My Favorite Moment at a Swinger’s Club Wasn’t Sexual
Helping another woman love her body the way it is made my night
The woman stood in the bathroom, tilting her head to the side and examining her reflection. Her glossy brown hair flowed to her shoulders, left bare by the spaghetti straps of her zebra-print dress. She’d walked into the club in jeans and a sweater and was changing in the restroom as many swinger-ladies do — it’s hard to explain a fishnet body stocking to a babysitter.
“You look great,” I smiled at her.
“Uh, thanks. I’m not sure whether to leave my jeans on under the dress or take them off. It’s pretty short.”
“Isn’t that the point? This is a swinger’s club. No one is going to tell you your skirt is too short,” I pointed out.
“That’s easy for you to say, you’re a tiny person. I’ve had three kids, and my body is not at all like yours.”
I considered her statement for a moment. I’m currently a size four and have maintained that for a few years, but I’ve been every size between two and 14. After my most recent child was born, the meds I was on for postpartum depression only made me gain more weight. I had been where this woman was — evaluating the size of my hips or midsection and comparing it to smaller women everywhere.
I did something I never thought I would.
I lifted the hem of my blue minidress and showed this woman the stretch marks from my first pregnancy. Like 8 out of 10 women who go through pregnancy, I have tiger stripes from navel to mid-thigh. The universe thinks it is funny to give women who are 5'2" ten-pound babies.
“Wear the dress, lose the jeans. You look hot,” I dropped my dress and walked into the stall.
For nearly a decade, I tried to cover my tiger stripes with skirted bathing suits, long shorts, and all other types of nonsense. Even with visible abs, I was never able to wear the flesh revealing bits of fabric I coveted on the beaches. It wasn’t until the first time I swung around a stripper pole in nothing but a thong that I realized no one focused on my stretch marks except me
Women are their worst critics, and this woman was standing in a bathroom, being completely vulnerable with me about her insecurities. I wanted to let her know that I saw her, that she was enough, and that we all stand in front of a mirror and criticize ourselves sometimes — even though we shouldn’t.
Later that evening, I was lying back, enjoying the pleasure Hubby bestowed upon me, and the woman from the bathroom wandered up to me with her husband.
“Thank you so much. This was our first time here, and you gave me the confidence boost I needed,” this time my new friend had shed not only the jeans but her slinky dress as well.
She went from judging her reflection in the mirror to walking around as naked as the day she was born.
Sure, non-monogamy and swinging are about lust, love, sex, and flirtation — but they are also about relationships, and connecting in all the ways that make us human.
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