I was captivated by what Eileen Myles told me at the time: “I know how to fight for what I want, to say no, when to wait. I’ve been in time for 65 years. I have a lot to share. That supposedly should only be in my teaching life — that’s not the case. It’s amazing on both sides to be able to share the world from different angles. It’s lively. It’s hot.” We stripped off our costumes, and he went down on me before taking me from behind. Three couples swapped in the space adjacent to us, their sex sounds and moans giving us a thrill that boosted both our orgasms. Tuesday It overwhelmed me, just then, the sudden force of my wanting. I wanted my own big, strong butch. Someone who wasn’t looking for someone to help them grow, because they’ve done most of their growing already. It’s about doing what excites you,’ says Skirt Club founder Geneviève LeJeune. Picture: Victoria Dawe

He eased into his seat on the dance floor as she writhed her body around him in time to the music, making me wish it was my birthday, too. Thursday Then there are the fake swingers. These couples tend to be younger. They attend all the big events, and if there's a stripper pole in the room, you can bet they'll be the first ones on it. But when it comes down to the actual swinging, they're more into the exhibitionist aspect of the lifestyle and ultimately are not looking for sex with other couples. When my partner jokingly warned me, before I left for the cruise, not to fall in love with a hot older butch — seriously, we joked about this — I thought, Fat chance. Not only because I had no intention of falling in love with anyone else, but because I thought hooking up with hot older butches would remain the stuff of my fantasies.

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She’s right, of course. Skirt Club is undeniably pretty – maybe too pretty, and expensive, and heteronormative to attract or accept everyone who might like it. Jamie mentioned that she’d previously passed on an Olivia cruise when she saw that a speaker booked for the trip was Lisa Vogel. Vogel, the creator and producer of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, shut down the lesbian feminist women’s gathering in 2015 — closing its doors entirely, after 40 years as a safe haven of living lesbian history, rather than allowing out trans women to attend. For a lot of millennial queer women, myself included, MichFest is the perfect example of something beautiful and sacred we would have loved to take part in — something we’d be forever thankful for — if only, if only, they hadn’t seen trans women as the enemy. I enjoyed both of their company over the next few hours, but afterwards, I was hardly able to stand. While my partner relaxed by the pool getting to know a new lady friend, I ran into a man who asked to join me in my room for some playtime. At first, sitting alone on the catamaran heading out for my snorkeling excursion, I felt shy again, and wished I had Dana or Jamie and Matie at my side. One of the guys running the boat, a youngish dude with dreads, took pity on me and brought me a glass of water. He asked me if I was staff on the cruise, noting my friendlessness, and I told him I was a reporter.

Later, we attended a masturbation workshop, which would be better described as a meditation on self-pleasure. Part of the reason why is no doubt what anti-trans lesbians (unreasonably) fear: More and more young people are realizing that they identify as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth — and more and more young people are realizing they’re attracted to people of two or more genders. But even though there are plenty of trans and nonbinary lesbians, and plenty of cis lesbians (like me) who don’t think that “lesbian” should be defined exclusively as “cis woman who’s only attracted to cis women,” our identity still hasn’t been able to shake the sexist, classist, and anti-gay stereotypes of lesbians as uncosmopolitan boomer TERFs, sporting Tevas and cargo pants covered in cat hair. Later, when telling friends what had happened, I did laugh about it — one told me it sounded like something pulled straight out of The L Word, which, true — but I was also a little mad at that girl, and even more so at myself for being so sloppy. The consent element there was indeterminate; I had willingly gone along with the hookup, at least for a little while, though I remain uncertain about how much I really could have consented while drunk-peeing in a bathroom the size of a broom closet.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.