Isn’t that from Wayne’s World? “Sch-wing, batter, batter. Sch-wing!” Hmm. Actually it’s from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Anyway, today’s blog has nothing to do with random comedies that inspired my sense of humor and influence how I spend my leisure days (btw-Day 2 of my vacation was great. I streaked my hair blond and listened to Stevie all daggone day, even on the treadmill.) We’re here today to discuss swinging. A frequent reader and friend hit me from his beachside vacation to ask me to broach the subject. I’m not sure if he’s swinging or not, but frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if he did. Ha!
A few fun facts:
*20% of married American couples swing
*Most swingers are in their late 20s to late 30s
So a couple week’s back I talked to a woman who runs a swing set in the Windy City. This is her story (in summary.)
She, 30ish now, was married to man who thought she was a wifey-type, a typical Madonna, who enjoyed nice, regular sex in the three standard positions. That wasn’t quite the case. But she’d married young and she didn’t know how to tell her husband that she was more into kink than cuddle. She had missionary, sighing, I-love-you-so-much sex until she couldn’t take it anymore and then they got divorced (this is the short version of the story that she gave . I imagine there are many reasons she didn’t go into.)
Post-divorce, she took a trip to Jamaica with her girlfriends to the notorious Hedonism resort. She was interested in the nude side, but decided to book a room on the side with clothes. She wasn’t ready for ‘alla dat.’ After a couple days and a couple drinks, she and the girls ventured over to the ”other side.” Everyone was fucking—just out in the open. Oral by the pool. Sixty-nine in the sand. Doggystyle in the ocean. They weren’t worried about what they looked like, they were only concerned about how much pleasure they could give and receive. And they didn’t care who was watching. She looked around and decided these folk were her type of people.
That was her turning point. When she got back to the states, she decided to let her freak flag fly. She got a side hustle as a phone sex operator and then she started selling lube and dildos and edible undies to all her girlfriends at passion parties. And then she, a single woman, decided to get into sch-winging.
She heard about a party in the ‘burbs of Chi-Town and headed there. It was wack. A whole bunch of white people and the music was bad. You see the thing about these swing parties isn’t just the sex. I mean the sex is what makes it different from the club, but it’s an actual party too. You pay your money ($10 or free admission for single ladies, $60 for couples and single gentlemen) and most of them are BYOB and there’s a deejay, and a buffet. And so you may meet a strange couple or a pair of old friends, and you might talk, and if you’re feeling one of them and he (or she) is feeling you, then you go in a separate room and do what ya’ll both came to do. (This is the version of events for a single woman who attends swing parties, which are populated by committed couples looking for new adventures with other folk.) Well, the atmosphere was wrong and there was no one she wanted to do and so she left.
She kept searching for a set that was more her speed and in time, she found what she was looking for-- upwardly mobile, Black bourgeoisie types with double-degrees and “good jobs” who knew how to two-step and liked to fuck outside-the-box just as much as she did. She was the single chick with whom a bunch of couples sch-wung until she happened upon an unattached man, a legend of the Chi swinger's set named Long Legeged Lou. (He wasn't called that just because he was tall.)
The first time she met L- Cubed, he asked if she wanted to party, code for "wanna fuck?" She did, but she turned him down. He was fine (choclate, bald, and built), but she didn't know what to make of him. She did know she wanted more than just d-i-c-k from L-o-u.
When she ran into him again at another party; she took him up on his offer. The sex was great, but she couldn't figure out why he was kissing her in the mouth while they were doing it. That's reserved for like real couples. And they weren't a couple, or even friends; they were just two strangers fucking. So why the intimacy?
(A quick word: at each swinging venue there are rooms for people who want to have sex. They're all in there together. There's also a ladies' only room for the women who want to get down with each other without men watching.)
L-Cubed asked her out when they were done and a week later they went on a date. They hit it off well and soon they were a couple who sch-wang approximately 5x a week. They liked to fuck. A lot. But there were rules to this shit. She couldn’t have sex with anyone else unless L-Cubed was watching. And L-Ccubed couldn’t put his mouth on nobody's kitty but hers.
Give or take a year later, and they're engaged now and thinking about cutting back to sch-wanging twice a month after the wedding. She thinks this will be a challenge, especially since last May they went into business together running their own couples-swing set on the third Saturday of every month. (They also do singles'‘ nights. But that’s not really swinging. That’s just going to the club to have sex, which is another story.)
I couldn't get a number out of her, but she said managing a swing set was very lucrative. So much so that her whole lifestyle got a major upgrade and she had to explain to her parents what she did lest they think she was into illegal activity. Oddly enough, they weren't as shocked as she thought they'd be. (For people with secrets, most folks whose opinions you care about already have an inkling of who you are and what you do when you think no one's watching. I've had three people come out to me. My response was something like "pass the salt." I'd known for at least 5+ years with each one. I was waiting on them to come to terms with it.)
She can't think of anything bad about swinging. Really, it's the best of both worlds-- the security and comfort of a relationship and the variety of different partners with her partner's approval. It’s like being single, but not being alone. However, there was this one time at her party where two couples swapped, the condom broke, and the woman got pregnant. The four of them had to decide whether or not to keep the baby. But stuff like that is rare. (When I talked to her, she didn't know if a decision had been reached on whether to keep the child.) There was another incident when a swinging couple divorced and the guy brought his new chick to the spot and his ex-wife was there, but that could happen at the Cheesecake on Michigan Avenue or anywhere so you can't blame swinging for that. And there have been no STD or HIV scares that she knew of. Everyone uses condoms. They’re mandatory and in plentiful supply everywhere at every place she’s ever been to and especially the place she operates.
Sometimes she and Lou-Cubed get jealous of eachother. For instance, he might sex a white chick with long flowing locks and she’ll notice how he played in her hair so much. She’ll tease him about her getting a long, silky weave since he liked all that pretty hair so much. And sometimes he takes note of how she moans for another man and wonders outloud why she doesn’t do that for him. But that’s the only drawback—and it’s minor in comparison to the joy they receive sch-wanging. It's just sex when they fuck others. Wht's the big deal? It has no meaning and no emotion. It's just a physical act that people assign to much meaning to. When she and Lou-Cubed have sex, they're making love. There’s a difference, you know?
She knows it's not for everyone and she doesn't expect everyone to understand and she's not trying to convince anybody to do what she does. But she does want folks to know that she is grown and very happy with her life, her lifestyle and her man.
The End
Discuss.
**For all the people who hit me with ideas at abelleinbrooklyn@gmail.com, I got em and if I haven't covered the topic previously on this site, I'm on it. Some take more research than others.