I would feel horrible, hurting a person I cared for, even though I was certain they wouldn’t be able to care for me in the years ahead in the way I needed them to — someone who I suspected, ultimately, wanted different things. How do you justify leaving a perfectly nice relationship, taking a blind chance that there might be something better for you out there — even if you’re right? Many people spent today taking it easy, enjoying their time in paradise and resting up for the final day on the ship. I was hesitant for a couple reasons. The first was that they’d slept with someone else, just once, when they were on a solo vacation, before we’d agreed to any sort of open-relationship terms; I felt like they’d forced my hand. (It’s hard for me even now to say they cheated on me, though that’s precisely what they did.) The second reason was that I’d watched some of my friends in long-term relationships experiment with nonmonogamy, only for the experiment to end in disaster: Somebody, inevitably, fell for somebody else. We felt pretty awkward, but we soon realized that this is just natural human behavior. People gravitate toward those they already know. And when you throw in the strong likelihood that you're going to be exchanging fluids with them later on in the evening, then of course, you're going to be a bit more discriminating about who you're hanging out with. Eventually, once we’d reboarded the boat after our snorkeling, I did start talking with a few of the women I met at the Gen O mixer earlier that week, and it only took a couple of drinks for us to become the best of friends.

In just two years since starting its secretive, sexy and luxurious private parties in Sydney, the Skirt Club — the all-female sex club for lesbian, bisexual and “plain curious” women — had seen its membership swell to 600.His confidence and muscular body were all the convincing I needed to accept his offer, and I did not regret it when I was moaning in ecstasy in his room a few hours later. It seemed logical we should open there. Two of our members had solid experience in luxury event management and offered to head up the 2018 program for Skirt Club Melbourne. We enjoy involving our members in the growth and development of our community.” This put me in a great mood as we returned to the ship, which must have turned on some kind of sex magnet.

By this point, I was — somewhat unintentionally — quite drunk. We started making out (I was still peeing) and almost right away, I began writing a goofy story about it in my head, thinking about how I’d relay the anecdote to my friends (“So I had sex in the bathroom of a catamaran???”). But there was another part of me that was very much not into it, especially when the makeout gave way to other things and people started banging on the bathroom door.I planned to meet Dana in the ship lobby that morning so that we could wander around for a while before the event. When we set off into town together, she gently informed me that my whatever-it-was with Lynette had not gone unnoticed by the staff, who’d encouraged Dana to encourage me to spend more time speaking with other people and reporting on the ship’s endless entertainment options. I would write in my journal, the night before leaving: “There’s something so deliriously pleasurable in the idea of trusting myself enough to know exactly what I want.” The ‘lace and latex’ theme nights are some of the most popular for Skirt Club. Picture: Victoria Dawe