‘The Tums Miracle,’ ‘Five Guys,’ and other first-time swinging adventures
Sexual non-monogamy is fun and exciting, but is there room for everyone on the swing set?
Editor’s note: If you’re in Houston, like myself and about half of our writing staff, be advised that the club that Summer Lovin mentions first, Collette’s, has a Houston (and Dallas and Austin) location.
It was our first out-of-town trip together. I was 22, Adam* was 24, and we had been dating for just a few months. We drove more than nine hours from our mid-sized Tennessee city to our hotel in New Orleans. When we woke up the next morning, we filled up on seafood and to-go hurricanes before meeting a friend for some beignets. Adam bought a charcoal sketch of Robert Johnson from a street artist, and we each paid too much for red hats. All indications would seem to point to an ordinary tourist trip to The Big Easy: soaking up the food, music and chilly October breeze.
But as the sun started to set, we got quiet and nervous, unsure if we would find everything we were looking for in the unmarked building downtown. It was true that I had always wanted to visit New Orleans, but what had ultimately drawn us here instead of anywhere else was a Google search for swingers’ clubs across the Southeast region. As you can imagine, they were few and far between.
I got lucky when I met Adam. On our first date, we had disclosed that we were both bisexual, and in a very short time, we developed a very open sexual relationship. We shared a lot of the same kinks and were open to trying new things. Although we agreed that we wanted to be romantically monogamous, we were both excited about the idea of inviting other sexual partners of any and all genders into the mix.
A couple months in, we started searching for a hookup app like Tinder that would facilitate threesomes or group sex. We eventually landed on Feeld. The app met most of our qualifications, but it was buggy and poorly designed.** Worst of all, though, we could not find what we were looking for. We were both most interested in the idea of Adam hooking up with a guy, but most men on Feeld were only looking for “FFM.” Even if we were willing to compromise a bit, most of our matches on Feeld flaked or sent unsolicited dick pics. We were having no luck finding other people to fuck online, so we started looking elsewhere.
I’m not sure how we started the conversation about swinging, but our first tastes of it were not promising. According to Google, the only swingers’ gathering in our area was periodically held in a seedy hotel off the interstate a few towns over. There was hardly any information available online except for a vague email address, and they never responded to our request for more information. We expanded our search to the rest of the Southeast, looking for clubs in Nashville, Atlanta and Asheville. It took us a while to figure out the correct keywords; swingers’ clubs were coded in language like “the lifestyle,” “open-minded,” “friendship,” or “social club.” When we eventually stumbled onto some official websites, we found that they all resembled the 2006 Myspace page of a goth kid. (Seriously, I’m not sure why all swingers’ club websites have a black background and neon fonts.) The sites made us feel a bit better, listing information about themed nights and prices, as well as tours for newcomers. After selecting a destination (NOLA) and corresponding with the club, we packed up our condoms, lube and lingerie, and we hit the road.
It felt like we were doing something incredibly illicit as we carried a backpack of sex supplies down the streets of downtown New Orleans looking for an unmarked building to jump out at us and say, “Hey! Sex here!”
To our surprise, however, the club was relatively easy to find; it was exactly where the website had said it was, and a security guard was waiting outside in a suit. At first he looked large and intimidating, but he surprised us with his friendly introduction. He laughed and made small talk with us as he opened the door, ushering us into our first experience with The Lifestyle.
As someone with a background in sexual health, I was extremely impressed with our introduction to the club, Collette’s. Two nice, young women dressed in corsets charged us the fee, which was $80 for a couple on a Friday or Saturday night. Through our research, we discovered that swingers’ clubs typically charge a small amount for single women, a significant amount for single men and somewhere in the middle for couples. There is usually at least one night of the week on which single men are not allowed in the club. We signed an agreement that included a “yes means yes, no means no” consent policy, and we followed one of the women on the tour. The downstairs area included a dance floor with a stripper pole, large white sofas, and a circular bar. This was the public area, intended for socializing and dancing with your clothes on. As is true of most swingers’ clubs, this club had a BYOB policy with mixers and bartending service provided.
We then walked up the stairs to the “play areas.” At this point in the tour, our guide reemphasized the importance of consent and reporting any unwanted activity to the staff. I was both impressed and intimidated by the variety and quality of the play spaces. There was a “library,” with walls of books and large leather couches. Just off of that room was a theatre where guests could watch the porn that played all evening on the screen. Down the hall were the semi-private rooms, with both sheer and opaque curtain options. Then there were private rooms that locked from the inside. The “viewing room” had a large round bed inside with one-way glass; we gazed in at the four or five guests who were already fucking at this relatively early hour. The “orgy room” was the largest of all the rooms, furnished with a single large bed for roomy play. Our guide then showed us to the dressing room and showed us where the condoms and lubes were kept. As we walked past, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the sulky custodian, whose job it was to clean up after the use of each room.
After the tour guide left us, we wandered around downstairs, conspicuously new and nervous. I danced on the mostly-empty dance floor, drank a plastic cup of pineapple juice, and whispered to Adam about which couples we might be interested in playing with. It became apparent that because we had come in early for a tour, we had arrived a bit too early for the crowd. Those who were there were much older than us and kept to themselves. An older gentleman came and sat near us and asked us what we were interested in. After we told him that we were mostly looking to play with another guy, he said, “I can’t help you there, but I wish you the best of luck in finding what you are looking for.” Although the interaction went nowhere physical, the friendly old man sat and advised us on the ins and outs of the swinging world, even suggesting some clubs closer to home. We were feeling a little bummed that we hadn’t found anyone to play with, but we were grateful for this kind old Fairy Godswinger who appeared in our moment of need.
Tired and disappointed, but not wanting to leave a swingers’ club without having removed our clothes, we settled into one of the semi-private rooms and fucked each other. I was so involved in the sex with Adam that I failed to notice our growing audience; there were about six people who had pulled aside the curtain to watch us. Luckily, they didn’t miss the big finale in which Adam came in my eye, leaving me barely able to blink for the rest of the night. One man thanked us for a “great performance” as we toweled off, dressed, and hurried down to the bar for some water. The bartender somehow noticed I was frazzled and nauseous; she took one look at me and handed me a bottle of Tums. That was the closest I have come to witnessing a miracle. We talked over our experience on the long drive back to our hotel, glad that we had done it but disappointed that we still had not acquired an additional dick.
Since we lost our swinging virginities in New Orleans, we have ventured a couple times to a (much closer) club in Atlanta called Trapeze. The concept is pretty similar, with different types of rooms to accommodate the varying comfort levels of club members. A key difference is the price; Trapeze charges a minimum 2-month membership fee, as well as nightly fees, bringing our first-time Friday night experience up to $170. However, this increase in price was slightly offset by the full buffet, stocked with tons of delicious-looking food. Another difference was diversity, both racially and in terms of age. There were many more club members we felt comfortable approaching and interacting with at Trapeze, and members were also more likely to approach us first — an important factor for newbies. While we didn’t have sex with any other couples at Collette’s New Orleans, we interacted with our fair share of attractive people at Trapeze. Our first time there, I had five guys on me at once, including Adam. (I joked to my friends that I had Five Guys, but not the Burgers and Fries.) Our second time, I finally got the courage to participate in a full swap, and it wasn’t nearly as jealousy-inducing as I imagined.
Although we have become more comfortable in The Lifestyle, we still have not found what we were looking for when we first created a profile on Feeld. Although swinging communities often state that they are nonjudgmental and open-minded, I’ve found the swingers’ scenes I’ve experienced to be filled with cis- and heteronormativity.
While spaghetti girls and bisexual women are welcome, we have yet to find a club where it is okay for men to express their bisexuality. While women are encouraged to participate in wet t-shirt contests and fuck one another, men are expected to be straight bystanders, treating their female partners as objects to be traded and passed around. If anyone is interested in guy-on-guy contact, it is difficult to initiate and would likely need to be conducted offsite or in a private room. I have gotten to play with both guys and girls; Adam stands by and experiences the consequences of male homophobia and biphobia.
Another strange dynamic involved with swingers’ clubs is the financial inaccessibility and the demographic of the people involved. The limited amount of research on swinging shows that swingers are most likely to be middle or upper class white married couples in their late thirties. Surprisingly, these couples actually skew religious and conservative. These demographics certainly explain some of the male biphobia, and their financial interests make the community difficult to change. It also makes it difficult for young, leftist swingers like Adam and me to integrate fully into the community (and leaves us feeling icky as we wonder whether we just fucked some Trump supporters).
When all the critiques and discomforts are said and done, I still enjoy The Lifestyle and hope to continue in it with my partner. If you are interested in non-monogamy, I would learn about the different ways to engage in sex and/or relationships with multiple people. Explore the difference between polyamory and swinging, and talk with your partner(s) about which one is right for you. There are so many possibilities and so many ways to make sexual openness work for you, even if you don’t find it the first time (see: cum in eye). As I dive deeper into this community, I find the need to envision and eventually create spaces where my partner and I can have the kind of sex we want to have. I will continue to explore with Adam until he is able to get the dick he deserves!
And in the meantime, we’ll enjoy the open buffet.
*My partner’s name was changed for privacy.
**Feeld has since fixed many of its bugs and made it easier to create a joint profile for both partners.
