When the urinal cakes started talking to me, I knew the party was officially over. I can’t remember whether they started talking dirty before or after I dropped off Dale the Nail at his temporary resting place, but I know it was before I returned Michelle, my vamped out trans Darkling, to her magical kingdom.

I should really remove the urinal cakes from the back seat of my car, but they keep me company during short trips and I guess I’m not ready to drive alone just yet.

We didn’t discover them until we were packing things up at the end of the 7th Annual Portland Masturbate-a-thon. They’d been hiding at the bottom of some boxes that I and my staff of Darklings had thought only contained Pink Visual porn, porn, and more porn. Wild Fuck Toys porn, to be exact. Perfectly in keeping with our masturbation focused party theme.

Yet, there they were, chattering away in the hands of the bemused Czarcasm; moaning and sighing and promising him sensual wonders beyond comparison — an ambitious goal, considering the evening’s auditory and other sensual debaucheries.

It’s true we do things a little differently in Portland. Perhaps it’s our outlaw sensibilities that inspire us to masturbate in unorthodox ways and places. Perhaps it’s our sense of community, perhaps it’s our sense of humor, or perhaps it’s just our sense of independence. Whatever it is, thank goodness it has the word “sense” nearby.

Whatever it is, it inspired 300 adults over the age of 21 to dress up in their kinkiest, sexiest, and most formal or most burlesque finery and spend seven hours watching not only one another, but some of the best in local, regional, and international erotic entertainment.

There’s something truly magical about stepping off of a stage and seeing literally hundreds of faces beaming smiles and joy in your direction. It never ceases to amaze me that I, the girl who couldn’t find a soul outside my family to celebrate her birthday with as a child, now spend months tearing my hair our in preparation for the arrival of an ever-increasing number of new best friends to enchant, entice, entertain, and perhaps even “educate.”

More importantly, throughout that party night, an increasing number of new best friends share their juicy, sweet vulnerability with me – and I don’t just mean sexually.

Tall, short, fat, thin, young, old, white, black, gay, straight, bi, trans, kinky, vanilla, poly, monogamous, and still deciding; we somehow managed to find our common humanity and spend a clothing-optional evening together in mutual respect and sometimes even admiration. This doesn’t mean we achieved perfection in our understanding of one another or our ability to communicate even with ourselves; but it does mean that we accomplished something that theoretically “normal” people have difficulty with. While America still struggles to decide whether it will slide into the various oceans if gays can marry or a mixed raced man sits behind the desk in the Oval Office, 300 people from Oregon, Washington, California – and even Texas – found it positively exhilarating to watch one another frolic with those we loved, or at least liked well enough to let touch our genitals or watch while we touched our own.

Thanks to HotMovies.com and the aforementioned talking urinal cake promoting Pink Visual, I was able to bring both Seattle’s VonFoxies and Canada’s Wet Spots to my corner of the universe, my sensual playground, my pansexual paradise manifested on earth.

Although my gregarious emcee, Hot Wendy Williams, found herself unable to escape the gravitational pull of her home state, Mr. the Nail was able to step in for her – and her fans sent their love to her, metaphorically speaking, throughout the evening; again, thanks to generosity from companies as diverse as Portland’s Mr. Peeps, Chatsworth’s Topco Sales, and North Carolina’s Adam & Eve.

Thanks to the Darklings, to the Mt. Tabor, to Puppetman, to DJs Darknezz and Emok, to the beautiful Sahara Dunes and sexy Sara Jay, to the inspiring and charitable VonFoxies, to GothFox.com pasties worthy of both a Sapphic Caribbean Sweetheart and a busty redhead with a hearse, to BlowFish.com for being wonderful, for BigTeazeToys.com for being wonderful and whimsical, to Hayb-Corsets.com for being cool with the idea of men in corsets, to the Naughty Baker for another sinfully delicious cake treat, to Taboo Video for baskets of pure joy, to Tonya Jone Miller for talk even more evocative than my urinal cakes, to Sik World Clothing for underwear and t-shirts that would make my mother blanch, to SwollenSkateboards for board backs my mother would send me to confession for touching, let alone auctioning — and to the amazing man behind The Thrillhammer, which has brought so much joy to so many of my guests during the past seven years.

Thanks also to Stormfeather for creating my amazing steampunk burlesque skirt and to Cindy Morgan of Odress.com for my curve hugging corset.

And, of course, thanks to my guests – and everyone who didn’t get mentioned in this article because the clock was ticking too close to my deadline. Without you, this evening would truly have been about nothing but solo masturbation – my own emotional masturbation; because without you, I would have been alone in my efforts.

But I was not alone.

We were 300 strong – not counting the hundreds, if not thousands – of other people who helped create our evening of sensual fundraising for the Free Speech Coalition, Woodhull Freedom Foundation, and Esther’s Pantry.

Thanks – and give yourself a hand. Or maybe, ask a friend to lend you theirs. After all, it’s all for science – and to cum for a cause! Keep on masturbating!