With the possible exception of Thanksgiving, Halloween is my favorite holiday. If Thanksgiving is a holiday devoted to eating, then Halloween is a holiday devoted to role-playing—you get to dress up as something you're not and have a ton of fun with people you love.
On Halloween and on the other 364 days of the year, role-playing can be a marvelous addition to anyone's sexual repertoire. If we are looking to spice things up without creating drama, then role-playing can offer us a chance to have sex with ""someone else"" while in a monogamous or long-term relationship. If we have a particular fantasy which we love, but find undesirable (or impossible) to truly bring to life, then role-playing can be a safe way to indulge in that fantasy. For these reasons and more, people can enjoy assuming another bedroom identity.
Once we've decided if role-play is for us, the next step is to introduce it to a partner. I suppose it is possible to role-play with oneself, but it is generally not awkward to ask yourself if you would like to dress up as Chewbacca. Asking a partner, however, can sometimes trip us up.
There's no magical way to ensure our partners will respond well to our sexual requests, and while we can sometimes negotiate compromises, boundaries must always be respected. That said, there are a few things we might try to help it go more smoothly. The first suggestion is to bring it up in a non-sexual setting. If you blurt out, ""Hey, I have a Richard Nixon mask in my closet. Would you mind putting it on?"" mid-thrust, your partner may be a little taken aback. Bringing it up outside the bedroom accomplishes two things. First, in the heat of the moment, our partners may feel pressured to say yes, even if they're unsure. Thus, we allow everyone some time to make sure we're okay with what is going on.
The second benefit is that we can give our partners a window to express some of their sexual desires. By making a dialogue (or trialogue, or whatever) out of it, we can tell our partners about our fantasies, and give them room to express theirs, too. An effective option for facilitating this is to make lists. Write down every fantasy you're interested in acting out (or activity you're interested in trying) on a sheet of paper. Have your partner do the same. Then exchange papers. Both of you will rank each item your partner has written on a scale of one to three. A rating of one means you are also extremely interested in trying that activity, a ‘two' means you're maybe not crazy about it, but are willing to check it out, and a ‘three' means you're not interested in trying that scene right now. Then, you can compare lists and see where both of your interests lie.
The second tip for bringing it up with your partner is the approach. My partner will probably not respond well if I look at the floor, shuffle my feet, and mumble, ""You know, um... I was kind of thinking, um... that maybe we could... well, I don't know, I know it's really stupid, but... I was kind of thinking we could dress up as zombies and have mad undead sex."" Sure, I might feel as awkward as I felt that time when I accidentally loaded a porn site onto my laptop in lecture (many apologies to the people behind me, but I was freakin' doing research for THIS COLUMN), but it will go so much more smoothly if I march up to my partner and say, ""I heard about this crazy hot zombie porno, and I was thinking that we could watch it and then act it out afterwards. What do you think?"" If we're worried that our partners will think we're weird, then by no means should we plant the seed that what we're asking might be weird.
Once all parties are psyched about role-playing, the next step is to make sure everyone's clear on what (or who) exactly is going down. Saying you're going to be the teacher and your partner is the student might not cut it. Is your partner going to be the naughty student who needs to be disciplined? Or the goody-two-shoes who is oh-so-eager to impress? You can design the scene any way you would like to. You can include props or costumes if you want to. You can draw the scene out for the whole weekend if you want to. It's your scene and your orgasm(s), and a good part of the fun can be planning every last detail.
It's also a good idea to have a safeword when we're role-playing. A safeword is a word that means ""no"" or ""stop"" that is not actually ""no"" or ""stop,"" and is unlikely to be said over the course of the scene. We have safewords because in some scenes, I might say ""no"" or ""stop"" when I don't actually want to stop—for example, if I'm role-playing that zombie sex scene and we're right at the part where my partner eats my... brains. Thus, a safeword ensures we have a way of letting our partners know we're not okay with the way the scene is progressing.
Halloween gets billed as pretty much the one day a year when we can become someone else and have fun. By incorporating role-play into our sex lives, every day can be one of those days. We can start today. Dress up. Be creative. Have fun. Get consent. Use rubbers. And if you have any questions, you can play the student, I'll play the sex columnist, and you can contact me via e-mail.
Erica is a first-year med student, but that will not stop her from rocking a Lady Gaga costume all weekend. Questions, comments and concerns can be directed to sex@dailycardinal.com.
