Suzy Spencer's blog

I’m a little bit dumbfounded that I can get nostalgic about writing a book that hasn’t even been published, yet. But the other day I was glancing through some old files and came across a photograph of my previous office, the place where I began writing Secret Sex Lives: A Year on the Fringes of American Sexuality. As I stared at that old photo and was reminded of those first days of research, I got verklempt. Isn’t that ridiculous?

The office where I began researching and writing "Secret Sex Lives."

But I look at that picture and see my notebooks on my desk filled with my research. Oh, my gosh, there are now so many more notebooks of research, as well as boxes and boxes of files.

I also see the telephone that I curled too tightly in my left hand while doing interviews, the computer screen that I stared at when my agent sent me his critiques of my book proposal, and the high branches of the oak trees outside my door that kept me company and gave me comfort during days and nights of confusion.

Most of all, I remember that first night I posted in Craigslist Casual Encounters, searching for my first sex book sources. “Need to talk about sex,” I wrote.

And I remember that first reply: “Please forward whatever information you’ve got to prove you’re not a creep, weirdo, prison inmate posing as an author (those schemes happen all the time, ya know), and I’ll be happy to talk. . . . Interested to see if you’re for real or not.”

Oh, I was for real. And I really want to tell you more, but I know it’s too soon. For now, it’s got to remain a secret, waiting for that perfect moment of release.

* * *

Secret Sex Lives: A Year on the Fringes of American Sexuality will be released by Berkley Books on October 2, 2012.

I’m sitting in Whataburger trying to work on my sex book.  I’m editing a chapter in which I meet swingers – lifestylers, partner-swappers – through Craigslist.  But I’m having trouble concentrating because there’s a lifestyle group meeting in my neighborhood this weekend.  Part of me, a large part of me, wants to be at their party watching and reporting.  Since I can’t, since I need to write rather than report, I came to the WB thinking the lifestylers might drop in for breakfast.  I think I was right … as I sit here watching the customers, trying to figure out who might and might not be swingers.

So far, I think I’ve seen six possibles.  (Freudian slip – I initially typed sex possibles.)  Two were females who ran in to get drinks and as they filled their soda cups, they talked about the men they’d seen and the ones they were attracted to.  Two were male-female couples.  One couple was older and ultra-fit.  In fact, the man – if not for his aged face and toupee – would have passed for 20 years younger.  He was that buff.  After briefly checking me out, he kept watching the two younger women getting their drinks.  His wife?  She reminded me of a fit blonde I saw at the first swing club I went to.

Piles of garbage lined the sidewalk to our right.  Three lengths of velvet rope stretched along the sidewalk to our left.  Maybe a dozen people stood behind the rope trying to get into the club, but we weren’t going to that nightclub.  We were going to the one across the street, the one that had garbage in front of it – a club for couples who have recreational sex with multiple, consenting partners.  Utilizing the vernacular of the 1970s, it is a club for swingers, though today’s practitioners prefer to be called lifestylers.*

For those who don’t know me, I was at the swing club solely for research.  The WB?  Well, I’m here for the sausage biscuit, endless supply of Diet Coke, and the swingers. 

As for the other swinging couple at the WB, actually, they were the first ones here.  They were sitting near my favorite table, so normally I would have sat near them.  Today, I didn’t.  I was thinking I needed space and privacy to edit.  Now I wish I had sat near them so that I could have talked to them.  He wasn’t as fit as the older gentleman, but he was flirtatious with his wife like he was ready to party.  And she was dressed ready to flirt in her bikini with a skimpy cover-up that revealed her pierced belly button.  In fact, that’s something I noticed about lifestyling women – the older they get, the more likely they are to get piercings and tattoos.  But that’s for book two, not the book I’m working on today.

Oh, wait!  Four more lifestylers just walked in.  I gotta go watch.  As a friend of mine said about me, “I watch; I write.”  The writing’s going to have to wait ‘cause … “Are you with the lifestyle group?” I whisper.

“Yes,” he says.

* From my sex book-in-progress.