Читать книгу Swinging: The Games Your Neighbours Play - Mark Brendon - Страница 17

AGAIN AND AGAIN, I was to discover that it was not the circumstances or the consequences of sex but simply sex itself (or rather sexual pleasure; dutiful, wearisome sex appeared immune from censure) that was associated with immorality.

This is no doubt the legacy at once of the notion that sex invariably means penetration and ejaculation, and so conception, and of the infantile conflation of inaccessibility or prohibition and naughtiness.

The former was irrelevant. It seemed to me that the true moralist (I speak here not of the sorry fantasist who would construct morality for humans upon the premiss that we might or should be insubstantial spirit, but rather of him who would work human clay to its finest forms) should be concerned with the means whereby sex might best be enjoyed and celebrated without doing harm—not with its denial.

As for the latter, whilst all play is of its nature ‘naughty’—irresponsible, daring, frivolous, ‘ludicrous’—I was no more willing to consider the greatest of all sensual pleasures and of inspirations to poetry and art a smutty, degenerate pastime, because of childish misunderstanding and fear, than I was about to devote half the Christmas budget to rebuilding the chimney for Santa.

Lisa, who parked her wagon in a field 500 yards away on her visits, sometimes watched daytime television. One day, we saw a singularly ugly woman there. She was, of course, relating the tales of her misfortunes. She said that she had once made a living as a ‘clip artist’—one who posed as a prostitute, took a fee in advance from would-be clients, then ran away, providing no service in exchange for her fee.

‘Of course, I wasn’t going to do them,’ she said smugly. ‘I never lost my morals. I got my self-respect.’

This preposterous assertion passed unchallenged. Her listeners nodded. There was even a patter of applause.

Here was a woman avowing that she had been an exploitative cheat and thief, occasioning untold distress to those who had entered into a contract with her in good faith. Yet she regarded herself as morally acceptable (and, by implication, honest prostitutes who rendered service in exchange for a fee as ‘immoral’) and retained ‘self-respect’ because her sorry genitals had remained inviolate.

That is how far we have sunk into the association of ‘morality’ with a peculiar, proscriptive notion of sexual probity.

If Mother Theresa had had a penchant for occasional adventures involving bondage or multiple partners, she would, de facto, have been irredeemably ‘immoral’. If a liar and cheat who has contributed nothing to the total of human happiness professes herself sexually useless, she is thereby redeemed.

Many newspapers have so far profited from this absurd conflation that they regularly ‘expose’ people’s harmless consensual sexual practices, so causing irreparable hurt to their families and friends, whilst purporting to perform a ‘moral’ function. Sex is ‘immoral’, so victimisation and intrusion assume the guise of morality.

Worse still, on the dubious principle that he who renounces pleasure is de facto morally superior to others (whence the respect afforded to vegetarians and ascetic but useless saints), any man—and most certainly any woman—who acknowledges enjoyment of sex without conventional sanction thereby loses credibility.

So far as I can now discern from three years’ experience, there is little that can be branded ‘immoral’ in contemporary swinging.

‘Amoral’ is quite another matter, but the word presupposes that all sex should, of its nature and regardless of context, be a moral matter.

Where there are resultant attachments and obligations involved, so, of course, it is. Where, however, we are talking about strangers pursuing mutual pleasure and explicitly committed to remaining unattached—at least to one another—to contraception, to courtesy and to safe sex, this is not so obvious.

Remove from sex the grave consequences which made it a lifechanging, life-creating, life-destroying act. Separate it from the emotions and obligations inevitably surrounding such an act. Can we then enjoy it for itself as a life-asserting, liberating, ecstatic, communicative and companionable experience?

A glance at many of the world’s societies, at our primate cousins and at our own people in youth, shows that many—if not all of us—can and do. The concept of sex as ‘sacred’ and exclusive is neither essential nor instinctive, but merely the product of social constructs and consequent economic necessities.

Many of those constructs still remain in law and in tabloid morality, and, of course, in much of our literature and our customs. Over the past fifty years, however, with contraception reliable and women financially empowered, the circus wagons appear to have broken down and the more spirited animals have broken out of their cages and run on, often confused and scared (sometimes even savage) ahead.

Again this is not to question the potential for sex to express a very particular love and commitment, nor to deny the value of such commitments. Both are fundamental tenets of swingers’ ethics. We are all surely aware, however, that this is not sex’s sole function.

Unlike much of the routine sex of conventional marriage and relationships founded upon convenience or personal advantage unrelated to sexual desire (curious, that the people who most fervently sing of the searing flame of romantic love as the sole justification for sex are also the principal champions of dutiful contentment amidst its clinker), swinging sex is always desired by both or all parties.

Emancipated woman has broken free of lifelong hire-purchase whoredom. Her transition to sensuous wantonness by choice—to anything by choice—is surely desirable.

Unlike the ‘love’ affairs that break up politicians’ families, yet mysteriously win the sympathy of otherwise censorious tabloids because ‘love’ is posited, swingers’ long-term relationships tend to be stable and their adventures—if gregarious—courteous and discreet. Swingers’ children, business-partners and ‘straight’ friends generally remain unaware of their hobby.

Unlike the febrile fumblings and jerkings of teenage clubbers, swinging has strictly enforced protocols ensuring mutual respect and sexual hygiene.

Unlike the commonplace and grotesque parade/charades of winebars and drinks parties, there is no ambivalence or deception in swingers’ seduction, little chance of one partner expecting romance or commitment whilst the other is driven only by sexual urges. The ambiguities and the power-struggles that characterise one-on-one sexual relationships are renounced by swingers, to whom explicitness and mutuality are prerequisites.

It was easy enough for me, as a liberally educated countryman, to accept sex as a gift of the gods and not, of its nature, ugly or immoral. I was surprised, however, to find not a single utilitarian objection to swinging vis à vis its more conventional vanilla alternatives.