Adult Playtime: Re-Learning Recess with ScrewSmart by Reindeer

Winter steals my sparkle. Mojo, Sexy, where have you gone? Wrapped in the itch of wool, I am cranky and play only with my cat. It’s the last week of January, do you know where your sparkle is?! Did you resolve to have more play, more mojo, less cranky-pants in 2012? When winter began back in December, I knew I needed to learn some skills to combat the doldrums. I sought relief from those warriors of pleasure and fun, Screwsmart! who led the Adult Playtime workshop at Passional.

A workshop about playfulness and sex for us big kids??? We adults can be tough customers; I arrived in my Lacking Sparkle State on a Friday at the end of a work week. Deciding to attend Adult Playtime also seemed harder than signing up to learn a particular skill, such as spanking or rope bondage. In play class, I might be goofy or vulnerable; mastering knots seems simple in comparison. By the end of Knots for Grown-ups, I’m bound (pun intended) to have learned how to secure my partner without reducing her circulation. Although, I’d hate to be so worried about my performance of the perfect knot that I didn’t notice my lover’s eyes or her wicked smile…play and a generous spirit keep any act fun and hot!

 So, Let’s play… said in a sultry voice or a tiny child-like voice…Will you be my teacher and keep me after class??? Play often begins with a request; asking requires mustering courage. During Adult Playtime, we asked to be called by a new name. Just call me Reindeer! Check out my big…antlers? (It was December). Complete your creature and present a gesture of a hobby. Yum, Yum, Yum, Reindeer munches grass!

No wild beast wants to play alone. Remember Simon Says? You go first, I copy you. Will you be my reindeer? In Adult Playtime, we repeated the person’s name and tried to mimic their gesture. We mimic to flatter and jest; I like you enough to try your eyelash batting or imitate your tough stare. You watch and laugh when I both miss and succeed at trying to be you for a few seconds. I discover that I’m not you and might not want to be! However, through these moments of mimicry, we meet anew and learn how we perceive and appreciate each other.

My most memorable attempts at mimicry were studying another person’s walk in a college theater class. Walking behind a person with a hand on their sacrum, at the base of the spine, I tried to study his or her gait, pace, and manner or moving. By attempting to be another body, I “met” my own shape; my hips are lower than hers, feet are more arched but our speed of walking is precisely matched. One of the joys and frustrations of relationships is learning how we are similar and quite different; those skills can be developed through play.

Not all play is as studious as my walking exercise, what about rough play, or play with power? The key to most kinds of play might be learning technique and maintaining some empathy, levity and acceptance of similarities and differences between self and partners. For example, when learning to flog, I was terrified I would harm the person receiving; the person watching me saw the grimace in my face. She smiled at me and suggested that I “offer from my heart.” That sounds wuzzy-fuzzy I realize, but I started to smile and allow my wrist to move in a figure 8 motion so the tails of the flogger impacted and swept over the skin with more precision and generosity than my anxious heart would have been able to offer. The result was a better experience for me and for the person receiving. Even shifting my state of mind from “I am doing this flogging” to “I am offering this flogging to a person who is trusting me,” allows me to relax and focus.

What are your most memorable playtimes, as a child, as an adult, as a lover? Play is good work! As a child, my friend Maureen and I played labor. Inspired by the moans of women birthing on the TV drama, Dr Marcus Welby, MD, we labored many times. We didn’t play with dolls but only blocks, smooth wooden blocks we laid on the bed and on which I rubbed to make babies. There was danger too, sometimes the birth produced a clawed creature, like a crab that gave pain upon leaving my body! More reason to howl!

Whether you prefer a light joke or intense scene, generate a list of how you play. The top of the ScrewSmart worksheet urges: “Ideas from Class Or Life? Jot ‘em down!” Striking is the number of different senses in my list, “Simon Says” from my mouth to your ears… “Scent,” based on an erotica story “Dropping the Hint” in “tasting her” a collection edited by Rachel Kramer Brussel in which a woman welcomes her lover home with a various scents that signal him to respond with different acts. If the nose knows isn’t for you, how about Silence Play!!! Never heard of it? neither had I until my magic marker wrote “Silence Play” on my paper. I love being in the company of a friend or lover and not needing to speak. Not because I’m afraid to communicate but because shared times silence can also be a choice that leads to a different kind of bonding, such as in meditation groups. In art school, I remember a friend trying a speaking fast for a few days to see might experience through note-passing and listening without the burden of talking. Play with your pets! Joke at meetings whenever possible! And of course, play in your erotic life.

 

For more discussion of the science that supports how we grow and bond through play check out Stuart Brown says play is more than fun!