Swinging: The Games Your Neighbours Play. Mark Brendon

      PLAY CONTINUED IN THE mini-cab. The driver, inevitably, got lost and asked us for directions. We were amused, then irritated.

      At length, after two calls to our hosts, we found ourselves at the electronic gates of a residential riverside block.

      We were buzzed into a hall lined with green brocade. The console tables were gilt, with marble tops. The chandelier was of giant Bohemian teardrops. The lift—for some strange reason in a building so plainly modern—was of the double gate, lattice variety.

      We were warmly greeted by a man in his mid-thirties. He was slim and well spoken. His sandy hair was receding, his chin of the sort with which furrows could be ploughed. His smile, however, carved a broad diamond on his face. His teeth were dazzling. Lisa plainly liked him.

      The girl beside him was a little younger. Her hair was short and blonde. Her eyes were blue and bright. She wore a clinging, dark blue jersey frock with a plunging bodice and a skirt that covered her knees. She kissed both of us on both cheeks. They could have been any prosperous couple welcoming us to spag-bol dinner with friends.

      Behind them, there was the usual rumble and chatter of a drinks party. Carl and Angie showed us around and introduced us to a few couples as we went.

      The guests were dressed conventionally enough. Here or there a skirt was slit to the hip. One woman wore PVC boots which snaked to mid-thigh. Another wore sandals like Lisa’s—laced, Greek-style, up the calf. Skirts might, on average, be a little shorter than usual—one was short enough to show stocking-tops—bodices cut a little lower, trousers a little rarer, but few people here would have looked out of place at a contemporary cocktail bar.

      The men were the usual confused mess denoted by the words ‘smart casual’. Their shirts and, no doubt, their trousers, were expensive and well pressed. There was no obviously man-made fibre on view. The shirts, however, flapped loose. The deck shoes and trainers seemed out of place.

      OK. To a fogey.

      Women’s choice of dress at swingers’ parties is, I was to learn, constrained by just one factor which may not be so pressing for others—the ease with which garments may be removed and, rather more important, put back on.

      Although she will strip off to play, a female swinger will then want to rejoin the throng outside the playrooms. Few like to do so totally naked. Intricate lace-up corsets or basques may be popular amongst beginners, but they are therefore rare amongst more experienced players, who generally favour expensive but mechanically simple underwear and dresses.

      Boots and shoes are the exception. Because swinging women tend to wear stockings, they need not remove their intricate and fanciful footwear when they undress. This makes for a delightful but sometimes alarming spectacle. I have often knelt on a mattress with stiletto heels flailing at groin level, their owners blissfully unaware of the nose-cutting, face-spiting dangers that they pose.

      Vanessa—a friend who came down from Warwickshire with her husband, Simon, to stay with us for a swinging weekend—spent an entire Saturday night party itching to join the action. But, having played soon after our arrival, then having had Simon, me and my swing-partner take twenty minutes to lace her up again, could not bring herself to go through the whole laborious process all over again.

      Of course, not every woman feels the need to dress after playing. Some enjoy the freedom of strutting their stuff and wandering about the party unclothed. Many, however, for peculiarly feminine reasons, choose not to be entirely naked. Sally, for example, always wore a thin gold chain around her belly. ‘I can’t explain it. All the bits that I’m meant to be worried about are on show, and it feels great, but that silly little chain just means that I’m wearing something which is mine. Weird, but there it is.’

      Some private parties are—usually unoriginally—themed: Roman Orgy, Tarts and Vicars, Schooldays, Fetish…With very few exceptions, such themes can be ignored. They are opportunities for silliness and aids to playfulness, not requirements.

      There were two couples here who might be in their mid-twenties. There were three who might be in their late forties or early fifties. The average age, however, must be around thirty-five to forty-five. No one here was overweight.

      Neither of us wanted alcohol, so we had brought ten bottles of ginger beer and, as a gauche—considering we were paying £25 admission—contribution to our hosts, a bottle of champagne. These were placed in the fridge in the kitchen. We were led back through the big living room with its balcony overlooking the river, then to the left again, into two bedrooms. Tonight, they were playrooms. The beds took up 90 per cent of the available space.

      We returned to the living room and chatted, first to one of the older couples—she, tall, blonde, tanned, slightly gaunt, in training for the London Marathon, he, shorter, smooth, with slicked-back greying dark hair and a slow, one-sided salesman’s smile. They holidayed at a naturist colony on the Isle of Wight and on their yacht which was moored in Torquay. Next week they were off to a swingers’ resort in Cancun, Mexico.

      Then came a younger foursome—the girls looking mildly ill at ease, the men falsely confident, limber and flash in their brilliant, open-necked shirts.

      Then a girl whom I particularly liked—a dark bob, strong dark features, a long, beautiful body in a swooping black dress with a slit skirt. She was an American academic, her subject the seventeenth-century English stage. He was a banker, but they were not here to play, they said, merely to observe. They had had some experience of the scene in Chicago, but had only heard rumours of the London swing-set. This was their first foray.

      Then a French girl, early thirties, tiny, trim, bright and bumptious—‘Hello, I am the bouncering person. May I have your name please?’—with a remarkably good looking husband—curly brown hair and an athlete’s body. He was an artist—formerly in the British army—she, a mother-of-two…

      But, interesting and congenial though all this was, it was the eyes that did the talking, not merely with those with whom we chatted, but with many others about the room.

      Perhaps it always is. At a straight drinks party too, we appraise with our eyes, approving, dismissing, interested, amused, desiring, but aware that we are likely to meet only a few of those whom we see.

      Eye contact is brief, decorous and frequently broken off out of fear. Just occasionally, our flickering gazes are drawn into a long, lingering, lip-licking maelstrom. Occasionally they are flung back with a mocking moue and a cock of the hips. In general, however, they pass—no doubt noticed but unacknowledged—the loose change of human transactions.

      Here, physical assessments were mirrored, smiles congenially returned. Glances were still fleeting, but they were frankly acknowledged. Later, we would all meet, or at least see one another, without these defensive clothes and manners.

      Time and again at such parties, I have observed a woman amidst the crowd, the ‘cut of whose jib’—as my father would say—pleases me. My glance has passed over her, and has been cursorily, inexpressively returned, but that merest split second longer than would be normal in the vanilla world.

      Initially, I took this for dismissal, but invariably, in the thick of orgiastic action, it has been she who has lain down beside me, she who has crawled across a mattress to suck me when I am going down on another woman, she who has welcomed me into her arms, often, by now, aware of my name.

       5 TIME TO PLAY

      LISA HAD BY NOW HAD enough of conventional socializing. She unbuttoned her shirt, threw it down and languorously danced to the music—now Getz and Gilberto.

      I was frankly nervous. ‘Hey, hang on,’ I said, looking over her shoulder at the impassive gazes of the others. ‘No need to be impatient!’

      She unhooked her skirt. It slithered to the floor. She stepped out of it and kicked it under the sofa. ‘Why not?’ she shrugged. In bra, thong and stockings, she sashayed up to me and linked her fingers at the nape