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.
