Mezzanine

Transcript

Speaker1: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are, I hope you have blue skies, a breeze on your back, and sand between your toes. Welcome to The Other Lifestyle Podcast. I am your host, Jason. Leave vanilla behind as we talk about mezzanines. This show is for adults only. We will talk about sex, relationships, the lifestyle, and ethical non-monogamy in an honest way with lots of real talk. If you are under 18, please stop listening. Around here on the beaches of sexual freedom, consent, education, and good times, everyone is welcome. Lifestyle, vanilla, or the curious. Whatever your gender, identity, expression, truth, flavor, you are welcome here. I do my best to use inclusive language, though you may hear words like husband or wife or man or woman to keep things simple. You want to connect, you can send me an email to host at thatotherlifestyle.com. Go to my website, thatotherlifestyle.com. You can go to stdhero.com. Use my promo code TOL15 for 15% off STI testing with those wonderful people. Testing takes the community to make a difference, so please go get STI tested and stay safe out there. For the absolute best lifestyle parties, check out risquélifestyleparties.com. We love their vibe, attitude, and always have fun, and I promise you will too. I want to say this up front right now. If this episode sounds sharp, it's because I have been the guy who was hypnotized by shiny people. I have been the guy who wanted to be a I didn't arrive at this place from a pedestal. I am here bruised. Looking around realizing our community can do better in the way that we treat each other and interact. Wildly different topic. I didn't learn about the word mezzanine. Until I was a young adult at a convention in a big-ass fancy hotel trying to figure out where the hell the mezzanine was specifically so I could locate a bathroom. When I was a kid, all of our vacations we stayed at a motel six the kind of places with exterior doors no free breakfast mezzanine that is a big fancy word for the walkie way the big space outside of the doors of meeting rooms in a hotel or a convention center big big walkways they're liminal spaces that you don't notice as you pass through them they usually have like floral pattern carpet with just enough color so your eyes don't focus down more liminal spaces this is not about elevators this time this is about mezzanine And thinking this through, this convention center analogy, mezzanine, stratification of interactions, the feeling of being inside and outside of something, spaces to hold people that want to mill about, the main show in a conference room auditorium, people who may choose not to enter those doors because they don't feel welcome inside that space or they don't even know there's a door to enter, people who are tired of the big show and opt for something quieter, the way we The mezzanine is the middle ground between the popular and the burnouts, the space where you can be yourself away from the worry of being included in every little thing that happens, away from the influence of shiny people. I feel a lot of people around me are becoming mezzanine people with me, and that could be a good thing. This idea slapped me in the face over the weekend, as most of my show topics do. My wife and I were talking about our plans for this year. We have the Fantasy Cruise coming up out of Tampa in February. That's the only time I'm going to mention specifically the name of the cruise we're going on because them bastards are not paying me for free advertising. Luminous. Risqué is putting on the Luminous Glow Party in Fort Walton Beach in May. Go to the website for details, risquélifestyleparties.com. They're doing Pulsify in October and then there's a bunch of other Risqué parties in Batch and Rouge throughout the year. We may be at Naughty in New Orleans. to jog my memory about what the hell it was called. I kept calling it the walkie way. Between sessions, you make idle small talk. Your boss will inevitably run up really, really excited and ask about what you heard in your session, just believing in their little pee-picking heart that you were paying attention or give two shits. For some reason, though, the structure of these buildings, these convention centers, has started spinning in my brain. And looking at the architecture, is there a useful analysis here of the These spaces create divisions. Intentionally, managing the flow of people, these divisions create boundaries inside and outside combined with the human need to be included in the tribe. Knowing that there is a different space that you are not a part of where people are having fun without you. A physical delineation of FOMO, all orchestrated by shiny people. This idea that you're outside the fun looking in, but why? And do you even want to be inside? Do you want to be on the inside at all? Do you want to chase the shiny popular people on their adventures? Do you want to be included or excluded? Do you find out about parties after the fact and wonder why the hell you weren't invited? Or maybe a group is trying to organize a meetup and you're wondering if you should go. Will you get noticed? Will you feel out of place? And it sounds way too much like an awkward high school dance at this point. This idea of who stands where in social organizations, in these convention halls. Unconsciously, we create strata of people that we put people into. A system people struggle against gaining access to popularity and the shiny people, creating hierarchies either intentionally or accidentally. The social dynamics of a local lifestyle community. Through this analogy of a convention center, trying to make sense of it. This is going to be a weird one. There's some sociological shit going on today. On the surface, according to the media, at least, the lifestyle, the thing that we do, is this private secret little taboo hobby. We gather quietly in homes on Tuesday nights for orgies before returning to our little vanilla lives, hushed using hand signs and hobo codes to transmit important information and connect. The infamous upside-down pineapple in a grocery basket comes to mind, which is complete bullshit, by the way. For newbies coming into the lifestyle, you woke up yesterday, decide to become swingers, you got your pineapple badge in the mail, and you stumble onto my show. The lifestyle is way fucking bigger than you think. You are not the first people to wake up and decide to try ethical non-monogamy within 50 miles of your house. Really, unless you live out in the middle of nowhere, then we're going to say 100 miles of your house. There is an entire ethical non-monogamy secret society out there of parties and cruises and clubs, in people and businesses that exist in the background of society. You may think that you were the only swinger couple in your town. I promise you were not. No one is out there advertising their interest in ethical non-monogamy openly, though. That's the reason you have never seen it or know anyone in this. There is a perception propagated by the media that there's only like three or four swinger couples in any town. As I have learned, the deeper into the lifestyle we get, the longer we are in this. All of that is completely fucking wrong. Sharing the truth of the lifestyle here. Most local people, based around a geographic area, for instance, form themselves into a community. Some of these resemble spider webs. Others are like dumb fucking high schools. Some are wheels that spokes around people who throw parties or elite chat groups. Others are based around events. All of these can exist and layer within the same area for the same people. My wife and I, for instance, we are part of a couple of communities. There are four or five chat groups based on events that happen throughout the year. There's a local chat group for people in our area. We're in a national chat group, and that's not even counting the dating sites, which could be considered, or considered, I guess, a community as well. I also think I'm in a few Facebook groups, but that's Facebook, and I don't count those because Facebook is dumb. When we started, no one told us any of this existed, though I feel that there has been a proliferation of chat groups and lifestyle groups in the past two years, probably due to more people entering the lifestyle and wanting to create places where they feel like they belong. All these groups that we're in, we stumbled into this shit by accident, mostly. We would find out about an event and then learn there was a dedicated chat group for it, for instance, or someone would invite us into something. No one is running around advertising their fucking chat group unless they are desperate for numbers and members. Lifestyle people tend to keep these things secret, or at least we should. No one should be running around waving banners and doing recruitment drives at sex clubs for people to join the super secret chat group that everyone else is in as well. It sucks that you don't even know these communities exist in some cases. I get that. Some would call these groups exclusive in air quotes. Others would say discriminatory, depending on where you stand. If you are in the lifestyle, but you feel like you are not, in the lifestyle, not in the broader community, this episode is for you. If you feel like there is always a party going on that you find out about later, right here, this is for you. Laying all this out there, I'm not telling you to try harder to integrate yourself into a community that's not a good fit. I'm saying, wherever you are, feel you are, what you are, it is valid as a participant in the lifestyle community, even if there isn't an organized meeting schedule. If you want to stand outside all the action, That is valid. If you want to be a part of everything, that is valid too. Even if you want to wander around looking at convention booths all day, drinking bad coffee, never committing to anything. Running with this convention center analogy, because I thought it was a good one. In the main hall, the high visibility people, or as I will refer to them from now on, the shiny people. I can't even remember where that word came from. Me and a friend came up with it and it stuck. and status rituals. Proximity equals popularity, which then equals fuckery. Out on the mezzanine, the rest of the crowd. The most. Those who show up to network and connect. But then being there, you can feel passive, like you're waiting for the crowd to shuffle and sweep you into a main room. Oh, and there's also secret side rooms, where real shit gets done, by the way. I have been to enough corporate bullshit symposiums to know that's where the real deals are done. And symposium. I fucking hate that word, but I left it into the script because I want to tell this story. One time, a couple years ago, I worked for a company who decided to host an all-employee symposium. They flew all of us from all around the country into a conference center on the East Coast. They hired stilt walkers and flamethrowers and comedians, but these motherfuckers would not pay for me to get a new laptop. I may have been a little too honest on the post-event survey, and I may have pointed out that you spent all this damn money on entertainment, but would not buy me a new laptop. I had the vice president call me up, and I may have been honest with her, and I may not work there anymore. Symposium is a fancy-ass word for let's sit around a room and sniff the CEO's farts while they tell us that our work-life balance is perfect and quit bitching. I need to put that rant in here. Anyway, secret rooms. This is where the real connections happen. Away from the noise, the real business is done. Deals are signed, handshakes, titties, all that. This is where you're going to find your people, your tribe. for way too long, waiting for another person to stop and say, you, we choose you to come with us and be included. I still have this. It's fucking human and I know everyone has a touch of it. We need to name it so we can at least understand it. Despite the lifestyle being incredibly welcoming, which it is, people can still get in their heads and think they are not welcome in a space. No one wants them there. No one likes them. Honestly, I'm going to tell you this. This is why I prefer events with a cover charge because I paid my money. I am allowed inside and I I'm okay to be in this space because I gave someone money so my lizard brain works I have found there are two kinds of people in this world those who have this mental hang-up and those who don't and find the rationale inconceivable but Jason you said you sound so confident about attending events I've seen you at events you look confident 50% spousal courage and the other half is masking my wife is the source of 95 let's say 95% of my courage and I know that if she is with me I don't like to walk in a party alone. I'll admit that to you. Showing some vulnerability here. I kind of get self-conscious. After all these years wearing my shiniest, sexiest outfit possible, it happened at Risqué, New Year's Eve. I don't want to walk in by ourselves. Just me and my wife. I will find people to walk in with us. I will offer to other people to walk in with them. I pretend it's for them, but it's actually for me. There's this feeling of going from outside to inside. the transition from a public to private space, and my brain just spins up on whether or not I am welcome in that space. As lifestyle folk, we stand outside the big convention room, seeing the shiny people inside, beckoning us, please come join us, join the fun, join the group, join the party. We see how many people are surrounding the shiny people, and we think for a moment, if we could be near them, we could be popular too, or we could draw in people too, or possibly you could be intimidated by the shiny people. Do not mistake popularity within a social community for confidence and do not be intimidated by shiny people. Shiny people. I am coining a new term because I have a show and I can do that. Shiny people are the popular, usually attractive people who seem unattainable. They create social groups around themselves with their own gravity. You know who I'm talking about. The sexy people who everyone fawns over and measures their own self-worth based on proximity, either physically or socially, to these people. Now to drop the hammer. Shiny people are not real. They are constructs of the system that they create to elevate themselves. Shiny people can create a high school dynamic around themselves full of clicks, gossip, and bullshit. Shiny people are not elevated by the will of the group. They rise up based on their own self-promotion and visibility. They are the couples or the people or the single dudes that will drop a picture in a group twice a week showing everyone how much fun they're having or self-aggrandize themselves to the point of absurdity. Newbies see shiny people and think that they must know some great secret of the lifestyle based on their popularity. Everyone knows these people right? They must know what they're doing and if a newbie couple can get close to them then they can figure out the secrets too. There's no great secret to being social in the lifestyle. Don't be a dick. That's about it. Popularity often gets mistaken for connection in the lifestyle and what do I mean by Popular in the Lifestyle is not based on the number of sexual partners. There are people banging every weekend and nobody knows who they are. I would say Popular in the Lifestyle is visibility. People know of you. They know who you are. Popular people are the shiny new toy that everyone wants, like a nickel in the parking lot. If you happen to know a shiny couple, do you actually know them? You know of them. You may know of their adventures and who they are But do you actually know them? Have you had more than two conversations of depth with them? Do we really know anyone in the lifestyle? No, Jason, do not go down that path today. No questioning reality. Shiny people do serve a function in the lifestyle ecosystem. They tend to be the ones who organize things. They create life around them, like big, beautiful humpback whales. Yeah. They run chat groups or gather people together. They do the hard work of nurturing connections between people meet a lot of people. They invite a lot of people to their events and parties, and by virtue of you being near them, you're going to meet more people. Shiny people stand in the door of the convention main hall like beacons of fun. Join us, they wave. Join our fun. Join the fun that we own and have created around us. They rely on critical mass to make others think that the spaces they inhabit are fun as well. I apologize if I sound bitter. I am not. I am calling this out. Something I have seen over the years, and I want to shine a light on this shiny, Phenomenon. Look, just because someone appears to be popular does not mean that they are the right connection for you. Just because they seem like they know a lot of people does not mean that you need to know them. Just because it appears they are always having fun based on the pictures they themselves are sharing does not mean that you're kind of fun. Have I ever wanted to be a shiny person? Fuck yeah. Yup. I tried and I failed and I've given up. Now I want something different from the lifestyle. I think everyone wants to be a shiny person to a degree. to be popular in this, whatever that popularity may look like. Maybe popularity leads to more fuckery or you think that is going to lead to more invites. This is not a condemnation on myself or any other person in particular. It is looking at the system and saying, all right, I'm done. We should not conduct ourselves in this manner if we don't want to. The shiny people trying to push you into the convention hall, their kind of lifestyle experience only have power if you let them. The shiny popular people do not control your personal lifestyle experience. I think I have been a shiny person at one point and I don't want to be. It's a lot to deal with. Very little benefit. You don't get laid nearly as much as you think you will as a shiny person or people assume you are. Let's say you're the organizer of a big hotel party. You ain't getting fucking laid that night. You put on a meetup. You're not getting fucking laid. You're going to be dealing with bullshit all night and have no time for sex. You will notice as a shiny person how much people use you, use your connections to their own benefit. They don't stay. They want to be included but rarely reciprocate. This is the truth of being a shiny person. You actually get invited to less things. And I'm not sure why and I don't feel like pondering it right now but that's been my experience. I wouldn't call it work being a shiny person either. I've done actual manual labor like digging ditches and picking up heavy things repeatedly. That's work. This being a shiny person is just shining up your own ass so people can see their reflection in it. It is mentally exhausting. People look to to be the organizer and the leader. And fuck me, that's a whole thing. I know a guy, for instance, he started a group chat to organize some friends of ours during a big party. Organize like who's going and you know, where everybody is. Someone made the mistake of calling him the leader of the group and he deleted that motherfucker immediately. Some people don't want it. They don't want the, they don't want to pay the price, have the responsibility or the power. If you do, good, go for it. I can't say being shiny is rewarding. Not sure if my breeze time as a self-proclaimed shiny person was even worth it. It might be for you. You have to ask, is it worth it? Is it worth the time and effort for you? Because really, anyone can do it. No one is special. Anyone can become a shiny person. Go to a bunch of events. You meet a whole lot of people, okay? You start a chat group. Organize your own event. You're locked in. Boom. Everyone knows who you are and you can go polish your own ass. It's going to lead to burnout. You can't chase these people. By virtue of personality or available time, these motherfuckers can go harder in the lifestyle than you can. This will lead to burnout in the lifestyle because you'll constantly be leading energy into relationships that will never pay off. If you're always trying to break into their convention rooms, it ain't going to end well. The mezzanine, though. Anybody can be on the mezzanine. This is where the real lifestyle happens. This is where most people exist in the lifestyle of this happy middle ground. And at work conventions, between sessions or reasons to be somewhere. People just stand around. They meet, they talk, network, visit a booth or two. This is where real connection happens. The conference rooms at conventions are for people who want to listen to themselves talk outside this area. This is for people who want to talk to each other. This crowd in a lifestyle sense are the ones who are just trying to have fun. They don't need an organized meetup to meet people. They're capable of starting a conversation with anyone. They tend to be busy. They have vanilla lives to juggle so they can't devote every single way to them. and all the distractions it brings like the shiny people. This is where the lifestyle truly breeds since this is the space for connections and relationships. To join the shiny people crowd, you have to audition. You don't have to do that to just stand here. Do you fit that shiny mold? Do you fit their vibe and what they think a swinger should be? And yes, this could totally apply to physical appearance too. Look, you should not have to audition for a spot in a group or a room or a party. If you click, you should be able to be yourself and find a tribe that you click with. And you find that crowd, not sequestered Ray, in a conference room standing next to bright lights. And I just realized that you as a listener, if you've never been to a conference center or one of these work bullshit things, this whole story may be falling flat. I apologize. I was really excited when I thought about it, and I just kept writing it, and then it was too late to change the script because I need to get this recorded. is the lobby. Lobby of this imaginary convention center in my head. This is for newbies who have no idea which escalator to take up to the action or the burnouts who took the escalators down to escape. Everyone starts and ends here, and then they go back for another round maybe. Newbies join the lifestyle unsure of what to do and where to go and who to talk to. They're the easiest ones to get swept up on the hype and radiance. people who look like they are fun and knowledgeable, then I will receive a benefit and possibly become a shiny person myself. They sprint up the stairs sucked in by social magnetism. The burnouts. They sit in the lobby for a reprieve. Burned out by an encounter, a night, a person, a couple, a reason, a desire. They are looking for a little bit of peace away from the noise and away from the action. I feel everyone goes through a burnout phase. I may be in one right now. We all have moments where we feel disconnected to the lifestyle. We feel disconnected from others. sitting down in the lobby on an uncomfortable sofa. Hearing all the fun upstairs, you have to wonder, do you go back up? Do you rejoin the crowd? Or do you just leave? Walk out those fucking doors and never come back? Whatever choice you make is up to you and acceptable and okay. I promise that if you go upstairs, that crowd up there is going to be different. There are new people who join the lifestyle every single day. My theory is the lifestyle cycles like every 8 to 12 months, but I don't have any concrete evidence. a jackass who will decide to settle everyone into hierarchies, proclaim themselves a leader, and other people will just accept this. The only reason they exist is because people give them power. It is perfectly acceptable to not engage, or to engage. It's okay not to participate in your local community at all. You can be part of every fucking chat group out there, or none. The real friends you make in the lifestyle will not care one bit what groups you participate in. They just want you to be their friends. out, be present, be kind. If you start looking at other people and think, oh, it looks like they're having so much fun without me, or why wasn't I invited, or you feel like you're missing out on something, remember, this is one of those cases where this is not your story. This is their story. That's their night, and you don't have to be a part of every story. You don't have to be a part of everything to be happy in this. You just have to be a part of your own story in your own way. You're fully empowered to go have your own fun. and gather your friends and hang out. You don't need permission from shiny people to do that. Even though I have found some shiny people sometimes do have fucking opinions on what the non-shiny people are doing, so fuck them. You have freedom in this to occupy whatever level of engagement you want, and there is no wrong answer. I talk to people who share that they don't feel like they are a part of the lifestyle because they don't go to the parties. They don't know a lot of people, to which I ask, are you ethically non-monogamous? Yeah, they say yes, that is the identifier of this. We are a community of people who engage in ethical non-monogamy, not the other way around. This is an individual and married couple hobby first. The community is a byproduct of what we do, not the source. You are not a bad swinger if you don't have a lot of friends in the lifestyle. You are not a bad swinger if you only go to one party a year. You are not a bad swinger if you miss an event that all your friends went to. because life gets in the way. None of those variables really matter in your identification in this. Don't trap yourself in an idea of what a swinger should be when the definition could be so liquid and personal. Don't get yourself trapped in a conference room at a convention in the shadow of a shiny person either. I've been in business type situations, some of these fucking work conferences, where it's like 200 people and they're all facing front and you got the guy at the front of the room or a woman just yammering on about work shit. And you'll want to leave. But the group pressure exerted by all those people, not wanting to embarrass yourself, not wanting to have everyone watch you leave or divert attention, keeps your ass firmly stuck in that chair for the full three hours. With a lifestyle, no. You are not stuck in one social group in this. You are not stuck in one community or one way to experience a lifestyle. You could be full swap today, soft swap tomorrow, and then switch to separate play the day after, as long as you and your spouse are on the same page. One nefarious aspect of shiny people, and granted, not all shiny people are popular people, a caveat, yeah, but some is that you can get stuck in their sphere of influence, and that influences how you perceive the lifestyle should be enjoyed. Give two examples. There may be a group that is very opposed to bisexual male play, for instance. There's nothing inherently wrong with this. If you enjoy it, go for it. your group, step back and ask if the values of this group actually align with what you want from the lifestyle and how you want to experience it. Look, there's no point being in a gangbang social club if you're not into gangbangs. If you don't want to do gangbangs, it's probably not the best chat group for you, okay? Just saying. Thank you for listening and tuning in every week. Make sure you tell a friend about the show. Thank you to my wife who is on this journey with me. If you want to reach out, ask a question, suggest a topic, send me an email to host at thatotherlifestyle.com. My personal disclaimer, you know this, I'm not a medical professional or a trained and certified educator of any way and any kind. I am a guy with a microphone sharing my personal experiences with you. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Please join us for the next episode. Go to stdhero.com, use my promo code TOL15 for 15% off your order and get tested. Whatever you may do today or tonight, I hope you do it with enthusiasm, consent, curiosity, and a little bit of spice. You are appreciated, loved, and I will see you for the next episode.