Photo by Rick Geary

"Mother and I have been married for 14 years. It’s the second marriage for both of us. Both of us walk on eggs to keep everything compatible."

The “party pad” for this particular Saturday night is in Clairemont: a small, tract house, inconspicuous among its neighbors. The only hint that a party may be in progress is the blue bug light shining in a semi-curtained front window. On entering, our first impression is one of expectancy: faces turned curiously towards the new arrivals. There is none of the milling and instant anonymity one has come to expect at big parties. This is no ordinary party. The people gathered here quite openly admit they have one thing in mind. For this is a swingers’ party.

The age-range at this party is mainly middle 30s and up.

Photo by Rick Geary

We are directed to a woman seated behind the door who has our name tags and accepts our money: seven dollars for guests such as us, three dollars for club members, an inexpensive entry fee compared with some swingers’ parties. The money goes for food, a cleanup fee for the host, towels, and laundry bill. We sign in, stating that we know what we are doing and have no drugs on our persons. The Sexual Freedom League, which organized this party, has voted not to allow marijuana on the premises. We find out, while talking with people later on, that this is no great sacrifice, since most members don’t smoke pot; they do smoke plenty of cigarettes.

My friend and I are here “undercover,” just another young couple attending their first swing party. This pose is taken not to be sneaky, because the League is not a secret operation, but because of the possibly negative effect of pulling out notebooks under these circumstances. We are appropriately nervous but, looking around, see no naked bodies and nobody poised to jump us. Nevertheless, we head for the kitchen, the traditional refuge for hard-core talkers. We study the assembled guests as we go. No need to be very discreet, since mutual appraisal is expected. The atmosphere appears subdued: people talking about family, job, and health matters, seated on the floor around the perimeter of the living room. The furniture has either been moved out for the occasion or is nonexistent in this bachelor’s residence. A radio plays desultorily in the background.

Soon after our arrival a group of four, two couples, left for more private quarters elsewhere. This is not unusual, says a middle-aged man, a party veteran who, like many of the people here, looks like he might be a corporate employee or a civil servant or a businessman.

Private swing parties, small groups of couples getting together, proliferate all over San Diego, we are told. Large League parties make a good recruiting ground for the more select private ones. Accurate statistics are impossible to come by, but it has been estimated that organized swinging such as the League’s accounts for at most one quarter of all swinging activity.

We talk in the kitchen with a school teacher who sells a slimming product on the side. This is his first party, too. He came with a woman friend who has been swinging for a year, and he is getting a bit disgruntled. When are things going to start happening? he wants to know. It is now ten o’clock and the door is officially closed. Someone suggests he might have better luck trying to sell his slimming product, since there are a number of overweight people around. This is a fact which disturbs some swingers, who scorn League parties because the participants, as one young woman put it, “tend to be age-ist and fat-ist.” Swingers who stick with the League tend to be more tolerant, realizing and in some cases relishing the fact that people come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and colors.

The age-range at this party is mainly middle 30s and up, although there are a few younger faces, notably one young woman with waist-long hair, who later causes sonic comment with her sensuous use of same in the “open bedroom.” There are only two bedrooms in this house, which gives rise to the comment that this is not one of the better parties. (In fact, the League has had problems in recent months recruiting “party pads” for motivational or economic reasons the Leaguers themselves don’t appear to have sorted out yet.) Since one bedroom is traditionally “open," containing several beds and thus providing stimulus for both exhibitionists and voyeurs, this home allows only one closed space for people with more private sensibilities.

By 11 o’clock the clothed bodies in the living room have become seasoned with a few naked ones. There is a lot of milling around in the tiny hall between the two bedrooms and the bathroom. My friend, who is braver than I, goes to see what’s happening and comes back to report that Jenny is “getting it on” with Bob, while Jenny’s husband, Mike, watches from the hall. Later, our friend the school teacher will go off with Jenny, but will suffer a mild, temporary sexual dysfunction. After that, we see him back in the kitchen. Jenny is still wandering around, seemingly unfazed, and returns to her husband. Our friend is philosophical. “It happens,” he shrugs, helping himself to an American cheese and bologna sandwich, still naked and apparently undaunted. We say we like his spirit, having remained firmly clothed and, as far as he knows, uptight, ourselves.

The party is by now definitely closer to its original goal than an hour ago. Most people are in the before, during, or after phases of swinging. The latter means that they have put their clothes back on and are, in some cases, ready to go home. Some people will not swing at all tonight, and that’s accepted, too.

Contrary to what one might expect, alcohol has very little to do with “loosening up” the people here. The prevalent beverage at League parties is soda pop.

“Well, you know, men have a tough time performing when they’re drunk,” I am told by more than one League member.

“Besides,” says Dan, current League president, who with his wife Jackie is an enthusiastic partygoer as well as all-around activist for sexual freedoms, “there’s so much sexual stimulation in the air at a party that you don’t need alcohol to loosen you up.”

My friend and I, unloosened, finally concede defeat on this score. We leave at about 12:30. The party is still going strong but will break up within an hour or so. People have family and work plans for the next day.

A broad definition of swinging would go roughly as follows: the practice of having intimate relations with a variety of partners other than one’s spouse or escort in a short span of time. Swinging, as distinct from multiple intimate relationships, is characterized by little or no emotional involvement. Hence, it has been called a recreational pastime. The emphasis has traditionally been on some kind of couple, often married, as the basic unit. Also traditionally, it has been white, middle-class suburbia which spawns swingers, people who in all other respects maintain very conventional lifestyles.

In San Diego, the easiest access to the swinging scene is through the public, nonprofit Sexual Freedom League (SFL). As the only large-scale. organized group for swingers in San Diego, the League is unique in swing circles by being both nonprofit and engaged in political activity. Elsewhere, swing groups open to the public tend to be run for profit and are unlikely to be represented at public hearings.

The League is, in fact, a holdover from the 1960s’ sexual freedom movement. During the late 60s and early 70s there was a national SFL and ten affiliated local groups. From its inception the League was geared towards political activity for sexual freedoms on all fronts. With time, however, other specialized organisations, such as gay rights groups, women’s lib groups, and the American Civil Liberties Union, took command of individual causes. Meanwhile, the League itself became more and more a vehicle for swingers, who started banding together after the East Bay Sexual Freedom League in San Francisco began organizing nude parties in 1965. Eventually, the national and all but three local chapters of SFL faded away.

Today, the majority of the League’s 200-odd members in San Diego appear not to care about furthering the cause of sexual freedom, except as it pertains to themselves and their right to attend swinging parties. Between ten and 20 people regularly come to the membership meetings and make the decisions about which political causes to espouse, reports Dan, the League's president. Dan is black, which is unusual among organized swingers, and his shaggy appearance earns for him a certain amount of good-natured disapproval. However, Dan has an infectiously enthusiastic personality, which makes him the ideal spokesman. He is committed to the ideals of sexual freedom in all aspects of society.

None of these activists, Dan included, appears too bothered by the disparities between the League’s official stands and the middle-American values held by the general membership.

For instance, in the wake of such a relatively uncontroversial cause as nude beaches (the SFL was the primary founder of the San Diego Nude Beaches Committee) the League recently sent a letter to state legislators voicing opposition to any laws banning child pornography.

The League habitually goes on record against all forms of censorship (they also sent money to the defense fund of Deep Throat star Harry Reems); and in this most recent instance the League's letter, drafted by Dan and a handful of other members, asserts that children have rights as sexual beings and that legislation would simply drive the business of child pornography underground and into the hands of organized crime.

Whatever the merits of such arguments, it is doubtful whether many of the middle-class couples' with children, who make up the rank-and-file membership, would agree with this notion about sexual freedom for children. The general feeling, though, is that as long as the parties keep happening, the members will stay content and aren’t going to argue about child pornography or incest or any of the other more “far-out” sexual practices which the League has defended over the years. In matters of personal morality, swingers prefer to live and let live.

Frank and Shirley seem about as middle-American as a couple can get. They reside in University City, a solid middle-class suburb. Kids, dogs, cats wander around their four-bedroom house, and the backyard sports one of the more inexpensive types of swimming pool, around which the neighbors gather on sunny weekends. The couple belongs to the PTA, is active in Little League, junior league football, all the regular family-oriented pursuits. Husband and wife stay trim, dress comfortably, not fashionably and certainly not eccentrically. They both like a vodka gimlet with lunch. They do not like long hair, hippies, or communism. They are friendly, outgoing, and easily likable.

Frank is a business executive nearing retirement age, and his wife, 20 years his junior, works with him as all-around assistant. They voted Republican in the last several presidential elections. They have no religious affiliation. Their background and motivation for swinging are not untypical of League members.

Frank and Shirley agreed readily to talk at length about their sexual proclivities, and like many of their fellow swingers they proved remarkably candid, eager to explain themselves, like kids showing off their secret clubhouse. Indeed, Frank talks of swinging as a “secret middle-class organization.” The secrecy is necessary, he feels, for working people, anyone who stands to lose from a disapproving boss or business associate who might find out. Their neighbors, friends, and children, however, are aware of their swinging activities.

Frank: Mother and I have been married for 14 years. It’s the second marriage for both of us. Both of us walk on eggs to keep everything compatible. There’s no jealousy between us, but reservations and priorities. We did try outside interests singly, but it wasn’t that successful.

When did you get interested in organized swinging?

Frank: About five years ago. Why? Curiosity as much as anything else. After three months’ discussion we went to an open house (an SFL information session, not a party). Shirley: The talk at the first open house we went to made us kind of apprehensive, and we waited several months after that. When we finally went to our first party, I expected to walk in and be attacked by a bunch of dirty hippies or sex-crazy men. I couldn’t picture women being involved. But it turned out we had a good time. It was a two-story house in University City with a pool. Now I’m the one who wants to go all the time.

Why?

Shirley: As a woman you have your home, children, dinner, housecleaning, and all these other things. But on Saturday night I can fix my hair and feel like a young girl being courted. As a kid, I was an ugly duckling. I had big hips but not a big bust. At 14, I remember my first experience of being wanted sexually. I liked feeling desirable. Now I enjoy the attention, the flirtation. I get the attention I need, but I don’t have the responsibility of an affair. I still have my home.

Frank: I think each guy in the League tries to make each girl that he’s going to bed with feel she’s desirable, attractive, and wanted. It’s an approach, a line, whatever you want to call it.

At the beginning we went to half a dozen League parties as guests. We met some people and then we quit going to League parties. We went to private parties for six months or a year... all couples, usually eight to ten people, all about the same age. Then because of the time commitment, the involvement, jealousies, and possessiveness on the part of the others, we decided small groups and private parties weren’t for us. We went back to the League about three years ago. We were going to parties then maybe every other week. In a period of three years this has evolved to once every four to six weeks. Mother might like to go to more. I’m the curtailing influence ....

I’m getting more particular in my old age. There’s so many fat gals and guys. Frankly I’m looking for gals in their 20s. I like people who are young-looking, firm, interested in current events. Black's Beach, and so on. The older gals, in their late 40s and 50s, seem bored with life. They just want to go to bed.

Shirley: You can compare it to a smorgasbord. After a while you get particular; you get bored with the mechanical act.

How do you get around the feeling of mechanical sex at the parties, since people later split up and go look for someone else? Frank: Well, for one thing the gal and I usually take a shower together. We’ll go in and get a 7-Up and we’ll continue with some conversation, because I enjoy her company and she enjoys mine, supposedly. Ultimately, that will break up. You’re not there for a date, one person for an evening. It’s not a dating service. The whole intent of the party, of course, is variety in your sex life. Although at. my age it’s usually just one. I’ll spend an hour and take two hours to recuperate.

Shirley: On a good night I'll average two or three different men. But it’s true. You’ll find that at a lot of parties you don’t have anything more in common than enjoying sex. On the other hand, I might have sex with a guy and barely know his first name, but at subsequent parties we may never have sex again, yet become good friends. His family and mine may do things together outside the League which have nothing to do with sex.

Frank: We compare notes afterparties. If she brags about how good some guy was, then I’m curious as to why he was good, which may make me more competitive. We can learn from these things.

Shirley: Plus with the hangups most women have, you can work out a lot of these hangups at parties. If you see other women doing things you’ve thought about but you thought, “I must be weird,” then you realize it must be normal.

Frank: I believe everyone wants to swing. Most people don’t, because of society. They need a medium like the League to accomplish their end. What we’re looking for now is another couple, who are secure in their relationship, to go to the movies, baseball. Disneyland, whatever, and have sex. But the chances of finding something like that are virtually impossible.

A minority of the League’s members. and swingers in general, are unmarried. While these people are legally single, they are dissuaded from coming to swinging parties as “singles” in order to keep the ratio of men to women roughly equal. To this end. the League has the unusual provision that it will admit only a certain percentage of unacccompanied men to a party, depending on the number of people overall. Women can come unescorted any time, though few of them ever do.

As would be expected, the single swingers tend to be younger than the married ones and their reasons for swinging more diverse. For some it is the swinging-singles image, free and easy, no commitments and lots of “action.”

Gil, the League’s public relations officer, and one of several single men active in League affairs, fits quite well the image of a swinging single: in his 30s, pleasant, hardworking, and trying to play equally hard. With all this, he sometimes appears a little harried. But his enthusiasm reasserts itself before long.

“You’d be surprised,” he says, managing to sound both knowing and overwhelmed at the same time, “at the number of swingers. There are a tremendous number of swing parties to attend. It’s unbelievable. If I want to hustle to the nth degree, I could go to four or five parties on a weekend. In any given office situation. where there’s 20 people, you’re likely to find two who swing.”

A different viewpoint, possibly exaggerated somewhat by problems with her own “swinging single” boyfriend, came from a young woman who volunteered a torrent of observations and personal confidences.

“Most of the people swinging, you’ll find, are older married couples, who’ve never had the opportunity to do this. The single men who swing and want to get more women involved will deny this, but it’s true. For me it’s no big thing. I went to some swinging parties because my friend wanted me to, but I hardly ever found anyone who attracted me there. Usually I went into the bedroom with someone, just to stop getting hassled in the living room. My friend always immediately dumps me when we get there, and if you’re new, or young and attractive and alone, you’ll get these men slobbering all over you. I won’t go anymore.

“The single guys want everything that walks by. A party to them is like an inexpensive whorehouse. I think some of them have problems dealing with women as people. This way they get plenty of sex, it’s an ego trip, and they don’t have to relate.”

Dan, the League’s president, brushes aside such criticism. "There’s lots of kinds of men and just as many motivations,” he says. “You can’t lump them together in one category. And we don’t have slobbering old men around. Sometimes, if it’s a person’s first party, they may not understand the acceptable way to behave, but we let them know fast. We don’t allow anyone to psychologically coerce anyone else. It’s not like going to a Coke machine and putting your dimes in. At our parties, a person has to be social enough to at least say ‘Hi.’ You have to be able to relate.”

San Diego’s Sexual Freedom League, an odd mix of idealistic social reformers and hedonists, touts itself as a sensible alternative to traditional monogamy and the pick-up bar scene. Says Dan: “We fulfill needs in people like any other club. People come to us and say, ‘Hey, 1 want to join something, be part of a group.’ That’s what we do.

“Sex is good in and of itself, and it can be a recreational form of activity—an end in itself. You enjoy it; it satisfies your needs. Why do people play tennis? It’s the same thing.”