Swinging: The Games Your Neighbours Play. Mark Brendon

on the sun-dappled lawns to smoke and shake and chat.

      ‘Look, I know the rules,’ I said, ‘but I don’t understand them. No “relationships” for at least twelve months, and then only with a potplant. Then an undemanding pet like a hamster, then a dog, and finally another human being…And you say we don’t have to avoid sex? That pot-plant had better be a cactus.’

      Emma intoned it like a catechism response. ‘Sex for its own sake is just using another person to escape from reality…’

      ‘Yes? And? Flying is just an escape from the equally inexorable forces of gravity. It can take you somewhere you want to go, or you can just go for a whirl, land where you took off, and it gives you a thrill and a beautiful view of the world. And if it’s mutual?’

      ‘…and you need to focus on who you are, what you need for happiness, and that must come from inside you. You need to find peace and serenity within yourself.’

      ‘Certainly, but myself is a sexual being. Serene isn’t exactly easy when you’re shaking with longing every time you see a frolicsome sheep.’

      ‘Hey, no! I’m not expecting you to be totally celibate…’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘…but only on the strict condition that you don’t give the other person power over your contentment or emotional stability. Your life depends upon that.’

      ‘I know that. I realise that,’ I nodded. ‘But listen, Em. I still want to share large aspects of my life. I want affection and adventure and flirtation. I want freedom. Are you saying I should just be a brutal, uncaring exploiter, then? Hurting others who expect more of me? Love ’em and leave ’em, and to hell with the consequences? Is that how you ensure the next generation of patients here?’

      ‘No, of course not,’ she smiled indulgently.

      ‘So, sex but no relationships? Which means—what? Whores?’

      ‘No!’ She reconsidered. She gulped. ‘Well, maybe. Possibly. But that can leave you feeling lonely and degraded. Just someone strong and not needy…’

      ‘I turn gay, then?’

      ‘That’s not fair.’ Her lips writhed. She did unnecessary things with papers and smiled. ‘Look, Mark, there are many people of both genders who can give love without sex and can share sex without regarding it as proof of ownership or allowing it to become a replacement obsession. It shouldn’t be such a big deal for you…You must never allow it to take the place of your Higher Power.’

      ‘Frustrated desire is far more likely to do that,’ I told her. ‘Not desire for sex, as such, but desire for the warmth, the closeness, the laughter, the excitement…’

      ‘Precisely,’ she said, as if it meant or proved anything. ‘The excitement…’ She leaned across the desk and laid a hand on my forearm. ‘It’s all right,’ she added, ‘you’ll work it out.’

       5 ‘NONE OF US WANTED OWNERSHIP…’

      TWO MONTHS LATER, I was living sober and alone in a Somerset country cottage with a greyhound and sixteen laying hens. I was still no closer to working it out.

      I shared my counsellor’s views on dependent, grasping, vampiric relationships. I did not want to feign love or, ever again, to feel that my happiness depended entirely upon that of another human being, or vice versa.

      But neither did I want casual sex with strangers or—still worse—friends, and the resultant feelings of waste and emptiness.

      I had tried it, of course, since I had been sober. It is not hard today to find another pair of eyes in which needs—for validation, for comfort, for adventure, for belief—glimmer as they circle just beneath the bright surface sparkle.

      Six such pairs of eyes, then, had gazed up at mine from my groin and had rolled upward into momentary unconsciousness as their owners knelt or splayed like starfish beneath me.

      Two of these women had husbands, which was ideal, but one of them was already talking about leaving her husband—not to move in with me, of course. That would be far too gauche for a modern girl. No, but flats in town were hard to find. Maybe she could find somewhere just down the road from me…

      As for the remainder, two had left earrings on the first night, one her ‘special’ knickers. This merely demonstrated touching fidelity to convention.

      I too had never wanted one-night stands, nor regarded sex as so rare as to be desirable in itself. We were all agreed, then. But in that case, given that we wanted neither casual sex nor exclusivity and dependence, just what did we want?

      Well, I wanted to give each of them a key to my house so that she could turn up when she felt like it, sit and read or listen to music, slip into bed beside me when she wanted a chat, a cuddle or a fuck. I wanted a best friend who loved every part of me.

      I liked it when they cleaned my kitchen or changed the bed-linen in my absence. I loved it when they made friends with my dog. Did each such intimacy mean that I must further cut myself off from them because I was forced to deceive? What if two of them turned up on the same night? Must I then scamper around like the asinine husband of French farce, keeping them apart and hiding evidence? Must I conceal from each a large part of my nature and my life?

      And they too did not want—well, maybe the jewellery shop manageress who gradually colonised my drawers with her clothes did, but more by reflex than reason—to live happily ever after with me and to bear my children. They did not want me questioning them as to where they had been and what they had done with whom.

      None of us wanted ownership, but we all valued affection and courtesy and did not want to cause hurt. On the other hand, we were all sexually active and desirous and had—whatever this may mean—a great need to give and to share love. We craved adventure. We needed to explore other human territories. We wanted the freedom, the sanction, the blessing afforded by the acceptance of ourselves naked, unguarded, needy and wild.

      I would never marry again. I was pretty sure of that. I doubted, even, that I would ever live with anyone in the long term. I would spend a great deal of my life alone. Once I could cope with the reflex temptations to drink, I would no doubt venture down to the pub to sit sober and hope to fascinate or meet people through my work, and form transitory attachments.

      At times, she—whoever she might be—would become more dependent and demanding than I could stand, and the relationship would founder amidst grief and recriminations. At times, through weakness or chivalry, I would encourage such dependence, only to check myself and arduously to unravel the knots that I had so laboriously tied.

      There would, I supposed, be occasional prostitutes. This, too, would be a moral choice. I would opt for any halfway house which would acknowledge my nature yet obviate needless damage to myself or to others.

      It was not an exciting prospect, but it was all that I could allow myself.

      But at that point—one grey, rain-spangled morning—the gods took a kindly hand.

       6 A WHORE AND A VAGABOND

      LISA WAS 36 AT THE TIME.

      She was a whore and a vagabond.

      She was also, amongst other things, an occasional psychiatric nurse, a registered childminder and a very good guitarist. She lived for the most part in a bright yellow Bedford van.

      She was part Romany on her mother’s side, gorgio on her father’s, with a sizeable slug of Afro-Caribbean in the mix. This made her hair black, lustrous and curly and her skin the colour of wet sand and silkier than any other I have ever encountered.

      Her father was a non-conformist