You are a Lifestyle Superhero

Transcript

Speaker1: good morning good afternoon good evening wherever you may be i hope you have blue skies and a smile in your heart welcome to that other lifestyle podcast where we talk about the good the bad the ugly the weird sides of this wild lifestyle. Please head over to our website, thatotherlifestyle.com, to find our blog and merchandise store. You can also find our group on sdc.com. Subscribe, comment, like, and all that good jazz. Disclaimer time. This podcast is for adults only. It is not safe for work. We will be discussing topics of an adult and sexual nature for 18 years and up only, and for entertainment purposes only. I also try to be as inclusive with my language and terms as I can. It can be challenging to formulate and write and say all the inclusive terms in every instance. For simplicity's sake and time management, I may use terms like husband or wife or partner or spouse for the purpose of the narrative I am sharing. This podcast is for everyone, though. No matter your background, gender identity, gender expression, or whatever truth you may be living, everyone is welcome. Let's talk about superheroes. Five episodes in and my nerd crit is starting to shine. What kind of superhero are you? Dark and brooding? Mysterious? Do you wear brightly colored underwear outside of your clothes? Do you leave bodily fluids all over town? Engage in physical altercations with others while wearing flamboyant outfits maybe? Do you refer to pieces of your anatomy as a magic hammer? Can you stop a speeding train by getting naked? Today we are talking about superheroes, the duality of existence, and the lifestyle. I have heavy topics planned for the near future, testing, compersion versus jealousy, how to say no and deal with rejection. Today, though, my friends, I want to do a fun episode. Fun for me, at least, and you are coming with me. You have been summoned to join the Lifestyle Super Friends Club. All this will make sense shortly, I promise. Hopefully drop some neato comic book knowledge on you, make you laugh, and show you that we are all superheroes. To share with everyone, I am not a sports guy. If you ever meet me in public, the last topic I know anything about is sports. I have no idea who the quarterback is of any team. I don't know who won the Super Bowl last year. I kind of understand the rules of baseball and football, but never got into sports. When I was a kid, I could not catch a ball to save my life. Everything hit me in the face. I am sure there's a joke in there somewhere about balls and faces, but I can't find it right now. I learned when I was 32 that I have stereo object deficiency, which means I have 50% of the normal human depth perception. It explains so much of my lack of athletic ability. Hard to catch a baseball when you can't see it. The whole keep your eye on the ball thing only works when you have functional eyes. I am a nerd through and through. I have read thousands of comic books. My house is full of collectibles and comic book art, and we love comic cons. We love dressing up for them and meeting other nerds. I say nerd, but that includes you geeks too. Love meeting other nerds in the LS for bonus points. I don't see these as bad terms either. It means you're enthusiastic about a subject, be it history or pop culture or a hobby or maybe even sports. You can't tell me fantasy football isn't just Dungeons and Dragons dressed up in jerseys. Throw in some dragons and orcs on the field and I might get on board with it. We all have passions, subjects we love to talk about endlessly in a good way. I enjoy it when a friend unleashes a secret passion. Do you like anime? I am here for it. Civil War history? Oh, please tell me more. 1990s rap, astronauts, or CrossFit. I can even enjoy a sports conversation, knowing that I will have nothing to contribute, but I will listen. I will give you the respect and dignity of listening. Rambling aside, what do superheroes and swinging have in common? Alter egos and discretion. Maybe superpowers. Do you know how many people have tried to figure out the real identity of Batman? Or why does Superman have the alter ego of Clark Kent? Neither one of them needs an alter ego. They are superheroes. Batman could stop being Bruce Wayne tomorrow and still be rich enough to afford all the gadgets and gear and planes and batarangs he needs to be Batman. Superman could drop the Clark Kent charade and just be Superman. Superman does not need to pretend to be a reporter as he can literally hear every conversation going on at once within 10 miles. In the lifestyle, we are creatures of duality. We have our vanilla side we present to the world, the nice person who brings a potluck casserole to a church function, or the normal-looking person in line to pick up their kids while they're sexting another couple, the teacher who always secretly wears lingerie under her work clothes to feel sexy, or the IT guy you never make contact with who went to an orgy last weekend. We maintain these appearances for our benefit, though. We live in a world of secret identities. We must. The vanilla world does not accept what we do for fun, so we hide it. We mask ourselves. We patrol the night in costumes, gather in secret headquarters, and fight for the lifestyle, or at least get naked with another couple. To what degree and how we express our duality, that makes for some fun connections with superheroes. There is no right or wrong way to experience the lifestyle. I have said that before and will repeat it again and again because it's true. However you do you, do it. I'm not here to judge. I'm not here to tell you to change. I'm here to draw parallels between superheroes and how I see people interacting with the lifestyle and maintaining their vanilla lives because I wanted to do a fun episode. Side topic time. In comics, is there any representation of the lifestyle as defined as a married couple engaging in sexual activities with another married couple? Not really. The criteria would be, we would need to find a married couple in comics, which is really rare because no one ever stays married for that long. Mr. Fantastic and Sue Storm from the Fantastic Four are the only example I can think of of a couple that has stayed married for a long time and even they had some bumpy points. For instance, Black Panther was married to Storm of the X-Men for a few years, until Namor declared War on Wakanda. It was a whole thing. But in the end, Black Panther and Storm separated. Comic books and sitcoms and all media, really, are all about the status quo. If a character does get married, it rarely lasts. Can't let them achieve their goals, because that takes away the drama of the story. The writers of these tales have to keep the tension going. The will they or won't they narrative is completely ruined when the couple that has been dancing around each other for a hundred episodes finally expresses their love. From a storytelling perspective, better let them dance than settle down. And based on our limited definition, we need them to settle down into marriage to then engage in swinging. So no representation of of swinging or the lifestyle in comics that I could find. Now, there are examples of polyamory in the comics, as in one character dating or engaging with two other characters in a triad or a polycule. An example right now, Wolverine and Cyclops and Jean Grey are in a polyamorous relationship in the comics. As polyamory becomes more mainstream in society, we will begin to see more representation of that style of ethical non-monogamy in comics. Comics are a reflection of the general zeitgeist of society. As variations of ethical non-monogamy become more accepted and prevalent in society, there will be more representation. Though personally, I don't think we will see much swinger representation in media because the lifestyle is hard to explain and hard to wrap your head around. Good stories need drama and swinging is not the kind of drama that gets popular. We actively avoid jealousy. Compersion is certainly hard to define, let alone represent on screen. And then there's a need for discretion and how we all participate in this hobby. Hard to make an interesting story when 90% of the time, we're sitting around talking. In addition, we have rules. There are rules to swinging, so that adds in a layer of world building. Everyone knows the rules on how to fight a zombie or vampires. Imagine having to explain how consent works and responsible fun and no one wants to watch a show preaching the virtues of STI testing. Give the audience sexy and spicy content, but it can't be too sexy on network television though. Speaking of discretion, respect it. You may not have the same level of concern as the others on your super team. You might be out loud about your participation in the lifestyle, flying around town in a day-go outfit riding a lightning bolt. You may wear very obvious shirts like those available on our website, thatotherlifestyle.com. I designed them all myself. When we hang out with a group of lifestyle friends in public, always one couple who makes it super obvious with a spicy shirt or hat or waving a pineapple around. I can't tell you what to do in public, though please be cognizant of others in the group if you may be in an environment that is less forgiving of the lifestyle. Always defer to the discretion level of the most discreet couple in the group. I have attended gatherings of lifestyle people in the past at bars or other public venues, and people get very paranoid. And justifiably so, I get it. If the wrong person sees you hanging out with people who are kissing people who are not their spouses in public and they start running their mouth, your life can get difficult very fast. Just as you are a valiant superhero of the lifestyle, supervillains are always on the prowl for a superhero to fight. We're going to talk more about supervillains later. Really, if the PDA is kept to a minimum and no one is wearing their lifestyle-ness on their shirts, No one is running around in spandex with a pineapple emblem on their chest like Superman. Would anyone think that you were out with a bunch of swingers? You were out with your friends. A group of friends. That's it. Perfectly normal vanilla activity. But there's always that one person. That one superhero who does not care if the world knows they have superpowers and starts throwing fireballs around. That one couple that decides to start playing grab ass with other people, and then a boob pops out. A boob popping out, no matter where, has a seismic effect on any situation, good or bad. Boob out at a bar? Neat. Boob out at a hotel at takeover? Neater. Boob out in Walmart? Cops. The environment matters. Getting lost in a huge crowd celebrating Mardi Gras is one thing. Going to a local dive bar wearing a shirt that says I fuck other people's husbands might get some looks. We need to support and respect each other in this community, which includes respecting others' need for discretion. I ain't saying don't wear your spicy clothes, but pick the right time and place. Those that do wear their affiliation to the lifestyle, who are only lifestyle and the vanilla world be damned, congratulations. You are Captain America and Black Panther and She-Hulk. In the comics and movies, Captain America does have a real name, Steve Rogers. After gaining his powers with the super soldier serum, he became Captain America. King Takala is Black Panther. There is no confusion about that. His whole identity is tied to being King of Wakanda and Black Panther. He does not have an alter ego where he can walk down the street pretending to be a different person. She-Hulk is nine feet tall and green. Jennifer Walters, her real name, spends more time as a Hulk than as a normal person. For these three characters, everyone knows they are you cannot separate steve rogers from captain america or black panther from wakanda that may be how you experience the lifestyle you slap a pineapple on your chest put your hands on your hips and proudly declare i am a swinger for all the vanilla world to know and see and react you don't care what other people think you share the virtues love, open communication, and safe sex with all to hear. Your family knows, and they either accept it or not. You identify as a swinger first, and this extends out into the greater ethical non-monogamy community as well. Maybe when asked about your sexuality, you stay plainly and simply polyamorous or bisexual or pansexual or trans. You do not shy away from the difficult conversations about the what and the who and why and how. On the opposite side of the spectrum is Spider-Man. Spider-Man has been around since the 60s and poor Peter Parker still hasn't hit middle age yet. In those 60 years in the main comic storylines, only 30-ish people know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, so a single person may learn Spider-Man is Peter Parker every two or three years, and most of those are other superheroes. Probably should have given y'all a spoiler warning on that. Impressive discretion for a guy who dresses up in a red suit, leaves webs all over town, and has saved the world numerous times. Spider-Man is so protective of his identity, he won't even take his mask off in front of other superheroes. They all know who he is. All the Avengers know that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, but he still won't unmask. You might follow this model. You keep your lifestyle life and your vanilla life very separate. No one knows. Not your close friends or family. You hide all memorabilia and paraphernalia in a vault in a secret bunker under a lake that can only be accessed when the full moon's light shines on a map and a key maybe you even use fake names in the lifestyle i have even heard of people using burner phones for communication in the lifestyle in the comics and movies spider-man has gone to great lengths including wiping his existence from the memory of everyone on the planet and literal deals with with the devil to maintain his secret identity, which he does to protect those around him from danger, which is not all that different from couples who maintain their secret lives to protect their kids from knowing, their families from judging, and ostracization from their community. I get it. You want to protect your vanilla life from the lifestyle. I will respect it and your secret is safe with me. On the outskirts of the spectrum fall the niche superheroes and the niche swingers. Like Aquaman. Maybe the Jason Momoa version or the blonde version from the comics and cartoons. Either one I throw into this niche category. All those jokes about Aquaman only being really useful in water are relevant here. Water covers 70% of the planet, but all the interesting action happens on land. So again, I throw him into his own category looking for a highly specific area where he operates, like those who may have a unique fetish or kink, maybe voyeurism or exhibitionism or BDSM. Aquaman operates in a specific set of scenarios. And if you're into BDSM, for instance, you have a specific set of scenarios and rules you prefer. Is Aquaman into BDSM? Maybe. Probably. There are dedicated dungeon spaces and clubs for BDSM. A whole subculture out there for you to explore just like the whole ocean is available to explore. Boom. Full circle explanation. Where do you engage in activities with other couples? Are you a street-level hero sticking close to home? Or maybe you fly through the universe looking for adventure. I know couples who have guests over to their homes. Their lives are conducive to this. Maybe no kids or they're empty nesters, so no concern about little Billy finding out. Others take advantage of hotels. Maybe a few hours on Saturday night and then they're back home in their own beds, back to their vanilla lives on Sunday morning. The hotels are great. They've got a shower and a bed and towels. Very useful. There are couples who may only engage in sweaty, naked wrestling at their local sex club. This is an environment that is specifically designed for superhero-style escapades. They might be close enough to run off to the club once or twice a week, have fun, and be back at church service the next morning. At the far end of the spectrum are couples who only go to resorts in a different country a few times a year. They may travel to Galaxy for fun for weeks, get in all the playtime they can, come home and plan the next trip. They may not do anything with anyone locally and only express their true selves at these resorts. All that to say, there is a wide range of places you can enjoy the lifestyle. Whatever method works best for you and your relationship. Each has its benefits and drawbacks. Using your personal home is great because all your stuff is there. But now people know where you live. Fooling around at a hotel is fun, but can be expensive to pay for a room you only need for three hours. Do not use pay-by-the-hour hotels. They are nasty and you should not go to those hotels. That's how you get bedbugs. Resorts have benefits. Whole compounds dedicated to the heathen arts, though there is a cost factor. Sex clubs can be good. There is a concern that other people may see you in the club from the local area, which brings us to the duality of the lifestyle. There are two sides to maintaining the double life and your secret identity. One side is fun. You have a secret you keep from the world and shared only with your partner and best friend. The other side is stress and worry about supervillains finding out about your participation in the lifestyle. If the lifestyle has superheroes, then there must be supervillains. What is Batman without the Joker? What about the Avengers and Thanos? Light and dark. Freedom of expression and repression of desires. On one side, you have a whole different world you can enjoy. An alternate reality bouncing around a multiverse of experiences. The parties, the social aspects, the sex. All the ways the lifestyle can enrich your life. You have a secret you get to keep all to yourself. Vanilla parties suddenly become fun adventures where you get to covertly proposition your partner to sneak off to the bathroom for shenanigans. I can say it is a rush and you should try it. You and your partner are on a secret mission together with your own language and emotions and possibly costumes. On the other hand, keeping up the illusion is stressful. What if you're found out? What if you say the wrong word of LS jargon to the wrong person and they figure it out? Just as there are superheroes, there are supervillains, and they are out there waiting and watching. You worry at night. What if a picture of you doing some ho shit leaks onto the internet? Side notes on pictures. Don't post anything outside of safe spaces that you wouldn't want your grandma to see. I will do a whole episode on navigating and sharing nudes. As I am prone to random bits of advice, be careful with victorial evidence of your participation in the lifestyle. Maintaining your double life can be stressful enough without the possibility of pictures running wild on the internet. And generally, you don't have to worry about being outed by those within the lifestyle. There is a concept of mutual assured destruction, which when activated, sends the world into a nuclear hellstorm of exposure and bad vibes. The term mutual assured destruction or MAD comes from the Cold War. US and Russia both had their fingers on the big red buttons to unleash nuclear warheads at each other. The thinking is that neither side would want to be the first to launch a nuclear missile because the other side will launch theirs and everyone will get destroyed. Hence, if one person launches a missile, it is assured that both sides will face mutual destruction or MAD. Take Batman and Superman. They know each other's secret identity. Batman is the world's greatest detective and figured out Clark Kent as Superman. To Batman's credit, he wore a lead-lined mask which sounds so uncomfortable to hide his identity from Superman's x-ray vision. Superman did eventually find out and they have respected each other's secrets. What would be the point of exposing each other? No one would gain anything. Superman could keep on being Superman even if he is exposed and Batman has said many times that Bruce Wayne is his alter ego not the other way around and he could leave it behind if he needed to. In the lifestyle if I know a couple is in the lifestyle they also know that I'm in the lifestyle. For the websites in order to go on there and look around you have to make a profile which no matter your intentions will instantly label you a swinger. So if I see a couple on a site or at a party, they know what I am there for and I know what they're there for. We're all in this together. You don't accidentally wander into a sex club despite what the media may tell you. If a person attempted to out me as a swinger, one, I don't care. Two, I have a podcast about it. And three, I make some spicy merch in my store for others to wave their superhero lifestyle banner proudly, but for explanation's sake. If a person wanted to out me as a swinger, I could do the same to them. How would you know I was at a sex club unless you were there as well? Is this foolproof? No, not at all, not by a long shot. Does it offer a measure of comfort? A little bit. Generally, you don't have to worry about others in the lifestyle outing you. What you do need to worry about, those sneaky vanilla supervillains. Sneaky is the best word for it, followed closely by super and villain. Because that is what they are. Sneaky by trying to infiltrate your secret life. Super because they never quit. And villains because it is just mean. You and your partner in in the lifestyle having a wonderful time with adventures and crime fighting and nudity an acquaintance comes over a backstabbing supervillain hunt shoulders troll like disfigured by years of hate and jealousy who is only out to uncover the maximum amount of gossip possible because their life is devoid of all meaning and they can only subsist on the misery of others, gnawing dried bones and tires and rocks. Doesn't matter if you're a swinger or maybe you drink wine once a week or don't recycle. They will find out the pettiest bit of unpleasant trivia about you. I am on a roll and I want to keep going so here are more descriptions of this supervillain. Not all vanilla people, certainly not. Don't get offended, my vanilla friend. But there's always one, one devious and demented sociopath who scampers around looking for dirt on their neighbors, sneering and laughing as they air out all your dirty secrets. Your happiness is their weakness, smiles are their kryptonite. When they find their precious gossip they will ride around the neighborhood on their little hate tricycle, peddling frantically spewing noxious words into the ear of anyone unlucky enough to be in their presence. I have strong feelings on this. Maybe they wear a little hat with wings on it that ruins their peripheral vision and costume, like super tacky and uncomfortable costume. The world is a miserable place full of hate. Too many people want to add to that misery bucket because it is fun for them. Watching others suffer is how they get their erections. Anyway, swinging wildly back to my Thank you. of hate. Too many people want to add to that misery bucket because it is fun for them. Watching others suffer is how they get their erections. Anyway, swinging wildly back to my point, there may be people in your life who will actively try to connect the dots. Maybe they see the pineapple in your kitchen and then they overhear you using a weird term or find a picture of you online. The dots connect, which is super dumb because they could just as easily connect the dots and get the wrong picture of a couple so vanilla they only do missionary position, which means you are not safe around them no matter what you do. If there is no story, they will make one up. If there is no evidence, they will twist a bit of information into a full-blown novel. Well, the Johnsons went to another city this weekend, which just so happens to have a hotel takeover. Yep, must be swingers. They are supervillains of the highest degree. Don't feed them and they will shrivel up and go away. Another perk of the lifestyle, your codename is how you and your partner are recognized as a couple. When you join one of the Swingers sites, which you can do on our website, thatotherlifestyle.com, got a link on there to sign up for SDC. When you do sign up, you get to pick a username. Make it fun, make it interesting, and make it memorable. Here is how my brain remembers other people at this point. Boobs first, then first names, then username. Often at parties, you may meet a couple. Just imagine super loud music blaring around you, and it's dark. Always loud and dark. You're feeling good vibes from them. You ask their names. Might remember that. You ask their username so you can look them up on a site and connect later. The next day you go online, you remember part of their username so you start looking through profiles. Well, people cover up their faces so you aren't sure who is who. You can't connect. You can't find this super sexy and sweet couple you talked to for three minutes last night. I recommend having a username that is memorable. Make a username that is unique. Looking for fun 77889CPL might get the job done, but it is easily confused with looking for fun 77887CPL. Make it unique. Your name might be a contraction of both your first names or a unique hobby, or just go nuts and call yourself Captain America and Black Widow. You get to pick the username, have fun with it. A couple of years ago, there was a fantastic cartoon, Justice League Unlimited. Final episode, Superman is fighting Darkseid, the big bad guy for the whole series. Darkseid invades Earth with all his armies, and the superheroes unite to stop him. Superman is the last hero standing to fight Darkseid. After Darkseid throws off Batman, Superman punches Darkseid through a wall and says, that man won't quit as long as he can still draw a breath. None of my teammates will. Me, I've got a different problem. I feel like I live in a world made of cardboard. Always taking constant care not to break something to break someone. Never allowing myself to lose control even for a moment or someone could die. But you can take it can't you big man? What we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose and show you just how powerful I really am. that episode aired over 15 years ago and those words still give me chills not the whole violence part of it, but the phrase living in a cardboard world and showing the world how powerful I really am. I felt that in my soul. I felt that I was pretending and going through the motions for so long. My daily life spent shuffling between cardboard cutouts of other humans, a cardboard job, a cardboard world. I realized I was living in the vanilla world even before we joined the lifestyle. I just didn't know that there was another way. Always holding back, always watching my words or actions or desires, maintain and control. I feel this in the core of my being and I bet you do too. We spend so much time in the vanilla world, in the cardboard world, hiding our true selves behind masks. We mask ourselves in the vanilla world for the benefit of others and only truly live our authentic selves in the lifestyle. We put on an alter ego to show you the cardboard world we are still a part of it. Unwilling heroes chained down and unable to fly. We spend our days appearing vanilla in a vanilla world, engaging in vanilla activities. We live in a world of duality. Our true selves hidden away until the time is right, surrounded by friends and understanding. We stand up for each other, we support each other. We fight our own supervillains in our own way. Plus, we get cool codenames. I hope I didn't bore you with all the nerd talk today. Remember, you are powerful. You are fury and glory. You're a defender and an avenger. You are living your true self, your true life, and that makes you a superhero to me. Thank you for joining us today. If you like the show, please subscribe and check out our website, thatotherlifestyle.com, where you can find our blog and merchandise store. Consider signing up for our mailing list so you're always the first to know what is going on with That Other Lifestyle. I always appreciate hearing your feedback and comments on episodes or suggestions for topics, so feel free to reach out to me. Subscribe and like wherever you may be enjoying this podcast because that is a huge help to me. My personal disclaimer, I am not a medical professional nor a trained and certified educator of any kind. I am a guy with a microphone sharing my personal experiences with you. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only and please join us for the next episode. Whatever you may do today, I hope you have a fantastic time doing it.
Speaker2: Know that you are appreciated and loved. Have a great day.