Certainly someone’s been singing its praises. Ahead of its first Melbourne event Skirt Club Melbourne already had 100 members.

As the scenery changed from the endless blue sea to the jade mountains of Bora Bora, we were both so overcome by the beauty that we couldn’t help but go to town on each other. I keep forgetting that my name tonight is Layla,” she says. “We all choose our names. I got mine from that Eric Clapton song.” I said as long as he could get me showered and out the door in time for my second date with the muscle-bound guy from Thursday, then he was welcome to have me.In some cases, Quinn says, women saw Skirt Club events more like a networking opportunity than a sex party. At the last London party she attended, a number of women wanted to network. I would tell my partner that I cared about them deeply, and the past five years were among the best of my life. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. But I also felt like we had come to a crossroads, and we weren’t facing the same futures. I had tried so hard to see myself in their dreams, but now I was having dreams of my own. And I didn’t think I saw a future, even a part-time one, in Montana. I took care of boys — like my partner, like the person I’d dated before them, even like my cis college boyfriend — because I loved them, and that’s what you do for the people you love. I think there was also a part of me that liked tempering my fastidious long-term planning, my conventionalism, my seriousness with their wild spirits, their rejection of every social expectation. Queer bois, with their embrace of pleasure above most all else, in their refusal to adhere to the rules of heteropatriarchal capitalism — why grow up if it means becoming a cog in the machine? — seemed to embody a radical queer ethos I admired, and maybe felt the slightest bit jealous of.

The first time I thought that Olivia might actually stand a chance at survival was Sunday, the first full day of the cruise, when I attended the welcome mixer for “Generation O,” which is how Olivia refers to its precious few millennial and Generation X clientele. As I walked around the ship, which holds over 2,000 passengers, it was already clear that the average woman here was a couple decades older than me. But it turned out that there were a few other twenty- and thirtysomethings who’d managed to find their way to Olivia. When I first pitched this story to my editors, I thought I’d be reporting on a lesbian cultural artifact in its twilight years. The women who’ve faithfully gone on dozens of Olivia trips over the decades are getting older, and I didn’t have a lot of faith that younger queer people were going to step in and save companies like this from extinction. Other elements of lesbian culture have been steadily dying; why should Olivia be any different? With the balcony door open, I watched the landscape cruise by while he used his mouth to bring me to orgasm. I switched positions on the couch, so he was behind me, making sure he got to take in the pleasurable view while experiencing his own pleasure. Before meeting Lynette, she of the multiple grooming products, I’d gotten used to dating people whose own beauty routines consisted of, if anything, 3-in-1 body wash. They tended to gently poke fun at me for all my feminine trappings: the 20 minutes I’d spend each day on my serums. I’m a little ashamed of how, over the years, living beside various permutations of my partners’ easy masculinity, I’d defend my own femme rituals with I’m-not-like-other-girls insistence: Hey, at least I don’t shave! At least I barely wear any makeup! My frivolity was never out of hand. And I prided myself for that, for the ways in which I deliberately limited myself.

MUST READ

In my relationship, I often worried that I was taking on the femme role to my partner’s masc — the Wendy to their Peter — in ways that weren’t always positive or healthy. My partner got frustrated when I mentioned what I thought were our gendered roles; they thought I was projecting straight bullshit into a queer space where it didn’t need to be. We were lesbian and nonbinary dykes; we were supposed to be beyond gender. She’s a true Pisces — romantic and dreamy and always processing. (My Capricorn groundedness makes us a good match, allegedly.) She’s known she was gay since she was 5 years old. Her mom still prays that, someday, she’ll find herself a good man. In fact, plenty of our fellow cruisers don’t even identify as swingers or non-monogamous. They just appreciate the opportunity to take a luxury vacation with non-judgmental, sex-positive people who hold space for them.

The invitation to Skirt Club, a women-only, bisexual and bi-curious sex party, tells you one thing, loud and clear: This may be a girls-only orgy, but it’s not lesbianism as you know it. This is Katy Perry singing “I kissed a girl and I liked it.” This is an Agent Provocateur window display. This is the kind of awkward, lighthearted, lesbianism many women either had – or wished they’d had – in college. It’s “lesbianism” that lesbians will recognize, but have a hard time endorsing without some irony. It’s lesbianism as a side piece. It’s lesbianism: our little secret, for women whose bi-curiosity has become too overwhelming to ignore. I enjoyed both of their company over the next few hours, but afterwards, I was hardly able to stand. I’d never considered before that being a femme with a butch partner needn’t be some inequitable hetero horror show, but instead could be something imbued with incredible queer comfort and power. It could be fun. It could be hot.The ‘lace and latex’ theme nights are some of the most popular for Skirt Club. Picture: Victoria Dawe In the world of LLV cruises, the last day is referred to as the ‘now or never’ day. Swingers can be just as shy as anyone else, and it can take time to grow the courage to ask another couple to play. But with no more nights left, well… it’s now or never. The pleasure on his face was palpable as we gave him a blowjob together, as was the pleasure on ours when he took turns going down on us. The session ended with him taking her from behind while burying his fingers in me, leaving all of us sweaty and breathless. It sounds shallow to imply that, in the beginning, I fell for her simply because of her style, her stuff. But what attracted me was the care and attention to detail she demonstrated via a lifetime’s accumulation and curation of these things. Together they made up the way she wanted to be seen in the public eye, the way she wanted to move through the world. She was not a boy but a full-grown butch who, at 53, was confident in who she was and what she wanted. Even before dinner, I received several more requests from men, women, and couples to play. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time, energy, or flesh to make it all happen.