The sultry lounge singer that acts as a perfect introduction to a rather sordid evening at “The Lust Experience: Anointment” (Source: The Experiences)

Tension returns to Los Angeles as the sexy, secretive, and sinister collide for another wild evening of misdirection

Guest Review: Inside The Magic editor and Pseudonym Productions producer Ricky Brigante offers up his unfiltered take on The Lust Experience’s “mid-season” event.

Since Darren Lynn Bousman’s The Tension Experience exploded onto the ARX and immersive theater scene in 2016, droves of fans have eagerly awaited 2017’s follow-up, announced many months ago to be The Lust Experience. While this year has delivered many chapters’ worth of a life-consuming alternate reality to the few dozen who have dared to engage for months on end, the rest of us have waited to see what the large-scale event from the team behind Tension would be like this year. But alas, Halloween season came and went without a new ticketed event.

Following some unforeseen production delays, The Lust Experience finally came to fruition this past weekend — sort of. A “mid-season” event, Anointment, as Bousman and his team called it, emerged from the darkness of warring secret societies that run more layers deep than I can personally wrap my head around. Across just four nights, The Lust Experience: Anointment welcomed handfuls of participants at a time for a rather personal adventure through sensuality, seduction, deception, and depravity.

I attended on the first night in one of the last timed entry slots of the evening. Attendance came with the requirement of signing an expectedly intimidating waiver together with the surprise of a Non-Disclosure Agreement this year to not reveal the secret south Los Angeles location until after it was all over.

So much of the event called on participants to leave inhibitions outside and engage on a rather intimate level with actors and fellow participants, so I will withhold explicitly specific details of the evening’s happenings. (Though many attendees are already sharing everything they experienced via Lust’s official Slack channels and forums.)

There was indeed a fair amount of namesake “lust” to be found throughout the experience in many forms, with the subject matter firmly dancing around sex during the 2+ hours spent in attendance. Levels of nudity surpassed expectations from moment one, as attendees entered a lounge-type environment, bathed in pink and blue hues. Immediately, participants were greeted by a boisterous shirtless (and masked) man together with a scantily clad (also masked) female, who offered “drugs” to get the party started. I indulged, naturally, as nothing is ever as it seems within these experiences and I trust this team to not actually feed me illicit substances without my prior knowledge.

Just beyond that initial encounter was a lounge singer, seductively delivering soulful music that was wholly difficult to pay attention to, as dreamily wandering throughout the lounge were some of Los Angeles’ most beautiful people — many of whom were nearly naked, donning only sheer robes to barely cover themselves. Once invited to join them in the lounge, it didn’t take long before just about every participant had at least one encounter with a character approaching them in the nude. Moreover, all attendees were asked to remove one item of clothing within minutes of arrival. I had neglected to follow recommendations emailed in advance, so I was left shirtless for the duration of the experience — which was both awkward and freeing at the same time. I felt like one of them.

But it was easy to quickly become desensitized to seeing all the naked bits, both male and female, allowing ones attention to shift onto the characters and story at hand, rather than simply staring at the many body parts often thrust in participants’ faces. (One of the females quite literally pushed her entire nude body against mine, staring deep into my eyes with a suggestive smile. Gulp.)

In the search for a storyline and emotional connection with characters, it became clear to me that not all hired actors were created equal for this event, some brought on for their impressive ability to draw participants’ into their elaborate backstories while others were clearly present primarily for their looks, adding to the overall ambience of ongoing debauchery. Repeat participants from last year would quickly recognize Sabrina Kern, who portrayed Addison Barrow in The Tension Experience — before the ongoing story morphed into a meta experience in which Sabrina now portrays a version of herself, blurring the lines between reality and fiction. In this case, she by far stood out as someone I constantly wanted to know more about thanks to her consistently inviting gaze.

Sabrina Kern, dressed for ‘’Lust,“ far more provocatively than her previous appearances in “Tension.”

Some of the “lust” within this experience was indeed gratuitous (not always a bad thing). But most of the hyper-sexualized moments did seem to serve a purpose, whether simply testing ones own ability to handle such *ahem* close personal attention or, as was more often the case, to see just how far participants were willing to say “yes” to what they were instructed to do. In my group, at least, practically everyone was willing to let loose without argument, without breaking any inappropriate social boundaries.

But let’s get this straight. The Lust Experience: Anointment was not a strip club, swingers club, BDSM dungeon, or anything of the like — despite initial appearances. I did witness on multiple occasions (as in, every few minutes) fellow participants in all stages of undress — often paired with sufficient levels of awkwardness and discomfort.

But it was the best kind of discomfort. The kind where you are thinking “I can’t believe I’m doing this” and then two hours later find yourself extraordinarily proud that you did. It’s a gloriously freeing feeling to push past those boundaries, for those who don’t shy away. It’s an effective way this experience offers a takeaway of enabling participants to feel more comfortable and confident with themselves, a recurring theme throughout.

In one scene, I found myself in a room with one particularly memorable male character named Rico and four other male participants. Rico first had all of the other males to join me in removing their shirts (they had smartly arrived wearing undershirts. He subsequently convinced one of the group to strip down completely while he also did the same, just before suggesting that we all join him for a circle jerk — an offer we unanimously declined, much to his chagrin.

Confidence was encouraged around every corner of The Lust Experience. Strong and prolonged eye contact, firm handshakes, and commitment to quick choices were rewarded with personal encounters that have left many participants with emotional reactions that, like with Tension last year, have them wanting to rush back and experience more. On the contrary, those who acted indecisively or doubted their decisions found themselves grouped together in entertaining, but far less intimate scenes.

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I write from experience, as I had the opportunity early on in Lust to follow one character down a rabbit hole. When I approached the lounge singer after her set, she began telling me a few dark secrets of how she got roped into this horrible organization, slowly leading me away from the group. She offered to sing me a song, privately, but as I hadn’t had a chance to talk to any of the other characters yet, I declined and she found another soul to entertain. In hindsight it’s clear that this early indecision and lack of focus (there were a LOT of distractions) sent me into a few group experiences rather than one-on-one encounters I could have had, which possibly would have given me more of an emotional connection to the story.

But therein lies a recurring issue I’ve seen in both Tension and Lust so far. While some participants are lavishly doted over with half the time spent getting personal attention from multiple actors, it is often at the expense of others who are sometimes literally left completely alone, wondering what they did “wrong” to miss out on the fun happening elsewhere. These experiences can deliver some serious FOMO. And with all attendees paying more than $150 a ticket for this latest event, there’s a certain level of expectation that every participant will receive a similarly personal experience. While some have left with life-changing intimate encounters, many others left scratching their heads thinking they took a wrong turn somewhere.

It’s a problem that really should be solved before the full-scale Lust event emerges in the months ahead. This short “mid-season” experience was no doubt intended to tide fans over until the bigger experience can be assembled, feeling a bit like a rushed, not-fully-planned event at times. There were the obvious differences in scope when comparing Tension’s elaborate custom sets spanning a massive warehouse last year to this year’s rented modern event space with few customizations, but also a significantly larger barrier to entry for those who haven’t been following along with the ongoing ARX in the past few months. I often found myself without a clue who any of the characters were or what story was being told, other than a basic evening of odd sexually-charged encounters.

Another key issue that ought to get a little more attention in the future Lust event is gauging in advance what participants’ expectations and comfort levels are with the subject of sex, if that remains a focus. While some have found this past weekend’s experience to be rather shocking simply in its abundance of nudity and strong sexual overtones throughout, those who are accustomed to being around lustful pursuits in public (such as in the aforementioned clubs and dungeons) found Anointment to be disappointingly tame in comparison, expecting a far greater level of boundary-pushing. Once past the initial influx of nude bodies, the event really wasn’t all that scandalous and often came across as rather immature. Rico’s actions and suggestions, while comedically entertaining, felt overly silly and out of place to me.

Intermingled with the always sexually-charged scenes were no shortage of unpredictable interactions. I ate. I drank. I held hands. I stared deeply into many, many peoples’ eyes. I was commanded to do things I personally had no problem doing. I was commanded to command others to do similar things that made them uncomfortable while I smirked at their perceived misfortune. (“Take off your dress,” I told a stranger upon instruction to do so, to which she quickly complied.)

Every decision participants made was seemingly a test of their willingness and confidence, always watched.

Does that make me a bad person? Lust’s message would tell me no way, as power and confidence are the two most important qualities to succeeding in life, apparently. I learned this through the single one-on-one experience I did have, in which an older man pulled me aside to illustrate just what confidence looks like — by calling over a nude male and telling me to stare directly at his maleness while he stood there proudly, inches away.

But what of the story behind all this? Was there one? If so, where does it all lead?

Circling every character and scene was most definitely an undercurrent of something deeper, an intangible secrecy that no one seemed to want to reveal, no matter how much one pushed — frustratingly so at times. Conversations with characters almost always ended in dead ends. Significant glances, the occasional quivering lip or tear shed, cowering body language, and all-too-frequent violent outbursts let every participant know that there is much more to the story here than is being delivered in this one event, which is great for the future but aggravating for those who can only attend this one experience.

For all its sexual scenes, The Lust Experience: Anointment amounted to 2 hours of nothing but foreplay, by design no doubt. It is, after all, the lead-up to a much larger event that will surely shed more light on the ODSM, BOS, TMC, and other acronym-heavy secret societies that apparently hate each other, as the story goes.

Understanding the full story behind The Lust Experience requires either months of daily attention to the ongoing ARX or a whole lot of advance reading. While the event’s creators claim you can come knowing nothing or knowing everything and still have a good time, it’s quite clear that if you have been following along the event is far more rewarding. Many newbies found themselves hopelessly lost in a sea of incomplete thoughts, whispered comments, and character introductions, all of which seemed very important in the moment but were ultimately left without clear future direction, even springing brand new characters and plot lines in the final moments of the experience. I’m sure those who have been following along for months can and will make a lot more sense out of it all, but I left with very little understanding of the meaning behind anything that happened.

Yet, this seemingly random series of events was wildly entertaining. I didn’t leave with any emotional connection whatsoever, but The Lust Experience: Anointment was no doubt a night to remember — even if it didn’t entirely make sense. It didn’t hook me enough to justify paying another $150+ to get another tiny snippet of an excessively complex story, but it did serve as a fun way to spend a Thursday evening in December while visiting Los Angeles, enhanced tremendously by its die hard fans who met me with open arms and helped me understand much of what happened after it was all over.

It is in these very fans that The Lust Experience and future events from its creators will primarily live on. And it is through them that I could be convinced to attend the next event when it comes up, as their enthusiasm is utterly infectious. I just hope that the creators find a way to make every participant feel special and fulfilled, not just a select few.

To those who don’t want to wind up like me leaving these events with a feeling of missing out, do not hesitate to act on your impulses. Even for a moment. These experiences move fast and they will keep moving without you if you’re not careful. Be bold. Be courageous. Don’t waiver from your desires or your attention. Be confident and perhaps you’ll find yourself in the most uncomfortably comfortable encounter you’ve ever had.

The story of The Lust Experience continues online at The Lust Experience forums and Slack channels.

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