geo (11/23/82)
Let me relate my experience with swingers.
I realize this has grown to be quite a long article. There-
fore I will summarize it, so you can decide whether to read
the whole thing. In this article
[1] I describe my first encouter with the swinger scene as
a hero of mine warns me that he expects to receive some
unusual telephone calls because of an ad that he had
placed.
[2] I relate my observations about those calls.
[3] I describe one call that profoundly changed my attitude
towards the "swinger" scene.
[4] I reveal a reconstruction of the ad that through detec-
tive work I pieced together.
[5] I share with you the conclusions I reached about
"swinging" and other kinds of unusual sexual activi-
ties.
enjoy
When I was younger and more foolish, I went to work on the
pet project of a hero of mine. He is an author. He had
become my hero when I read one of his books. For the sake
of anonymity, I will refer to him as "Fred Hero". Also
working on this project was an older computer hack, "Gregory
Hack".
Anyhow, Fred came to pick me up at the airport, and as we
were driving out to the small college town where he lived we
had this conversation.
Fred: Geo, (chuckle) since you are going to be staying
with me for a while there is something I better warn
you about. (chuckle chuckle)
Self: What's that Fred?
Fred: Well, (chuckle chuckle) you know those swinger maga-
zines ...
Self: Swinger magazines? What are they Fred?
Fred: You *know* (suggestive leer) "Direct Line", "The
Yellow Pages". People place *ads* in them (leer).
Self: Oh? What kind of ads Fred?
Fred: (embarrassed clearing of throat) Well you see Geo, a
couple of years ago I was involved with woman...
Well (charming boyish grin) she was a wild one,
(suggestive leer) if you know what I mean (chuckle
chuckle). *Anyhow* we placed an ad in a couple of
these magazines, and I still receive phone calls
about them... Even though I've tried to cancel the
ads, they still publish it. I guess they no longer
have enough legitimate ads to fill their pages.
Well I asked Fred what the ads said, but he seemed reluctant
to go into it, so being a polite Canadian, I didn't press
him any further.
Sure enough, we *did* receive calls about the ads, about a
dozen calls a day as a matter of fact. Fred and Gregory
treated the calls as something of a lark, so I tried to
treat them lightly too.
About half of the callers hung up as soon as they heard you
say "Hello".
Of the remaining callers, most mumbled a lot, and were
reluctant to say what they wanted. Actually, it was a lit-
tle bit of an awkward situation, because they would usually
say something like, "Hello? I read what you wrote in the
magazine." Since Fred was an author as well as en (ex-
)swinger, and the person might be responding to one of the
articles he had published in OMNI or Creative Computing, I
would have to respond by asking something like, "Well,
*which* magazine did you read it in?" If they were phoning
about the ad I would tell them sorry, no-one around here was
into that kind of stuff anymore. Then they would be even
more embarrassed than ever.
Every day or two a person would call who wasn't shy, and who
would harangue me about how much money he had spent to call
us from Anchorage Alaska, or wherever he was.
In the months I was working on this project fewer than half
a dozen women phoned. One evening Fred answered the phone,
and it was a woman, phoning about the ad, who lived in a
neighouring town about four miles away. Fred must have
wanted to kid Gregory, or amuse Gregory, or something like
that, because I heard him say into the phone: "Well no, I am
not into that kind of stuff myself anymore, but I may
*still* be able to help you." Then he covered the receiver
with his hand, and called out, "Gregory, I've got a live one
for you!" He talked to the woman some more, but I wasn't
paying much attention. A little later I saw Gregory on the
telephone. I think he was embarrassed, but that he meant to
talk to the woman long enough to be polite.
Well the next morning I was all alone, and the phone rang,
and I had the following conversation.
Self: Hello
Caller: Hello?
... I think my wife phoned you...
Self: Yes?
Caller: It's about the ad....
My wife phoned you last night...
she said you told her that you weren't into that kind of
stuff anymore....
... but -- but that you had been keeping a list....?
Well needless to say there was no list. The last thing any
of the callers wanted to do was leave their names. Obvi-
ously this list was some fabrication Fred had dreamed up so
he could keep the woman on the phone long enough that he
could tease Gregory. I felt very sorry for this man. I
felt very sorry for his wife. I tried to gently tell him
that there was no list. I ended talking to him for about a
quarter of an hour. He didn't go into too many details, but
I gather that there marraige wasn't turning out so well, and
they got this notion from a pop-psychology book, or from a
magazine article, that the way to put some zest back into a
flagging marriage was kinky sex.
I am a very curious person, and since I had built up some
kind of rapport with this man, and since Fred wouldn't tell
me what the ad said, I asked him. He mumbled something the
only two words of which I could make out were "clean" and
"white". In the remaining time that I was down in the
states, I asked some of the men who phoned about the ad, and
gradually I pieced together a reconstruction that went some-
thing like this:
----------------------------------------
Fred & Jan
Small College Town
999-765-4321
Hip, young, clean, white, professional,
bisexual couple. Into anything, will
travel up to one hundred miles for a
good time.
--------------------------------------
I don't consider myself a prude, but I find my experiences
have made me think of the whole 'swinger' movement, and por-
nography and prostitution for that matter, as something
really sordid.
It was while I was talking to the man whose wife had called
thatI realized that these calls weren't jokes.. That with the
possible exceptions of the belligerent fellows, each of
these calls was a tiny window into someone terrifying,
desparate, crushing, banal, personal tragedy. That each
call represented an individual for whom the ordinary kinds
of interactions of our society had totally failed.
I invite comments to me or to the net.
No flames please.
Geo Swan
Integrated Studies
University of Waterloo