My girlfriend and I are regularly looking for fun and exciting things to do during the weekends. This past weekend, tickets for Houston’s Sixth Annual Erotic Ball popped up. I proposed the idea to the GF. I was expecting to get shot down. Somewhat to my surprise, she was actually pretty open to the idea. Hmm.

Internal conflict: The idea of going to this “sexpo” (as the GF liked to call it) was both exhilarating and scary – I wanted to peek behind the curtain, but I was scared of what I might see. I would not consider myself a prude or anything like that, but I would say that I generally tend to keep what happens in the bedroom (mostly) to myself. The website was also pretty vague about what exactly was going on. Hmm.

I bought the tickets.

Lesson 1: Don’t Wear a Black Polo and Jeans to an Erotic Ball

One thing kept coming up in my mind the week leading up to the event: what, exactly, does one wear to an Erotic Ball? Flips flops and a t-shirt? Business casual? Formal wear? Leather bondage gear? All of the above?

The GF and I both pondered it, until finally landing on her wearing a fairly racy, but classy, blue cocktail dress and heels and me just wearing a black polo with jeans and my work shoes. She also hand made me a masquerade mask out a cereal box and a fabric swatch.

We were ready.

The correct answer turned out to be all of the above. When we were just driving up we saw a woman in a dress with a wide slit up the side that traveled all the way up to her armpit, revealing a six inch swath of skin all the way up and leaving little to the imagination. This was not the most provocative outfit on display. As you can imagine, I somehow felt both underdressed and overdressed at the same time.

In a way, it almost felt like going to the zoo. “Over here we have rich men, dressed in designer suits and wearing as much gold jewelry as can fit onto one person’s fingers. Be warned, they will try to grope you once you are in the dark. On your right we have the renaissance festival goers, wearing exactly what they plan on wearing to the festival the following day. Be prepared for a discussion about how it took 200 man hours to hand craft their chain mail. Over there, please find the classic middle-aged woman, probably a school teacher, in a leather corset and fish nets wearing a choker attached to a metal chain that her husband is using to parade her around like a prize show animal. Try not to think about it too hard. And yes, that is someone in a full on gimp suit. Have fun!”

Lesson 2: I Am Not a “Lifestyler”

As we were waiting in line for entrance, we started conversations with some of the people around us. Many of them had just found the tickets online like we had and this was their first time to such an event, but there were a certain subset of people that you could just tell regularly attended this kind of thing. We struck up a conversation with one such individual.

She was a fairly rotund woman wearing a plaid shirt and you could tell she was missing some of her molars when she smiled with a lecherous side-mouthed grin. But she was very nice. We mentioned that we had never been to this kind of event before and she asked us if we were “lifestylers”. She didn’t seem to understand that we didn’t know what she was talking about, and went on to inform us that if anyone approaches us to “play”, to just let it happen if we are into it. If we didn’t want to “play”, she mentioned that every once in a while people could be assholes about it. She also asked us if we were going to go into the VIP section. Apparently, that was where the heavy bondage shows and other activities were to take place.

At this point, we were a little concerned. What the hell had we gotten ourselves into? Were we swingers now? Are we going to be touched by strange people? Are we going to be chained and whipped? What is this place?

Lesson 3: Pole Dancers Must Have Incredible Core Strength

We wandered the second floor balcony to where we could see the main stage because it sounded like there was some sort of commotion going on. Below us two women were industriously cleaning off the pole in front of the main stage. These women were cleaning with purpose, with an almost dour look on their faces. They were built like athletes, like they had just finished running sprints at the track and had wandered into the club, losing most of their clothes somewhere along the way. They were ready for business.

After they finished cleaning, they pushed back the crowd to clear space and began doing a tandem pole-dancing routine. They were doing all sorts of crazy contortions and poses, hanging off of each other as they spun around. This was Cirque du Solei level shit. At one point, one girl was hanging on the pole upside down, spinning, doing the splits, as the other was standing on top of her thighs. I was amazed.

Lesson 4: There Are Places That You Don’t Want to Run Into One of Your Exes

Ran into one of my exes. Yep.

Lesson 5: Dildo Fingers Open Up So Many Opportunities

As the night wore on, there were several different acts that came across the stage: belly dancers, drag queens, burlesque dancers, etc. In the advertisement, it was mentioned that “The Men of Le Bare” were to make an appearance. I felt like this was something that I needed to see. So we waited despite the fact that we were getting tired.

Late into the evening, a smallish, but fairly built Latino man got up onto the stage wearing what I can really only describe as a “thong unitard”, a muzzle, white eye contacts and light-up LED shoes. He kind of looked like he was from Mortal Kombat, but that he had left the ass of his costume at the character select screen.

He proceeded to dance and gyrate as one would expect from such a performance, but then he started pulling women randomly from the crowd. He found this one girl and then immediately flipped her over, and started doing what could only be described as an onstage, standing 69. She seemed surprisingly ok with it.

Next, he pulled out a little black box, and then proceeded to open up the box with a flair of mystery and showmanship. The box seemed to contain some kind of glove. He struggled to put it on for a bit with his back turned to the crowd. Finally, he turned around to reveal that it was a Freddy Kruger style glove, except that there weren’t blades at the ends of the fingers. No, there were metal dildos. He had a metal dildo finger glove. Metal. Dildo. Finger. Glove.

He proceeded to dance around as he waved his dildo fingers in the air, occasionally running his cold, steely, finger-peens across the faces, and particularly mouths, of women in the crowd below the stage. They were eating it up. Again, he pulled a woman with him up onto the stage. He rubbed her entire body all over with his finger-wieners before finally sticking his dong-digits up her dress and simulating a finger banging frenzy (or perhaps it was the real deal?) on stage. The crowd went wild.

It was about then that we decided it was time to go home. Thanks for the memories, Houston’s Sixth Annual Erotic Ball!