Skipping Towards Gomorrah (13 page)

“God,” David continued, “
breathed
life into Adam, he didn't give him a glass of water or hand him a sandwich.”

One thing runs through my mind while David talks:
Bill Bennett would eat this shit up
. David and Bridget are devoted to each other, committed to their children, religious, and observant in an open, moving, thoroughly genuine way. What's for a conservative not to like about these two?

The swinging, of course. The parties, the conventions, the extramarital outlets. To Bennett and other one-size-fits-all moral scolds, David and Bridget's faith, their well-behaved boys, the hours they spend volunteering at their synagogue, and their loving, egalitarian relationship won't get them out of the “moral collapse” column on Bill Bennett's good family-bad family ledger.

 

A
fter dinner ended and the boys went back to the basement, I asked David and Bridget if we could talk about swinging. Bridget got up from the table and bent to look down the stairs that lead to the basement. She called down to the boys, telling them they could put a tape in the VCR, and a small cheer went up; television is strictly rationed in this ranch house. Once she was satisfied that the boys couldn't hear us, Bridget returned to the table and nodded.

But I somehow already know the answer to my first question: Do the boys know?

David and Bridget have decided not to tell their kids about their sex lives for the time being—now it's their sex lives and not their “lifestyle.” They certainly weren't going to tell them now, while the boys were so young. They probably would never tell them.

“It's not that we don't talk to our kids about sex,” Bridget said. “We want them to grow up to have healthy attitudes about sex, and we want them to have all the information they need. I've talked to my older son about masturbation. But I don't think we would tell them about this.”

“I look at it this way,” David said. “I wouldn't want to know all the details of my parents' sex life. I mean, if your parents had been swingers, would you want them to tell you about it?”

That's a big, fat no.

“Right,” said David. “So why tell our boys something they would rather not know? We can't really see how it would ever even come up.”

But what if one of the boys heard something about swinging on TV or read something about the lifestyle—his parents' lifestyle—on the Internet and asked them about it?

David and Bridget looked at each other, then back at me. “We would lie,” Bridget whispered—actually, all three of us were whispering. “People say very disparaging things about swingers. It's so countercultural that people have a hard time understanding it. We wouldn't want to tell the boys for some of the same reasons we couldn't tell the neighbors or our rabbi. Swingers are discriminated against, and the way the media portrays swingers is hateful. The public image is that all swingers are sex-crazed lunatics whose lives revolve around sex.”

“People say such hateful things about swingers,” David said. “We spread diseases; we have no self-control. But we're very safe, and a swinging environment is controlled and respectful. But you would only know that if you went to one with an open mind, and you saw that people were using condoms, very cautiously, and that everyone was friendly and respectful of each other.”

Bridget especially hates the idea that wives are forced into swinging by controlling husbands.

“The truth is, most women go to their first party because their husbands want to go,” said Bridget. “And most couples don't do anything at their first party. But it's also true that it's the wives who insist on going to more and more parties. Here's this place where you can be totally sexually free and open in public
and
completely safe at the same time. How many women get to experience that in their lives? And to share that experience with my husband is a joy.”

David and Bridget are quick to admit that they're part of the problem. The myths about their lifestyle will be dispelled only when swingers who don't fit the stereotype come out. Just as potheads with dreads are likelier to be open about smoking marijuana, it's the sex-crazed lunatics whose lives revolve around sex who are likelier to be open about swinging. If couples like David and Bridget never come out, then their rabbis, priests, friends, family, and neighbors will never reexamine their preconceptions about swingers. It's a catch-22: Until the Davids and Bridgets come out, it won't be safe for the Davids and Bridgets to come out.

The nightmare scenario in this catch-22, of course, is that their own children may grow up to believe all the hateful things that are said about swingers—they're sex-crazed lunatics, wives are forced into swinging by controlling husbands, they spread diseases—and then find out their own parents are swingers. All it would take is a club newsletter, a piece of e-mail, an explicit phone message . . .

And it's not just their kids David and Bridget worry about. They were on the dance floor at a club near their home once when someone tapped Bridget on the shoulder.

“I turned around and there was this cousin of mine,” said Bridget. “It was a distant cousin, not someone I knew that well, but I was flipped out. He told David his date thought he was cute, like the four of us should go off somewhere together. That was way too incestuous for me.” They've never returned to the club where they ran into Bridget's cousin.

The club they usually attend is in another Chicago suburb. The club is in a private home, and it's an elaborate setup, with a dance floor, a bar, half a dozen bedrooms, an orgy room, and room for light—very light—bondage and S&M. It sounds like a straight version of a gay bathhouse, but while there are maybe three gay bathhouses in the Chicago area, there are at least nine straight swingers clubs.

David goes up to his office and brings back the newsletter for the club they frequent. There's a party tomorrow night that David and Bridget will be attending. According to the newsletter, I missed a talent contest held at the most recent party. (“You can sing karaoke, do a dance, or strip, or tell jokes—whatever you'd like!”) The newsletter included a list of upcoming theme parties (Back to School, Talent Contest II, Sci-Fi Night, Oktoberfest Party), a list of birthdays of clubs members, some bad clip art, and a funny story someone found on-line about Saint Peter trying to explain the “suburban tribe” to a perplexed God. I assumed the story was about the tribe of suburban swingers who frequent the club but it turned out to be about suburbanites and their
lawns
. On the back of the newsletter were the names and addresses of nine other swingers clubs in the Chicago area, clubs with nudge-nudge names like Private Affairs, Couples Hideaway, Club Adventure.

David and Bridget usually attend two parties a month. David's mother, who lives nearby, baby-sits on those Saturday nights.

“It's her time with the boys, and it's our date night,” said Bridget. “She thinks we're going to dinner and a movie. She's asleep in the guest room when we get come home. We don't bring people home, and no one is the wiser.”

“We are always having to pretend we've seen all these movies we haven't seen,” laughs David. “Mom thinks we see two movies a month, so we're always ‘up' on movies, you know? She calls us from video stores. ‘You saw
Bicentennial Man,
didn't you? Was it good or bad? Should I rent it?' And I have to say, ‘What was that, Mom?
Bicentennial Man?
Uh, two thumbs up, Mom.' ”

They've worked out a system to silently communicate with each other at a club, whether they're on the dance floor or in an orgy room. They make eye contact with each other constantly (“nonverbal checking in”), and if they wind up on opposite sides of the room a tug on the ear means “come back and be with me.” In an orgy room or during a group-grope on the dance floor, three taps on the shoulder or thigh means, “I'm uncomfortable, let's take a break.”

But it's been a long time since they've had to use the three taps.

“We almost never feel uncomfortable,” said Bridget.

“The last time she had to tap me three times was when we ran into her cousin,” said David. “Those three taps just about dislocated my shoulder.”

David and Bridget laughed. We'd moved into the living room, onto the couch, and Bridget was sitting next to David, leaning into him.

“When we're at a party,” David continued, “we'll sometimes look at each other and say, ‘Who has more fun than we do?' Because no one does.” David looked at Bridget. “We've been married ten years, and no couple has more fun than we do.”

“There are times when I'm walking up the block waving to people, and I think, ‘Oh, if the neighbors only knew!' ” Bridget said. “People would be shocked.”

But isn't it possible that some of your neighbors are swingers? Couldn't they be sitting in their living rooms in Buffalo Grove, saying the exact same thing?

“That's possible, that's possible,” David said, his eyes twinkling. “I guess it just goes to show that you can't take people at face value.”

“All people have secrets.” Bridget nodded. “But some people's secrets are more fun.”

The thrill of keeping a secret may be the penultimate reason David and Bridget don't plan on coming out, running a very close second to the disapproval of their friends and family. Like a businessman who gets a secret charge out of wearing panties under his power suit, David and Bridget get a little if-they-only-knew charge when they wave to neighbors. They're a married couple in their forties with one mortgage, two cars, and three kids; they're adults with responsibilities and big-time jobs—and they lie to David's mother about where they've been like a couple of horny teenagers. Twice a month they get to be accomplices and coconspirators, sinning in secret so as not to scandalize their friends, families, neighbors, and rabbi.

“Having a secret is fun. But the important thing is we feel closer as a couple thanks to the parties,” said Bridget. “It puts some extra zest into our sex life, the sex life we share with each other.”

David and Bridget emphasized that they do have a sex life outside of the parties.

“We make love just about every day,” Bridget said, “whether we go to a club or not.”

“There are times when I can't believe how lucky we are,” David said. “She'll be on her knees, kissing another woman, while I'm fucking her from behind—”

David stopped when he saw the startled look on my face. For all the talk about sex, this was the first even remotely graphic thing David or Bridget had said, and I was taken aback. Seeing them going through all the parenting motions that evening—feeding their kids, correcting their kids, running herd on their kids—I had come to see them through the lens that strips known parents of all sexual energy and agency. Despite all the talk about sex and secrets and parties, David and Bridget were a mom and a dad in my mind's eye, not sexual adventurers, and to have David suddenly create a mental image that was so specific and overtly sexual—well, I giggled a little nervously and instinctively looked around for the boys. Our voices had been getting louder and louder after we moved to the couch in the living room. Bridget followed my eyes and then got up and walked over to the top of the stairs, just to make sure the boys were still anesthetized in front of the TV.

“Where I was going was—,” David whispered.

“Try not to shock the sex-advice columnist, honey.”

“—in a normal marriage, if you're attracted to someone else, you can't mention it to your partner. But because we can be honest with each other, we can really share our fantasies and desires, and that brings us closer together. All of my fantasies involve my wife—how many married men can say that?”

I ask them the obvious question, the one that's inevitably put to swingers: Don't they get jealous watching each other mess around with other people?

“Married people who aren't in the lifestyle sometimes get jealous,” Bridget said. “You can't avoid feeling jealous from time to time. All married people are attracted to people they're not married to. It happens to all couples. But we can talk about it. Our feelings of jealousy, they arise because we can be honest with each other about sex in ways that nonswinging couples can't. Being in this environment makes you communicate more, and more honestly, than most couples. We don't have to lie and pretend that we don't find other people attractive.”

Swinging is not for everyone, as all swingers are quick to emphasize. By contrast, according to Bennett, Bork, Buchanan, Dr. Laura, Alan Keyes, et alia, monogamy is for everyone—whether we like it or not. Swinging has allowed David and Bridget to incorporate normal, healthy lust, one of the natural sins, into their marriage. Rather than seeing their attraction to other people pull them away from each other, David and Bridget have made lust something they do together and share and, most important, control and police.

“I don't feel like we're doing anything wrong,” said David. “The Torah says a man should leave his parents and cling to his wife. Well, we've been together for ten years and in the lifestyle for four years, and we're still clinging to each other.”

“This may sound crazy, but what we're doing feels to us like the most natural thing in the world,” said Bridget.

 

A
nd so it is.

This may come as shock to some—David's mother, my mother, the pope in Rome—but humans didn't evolve two-to-a-bungalow. We evolved in sprawling, multigenerational tribes, like apes or hippies, our sex lives messy and communal, with little privacy and no rules. Early humans made it up as they went, since God didn't see fit to deliver the Commandments for the first 37,000 years of our species' existence. (And it was another 1,200 years before he sent his son down for a lynching, Roman-style.) Without Commandments or virtuecrats to tell us what to do—or who to do it to or how often to do it to them—early humans pretty much did whatever they liked. In evolutionary terms, monogamous coupling is a recent development, one that's virtually unheard of in the animal kingdom. The supposed monogamous behavior of certain animals—one kind of primate, a couple of species of birds—turned out, upon closer examination, to be so much wishful thinking on our part.