Your first time at a play party: what to expect

The question I get asked most about a play party isn’t what happens there. It’s whether you look out of place if you don’t do anything.

No. You look out of place if you touch someone without asking. Doing nothing is the most popular activity of the evening.

What a play party is

An evening where people play together in a furnished space, with supervision and with rules. That’s all it is. The room where it happens is often called a dungeon, which is a misleading word for what is usually a heated hall with furniture.

The difference with a fetish party is the emphasis. A fetish party is about clothing and about being seen; there’s a dress code and there’s dancing. A play party is about what happens in the play space. Many evenings are both at once, and then the play space is a separate room where the music is turned down.

There’s also a version without any play: the munch. That’s a get-together in a cafe or restaurant, in ordinary clothes, where people only talk. For a lot of people that’s the real first step, and to my mind a sensible one.

The house rules are the point, not the fine print

Every venue has house rules, and you get them at the door or beforehand by email. Read them. They differ from place to place and they are not a formality.

What they almost always include:

• No phones, no photos. At most places your phone has to stay in a locker or in your bag. This is the rule that’s enforced most strictly, because everyone in that hall has something to lose.
• Ask before you touch anything. A shoulder too. Someone’s toys too.
• Don’t walk through a scene. There’s an imaginary space around a spot where people are playing, and you walk around it, even if that’s a detour.
• No alcohol or drugs for anyone playing. A hard rule almost everywhere, for both sides of the scene.
• What you see stays there. You recognize someone from work, and that’s a conversation you don’t have.

Who the DM is and why you look for him

Someone walks through the play space with a recognizable armband, a shirt, or a badge. That’s the DM, the dungeon monitor. His job is oversight: he watches the safety of what’s happening, steps in if something goes wrong, and is who you turn to when you’re unsure.

What a DM is not: a bouncer who throws you out. And not someone who judges whether your question is dumb enough to leave unasked.

Find him the moment you’re inside, before you want anything. Tell him it’s your first time. At every good evening that sentence gets you a tour, and sometimes someone who checks in on you the rest of the night. That’s not special treatment. That’s what the role exists for.

Watching is part of it

What happens in the play space is called public play: playing where others are present. That means being watched is part of the agreement the players made with each other.

So watching is allowed. Joining in isn’t, unless you’re asked. There’s more distance between those two than new visitors think, so a few practical things:

Don’t stand too close. A meter and a half is plenty, and you see everything.

Say nothing while it’s happening. Not even a compliment. Someone in a scene hears a voice from the crowd as an interruption.

Walk away when you’ve seen enough. There’s no etiquette that says you have to stay until the end.

Watch the aftercare too. Afterward there’s often a stretch of quiet with a blanket and water. That’s not a side note, and for a lot of new visitors it’s the most illuminating part of the evening. What happens there is on the page about aftercare.

What to bring

Not much. A towel, water, and something you feel comfortable in.

About clothing: at a play party the dress code is usually looser than at a fetish party, but street clothes stand out. Something simple in black is never wrong. Bring shoes you can keep on indoors, because a lot of venues don’t want outdoor soles on the floor.

Beyond that: your own toys if you have them, and otherwise none. Most places have gear, and it gets cleaned between users. Ask how that works if you want to know. That’s a normal question.

Don’t go alone, or do go alone

Both work, and it depends on what you need.

Going with someone is the lowest threshold. You have someone to stand next to for the first ten minutes, and those are the ten minutes that are hardest. The downside is that you’re tied to that person and it’s easy to spend the whole evening talking in a corner.

Going alone forces you to speak to someone, and that happens faster than you’d think: at these evenings a new face isn’t a threat but a topic of conversation. Do arrange a safe call then, someone who knows where you are and what time you’ll check in. I do that myself, and it’s not distrust but a habit.

What I see of it

The women who write to me about this almost all have the same picture in their heads: a hall where everyone looks at them the moment the door opens. What actually happens is that almost no one looks up.

The first time is usually duller than expected, and that’s exactly right. You walk around, you watch, you talk to two people, you go home at half past midnight, and you’ve done nothing. That’s a successful first time.

If you’d rather first talk with someone who knows these evenings, that’s possible too. I go to them myself, and I answer questions about them without you having to book anything. What an evening together looks like if you do want to go further is on BDSM date.