Swinging: The Games Your Neighbours Play. Mark Brendon

or moaning. Behind them again, against the wall, clothed couples stood watching, the men’s arms hanging limply over the women’s shoulders, the women occasionally moving to raise their lips like nymphing trout to kiss their men.

      One woman was squatting on the carpet at my right. Her head bobbed to and fro at the groins of two men who stood upright against the wall. Her eyes, however, constantly swivelled to the scene at the centre of the room.

      It was all really quite pleasant and, by most standards I think, interesting.

      Christy pulled herself away from this Steve and rolled onto her back. She grinned up at me again, then pulled herself down the bed until her arse was on the very edge and her feet on the carpet. She vanished from my sight. A moment later her hair, then her nose, pushed at my testicles. Her mouth was warm and wet.

      Steve had obviously followed her, because I felt her head banged rhythmically against the blonde girl’s groin.

      I moaned, I suppose.

      A quavering male voice close at hand bleated, ‘Er, darling…?’

      Christy withdrew her head from between my legs. It was cold without her there.

      The man who addressed us wore a grey shirt, fawn chinos and carpet slippers. His hair was white, his face soft and pink. He fingered the gold-rimmed spectacles that hung beneath his chest.

      Bending down in front of me, he crossly addressed Laurie’s stomach and shaven pubis, which now slithered back and forth, a couple of feet away from his face—much closer to his wife’s. ‘Darling? Darling? Look, we really must be going. It’s half-past one. The sitter…’

      Laurie politely raised her crotch and propped herself up on one leg so that the blonde woman could speak.

      She raised her head a few inches. Her lower face gleamed. She licked her lips. ‘Oh, come on, Roger,’ she said. ‘Give us a break. Oh, yeah…’ she creaked at me. ‘No, don’t stop, hun…’ Her eyes shifted back to her husband. ‘I mean, fuck the sitter. I am not going ’til these guys have come.’

      She pulled her right arm back through Laurie’s legs, hooked it around her thigh and, with a deep laugh and an imperious ‘Bring that thing back, darling…’ pulled her back down on her.

      Roger took a step backward. He sighed. ‘It’s always the same,’ he told me with a shrug and a flap. ‘I mean, it’s alright for you guys, but some of us have to work.’

      I leaned forward on my hands. ‘I know,’ I panted sympathetically as my cock slid in and out of his wife. ‘Still—oh, yes—you’ll be able to have a lie-in tomorrow, won’t you?’

      ‘Me? Lie-in? Ha! Forget it. I’ve got to take Tom to cricket, then I’m meant to be driving in a road-race in Devon. And I have to be up at seven on Monday morning to get to work. And the bloody sitter charges double time after midnight.’

      My lips were working as I tried to stop myself from laughing.

      This was swinging for you. Middle-class concerns with children and domestic budgets in amongst the groans and yelps of orgiasts.

      ‘Yes,’ I said sympathetically. ‘Wish I could get that sort of money for sitting on my arse…doing…mmm…nothing…’

      Roger nodded. He had found a friend. ‘Well, do be as quick as you can, will you?’ he said. ‘If she lets you…’

      I nodded obediently.

      Roger shuffled away towards the door. ‘Oh, and Karen!’ he turned and raised his voice. He spoke very slowly, as though to a very old foreigner. ‘I’ve got your bag, OK? And your shoes are outside the dark room.’ He shook his head sorrowfully, and told me, ‘She’s always losing things…’

      As he shuffled from the room, Christy allowed a giggle to bubble up. She knelt up at my shoulder so that I felt her pussy damp and hot against my buttocks. Her fingers plucked at my nipples. ‘Come on, darling,’ she croaked in my ear. ‘For heaven’s sake, think about the sitter…’

      Laurie’s hand reached out for mine and clasped it. She grit her teeth. Beneath her, Karen said, ‘Hmmff,’ and burbled. Christy and I laughed and kissed. Laurie leaned forward. Her tongue joined ours and slithered around them. Her eyes sparkled, so I kissed them too.

      Group hug, only naked and interlinked by tongues and genitals. We were all four united in playful naughtiness and companionship. In that moment, surely, we loved one another.

       2 TAMING LUST

      TO DATE ALMOST ALL the books and articles about swinging have been written by panting ‘vanillas’ (as non-swingers are known) alternately—or sometimes simultaneously—drooling and expressing disapproval.

      Theirs is surely the most disreputable form of journalism. Peeking in, urging on those observed, picking out the saleable or sensational aspects of its subjects’ activities, then retreating to don an enemy padre’s uniform.

      This book’s purpose is not to titillate—or, at least, not directly. If it opens up new prospects and inspires individuals or couples to conjure their own fantasies and make their own plans for sexual adventure, I am delighted. But it features few detailed accounts of sex, and studiously avoids the lyrical when it does so.

      I include the mundane little memoir of last night because, commonplace though it is, it summarises much of what swinging is about. There is the sensuality, of course, and the curiosity as to the sexuality of others. There are the senses of adventure and community and, perhaps above all, the affectionate playfulness…

      It also typifies the essential conventionality of swingers.

      Swingers by definition respect the sanctity—or, at least, the value—of secure, enduring marriage or partnership, and the requirements of children. They do not have extra-marital affairs, nor allow their emotions to be influenced by their sexual needs by falling ‘in love’ with their secretaries, gardeners, colleagues, personal trainers, spouse’s best friends or children’s schoolfellows, to the peril of their homes and their children’s welfare.

      They recognise, however, that the extended family has gone, the nuclear family couple is insufficient to meet their emotional and sexual needs, and the active sex-life-expectancy has been enormously prolonged over the past two centuries. For those reasons they cannot find all the adventure, interest and passion they require in one person, who inevitably has distinct needs and develops at a different pace from themselves.

      They therefore seek mutuality in shared sexual adventures.

      Let’s face it: it is a lot more amusing, convivial and revealing than, say, golf or fishing. And, while these have in large measure been gender-specific distractions—or refuges—from hearth and home, swinging is by definition a cross-gender and wholly mutual diversion.

      It takes lust—the wolf that snuffles and growls at the door of every marital home—tames it, and brings it into the house as an amusing and stimulating pet.

      To the seeker of pornography, those four or five bodies intertwined on the bed last night were merely performing an undifferentiated thing called sex. For those bodies’ owners, however, it was a celebration of one another, of the infinite variety of human responses and sensuous experience, and of their own strength, vivacity and beauty within that fleeting moment.

      And it was without recrimination or cost—except for babysitting fees.

      It was loving, laughing and irresponsible.

      It was play.

       3 IT IS EVERYWHERE

      SHOW ME AN URBAN TERRACE, suburban close or sleepy village, and I will show you swingers. In every