Читать книгу Swinging: The Games Your Neighbours Play - Mark Brendon - Страница 20

NOT ONLY, THEN, DID SWINGING SEEM to be safe and at worst morally neutral, but, according to Lisa, swingers enjoyed their hobby only subject to strict rules.

Sir Francis Dashwood and his consciously rebellious, debauched friends in the Hellfire Club borrowed as the motto for their orgies Rabelais’s ‘Fay Ce Que Vouldra’ or ‘Do what you will’.

Such anarchy, it seemed, is far removed from the ethos of modern swinging.

Dashwood’s blasphemous orgies were fuelled (like their religious predecessors) by alcohol, drugs and incantation, and most of its female participants were prostitutes. But drunkenness is almost unknown at swingers’ parties, drugs—but for the odd joint out in the garden—are strictly forbidden, and working girls attend—if at all—only for a busman’s holiday.

‘They’re just straight social occasions,’ Lisa shrugged. ‘Meetings, greetings, gossip…Aside from the playrooms—and okay, the sometimes crazy, OTT costumes—the only thing that distinguishes them from vanilla drinks parties is the ease with which subjects that most people think of as threatening or difficult are openly discussed.”

She was right there. Swingers’ conversation can seem startling when written down. Overheard from last night: ‘We really wanted to play with them but I got my period the very evening we arrived…’ ‘Oh, yes, we played with them—when was it, darling? Couple of months ago? That cock is terrifying!’ ‘Silly sod got so excited he came all over this new dress. I was like, “Oh, that’s good…No! Help! Christ!”, diving behind the sofa for cover. I could have killed him.’ But when you hear it, it’s so easy, so unaffected, so untainted by exhibitionism or connivance, that it might as well be fellow-golfers talking about courses.

‘The thing I love is that there’s no hidden sexual agenda here,’ Annabel told me. ‘Just for once, men and women, in front of their partners, can touch, kiss or express appreciation of other people without causing jealousy, or having to hide their sexual feelings beneath banter or allusion.

‘Swinging couples might enjoy a conversation and become friends but never consider having sex, or they could reject one another’s proposals of sex without causing any resentment.’

‘You’ll enjoy it,’ said Lisa. ‘Stop fussing. It’s just good, clean fun…’ And then, when I raised my eyebrows, she added, ‘Yeah, well, it is clean. It’s uncluttered and untainted by all the world’s usual prejudices, fears and emotional complications.

‘It’s clean (and, okay, mucky) like rugby is clean—and battle is anything but. Swingers play just like children do—no expectations, inhibitions, imposed responsibilities, status. Even stereotypical sexual identities—gay, bi, straight, sub, dom, etc.—go by the board really. You just frolic in a fantasy world.

‘The reason the story of the Fall works so well is that we all do it, we all feel it,’ Lisa went on. ‘So, like at puberty, we taste forbidden fruit and are chucked out of Eden, and from then on we’re meant to be tainted and guilty. Whole areas of our bodies are taboo. All physical play from say thirteen onwards has to be cautious and inhibited, especially nowadays when the law has a mind as dirty as any perv. If it does inspire sexual response, we’re meant to feel ashamed.

‘So swingers, like us, think, “Hang on. I was born naked in Eden, wasn’t I? A naked princess in Eden. It’s my birthright. Why should my natural sexuality debar me? What jumped up arsehole says so?” As far as we’re concerned, it was the shame, not the tasting, that was the original sin. We aim to take our sexuality back into Eden, say “Fuck you” to those who don’t like it, and frolic and play proudly just like when we were children.

‘And everywhere else, it’s sort of adult concerns that decide who you fuck, like money, social background and how they’re dressed and…This is sex as a game, not a lasting social commitment. So you play with people of all backgrounds, people you might have nothing in common with in other circumstances, but here you’re united by just humanity, sensuality and acceptance of both in others. You don’t enquire into their race, wealth or social rank, just, “Is he or she fanciable and will he or she give a lot and have a laugh?”’

Caroline, 42, an estate agent acquaintance of Lisa’s, agreed. ‘God, the number of men and women I’ve seen in my life and I’ve thought, “Ooh, I’d do them if only it weren’t for their table-manners, or way of talking, or the idea of finding them there in the morning!”

‘But in the Lifestyle, all that goes out of the window. You can play with them because you’re both raunchy and they are pretty and have nice smiles, and it can be beautiful and warm and affectionate and—“Thanks, love, that was great and bye, bye”. No need to worry about anything else.

‘You go to a party. The welcome’s always warm. The jokes are uninhibited. Everyone’s kind and affectionate. And when the game is over, swingers go back to their normal, everyday identities and duties.’

Much is made today of avoidance of commitment. ‘He (or, less commonly, she) is afraid of commitment’ is generally used as an insult. It is seldom considered that avoidance of commitment might actually be desirable, intelligent and considerate, and that more grief is caused by commitments irresponsibly made—or assumed to be made—on the grounds of sexual attraction, than was ever caused by sex for its own sake.

‘Swingers can be attracted, have sex with someone and move on,’ said Lisa, ‘or, after sex, become their close friends, where everywhere else, relationships seem to be ordained simply by the fact of sex, whether it be good, bad or indifferent, and all the expectations and obligations, affections or guilty animosities arising from that fact.’

Swingers almost invariably refer to their hobby as ‘playing’. It is a word well chosen. War is dangerous and has many casualties. We therefore play games on sports fields in order to indulge the impulses which give rise to—and which spring from—war, but we play them only in public and subject to strict rules.

Swinging (and sex too has many casualties) seems to be playing in the same sense. Just as rugby players hate one another only during the game and then afterwards retire to the bar for a drink, just as children desire the deaths of their enemies as they fire their fingers at them, then go home to share jellies and to pass-the-parcel, so—as Stevie Nicks relates—‘Players only love you when they’re playing.’

Afterwards, although the shared experience creates a bond, swingers return to their other lives and responsibilities.

‘The other frustrated fantasists indulging their whims are just playing unregulated war-games with real weapons,’ said Caroline, ‘and real weapons tend to have lives of their own and to fulfil their natures despite all the best intentions of those brandishing them.’

All in all—and yes, I acknowledge that I wanted to think thus, but this made it harder, not easier to believe—I really could not discern a single reason why I should not give swinging a whirl.

Lisa had been growing increasingly frustrated with me as I questioned all and sundry as to their views.

Now I yielded. ‘OK,’ I announced. ‘I want this. Let’s do it.’