Swinging: The Games Your Neighbours Play. Mark Brendon

from the West Country, Lisa explained to me how swingers’ parties work. They are, it seemed, a cross between the disco parties of my teenage years and the drinks parties and receptions of adulthood.

      As at drinks parties, swingers meet—singly or in couples—form short-lived groups which absorb others, fragment and reform, and chatter a lot about the weather, sport, their sex lives, the cost of living, their possessions, their children and the government.

      As at the teenage party, where communication is generally limited to hair patting, sneering and preening followed by a bit of mutual gut wriggling, the intention of the whole business is manifest if largely unstated. At teenage parties the dance floor slowly empties as couple after couple retires into dark corners to slobber over one another, and to fondle one another’s crevices. Here too, couple after couple will drift off into the playrooms, remove their clothes and ‘play’.

      ‘Generally, you play with one another,’ explained Lisa, ‘and then others come and join you, or people playing on the bed or mattress beside you begin touching you and checking out your response. Maybe you like them and swap with them, or play as a foursome for a while. So, say you’ve got a girl sitting on a guy’s cock and the other girl’s sitting on his face and sucking the other guy or whatever. And then another couple is playing nearby, and one of you reaches out to stroke her or kiss him, and so it goes on…’

      But few swingers spend an entire evening in the thick of the action. ‘You need a break—food, drink, a piss, even just a rest—so you go off into the social rooms again. And that’s the second way of meeting people you play with. You’re there—naked or just dressed in underwear or something—and you meet some people and like them, and one of you will say, “Shall we go and play?” so you all pile back in together and the whole thing starts all over again.

      ‘Of course, you may have no interest in the others playing around you. That’s cool,’ Lisa shrugged, ‘you just play with one another. Other people come along; you just shake your head, say “No, thanks.’”

      Most couples, she told me—again as at drinks parties—attend as couples and won’t be separated. ‘Some couples will just stick together for the first hour or so then split up, just coming back from time to time to check that the other one’s OK…’

      In many ways, then, the swingers’ party seemed to me to resemble the more conventional sort of ball, with fucking at last taking its rightful throne from that unconvincing pretender, dance. The chatter, the introductions, the proposals accepted or rejected, the ‘excuse me’s’, the set-piece communal dances, the timorous ‘wallflowers’—even the conga—all find their echoes in the modern orgy.

      Lisa, a Georgette Heyer fan, liked this allusion. ‘Yeah. Quite fancy the idea of a fuck-card attached to my wrist: “May I have the honour of the 10.30 sixty-nine, or the midnight slow fuck?” “La, sir! But we barely know each other! Perhaps a well-lit blow-job would be more appropriate…” But yeah, basically, you’ve got the idea.’

       3 THE WARM-UP

      THE DOCKLANDS PARTY WAS reassuringly small, and run by a trio of city business types who call themselves ‘Coupleszone’. The location of their regular orgies changed from month to month, but it was usually a luxurious flat or house somewhere within the square mile.

      This was a ‘Couples Only’ party. Many clubs and swingers’ groups permit a limited number of single males to enter on specific nights. Some men’s enthusiasm flags in the course of the evening, whilst women’s tends to remain constant or to increase with each adventure. These single men, therefore, provide a reserve energy supply. The usual convention in the clubs is that males are permitted on Friday nights, but only couples on Saturdays.

      The extent of selectivity imposed at each venue varies widely. At the better clubs—such as Chameleons in Birmingham and at Liberations in Leicester—single males must submit photographs and lengthy forms before they are considered, and must then remain on a waiting list for a long while before they will be admitted. Other clubs are less stringent in their requirements, particularly since single males must pay up to three times the entrance fee paid by couples. Single females, unsurprisingly, are always welcome.

      Most of these clubs also have ‘Greedy Girls’ nights in their calendars. At these, the single males (who again pay a great deal for the privilege) outnumber the women by a factor of three or more to one.

      Lisa and I travelled to London by train. I had booked into one of those supersonic, globetrotting hotels whose foyers boast acres of textured MDF panels, a great deal of curious lighting and 100-yard reception desks, staffed by one woman in a cardboard-cut-out suit and jabot and one man with a yellow tie. Piped music—like light—seeped and puddled into this vast space and dribbled from invisible speakers into the pill-capsule lift.

      Our room was a box with a huge window overlooking the Thames. Our bed was also a large, hard box. It did not matter. As Lisa said, ‘With any luck, we’ll be returning totally shagged at four in the morning, so who cares? It’s clean, isn’t it?’

      This is a sound and thrifty principle for swingers. Luxury suites are wasted.

      She showered and enjoyed dressing up. This is always one of the most pleasurable and most childlike aspects of swinging. Women can indulge their every last ‘look at me’ fantasy of sweeping staircases, stilettos, thigh-high boots, slashed skirts or no skirt, glittering panties or no panties, satin, lace, leather, PVC or liquid latex. Some content themselves with lavish corsets or plain little black dresses. The only article of clothing that appears de rigueur is stockings—whether holdups or sustained with suspenders.

      Some enjoy fancy dress, and there are usually a few French maids, cowgirls, traffic-cops and the like in the mix. Lisa dressed simply that night. Her bra, thong and hold-up stockings were lemon yellow. She wore a short, black, accordion-pleated skirt and a scoop-yoked golden silken top with a parrot and jungle foliage design. Ferragamo—via Oxfam.

      I wore what would become my swinging uniform—black velvet evening slippers, black silk socks, plain black trousers, a white poplin shirt with gold links, and an off-the-peg blue blazer.

      I had thought carefully about this outfit. I retain it to this day because my reasoning still seems sound.

      On the one hand, I need to carry a pen (for names and numbers), cards, cigarettes and at least twenty condoms (some parties and clubs have bowls of free condoms in every room, but many rely on you to bring your own), and I am sufficiently fogeyish to want to make an effort—at least in part—to match that made by the women in their sparse but sexy finery.

      On the other, I was and am well aware that these clothes will—with luck—be worn for a short time only, and will spend the greater part of the evening crumpled and frequently trampled where they fall. A swingers’ party is not the place for your fragile Sunday best.

      I removed all credit cards from my coat and retained just £60 in cash in my back pocket. It is unlikely that there will be petty thieves about—nor have I met any since then—but there seems no point in taking the risk, or putting temptation in anyone’s way.

      Lisa and I then learned spontaneously a regular and delicious feature of preparation for parties. As she raised a foot onto the armchair to lace her golden sandals, I dived in there and we played for fifteen minutes or so, which meant she had to rearrange her make-up and hair.

      Since then, I have dressed for hundreds of parties with many different women. We have always played together as part of the process. Sometimes, when we have guests round, I have played with as many as five girls in turn and together before setting off.

      This is the warm-up, the amuse-gueule, the delicious equivalent of the freshly baked bread, the Negroni, the sussuration of linen and the tattoo of cutlery and glass. It is an essential part of the fun.