Several years ago I was at a huge swinger resort takeover in Las Vegas. From all over the country over a thousand members of a popular swinger dating website had traveled to attend this event. I had been invited there by the event’s promoter to film it and edit together a fun memory video that the members could later view on the website. Just for kicks, before coming to the event I had taken the time to create a humorous short film about swinging to be premiered at the huge formal dinner on the last night.
It was a Saturday morning as I stood in the hotel’s huge empty ballroom working with Bob Hannaford (the event’s promoter). Techno music from the pool outside echoed in through the massive sliding glass doors. We had just finished setting up the digital projector and sound system to play my video directly from my brand new Macbook Pro laptop. After an hour and a half of technical tinkering, we were finally satisfied that the audio and video would work flawlessly at that night’s big dinner.
“Would you like me to have the hotel lock up your laptop in the main office until dinner?” asked Bob.
I looked outside through the giant glass windows. Hundreds of swingers in bathing suits had already filled the pool area and more were arriving from their rooms every minute. It was only 11am and they were already dancing, drinking, flirting, swimming and partying as if they hadn’t been up till 4am the previous night, clubbing and having sex. Every few minutes one of them would walk through the ballroom past us on their way to the hotel’s nearest bathroom. Although I belonged to the same swinger website, this was my first national swinger event and I had never personally met 99% of the people attending. They were complete strangers to me.
I turned to Bob and replied, “No, I’ll leave my laptop here. I trust all these people.”
I’m sure that many of you just read the previous sentence and exclaimed, “Dude, are you a fucking idiot!?”… and I don’t blame you. Leaving my brand new $3500 laptop in the middle of a hotel full of inebriated strangers sounds like a pretty dumb idea. But I did it anyway. I put on my bathing suit, went to the pool and danced, drank, flirted, swam and partied for the rest of the day. Eight hours later, dressed in my formal attire, I walked into the ballroom for dinner…
My $3500 laptop was exactly where I had left it.
Last month I was invited to a swinger friend’s birthday celebration. The plan was for the group to meet at a restaurant for dinner, then move on to karaoke and bar-hopping. The birthday girl was not only a swinger, but a stripper (and a damn good one at that!). So while a few of the guests were swingers, most of them were her dancer friends from work along with a few of their boyfriends or husbands. I got to know most of them throughout the night and I found they were all really wonderful people. After dinner and some dive-bar karaoke (during which I did a kick-ass rendition of “All Around the World” by ATC), we moved on to one of the more popular nightclubs downtown.
This place was crowded. It seemed like every two minutes we’d unexpectedly run into someone who knew the birthday girl or one of her friends. By last call our group had doubled in size. Knowing that I lived nearby and had a pretty damn awesome party pad, the birthday girl asked if I would mind hosting an after party. It was her birthday and all her friends were strippers… so how could I say no?
Most of the people who began showing up at my home around 2:30AM were not people that I recognized from dinner. They were friends of friends of the birthday girl. Some were from the nightclub, and some were people who had just been called or texted by people who were coming. By 3:00AM my home was filled with about 4 swingers and 20 vanillas. I welcomed them all and generously offered up both my home and my alcohol.
By 4:00AM about a dozen of the vanilla guests had disappeared… along with my iPhone, which had been sitting in it’s charger in my kitchen. I was furious.
I’ve thrown countless swinger parties in my home over the many years that I’ve been in the lifestyle. While many of the guests were people that I’d met and played with before, about a third of the guests were usually people I’d met online but never in person. Often my home was offered as an impromptu afterparty location as the local swinger club or event was closing, which frequently resulted in a majority of the swinger guests being complete strangers. In almost eight years of allowing hundreds of unfamiliar swingers into my home, nothing has ever been stolen. Yet the very first time that I allowed unfamiliar vanillas into my home, my $600 iPhone is stolen!… That really made me think. Was this just a coincidence?
Maybe… but I don’t think so.
Given the choice, I’ll trust a swinger I’ve never met over a vanilla I’ve never met any day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not claiming that there are no bad eggs is the swinger community, or that all vanillas are dishonest. Every swinger I know has at least one horror story about an experience with deceit in the lifestyle. But I sincerely believe that on average, people in the swinger community are far easier to trust for several reasons.
I’ve heard it said that every person in the world is just six degrees of separation from you. But in the swinger community it is significantly less.
Community – I use the term “Swinger Community” a lot. Because, especially since the rise of the internet, community is a big part about what being a swinger is about. With rare exception, long gone are the days of the anonymous one night stand with a couple, group or swingle. In fact, between phone, email, text messages, instant messengers, swinger forums, swinger chatrooms, local clubs, MySpace and Facebook, it actually takes far more effort not to stay in touch with your past playmates.
I’ve heard it said that every person in the world is just six degrees of separation from you. But in the swinger community it is significantly less. Through our past playmates and friends we meet our future playmates and friends. Since the creation of online lifestyle dating sites, swingers across the country have been able to foster many lasting friendships with people outside their local area. Moreover, it meant swingers actually began forming many online friendships that were not based purely on physical attraction or the desire to get into each other’s pants. Even without the motivation or desire of sex, swingers tend to look out for each other. Word travels fast in our community, and the bad seeds are weeded out quickly. If a member of the swinger community is caught doing something truly sinister, you can bet that everyone they know will have found out about it by the end of the week. With this organic “neighborhood watch”, baneful people have a very short lifespan in the swinger community. But when I had my property stolen by a vanilla, there was no one for them to be accountable to, no community to be shunned from.
Motive – Every criminal has a motive. Every swinger also has a motive. But a swinger’s motive is not criminal, it’s sexual and social. When you invite a group of unfamiliar swingers to a party, the only thing that they are usually thinking about “stealing” is some time in the bedroom with some sexy new friends. As much as they might admire the Rolex watch that you left on your nightstand, they didn’t come to your party with the intention of filling their pockets with anything other than a few phone numbers. Sure, often we swingers don’t get lucky at a party. But our motivation doesn’t change as a result. We’re unlikely to think to ourselves, “I didn’t get sex or meet anyone, so let me take something else home so that this evening isn’t a total bust.” On the whole, swingers remain optimistic. We know that there’s always next time… unless we do something stupid enough to not be invited back.
When you have a crowd of unfamiliar vanillas together at a party, motives can be far more unclear. The majority are there to socialize. Some are probably motivated by the potential hookup. But unlike the swingers, nobody there has built in reason to feel any real investment in respecting this group of strangers. Unless they make the effort, chances are that they will probably never see any of these people again. They could easily walk out the front door and anonymously disappear like a ghost into the night without any repercussions or accountability. The perfect crime. If the party is boring, nobody is talking to them, they don’t see any sexual opportunities… and they have no conscience, I could easily see a person being tempted by something like a shiny unattended iPhone.
Whether it is between two people or twelve, sex requires trust in others.
Nakedness – The preceding two factors aside, the most significant reason I have so much trust of swingers really comes down to nakedness. When I say “nakedness” I’m only partially referring to physical nudity. What I’m mainly talking about is character, and openness. Be it clothing or socializing, swingers are people who are willing to bare all. It’s almost impossible to be dishonest when you’re truly “naked.”
Whether it is between two people or twelve, sex requires trust in others. We are at our most open, most vulnerable, and most genuine when we are in the throws of an orgasm. The willingness to be at your most “naked” in front of others requires a great deal of trust and strength of character. These are the qualities that I most appreciate in the swinger population because though they may stem from the act of sex, they carry over into the rest of their social interactions with their community. You don’t need to actually have sex with another swinger, or have personally seen them naked to experience this earnestness. By the very lifestyle that we all lead, there is a beautiful unspoken understanding; A person with a truly open-mind has nothing to hide and no place to hide it.
In closing, I realize that this article may sound harsh, even preachy in parts. I fully acknowledge that I’m still feeling a little bitter and violated about my iPhone being stolen. While I don’t plan on never trusting non-swingers again, for the next few weeks while I wait for my emotional vanilla wounds to heal, I’m hanging the following sign above the entrance to my home…
