Swingers' Saga, Part Two

Names have been changed to protect the identity of those mentioned.

The Swingers' Saga continues! If you missed last week's column, here's an update: In a fit of spontaneity, I accepted a reader's invitation to visit a swingers' sex club with him and his girlfriend. Enter: John and Kiki, a hip young Cal couple in their twenties who enjoy having sex with other couples because it "brings them closer together."

Although John and Kiki had prepared me with useful tips ("Don't take your clothes off unless you want to get groped"), I was still incredibly nervous. Fortunately, my friend Jess came along for support. She was silent the whole ride (perhaps preparing herself to not shriek at the site of old man penis). I felt a little guilty for relying on the old peer pressure tactic ("C'monnn, don't be a chicken! Bawk bawk ... "), but I was way too chicken shit to go to a sex club alone.

As we stepped into the club, John and Kiki donned their swinger personas (Kiki rocking a fuck-me electric blue skirt, John trading glasses for contacts-GSIs Gone Wild style). X, the club we visited, is located through a nondescript, darkened doorway in the heart of North Beach. If you haven't been personally sent an invitation, you'd never know it existed. Through their 'couples and single women-only' policy, X keeps the creeper vibe to a minimum. Plastered all over the walls is club etiquette advising patrons of girl's choice (no means no, or we'll kick your ass out!).

The rules on the walls comfortingly remind me of kindergarten classrooms ("No Hitting or Pinching," "Clean Up After Messes!"), so I start to calm down. As John and Kiki warned us, many of the couples there look like spitting images of my parents or grandparents, sporting conservative outfits, pearl necklaces and patent pumps. Others look like crack addicts, skin weathered by the weight of the world, squeezed into body-hugging dresses that were never meant for a 60-year-old. Both types of couple can be found shimmying their hips to hard-hitting hip-hop bass on the dance floor (whaaa?), or (in the case of the crack addict types) flinging themselves wholeheartedly 'round the stripper pole. Jess and I sit inconspicuously in the corner taking it all in, emotions alternating between horrific fascination and total endearment.

There are a few young couples mixed in, and Kiki beelines for the hottest duo. John sits next to us, confiding, "I let her do all the work. She's good at seducing the girl." Sure enough, my jaw drops as previously demure, sweet Kiki transforms into a sex goddess. Every eye in the room is on her when she takes the stripper pole in her mile high heels, hypnotically rolling her hips with the beat. Jess glances my way after 10 minutes of watching this and murmurs, "Oh my God. I'm turned on." All I could say in reply was,"I know. Christ!"

I've seen pornography. I've read erotic novels. I've had spine-tingling, toe curling, wall-rattling sex. And yet, nothing had prepared me for the way it felt to watch Kiki dance for that other couple. After the night was over, Jess and I looked back on this moment and agreed that it was the turning point for us. She was an elegant dancer and had her movements been a little less risque, they would have belonged on a ballet floor just as much as a stripper pole. Jess and I concurred that we felt like we were watching art strangely mixed with sex. It drew us into the heat of the club and made us forget our nerves.

We couldn't keep our eyes off "our couple" (as we began affectionately calling them). John and Kiki had made their move and were slowly experimenting with swapping partners. "No!" Jess and I cried as they kissed the other couple. In all the excitement, we had somehow forgotten the purpose of this club and grown quite attached to the John-Kiki duo. We found it jarring and uncomfortable to see them separated (much the same as a child might feel watching their newly-divorced mother kiss a new man). But we quickly swallowed our sense of betrayal and cheered on Kiki and John's successful seduction of the other, shyer couple. At the same time, we scoped out the others in the room, ranking the most adorable, hottest and funniest pairs on the dance floor. We analyzed their seduction tactics and invented wildly imaginative stories to explain each person's presence at the club.

In short, Jess and I became natural voyeurs in the span of an hour. We stopped thinking about social rules, and abandoned our sense of propriety. I had assumed that being thrust into the sex club environment would be disconcerting, gross or freakish-a realm appropriate only for those of the extremely kinky heart (or loins). But in fact, watching the sex progress felt like quite a natural, if somewhat surreal, situation.

Jess and I would end up wrestling with the significance of our voyeuristic hedonism later. Did the fact that we got turned on watching the action make us weird? Were we now classified in the category of "fetishists," disconnected from the desires of normal people? Is it possible (horror of horrors) that we actually belonged here and were, in fact, harboring secret 'swinger' urges? It may sound superficial, but these are some existentially troubling questions for two individuals who had previously considered themselves ordinary Cal students.

Tune in next week for the final installment of the Swingers' Saga (and the sex you've been waiting for!).