Many hands make light work. If one-on-one sex sessions are that much fun, how about adding in another couple of pairs of hands, legs, breasts and lips? But if you thought getting one-on-one sex right was tricky, it gets more complicated with extra moving parts – physically, emotionally and politically. Orgies aren’t mythical, although there are plenty of myths surrounding them…
The origin of the orgy
To understand the allure of the orgy we have to look back in time to ancient Rome. Greek mystery religions, which became quite trendy in the early days of the Roman Empire, had a mania for orgies which were shrouded in secrecy. This air of mystery was deliberate: the rituals’ hidden nature gave the participants power.
Revellers sought “transcendence of being”, or an ecstatic union with the divine, but some took a turn for the painful: members of cults like Cybele, who adulated a eunuch mother goddess, would result in the frenzied castration of priests. When the Greek cults were adopted by the Romans in the form of the Bacchanalia, a series of festivals praising the Greek god Dionysus, reports of orgies ending in violence continued. Livy, a Roman historian, recounted that the screams of women and young men being raped would be purposely drowned out by the clashing of cymbals.
Many historians discount Livy as a reliable source and suggest that his writings reflect the anxieties of the emperor Augustus about the “Hellenisation” of Rome. He probably played up the shocking nature of the cult for added outrage. State sanctioning (with fun rules!) of these gatherings in 186 AD removed their subversive nature – and their spice. The exact details of the pre-reformation orgies is lost forever, but by forever guessing what exactly was going on back then we give the idea of orgies cultural significance and power. And that’s exactly how Hugh Hefner made his millions.
The ultimate male fantasy
Talking of Hugh Hefner, when he started his Playboy empire in the Sixties the sexual revolution was reaching fever-pitch. Contraception lead to short skirts and loose morals.
Hefner sprung on the zeitgeist as he did lithe females. But Hugh was no fool. His glossy magazines and double page centre-folds put beautiful women almost within the sweaty grasp of teenage boys, but retained the exclusivity with the Mansion. The fact that the parties actually happened with hot famous bods added to the frenzy a hundred-fold, and by keeping some of it secret it made you want to join in more. Oh the promises!
The hedonistic days of the Sixties and Seventies are long gone. The battles of the sexual revolution were won on the satin bedsheets. We have the sexual freedoms we want – we can even see inside the Playboy Mansion on MTV. Now we have hedonism for hedonism’s sake. What’s the point? Where’s the purpose? The Playboy Mansion and the empire that Hugh Hefner amassed is only kept up if Hugh, err, keeps it up.
How very… organised and… clinical. To get back into the swing of things we need to find a pressure-cooker of a society…
1001 Arabian Nights
Enter a young female anthropologist, Pardis Mahdavi, who in 2001 on returning home to Iran discovered a growing trend of sex parties. Mahdavi describes watching an orgy unfold from the diving board of a drained swimming pool in which a writhing mass of naked bodies moan in pleasure. This attention-grabbing image is much more stirring than the idea of Hefner being dutifully serviced by his bunnies. In the context of a religious totalitarian regime, Mahdavi concluded that these orgies provide Iran’s youth with escape from unrealistic moral stricture. She argues the green revolution of 2009 and revolutionaries’ resolve to defy the regime have orgies to thank.
In a country where morality police will whip you for improper dress, orgies are potentially life-threatening. That’s one way of generating a highly charged atmosphere. This danger provides the frisson that on-tap sex at the Playboy Mansion can’t compete with.
Carnal-val
The closest it’s possible to get to this kind of atmosphere in the West is the festival, music or otherwise: anthropologists like to study these because they ease social tension. Highly religious populations will often display raucous behaviour: take Mardi Gras, for example, or Venice Carnival. The problem is that when orgies become predictable they lose their bite. An element of mayhem is needed to provide antithesis to the structure of life.
The Playboy Mansion has fallen foul of this, and so will the orgies in Tehran once the practice stops being subversive (maybe Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, could learn a thing or two from the Romans?).
Can we fall into an orgasmic mess outside the Houses of Parliament in revolt against Jeremy Corbyn or the state of the NHS? No. Because in the UK and in the US we don’t have a reason to be sexually subversive. Anything goes! And our sex parties show it. Even mentioning Killing Kittens over breakfast raises a stifled yawn or two.
However, these things still serve a purpose. Organising an orgy is the ultimate status symbol. Partaking in an orgy (or even just reportedly taking part) shows to both sexes that you are sexually desirable, socially mobile and like to experiment. We’re back to the secret societies of ancient Greece and Rome. Shrouded in secrecy, the rites and rituals of the rich make them more powerful, and richer. But we imagine that a “successful” orgy, and by that we mean one that is actually fun, is as rare as an unmedicated erection for Hugh Hefner.
That said – when’s the next flight to Tehran?