We talk about whether it is statistically possible for any one person to be "universally liked" by every person in a room, and, for a moment, about "energies." Another man, who appears to let his eyebrows do the talking, tells me he's new to polyamory and figured this might be a good start.

The mention of polyamory momentarily shatters the innocence of the space, which has been carefully designed to dispel sexuality, as much as can be in a room full of adults with bodies and hormones and thoughts. Alcohol and lacy pajamas are prohibited. The room, which is growing toastier by the entrance of every new Cuddle Party attendee, feels like the set of a slumber party. I wonder if we will build a fort out of pillows.

I am most likely the youngest person in the room, something I quickly realize once we gather for the "welcome circle." One by one, we introduce ourselves.

"I'm a huge extrovert, like huge," a woman with thick, gray hair says excitedly. "If I could hold onto someone on the bus, even a stranger, I would. They would definitely hate me though."

It strikes me that this is not what an extrovert is.

Another person says they're here to "work on their Yes's and No's." A tiny, bewildered woman who looks to be in her 60s says she's here because she has a "lot of friends in the poly community" and wanted to "give it a try." A long-haired man sitting cross-legged says he will not be cuddling today; instead, he will be reading Winnie the Pooh out loud.

Photo: Digital First Media/Orange Count/Digital First Media Via Getty Im Participants take part in a cuddle party at a home in Marina Del...

At this point, Alkan has removed the top half of his Cookie Monster costume, revealing a T-shirt underneath. It is getting hot in the room, and also serious. It's time to go over the Cuddle Party rules.

Rule #1: Pajamas stay on the whole time.

Rule #2: You don't have to cuddle anyone at a Cuddle Party, ever.

Rule #3: You must ask permission and receive a verbal "yes" before you touch anyone (Be as specific in your request as you can).

Cuddling, I am beginning to find out, is not just spooning or hugging. The term contains literally hundreds of actions. Cuddling can be non-touch. Eye gazing and chatting are forms of cuddling. Everything from a gossamer graze of an elbow to a "puppy pile" counts. Alkan wrote an entire book on it, a picture book for adults titled "The Book of Cuddles."

Earlier in the evening, I'd asked a woman in thick glasses and a frank energy if she had brought any "cuddling appliances," by which I meant a pillow or blanket. The question sounds much dumber out-loud than it does in my head. "Here, we call that fluff!" Alkan says, appearing out of nowhere.

Rule #4: If you're a yes, say yes. If you're a no, say no.

Rule #5: If you're a maybe, say no.

Rule #6: You are encouraged to change your mind.

Rule #7: Respect your relationship agreements and communicate with your partner.

Rule #8: Get your Cuddle Party Facilitator or the Cuddle Assistant if you have a question or concern or need assistance with anything during the Cuddle Party.

Rule #9: Tears and laughter are both welcome.

Rule #10: Respect people's privacy when sharing about Cuddle Parties.

Rule #11: Keep the Cuddle space tidy.

Photo: Digital First Media/Orange Count/Digital First Media Via Getty Im Participants take part in a cuddle party at a home in Marina Del...

Consent is baked into every step of the process and, to help us practice, we're prompted with a few exercises. They're supposed to help us feel comfortable saying "our Yes's and No's." In one of them, Alkan asks us to turn to a partner and practice saying "no" to their request of "Can I kiss you?" ("Even if you want to!" he quips.) In the canned form of a script, it feels distanced from the actuality of rejecting someone in person.

Alkan gives us "tools" to prepare us for the inevitable part of consent, which is rejection. If someone says no to our request, he suggests responding with "Thanks for taking care of yourself" or "Thanks for the information."

"No is a complete sentence," he says in his introductory speech. We're told we shouldn't feel any pressure to "pad" our "no" with justifications.

Before we start the free-range cuddling, Alkan announces to the group that anyone who would like to leave can do so now and they'll get a full refund. This, he tells me later, is so he can ensure that everyone who stays for the cuddling is there because they actively want to. He doesn't want money to be the reason for them to stay, he said.

"People who are looking for sexual gratification and come to a cuddle party filter themselves out," he told me over coffee, a few days after the Cuddle Party. "At some point, they understand that this is not going to happen here, and they choose to leave."

Alkan, who has been a sexual educator since 2011, decided to pursue Cuddle Parties as a venture two years ago, at the recommendation of "one of the leading cuddlists at the time." The most prominent professional one-on-one cuddling service is Cuddlist.com. Founded in 2016 by Madelon Guinazzo and Adam Lippin, the service has trained more than 400 people to become professional cuddlists.

Photo: Eric Chan Yoni Alkan, a certified Cuddlist and a Cuddle Party facilitator,...

There are certified cuddlists and the higher-ranking trained cuddlists. The training for both requires an online course billed at $149. The sessions range in time and rate; Alkan charges $100 per hour.

Sometimes a client just wants to talk, Alkan said. Others just want a space to cry, or a companion to watch a movie with. Each room at Cuddle Up To Me, a cuddling "studio" in Portland, Ore., has a full-sized bed and a TV. Professional cuddler Samantha Hess, founder of Cuddle Up to Me and the first person to open a cuddling brick and mortar, got the idea of cuddling as a service in 2013.

She'd watched a Free Hugs Campaign video on Facebook and decided there needed to be a place that was like a "Starbucks for Hugs." She was 28 and recovering from a difficult divorce from a man she'd begun dating at 15. After more of a decade of "touch bankruptcy," she decided to leave him.

The beginning to her business was endearingly analog — she went door-to-door around her neighborhood and posted flyers around town. She met people for cuddling sessions at homes, parks, and movie theaters. Within a month, after an Oregonian reporter caught wind of her enterprise, her story went viral. She was contacted by 40 news stations, was booked two months in advance, and cuddled Nick Cannon on "America's Got Talent."

Most of her clients are regulars. Close to 90 percent are people who have feelings of loneliness on a regular basis, she said. Many of her clients have never had sex. She received three marriage proposals in the first year of her work.

"We are genetically coded to be pack animals," she said. "Touch is a shortcut to know you exist. And if you exist, you must matter. When someone else can touch me, feel me — I know that I'm in the world. And that makes me instantly feel less alone."

Photo: Erika Kapin Photography Yoni Alkan, a certified Cuddlist and a Cuddle Party facilitator,...

At the Cuddle Party, pitted against the promise of play is a quiet air of loneliness. "I'm here because I just was really feeling like I need a cuddle," the woman in glasses says, choking on her words. She pauses for a moment, and her eyes well up behind her thick frames. "Sorry," she says, on the precipice of tears.

The somber air doesn't linger though, at least not for long. At this point, we split off into trios. We play another flash-round of a scripted consent game, after which we're set off into the wild — the safe, authorized wild of non-sexual cuddling.

We're encouraged to start with our trios but are reminded that we can move to any group — with their consent, of course. I look over to my trio: a man in silky silver pajamas and platinum blonde hair— a spitting image of Zosia Mamet — and a man probably nearer to my age, with trendy glasses and a Hypebeast aesthetic. We pragmatically discuss what kind of cuddling we would like to do with each other, the throuple of the hour.

The man in silk starts. "I'd like to be laying down, ideally. I'd also like to be near a window, if that's possible? I don't know if I'm just like, going through menopause or something, but it's really hot in here."

Our other group member nods silently in agreement and so do I. I find myself in a kind of automatic trance, feeling like I'm walking on water, as the three of us head over to one of the large airbeds, the one with the best ventilation.

The man in silk jumps on the bed. He seems carefree, comfortable with this cuddling session. I feel stiff — mentally and physically. I lay down, partially — my feet are off the bed and touching the floor. I realize this must look unnatural and amateur, but I don't know how else to be. We decide to start slowly, holding hands in a row.

We are silent. I think about how unpleasant my hand— sweaty and emotionally unavailable — must feel to this sincere young man. I can't shake the feeling that I am disappointing both of them, that this is not what they want, that I am not what they want. That what they want is something or someone more connected, more open, whose hands are more moisturized.

I decide to break the silence by sitting up and facing both of them. We fall quickly into conversation and are still holding hands. I feel even more vulnerable when the man in the silk tells me he is a cuddle veteran. He had spent the weekend in Chicago with Alkan, attending an international cuddle conference called CuddleExpo.

We are the least touchy corner of the Cuddle Party. The group next to me has extended out the futon are all nuzzling each other in a close embrace, like a lioness meeting her cubs. At our feet is a very active massage train. A man with a low blonde ponytail is spooning with two women, a move called the spoon drawer. His eyes are closed in delicious delight.

After the party, this man tells me he briefly heard about Cuddle Parties about a decade ago, when he was living in Chicago. He said it seemed like that kind of thing that he was "desperate for." But it was only until a year and a half ago that he actually began to attend Cuddle Parties; the organizer of a polyamorous "munch" mentioned it as a way to meet new people.

That period of his life had been very difficult, he said, and he spent most nights feeling lonely and sad. He went to go see a professional cuddlist, and after a session with her, he remembered feeling "very OK and warm and floating."

At this point, he's attended more than 20 Cuddle Parties. To him, they serve as a way to develop and enforce boundaries, encourage others to do the same, and most importantly, as a playful place to explore. When I ask him if he tends to follow a similar routine at parties, he admits he can be strategic; he identifies women who he is attracted to, and makes it a goal to cuddle with at least one during the party.

He often leaves with a few phone numbers, either for platonic cuddle partners — who he calls Cuddle Buddies — or, if the opportunity arises, for more. At his first Cuddle Party, he met the woman who, one month later, would become a serious girlfriend.

Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images NEW YORK - OCTOBER 16: People cuddle during an a "Cuddle Party"...

Romantic partners through Cuddle Parties have also been an unintended consequence for Alice Liu, a engineer in San Francisco, who estimates she's been to at least a dozen of Alkan's Cuddle Parties. She's met four of her romantic partners at Cuddle Parties, including at the first one she went to. She said she didn't realize it, but her partner later told her she was "moaning pretty hard" during their cuddle.

The parties have been undeniably fruitful for developing crushes — something she says can be challenging to regulate amid the parties' emphasis on platonic and non-sexual touch. But they also serve a larger purpose: they've helped her feel more in control of her life, and more confident about her desires and her boundaries.

Later, the woman with the frank energy approaches me, somewhat abruptly. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but, I wanted to ask," she says. "Would you like to cuddle?"

She immediately establishes herself as the dominant one in our cuddling dynamic, which is completely fine by me because I have no idea what I'm doing. We sit next to each other on the couch, smiling politely like acquaintances who've just run into each other in the Pottery Barn checkout line.

"I'm having an impulse to have you in my arms," she says in a warm, direct tone. "Would that be OK with you?" I say yes. Her arm is around me; my head and neck are thrown back on the top of the couch. I feel like the Tin Man. I am envious of her ease.

We are silent for a few seconds, then check in with each other about how it's all feeling. The past year, she says, has been a difficult one; she went through a breakup and the death of her cat in a week. She explains that touch is extremely important to her and, without a romantic partner, she's been feeling out-of-sorts at not being able to experience it. She's 46, she says, and time always feels like it's ticking.

We're talking closely now, about the tribulations of courtship and social isolation. Her breath smells faintly of garlic and inexplicably, this gives me a feeling of comfort. For the first time in the night, I start to feel warm.

My body is almost fully relaxed before we're asked to gather for the closing circle. Alkan asks us to briefly share how we felt before and after the Cuddle Party.

Nearly everyone describes feeling some variation of "warm." One woman says she'd been dreading the party, that the thought of it had started to feel like an errand, but that tension almost immediately dissipated. The reticent man from my original cuddling trio says he'd felt "confused" before arriving, and now felt "confused, but in a different way."

As we inch closer toward the end of the night, Alkan puts word to the ember of warmth that has permeated the room: oxytocin, aka the "love hormone." For some people, he said, the effects of the hormone can last through the evening — for others, it can stay for as long as weeks. He tells us to be careful getting home, whether we're driving, walking, or taking the bus. Cuddling, he said, puts us in an altered state of mind.

As soon as I get home, the effects — perhaps placebo, perhaps real — are still there. I feel lighter. My brain feels cozy. My roommates, awaiting my arrival with bated breath, ask me how the Cuddle Party was. For some reason, it feels impossible to even begin to explain, and that feeling of blankness lasts for days.

"This is not a cure for loneliness, but people feel better," Alkan said during our final conversation. "This is not self-defense ... but people get their agency in saying what they want. This is not therapy, but people learn to ask for what they want and find their true selves."

I've spent the past week huddled over my computer like a futuristic monk, scouring the cuddle internet. I've spent hours reading the bios of cuddle professionals and "Cuddlemonials." I have withdrawn from everything in pursuit of distilling the mystifying world of cuddling.

As a human, I find I need a category under which to sort a Cuddle Party.

I desperately want it to make sense but, in the end, it doesn't.

Read Annie Vainshtein's latest stories here. Email her at avainshtein@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @annievain