Wandering into an Adult Friend Finder Hookup

My buddy Don and I started drinking early that day… Well, actually, Don and his office manager started drinking REALLY early and I just kind of caught up in time to… well, catch up. The were at this dive bar near Don’s office that has an amazing selection of whiskeys — fill your card with 30 different kinds of whiskey (over time) and get a T-Shirt and a permanent discount.

Anyhow, Don and… let’s call his office manager Norm because I can’t actually remember his name. Don and Norm were a couple shots in when I showed up — I knocked off a couple more entries on my card, getting me slightly closer to a t-shirt, when Norm’s phone rang. A couple of his friends from out of town were staying at a hotel by the airport on their way to a sunny vacaiton and wanted to know if he’d like to join them for some drinks. When he asked if we could tag along, they said “Sure!” and the road trip started.

It’s probably a 20 minute drive from the bar to the hotel, and along the way Norm’s phone kept buzzing and he started chuckling and, honest to god, giggling in the back seat. He was getting cryptic messages along the lines of, “Weird people here…” and “I think it’s some kind of a meat market” and, “Oh my god… we might not want to eat here.”

Turned out it was some kind of a regional Adult Friend Finder party. If you aren’t familar with the site, it’s basically a place to get laid. No questions about anyone’s motives, and probably one of the more honest dating sites out there. But I didn’t know they had conferences.

Walking in was… interesting. There was a big crowd and while they weren’t horribly disfigured or anything, there was something… odd about them. I always think they kind of looked like the crowd in Rocky Horror Picture Show that did the Time Warp (again).

There was woman who I dubbed The Welcome Wagon. She was really pleased to see three men walk in, and she really liked me. She turned on her best flirtatious banter and I stepped it up. I can’t help myself — it’s my horn-dog instincts: I’m going to flirt back with a flirty girl. Hell, I flirt with gay guys… I flirt back with 80 year old women when they make innuendo. I flirt, and this was like open-mic night for flirts.

But part of it is my amateur anthropology — this is some kind of a tribe that I want to study, and I study best by immersion.

I did sort of have this feeling of, “In the valley of the blind the one eyed man would be king.” These folks lacked basic social skills and were either talking much to excitedly (“someone is paying attention to me!”) or hugging the walls, (“please don’t let someone notice me!”). With my basic salesman skills I can get anyone to open up, and women who have resorted to Adult Friend Finder don’t need a lot of prompting.

Norm and his friends were trying to pretend none of this was going on, but they didn’t want to leave and couldn’t help but watch the goings on — you can’t pay for this kind of entertainment.

Don, on the other hand, couldn’t stop laughing. He said the worst part was when he was coming back from the bathroom and this short, wrinkly, old woman was walking arm in arm in arm with two pimply faced early 20 something guys. He said he tried to apologize but could stop laughing long enough.

No one was doing any major make out scene or anything particularly sexy. They were like high-school kids on Senior Cut day — then knew they were going to be naughty but they weren’t really sure how to do it.

After awhile I got to talking to a woman who was there with her husband. He really wanted to do a threesome with this other woman they came with. I could tell she wasn’t happy about the whole thing, but her marraige was important enough to her to try it, but you could see the strain.

And that kind of made me notice the strain everyone seemed to have. They were all sort of playing a game, but it was game that was very real and one that they didn’t really know the rules to. Why they didn’t know the rules for basic, “Hey baby, want to go back to my room?” was probably different for every one of them — it was a party for outcasts who can’t find the kind of sexual and emotional satisfaction in day-to-day life, which means there are probably other things missing from day-to-day.

So, no, this story doesn’t end up with me fucking a stranger behind the ice machine. It was kind of sad, and honestly, a little scary (who knows what lurks beneath the lace and satin corsets). I gave Welcome Wagon a hug goodbye, Don accidentally ended up with her tounge in his mouth, and we went to get some more whiskey and donuts in a more “normal” corner of Portland.