Читать книгу Swinging: The Games Your Neighbours Play - Mark Brendon - Страница 7

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.