Using Spin the Bottle as an Icebreaker in Play Party | Facebook Walk With Reid
Reid: Hello everybody! It’s Reid Mihalko from https://reidaboutsex.com/ and we have a guest star today, guest starring Stella Harris and the….now we’re away from the wind. So, again like I realized I don’t have my sex geek t-shirt on. I’m being I’m horrible…I’m so not on-brand today. Although this t-shirt by the way comes from Canada and it is from… if you know John and Cass. John Woods and….and Cass King from the Wet Spots?
Stella: Oh! Yes, yes, yes.
Reid: Yeah. This was this was given to me by….by John and Cass of the Wet Spots so if you if you’re watching, Hello! Quick video with Stella Harris who flew in from Portland today for a…can….can we tell?
Stella: We can tell.
Reid: There’s a play party tonight that’s happening that we’re throwing specifically for Mollena Williams and her husband her Meister for them to be able to create more stories for Bawdy Storytelling of which Bawdy Storytelling’s 10th anniversary. Storytelling events happening tomorrow night in San Francisco and you can pay per view it go to https://bawdystorytelling.com/.
So if you can’t come to the…the…the event you can watch it tomorrow night live via live stream or watch it later and it’s a bargain folks it’s eight dollars if you want to check it out live stream. I’m just doing that because I believe in….in Bawdy Storytelling a lot. I’m going to be telling a story, Allison Moon is going to be telling a story, and Cathy Vartuli is going to be telling a story and a lot of awesome badass folks, Mollena. So, go check that out but in…in us geeking out about play parties, we got to talk about spin the bottle and I just want to have a quick conversation about spin the bottle as a as a thing that adults can do because I as an adult have gone to a couple of spin the bottle parties and had them been awesome and I enjoyed them because it didn’t turn into sex.
So, it was also like as somebody who goes to a lot of play parties it was nice to go to something that wasn’t a play party but that also had a certain kind of playfulness and sensuality to it. So that being said for people who don’t know who you are, Stella tell them very quickly and then let’s talk about play party or a
Stella: Sure
Reid: spin the bottle plays for me
Stella: Yeah. I’m Stella Harris, I am a sex educator and a sex coach based on Portland, Oregon but I travel around to…to teach and spread the sexy gospel you can find out about me http://stellaharris.net/contact/
Reid: Yey!
Stella: And I’m a huge fan of play parties and of spin the bottle. Hahaha
Reid: And A.J just had a podcast
Stella: Yes
Reid: About play parties. So tell them about…about that
Stella: It’s true. So, sex on the brain with Amory Jane recorded live at a firm sex play party where I was attending and then put it out on the podcast. You can go find that if you want to hear all about what it sounded like to negotiate, what people didn’t…didn’t want to do talking about boundaries, having all kinds of different play, well that sort of narrated and discussed so you can get an inside track of what it sounds like in one of those play parties.
Reid: Yeah. And there… again just to…to do our diligence there’s lots of different kinds of events and designs for containers of adult gatherings and there is here in the bay area for people who are familiar with Kinky Salon and Mission Control Events that’s a particular kind of…of play party. There’s the Bonobo Tribe that has you know kind of variation or their own kind of style play parties the kinds that I like to run have a….a welcome circle and you know we’ll go over the house rules, everybody gets to know each other, some ice breaking exercises or some consent exercises, there’s a thing called the mildest wildest exercises and there’s always a big safer sex conversation because I’m a nerd about that stuff but there is also swing events, there’s kink play parties, what am I missing? It’s like small hotel play parties and there’s like big events. So there’s lots of different things and I just to…to let people know that like when we say play party, that is an umbrella term for… for things that can look very different.
Stella: Yeah. And spin the bottle can be its very own party or it can be an icebreaker for the other parties.
Reid: I’ve never tried spin the bottle as an icebreaker for a play party.
Stella: That’s a real regular thing for the
Reid: Yeah
Stella: parties that I go to. In fact, the podcast we were just talking about where we were recorded at a play party opens with spin the bottle. The versions I usually see or either way, you negotiate for anything you want, a real regular feature of some of the parties I go to is kiss or slap. So, you spin the bottle and then you pick if you want to get kissed or slapped in the face. Lot on the face
Reid: In the face?
Stella: Oh yeah!
Reid: How about how about
Stella: It’s good fun.
Reid: Wow
Stella: A lot of my friends go for both from that one.
Reid: I think
Stella: So
Reid: I think you’re a way more kinky than I am.
Stella: It’s true. Yeah, that’s…that’s not even in debate. Yeah
Reid: Oh yeah, let’s do it. Let’s be honest.
Stella: Uhuh.
Reid: We’re going to give you a quick…quick shot of the water it’s always beautiful here and its sunny today. What a…. so what kind of….for people who are watching who are like “oh my goodness. I might want to throw my own spin the bottle party,” where….what would you had like what are some good basic rules and we’ll walk back this way. What are some good rules for spin the bottle? If you know
Stella: Yeah!
Reid: Being a spin the bottle enthusiast
Stella: Hahaha! Absolutely well, again setting the content for play, letting people know that somebody spins on you and the way I usually play at the very consent focus version of spin the bottle. The person who spins proposes something to the person they land on. So maybe they propose a kiss but the other person can negotiate they can say
Reid: Kiss on the cheek or
Stella: How…how about a kiss on the cheek? How about a hug? A.J’s favor is asking someone to feed her a pickle. So, you know anything
Reid: Pickles?
Stella: that that you’re excited about. Finding some way you can engage with that person and if it’s an ice breaker for a party, you’re having that as a way to practice negotiating and practicing your yeses and no’s before the higher stakes activity start.
Reid: Got it. Yeah. I think the…the spin the bottle stuff that I’ve noticed is been really interesting and again like some…some people might disagree with me. But I’ve been at…at…at parties where spin the bottle game broke out and it’s like this mythical creature spin the bottle it’s kind of like strip poker like people hear about it and we see it in a movie but this time you know who actually has actually played strip poker? Maybe you
Stella: It’s true
Reid: But…but like most…most people you know most air quotes when strip poker starts, most people that I know in the non-sex geek world have never actually played it
Stella: Right
Reid: Till like…like no one like how does somebody win? Like what’s the winner look like? Like how do we know? For super nerds there’s a great book called Finite and Infinite Games by something Carse I’m forgetting his first name PJ Carse or something like that and it talks about games that don’t have winners where it’s really about the play
Stella: Yeah
Reid: And what’s interesting is strip poker is kind of it is like that. Spin the bottle’s kind of like that but the problem of strip poker is, at some point people get naked. So, then what happens and most adults that I know never really thought about it through to the end
Stella: Right
Reid: So, you get to this weird place of like, what…what happens next? We spin the bottle there’s like kissing….kissing….kissing it’s fun and then there’s like this like okay so, we’ve all kissed each other. Now what do we do? And so this is also an epic spin the bottle game that happened in Italy in a castle in a torrent where everybody was in tuxes and once we’d all kind of kissed each other like everybody was like, well what do we do now? And then somebody just whipped out a boob and said “we’ll kiss this” to a man who was really gay and he’s like “I haven’t kissed one of those since when I was fifteen.” And that took the game to a whole other place.
Stella: Nice
Reid: I’m not saying that every spin the bottle game has to end with boobs but people will get creative when they don’t know what else to do next and the big the big idea is how do you do it in a way that’s consensual where people are having fun rather than feeling like they have to participate.
Stella: Right and the idea of spin the bottle it can make it safer to have those lower level interactions of people just to kiss because the idea that average play party people might think well if I start kissing this person, you get to that. Well, what next? Where is it supposed to go? And when it spin the bottle
Reid: The gate
Stella: it’s like well
Reid: The gateway drug
Stella: this is just a kiss and
Reid: Yeah
Stella: safe to just to a kiss because that’s the next person’s turn and you don’t have to worry about what expectations in this setting
Reid: Yeah. Alright I’ll I think I like maybe…maybe we stop there.
Stella: Hahahaha
Reid: Maybe we’ve titillated everybody on a Friday before the weekend. Rumor has it that tonight at the play party and for those of you who don’t know what a play party is, that’s what that’s what the kids are calling orgies these days. At the play party tonight, we will at the beginning of it live Facebook live on Dixie De La Tour’s Facebook page. So, I think if you go to Bawdy Storytelling on Facebook, like Bawdy Storytelling and then I think at approximately 8 p.m. we will Facebook live for Dixie to celebrate that Mollena flew in all the way from the East Coast or from Europe or wherever she was with her Meister for Bawdy Storytelling. We’ll do a quick Facebook live. We will tell you a little bit about play parties if you’re interested and for any of you who want more information about play parties, I believe and if this doesn’t work give me 20 minutes I’ll fix it when I get home go to https://reidaboutsex.com/playparty and I believe there’s a sign up for you to get some free handouts or something like that and if that doesn’t exist if you get a 4 of 4 page, come back because I’ll fix it in like 20 minutes. Anything else?
Stella: I think that’ll do it for now.
Reid: Alright everybody, have a really great weekend! Stella thanks for…for…for letting me pick up you at the airport and the….and then jumping on Facebook live. Everybody thank you so much for being a part of my walks and giving me an excuse to get outside. Leave a comment. I’ll check comments when I get home and have a great weekend and check out https://bawdystorytelling.com/. Bye everyone!
Stella: Bye!