USA — Adults who enjoy attending landed swinger club events in Indiana and New Jersey have lost two of their options, thanks to two recent court decisions.

A club in rural Indiana that bills itself as the states oldest is facing $300 per day fines after having been declared in violation of zoning ordinances by Shelby County officials who insist that the discreet country club “isn’t something that you would expect in rural Indiana.”

Topside II resides in an old farm purchased by Gary James, the club’s owner. James had run a similar operation in Indianapolis but relocated after encountering zoning problems there.

Shelby County Sheriff Tom Debaun says he’s not sure if anything happening at the club is illegal or not, stating that the club’s website insists it will not tolerate illegal activity and that only consenting adults are allowed entrance.

Since the club requests donations for participation, Debaun thinks it may qualify as an adult business, which is not allowed in the zoned agricultural and single-family residence area. Topside II was served a cease-and-desist order in September and police say they have not seen any recent activity.

Regardless, the county plan commission recently voted 7 – 0 to find the club in violation of zoning codes and make the $300 per day fines retroactive to September 7th. Simultaneously, the previous owners of the farm property are seeking termination of the sale agreement and a return of their land.
Meanwhile in New Jersey, the Beginnings swing club has agreed to close its door and be out of town by December 1st, after receiving dozens of citations from Rahway officials.

Calling itself “New Jersey’s Premier Club for Couples,” the private club has been in business since 1982, something mayor James Kennedy finds reprehensible, insisting that the club’s owners have “been a thorn in this city for many years; a well-known secret where sex acts were protected by laws intended to preserve the rights of Americans.”

Apparently swapping sex partners is not a right Kennedy considers protected or worth protecting, because, along with announcing that “At long last, the sex club is on its way out of Rahway” he lauded City Health Officer Rick Proctor and director of building, engineering, planning and economic development Lenore A Slothower for accompanying the city’s police into the club in March after obtaining a search warrant.

The club received 39 citations because of the raid, although club operators insist that its membership of more than 600 couples do not engage in behavior that is improper and have pointed out that it has operated for more than 20 years without incident.

According to Slothhower, adult businesses are not allowed in the city’s downtown area and can only operate in light-industrial areas with conditions.

Kennedy, a Democrat running for reelection, can add the courageous closing of this swing club to his list of career achievements, along with closing a juice bar, revoking liquor licenses for two taverns, and shutting down three massage parlors.

“I am dedicated to getting rid of prostitution, drug dealers, and sex clubs,” Kennedy announced. “Rahway will not be home to sexual exploitation and vice crimes.”

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RAHWAY-The operator of a sex club that has been ordered to close is taking aim at Mayor James Kennedy, whose re-election on Nov. 7 is being contested by former Republican Councilman Lawrence Bodine.

In a statement posted on the website “www.couples4u.com” the sex club blasts politicians who, “take control of all of our fundamental freedoms and sit in moral judgment on us as if they know better than we as to how we should choose to lead our lives.”

Although the missive does not mention Kennedy by name, the site does include an article from the Star Ledger concerning the mayor under the headline: “This Is Why We Are Having The Problems We Are.”

Earlier this year, city officials obtained a warrant to execute a search on the sex club, during which they found numerous unclothed people engaged in various acts on all three floors of the Main Street establishment.

A total of 39 summonses were filed for violations of health and zoning laws, but those charges were dismissed in a settlement that called for the sex club to vacate the city by Dec. 1.

There was a Meet-And-Greet party on Friday, Oct. 13, specifically billed as “This is a ‘Social Event’ only, held in the main room and not a normal club opening”

Leaving or not, the club operator had some stern words for city officials and praise for supporters.

“Enough is enough already!,” the statement said. “To those 248 residents of town whom have been either long time patrons of the club, are on our mailing list, or just neighbors that know us for who we really are, use your votes to make a difference.”

The sex club, known as both Beginnings2 or Tokar Services, maintains the website at couples4u.com and provided private parties catering to the alternative lifestyle called swinging, or the practice of having sex with other couples.

Swinging couples sometimes swap sex partners or may engage in group sex involving bi-sexual acts.

Since taking over as mayor nearly 16 years ago, Kennedy has had a streak of successes in ridding the city of what he termed, “sexual exploitation,” including prostitution and other vice crimes, nude dancing and sex clubs.

During his first term he ordered a series of raids that closed three massage parlors that harbored prostitutes. He was later able to close the juice bar off Routes 1&9, Razzle Dazzle, which featured nude dancing and promoted prostitution.

Kennedy’s administration also closed a number of bars that served as havens for drug dealers, including the Rahway Inn on St. George’s Avenue and the Triangle Bar on Monroe Street.

Reference

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Nobody doubts that our culture influences our sexuality and sexual expression. Germany seems to be a hotbed of pantyhose fetish Web sites, Japan has raised the schoolgirl uniform to high art, and male parliamentarians getting spanked can sometimes seem as British as high tea at Harrods.

But our cultural influences are not always good for us. That’s part of the “moral values” debate we’ve been having in this country for 20 years or so. The question is, what can we do to keep the culture from harming us? How can we resist the worst bits of it, and embrace the best?

While reading through some research on sex recently, one of the studies I encountered popped out at me. It raised the question “What is the problem with sex?”
Problem?

Sex is one of the most basic and fulfilling things we do. At least it should be. Assuming we’re not suffering from biological or health trouble, sex is a problem only when it clashes with the culture we’re in.

Sometimes these clashes can be personally dramatic. Last fall, in a psychiatric journal, British researcher and clinician Nilamadhab Kar described the cases of two men suffering from a condition known in the countries of South Asia as koro.

One, Kar wrote, “presented with the complaints of gradual retraction of penis and scrotum into the abdomen. He had frequent panic attacks feeling that the end had come. … During exacerbations he spent most of his time measuring the penis by a scale and pulling it in order to bring it out of abdomen. He tied a string around it and attached it to a hook above to prevent its shrinkage during night.”

Koro, the anxious feeling that your penis is retracting back into your body, is often described as a “culture-bound” psychiatric disorder. Sometimes, episodes of koro come in waves, almost epidemics. Some victims believe that if the penis shrinks far enough into their bodies, they’ll die.
Dhat syndrome is another so-called culture-bound disorder. Victims of dhat syndrome come to believe that semen lost during sleep, through masturbation, or by having sex, is literally draining them of life force. They can feel lethargic or weak. Some have great sexual performance anxiety.

Dhat is thought to be culturally bound to the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka (you can find a variety of curatives sold there), but the idea of a loss of vigor developing from a loss of semen is very old and not confined to South Asia. Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, believed that losing semen through masturbation made boys weak, sickly, pale. It “quickly destroys both health and spirits; he becomes feeble in body and mind and often ends in a lunatic asylum.”

From Sri Lanka to the locker room
Whether or not dhat and koro are truly “culture-bound” is open to debate. There have been reports of European men suffering from koro after smoking too much dope, for example, and if my junior high track coach is any indication, the idea behind dhat is just about universal. I can still hear his barked orders telling us that if we masturbated within a couple weeks of a meet, we’d barely be able to lift the shot put.

Still, both phenomena, especially in their pathological form, do seem to be more prevalent in Asian culture. The culture somehow makes men susceptible to them.

But you needn’t seek out far away lands to find just how important culture is to sex. Dionne P. Stephens, a psychologist at Florida International University, has examined the subculture of American hip-hop and how it influences the “sexual scripts,” or expectations and behavior, of African-American girls. She argues that girls too often wind up being labeled “freak, gold digger, diva and dyke.”

“Clearly, the fact that sexuality is so central in African-American women’s scripts within their youth culture is particularly problematic,” she writes. “Sexuality remains a commodity within this paradigm, where it is projected as the most powerful instrument that adolescent African American women have for negotiating interpersonal relationships and daily discourses in American society. This continuing physical, emotional, and verbal assault from their potential partners, Hip Hop culture, and broader society reinforces the importance of dismantling the frameworks upon which these sexual scripts are supported.”

Dismantling a framework is tough, though. Even modern, mature, middle-aged American women (and no doubt men, too) behave to some degree according to culture.

Back in 1994, a giant research project called Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN) began collecting all sorts of health data on American women. When the researchers crunched the numbers from SWAN, they found that the sex middle-aged women had, and how often they had it, depended, in part, on their ethnic heritage.

“It suggests something about cultural patterns in groups leading to differences,” in behaviors and attitudes, Virginia Cain, lead author of the study, says.

For example, Caucasian women were much more likely to masturbate than were African-American, Hispanic, Chinese or Japanese women. Almost half of Hispanic women engaged in oral sex once per week or more, but only 10.5 percent of Chinese women did. Just over 70 percent of African-American women had intercourse once per week or more; 41.5 percent of Japanese women did.
Cracking the mold
It wasn’t just differences in the menu of sex acts, but the deeper importance of sex that distinguished ethnic groups. Women also varied in the amount of emotional satisfaction they received from sex, how often they became aroused, even how often they desired it.

Cain doesn’t say what any of this means, whether it’s good or bad, only that it has meaning. How cultural norms and expectations come about and how they change, she says, needs more research.

But people can and do crack the mold, Cain says. “It is clear that changes can occur; norms in health practices change over the years and they are learned. One way or the other it is entirely possible to break out of them. The challenge is to figure out the best ways to do that.”

The question for each of us is to decide for ourselves how much guidance we wish to take from our culture and our backgrounds in the way we live our sexual lives. Making a conscious choice, not simply reciting from a canned “script,” can be key to a fulfilling sex life.

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So you’ve seen the results of the Elle/MSNBC.com Sex and Beauty Survey and you’ve learned that women spend 2.2 hours more per week working on their appearance than men do, and that women are more freaked out by the thought of sex if they don’t feel confident about the state of their “nether regions.” This sure reinforces the view of men as the gender more willing to have sex no matter what we look or smell like.

Sadly, this is not an entirely mistaken view. An old girlfriend of mine once thanked me for smelling good. I figured cleanliness was kind of a minimum requirement. I mean, it’s not like I could afford to alienate a willing woman. But she informed me that not all men were quite so fastidious (or, I could have added, grateful).

So let me state right up front that taking a shower before a date is the very least you can do, even if you’re not going to have sex. And use soap. In fact, if this admonition comes as news to you, you shouldn’t be having sex at all. I hereby revoke your license.
But what else can one do, aside from avoiding being thought a swine, to actually groom for sexual success?

Well, my friends, more than you could have imagined.

Trim the hair down there
I called Lou Paget, the Los Angeles sex seminar guru and author of books like “The Great Lover Playbook” for a few tips. According to Paget, a shower, a spritz of deodorant and a good teeth scrubbing just aren’t enough when it comes to sex.

“Women always say ‘Oh, I have shaved my legs,’ but I always tell them ‘Ladies, that’s fine, but he’s not having sex with your legs.’”

So trim things up a bit down there. Sexploration has covered pubic hair grooming before, and described all sorts of creative hairdos that have come in vogue and gone out again, but you don’t have to be elaborate. Just tidy up. This goes for men, too. If you want her down there, why not spruce up Mr. Happy? Besides, he’ll look a bit bigger if he’s out from under all that hair, and most guys are happy for any optical illusion they can get.

Did you remember to drink pineapple juice?

Yes, ladies – and men too, for that matter – drinking a good sized glass of pineapple juice a couple of hours before the deed can help make your bodily fluids taste and even smell better. Fruits in general are good because they contain acids and sugars.

But, Paget cautions, avoid some vegetables, like asparagus. The same chemicals that makes post-asparagus pee smell like a biohazard also affect our vital juices.

Tragically, beer can make semen taste bitter. Some guys, of course, have never actually had sex without drinking beer, so this is a tough one to avoid, but at least now you know.
While women should be aware of how their genitals are faring, they should not be paranoid about how the aroma changes during the monthly cycle, just aware. An extra shower might be good right beforehand, but it’s usually a bad idea to douche. The vagina contains an entire ecosystem. Douching can wreck it. Besides, Paget says, “Women tell me they use douches that smell like roses or something, but no man wants somebody who smells like wilted flowers!”

As for you, men, picture this: You’re out on a date and things are going beautifully. As you stand there at the restaurant’s urinal, you’re thinking to yourself “Dude! You are Mr. Seduction!” And then, like all men, you flip Mr. Happy back in your pants, wave your hands under the faucet and quicker than she can say “Waiter! Another Cosmopolitan!” you’re back at the table.

Well, inside your pants, Mr. Happy’s crown is drenched in urine. So take a second to give that little fella a wipe with a piece of tissue, preferably moistened with water. Ignore the stares you’ll get from other guys. They won’t be getting laid.
“Men are really not aware of how sensitive a woman’s sense of smell can be,” Paget says. “Especially when we ovulate, it’s unbelievable.”

Just remember, the idea is to put out a big sign saying “Welcome to my Happy Place!”

“You want her to keep her focus on whatever activity she’s doing,” Paget explains, and odd smells “make it hard to focus.”

When less is more
Smells are very powerful, but that doesn’t mean you should pour on the cologne or perfume. We have natural smells, often quite subtle, that are meant to attract the opposite sex. Let those shine through. While a dash of a lover’s favorite scent can be a boost, it should mingle with what we’ve already got.

Paget argues that most of these tips are really just common courtesy. You are asking another person to share bodies. We should all make that sharing as welcoming and enticing as we can.

While we might do all these things when we’re first trying to seduce a new lover, we often forget them once we’re in a long-term, committed relationship. Don’t. By keeping up with the grooming and prep work, you are paying attention to the needs of your lover and, as Paget says, “paying attention to someone the way they love to have attention paid to them is massively seductive. And you are paying attention to yourself, too.”

In fact, you might find that the grooming and cleansing and attention doesn’t seem like work at all, that it can help you feel more confident, free and sexy. Even guys who have been married forever can still stand in front of that urinal and say “Dude! You are Mr. Seduction!”

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TAMPA, Fla. – While it’s not every night you find yourself stepping off a bus behind a 6-foot man dressed as Little Bo Peep, that’s not why I’m staring at him.

This bus is full of people going to a party at a club here called The Chambers, after spending the day at the Hyatt Regency for “FetishCon,” an annual convention that is part trade show, part classroom, part nighttime scene for fetish aficionados and the merely curious.

In a little while, some of the several hundred people in attendance will be chained to large steel Xs and flogged with leather cat-o-nine tails. Men will crawl on all fours and lick the feet of the women who brought them. One topless woman, her skin painted with a mural by a professional artist named Pashur, will dance for hours in a pair of giant boots that make her 7 feet tall.

So compared with this phalanx of PVC, leather and latex, Bo Peep looks practically normal.

No, I’m staring because I’m pretty sure I interviewed this guy the day before on the trade show floor. On my tape of our conversation he talks about being an occasional transvestite, how it helps him land girlfriends, and a little about the whole fetish philosophy. (Some words on my recording are tough to hear because somebody in the background is cracking a bullwhip.)

But I can’t be positive this is the same guy because – no kidding – he looks a lot like Little Bo Peep. He’s wearing makeup, a blonde wig, a bonnet, a blue skirt with petticoats, the whole Bo Peep she-bang, including the shepherd’s staff.

Yesterday, sitting on a couch inside the hotel, he looked all the world like what he said he was, a middle-aged, upper middle-class IT manager for a major international charity. He wore a pair of Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt, his hair cut sensibly short like one of those guys from the 1960s glory days of IBM. He told me he was a Republican.

After spending three days and nights with bondage enthusiasts, submissives and dominants, a man mummified in duct tape, a huge pink bunny (who refused to speak to me because he was a bunny, and bunnies don’t talk), people dressed as ponies complete with actual tack, and a 49-year-old North Carolina housewife turned Superhero fetish icon named Super Becca, I have learned to check my preconceptions at the door.

A mental illness?
No one is sure just how many Americans are into fetish; there aren’t any good surveys. The publisher of one fetish magazine says he figures about 7 percent of us could be called fetishists, but he’s guessing. Everyone here, however, thinks it’s growing, and if you believe the business people manning the booths selling everything from stainless steel slave collars to medical-grade speculums, it is.

America Unzipped

But there are no hard-and-fast rules about what a fetish is. Is bondage a fetish or a practice? How about wearing whole-body rubber suits? Being spanked with a leather paddle? Nobody seems able to define it so everything tends to get lumped into it.

Supposed authorities aren’t much help. For example, the World Health Organization and psychiatry’s DSM-IV manual classify “fetishism” as a mental illness. The WHO says it is a “reliance on some non-living object as a stimulus for sexual arousal and sexual gratification.” The fetish object might “simply serve to enhance sexual excitement achieved in ordinary ways (e.g. having a partner wear a particular garment).”

In other words, every woman who ever imagined her man in a pair of buttless chaps, every man who thinks baby-doll nighties are the greatest invention since the centerfold, could be a fetishist.

“Occasionally somebody will find out what we do,” says Melissa, a 33-year-old engineer for a civilian defense contractor in Florida who is newly married to Bob, 34, a corporate controller. (She tells me this as she holds a leash attached to a collar around Bob’s neck. Bob is wearing a leather hood that covers his head.) When somebody does find out, Melissa continues, “often they have done some form of it, too. Maybe not to the extent we do, but they say, ‘Oh yeah, we do handcuffs.’ Lots of people have tried it.”

While fetish can come to seem like any sexual practice that makes the “vanilla” world – the slightly derogatory name that fetishists use for anybody who’s not into fetishism – uncomfortable and while there may be no such thing as a typical fetishist, a few commonalities have emerged over the past few days as I wandered the convention, attended the classes and went to parties.

To see and be seen

Fetish is an aesthetic statement, not just a sexual one. For example, though some fetishists might be into swinging and group sex, neither of those activities are a big part of fetish. In fact, some fetishists refer to “lifestylers” (meaning swingers) with a bit of a sneer.

Sex at fetish parties in public spaces is frowned upon, partly because it can be illegal but also because it’s considered a breach of etiquette. (In private, or in small gatherings, people sometimes do have forms of exhibitionist sex if that’s their fetish.) Here the idea is to see and be seen – imagine a sex-oriented Star Trek convention.

For most fetishists, privacy is critical. Even at fetish events like this one, a young woman tells me, “You do not walk up to somebody and say, ‘Hi, my name is Joe, I am a corporate banker.’ You do not give out personal details because there is a risk involved. We value our jobs.” She happens to be a microbiologist who works in waste water treatment for a Florida municipality.

Many trace their interest in alternative sex practices to youth, or even childhood. “My earliest memory – I didn’t even know about sex – was the warm feeling a spanking would give me,” a woman named Rita, who works at the Kink Shop in Shreveport, La., recalls. “When I couldn’t sleep as a girl, if I thought about spanking, I could drift off.” She was married to the same man for 31 years “but I could not get my husband to hit me for anything.” She’s now involved with a “master” who obliges.
Media often provide a first introduction to the fetish world. Some fetishists cite comic books, sci-fi movies and fantasy art like that of Frank Frazetta, famous for his hugely muscled barbarian men and voluptuous, mostly naked women.

“I was 8 years old and up late and saw a movie on HBO,” Melissa says. “A man, fully clothed, spanked a partially nude woman in a hallway and it spoke to me. I thought, there is something about this I like. I have to know more about it.”

The Internet has been a powerful force in the mainstreaming of fetish. For example, the day Rita got a connection, she typed “spanking” into a search engine and realized for the first time “that I was not the only person in the world.”

“Dude, it started off with, like a 300-baud modem,” James, a 27-year-old electrical engineering student from Knoxville, Tenn., tells me. “Even as a little kid, before I even knew anything about sex, I used to really like tying people up. Then my dad went back to school to study computer science and we had like, an old 286 computer. It took five minutes to download one picture! But I could look up whatever I wanted.”

Once a taboo is overcome, a new world opens. “You cannot turn back,” James says.

“That’s true. You can’t go back to vanilla sex once you taste this,” agrees Anastasia Pierce, a professional fetish model, actress and movie producer based in Los Angeles. “It’s a very adrenaline thing. You try stuff constantly and go, ‘Oh, this feels good! I never tried that!’”

But as much as fetishists love what they do, many express mixed feelings that fetish has gone mainstream. Fashion layouts in Vogue and big budget movies like “The Matrix” use fetish clothing, and thousands of “goth” kids show up at clubs dressed in fetish attire.

“Yes, they’re being rebels,” Pierce says sarcastically of the young arrivistes.

On the other hand, many fetishists I talk to here have been among the most thoughtful people about their sex lives I have ever encountered. They have to be.

“What a lot of people in the vanilla world do not understand is that this entails an extreme amount of trust,” a “lifestyle master” who works as a real estate agent tells me. Part of his job is to dish out just the right amount of pain to his girlfriend. “It is a trust that goes beyond what a lot of people in everyday vanilla relationships have. Left and right they are lying to each other, doing things behind each other’s back. A lot of that does not happen here.”

Abuse, degradation and love
Some say the very nature of participating in fetishes like bondage, sadomasochism and humiliation requires a level of communication between partners that many other couples never experience.

They also argue that the vanilla world misunderstands the practicalities of fetish. While some do seem to immerse themselves in it as an almost full-time way of life, most don’t.

“A lot of times you come home after a long day and you’re tired and you really do not feel like spending 30 minutes tying somebody up,” says James, the engineering student. “Then it’s like, can we just have sex?”

“What we do is a very big part of our lives,” Bob explains from behind his leather hood. “But it is not strictly this. We have a normal life. We have [regular] sex. This is part of our sexual relationship but it is not who we are. We are very much in love.”

His wife, Melissa, describes one way they express that love: “I put him in his place. I verbally abuse him. I degrade him. I spit on him, urinate on him, absolutely anything I can think of to take that smug little look off his face.”

And then she looks at Bob and they both laugh the warm laugh of affection.

Brian Alexander, a California-based freelance writer and MSNBC.com’s Sexploration columnist, is traveling around the country to find out how Americans get sexual satisfaction. Alexander, also a Glamour contributing editor, is chronicling his work in the MSNBC.com special report “America Unzipped” and in an upcoming book for Harmony, an imprint of Crown Publishing. In the next installment in this series, he ventures into the world of online exhibitionism.

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On a Saturday night at Mizner Park, Gigi’s Tavern was busting out all over the place like ten thousand-dollar tits in a five-dollar shirt – just as my friend Kim had promised.

Like any meat market, the prime cuts were right out front. Luxury cars were parked at the curb rather than in the lot. Pretty people (and delusional ones) paraded down the sidewalk. We didn’t even have to go inside to experience the party; the music was audible from several doors down. Folks were outside smoking it up, many sitting along the edge of the large fountain. Others were bridging the gap between Gigi’s and Pranzo next door.

The two bars exchanged patrons as freely as swingers swap partners. They reflected the same aesthetic, after all – including middle-aged cover bands, each with male musicians and chick singers, and each with their own rendition of “Funky Town.” (I was beginning to think these bands were on to something – the ’70s anthem was perfect as the official song of Boca Raton.)

Three women and two guys were squeezed together on a single bench, their privilege obvious all the way from the women’s pedicured piggies to their heads of healthy hair.

“So how do you all know each other?” I asked the group, who looked tuckered out by only 11:30 p.m.

“These girls were rubbing me up and down on the dance floor,” replied the business-casual guy sitting on the bench’s arm.

I was dubious: “Y’all just met?”

“No, we’re all married,” the girl in the middle said. “All of us. To each other.”

“Yeah, we’re married,” another chick countered, draping herself on the gentleman next to her as her silky hair slid over her shoulder. Then she shot me a smile equal parts innocence and contempt. “Not necessarily to each other.”

So much for polite conversation.

Inside, Gigi’s was packed. With the bar and dance floor full, people appropriated the dining area for dance space and hanging out. In keeping with the less-than-wholesome vibe, some of the tables were still icky with foodstuff.

Otherwise, the décor actually lived up to the French name – like a modern version of the Parisian cafés in Edouard Manet’s paintings. Dark wood lined the walls. Chalkboards with curlicue pastel lettering announced daily specials. It was the perfect setting for a classy night out. But someone hadn’t clued in the clientele.

“Call me ‘Tom from Vegas,’” a middle-aged man told me when I found Kim at the bar with the newest members of her fan club.

“What’s not to like?” Tom asked rhetorically when I teased Kim about her admirers. He put an arm around her. “Just look at her!”

“He’s a little touchy-feely,” Kim said, punctuating her sentence with an exasperated burst of air that blew directly into my eye like a glaucoma test.

“She’s a little feisty,” Tom noted as I blinked.

That was one way of putting it.

I smiled blankly and turned my attention to the band’s blond singer with the modern mullet haircut. Strutting on the bar top, she sang “Play that Funky Music White Boy” (again with the funk!) into her cordless mic and swung the hanging lamps toward the bar crowd.

When Mr. Vegas realized he wasn’t gonna get anywhere with either of us, he slithered off to an unescorted woman nearby. I turned my attention to another of Kim’s admirers, a guy named Mike. After I listened to the asphalt supervisor critique several girls’ physiques, I pointed out that he seemed to specialize in finding “ass faults.”

“So what do you look for in a girl?”

He leaned to look across the room. I followed his gaze to a chick who was shaking her tiny, micro-mini-clad rump to the music.

“Well, I guess you found what you’re looking for,” I shrugged.

“That’s not a girlfriend,” he countered, suggesting her assets didn’t make her worth keeping. “It’s one extreme or the other.”

“Never been married, huh?” I ventured.

“Why would I? Like nine out of ten fail.”

I left Mr. Positivity alone with his impossible standards and moved on. A couple of stools down, two women were chatting, drawing attention to themselves by not seeking it. Claudia and Natalie had driven up from Coral Springs for the place’s lively atmosphere. They didn’t seem to be making the most of it.

“When you’re married, your life is over,” Natalie said. “We’re both married with kids.”

Claudia was silently contradicting her friend by shaking her head.

“She’s still married,” Natalie insisted.

“With a question mark!” Claudia asserted.

OK, so Gigi’s wasn’t HQ for the Promise Keepers and their old-fashioned values, but the crowd did have a retro approach to fashion. The ’80s were back with a vengeance and claiming new fashion victims.

On the dance floor, a Charo ringer wore a dress that showed off what could only be called (thanks to the Black Eyed Peas) her lady lumps. The frock’s animal print looked like some terrible crossbred pattern.

Thank God she wasn’t doing the Charo shimmy.

“One can only ask ‘Why?’,” Kim said, when she nudged me to show me the woman passing us. The plunging, black, backless dress alone was fine, but the wide red belt? (Her fashion sense equaled her originality. We saw three wide, red belts with black outfits that night. None was flattering.)

“Perhaps we should get her together with that guy,” I said, pointing out a blond guy in a black, short-sleeved shirt and skinny red tie.

I dipped back into Pranzo just to see how things were progressing. Grannies in suits and blond preppy haircuts were getting down to “Funky Cold Medina.”
OK, it was funky. Not necessarily in the good way. And the crowd was beginning to thin like the hair on many of the heads in the place. So I went back to rescue Kim from whatever schmoe happened to be dogging her in the short time we were parted. The schmoe’s name was Franz, a good-looking, 30-something who lectured me on tavern etiquette.

“When you are at a bar, it shouldn’t be about who you are and what you do,” he said.

It was what he said, not his German accent, that made it clear he wasn’t Boca material.

The band’s last two songs of the evening were perfect for Gigi’s image: “Lady Marmalade” and “Let’s Get It On.” Since neither Kim nor I needed an invitation to dry-hump with the Don Juans on the dance floor, we decided to call it quits.

On our way out, I asked another group of 20-somethings how they had enjoyed themselves. The affable bunch were Gigi’s regulars, and tonight, they were fueled for fun. After some quick pleasantries, including that one of the girls was a stripper and the guy worked for a “movie production company” (which, he admitted, produces porn), the dark, curly haired girl commanded, “Show ‘em what you do.”

Two of the girls began kissing. Soon, the entire group was an orgy of lips and tongues. The scene was an inspiration for a new movie. The dude had the right job to pitch the idea, anyway. Luscious Lushes: Coming soon?

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One day it’s a place for weddings, the next it can transform into a nudist retreat.

And most Weirton residents aren’t even aware of what’s going on behind closed doors in a mansion on Marland Heights.

The mansion, formerly occupied by E.W. Weir, is just feet away from Williams Country Club and in walking distance of a neighborhood park.

On its website, Rosemont Manor offers to cater to wedding receptions and parties. But another website advertises the same building for swingers, nudists and S&M.

Owner Rose Susko said she welcomes alternative lifestyles.

“That particular (website) talks about fetish, swingers, nudists. Yes, those are topics that are prevalent in our society today and if people would like to come here and discuss things of that nature, they are more than welcome to,” Susko said.

Though the building sits right next door to Williams Country Club, the club does not own the building and the manager said he is not aware of any of the activities that go on at Rosemont.

A Marland Heights resident enjoying the fall weather with his family said he was upset to hear what is offered just up the road.

“I think it’s totally antagonistic to a family wanting to raise children here. (There’s) definitely no need for anything of that nature to be in this area,” said Brent Beatty.

But Susko contends she isn’t harming anyone.

“There’s not anything out of the ordinary going on here – maybe a little more not quite mainstream topics, but there’s nothing illegal going on. It’s not a sex club – certainly not,” Susko said.

Councilman George Kondik said he’s received numerous phone calls from people angry about the website and the building.

“Not only are they worried about it, I’m worried about it too. But, like I said, morally yes, it’s probably not the right thing to do, but they’re not doing anything illegal that we know of,” Kondik said.

Kondik said because there is no illegal activity going on at the mansion, the city can not take any action with regard to the matter.

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In the spirit of general sex-positivity, let’s talk about swinging. I see that among active participants, the words “swingers” and “swinging” are being replaced by “play couples” and “the lifestyle.” Either way, you’re talking about heterosexual couples exchanging partners with other couples for recreational sex. Sound like fun? Here’s some basic info about “the lifestyle”:

It’s couples-oriented. Single men have a tough time getting into most swingers’ events, although single women are often accepted.

It’s not just the Beautiful People. Most swingers are a bit older and, as in the rest of the world, while some are gorgeous hard bodies, many aren’t.

It’s mostly het sex. Bisexual behavior between women isn’t uncommon, but sex between men is clearly frowned upon.

It’s an organized sexual community. There are hundred of swingers’ clubs nationwide, according to the North American Swing Club Association (a.k.a. NASCA International). There is also an annual conference called “The Lifestyles Convention,” which drew over 3,000 people last year.

Like other sexual subcultures, the swinger lifestyle comes with its own lingo:

· Open Swinging: Having sex with someone else while your partner is present, frequently while they are also having sex with another person.

· Closed Swinging: Having sex with someone else, with your partner’s agreement but without them being present.

· Soft Swinging: Engaging in foreplay with someone else, and then returning to your own partner for actual intercourse.

· Off-Premises Party: Sex will not take place at the actual event, it’s for meeting and mingling only.

· On-Premises Party: Sex will be happening at the party.

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On our way home from dinner with friends, my wife and I enjoy talking about who among our friends we could imagine having sex with. These conversations get especially interesting when the woman I could imagine having sex with is married to the man my wife could imagine having sex with. Naturally, this raises the question of a “swap.”

Is there a protocol for suggesting to another couple that they entertain the idea of a “swap?” Or does it just require getting everyone really drunk?

Just Curious

Robert McGinley is President of the North American Swing Club Association (NASCA), has a Ph.D. in psychology, and has been called the “swingers’ guru” more times than he cares to remember.

“In my experience, it is not a wise idea, and rarely successful, to try to introduce one’s dinner companions to swinging unless you’re sure that couple is interested or already involved in swing activities,” Robert said when I shared your letter with him. “Good friends are hard to find, so why risk mucking up a friendship by making an advance? Also, if the other couple is shocked, they may tell others of your advance, affecting other friendships. Far better to go to a swing club, one that is couple-oriented, and make new friends who are already into swinging.”

Robert would give that advice, wouldn’t he? As the head of a trade association for swing clubs, it’s Robert’s job to direct horny married couples to NASCA’s paying members, and discourage freelance swinging. But conflicts of interest aside, I have to say I agree with Robert. When it comes to major kink–and swinging is major–it’s best to meet like-minded pervs through like-minded perv organizations or at like-minded perv bars or parties. At NASCA’s inevitable website (www.nasca.com), you’ll find listings for swing clubs all over the world. “Look up clubs in the state you live in,” Robert suggested, “and call the clubs that sound interesting.” I went online and found eight clubs where you live, JC.

What kind of people will you meet? “Couples involved in swinging are the cream of the crop,” said Robert–but again, Robert would have to say that. The head of NASCA is not going to say, “swingers are scum,” is he? But once again, I’m going to back Robert up: Some of my best friends are swingers, and some are the cream of the crop. “The last study I saw put the median age for men at 39, and 36 for women,” Robert said. “These people are married, they have careers, they have families. Swinging is a couples activity. They have their act together and know what’s what.”

But what if you’re attracted to one particular couple who aren’t swingers? Should you get them drunk–a move I recommend frequently–and make a pass? “Oh, boy, that is a no-no from the word go,” said Robert. “Even if it works, there can be a lot of repercussions once everyone sobers up. And why would you want to be drunk when you have sex? Getting drunk greatly inhibits the ability to be sexual. Swinging should always be entered into by knowledgeable, sober, consenting adults.”

This is where Robert and I part company. Yeah, yeah, yeah; everything should be entered into by knowledgeable, sober, consenting adults–but that’s not the way the world works when the world wants to get off, is it? My advice: Get your friends blasted and work swinging into the conversation. There’s a new documentary film about swinging called The Lifestyle, and it’s making the rounds on the festival circuit. See it, or claim to have seen it, and tell your friends about it–when they’re blasted. Without saying anything pro-swing or con-swing, feel your friends out on the swap topic. If they’re pro-swing, pounce–make that pass. If they’re con-swing, get ‘em a little drunker, and see if they don’t come around to a pro-swing position.

In addition to his many duties at NASCA, Robert also runs the Lifestyle Organization, whose 26th annual convention will be held in Reno, Nevada this weekend–where everyone will be stone-cold sober, no doubt. “There’ll be four dances,” Robert told me, “and seminars on sexuality, relationships, growth, and medical issues–and a lot of socializing.” But no drinking, of course. You can get more info about the convention by visiting–you guessed it–Lifestyle Organization’s inevitable website, www.lifestyles.org.

Before I let Robert off the phone, I had one more question: Has the late ’90s resurgence of swing dancing resulted in the North American Swing Club Association getting calls from people looking for dance lessons and not pervy, middle-aged married couples? “Yeah,” Robert said, laughing. “Not very many, but some. We tell them we’re not swing dancers. They laugh, say they’re sorry, and go away.”

My fiancé and I were frequently intimate when we were boyfriend and girlfriend. But since we got engaged, we haven’t done much. Any advice?

Really Curious

Don’t get married.

Have you heard of a gay sex practice called “decanting”? As it was told to me, one man catheterizes himself to empty his bladder, and then refills his bladder with wine to serve to guests at a very posh gay club. Is this real? While not universally appealing, urine is sterile and the bladder is a very clean place. Is a glass filled from the penis, or does it go directly into the mouth? Any light you could shed on this would be great.

Curious

No, I haven’t heard of “decanting,” nor have I heard of “mudslides” (gay men crapping and pissing in a room filled with dirt), nor “donkey punching” (gay men knocking their sex partners out with a blow to the back of the head as they fuck), nor “booger planting” (gay men with small penises fucking gay men with large noses in the nostrils), nor “pigs in a blanket” (gay men wrapping sausages in pancakes and serving them to friends with butter and syrup), nor any of the other bizarre and implausible “gay” sex practices straight people are absolutely obsessed with. Are any of these things “real?” Only in the imaginations of some straight people whose sex lives are so dull, they have to make up bullshit about mine.

Speaking of bullshit: Just Shoot Me star David Spade used the word “fag” in an interview with Playboy magazine, sending the fags over at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation into a press-release writing frenzy. Spade joked that Just Shoot Me producers were constantly trying “to fag me up… [but] when I get too faggy, they have me make out with a chick.” GLAAD spokesfag Scott Seomin slammed Spade for using “derogatory” and “hurtful” terms, claiming “fag” and “faggy” are comparable to “racial or ethnic slurs,” and demanded that Spade apologize.

David, don’t worry about anything GLAAD says–most gays and lesbians don’t–and don’t apologize. If Scott Seomin didn’t find things to get upset about, he’d be out of a job. The vast majority of gays and lesbians use the word “fag” as a noun, a verb, and an adjective, and “fag” really isn’t comparable to racial or ethnic slurs like, oh, say, nigger or kike. Gays and lesbians have “Dyke Marches,” wear T-shirts with fruit jokes on them, and chant “fags and dykes and queers, oh my!” at demonstrations. The word is so commonly used by gay men that we can’t object when straight comedians use it too, and in the exact same way we do: not as a slur, but as a joke. Get over it, GLAAD.

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I spent this past weekend at an event called “Wet Spot in Paradise,” Wet Spot’s annual campout for the sex-positive community. I didn’t have any big scenes planned. I just wanted to hang out in the sunshine, gab with friends, and maybe meet some different people. Which I did.

You see, WSIP isn’t a strictly BDSM event, so some of the attendees were from what I sometimes think of as that other group of alt-sex folks: the swingers’ community. It’s funny: Since swingers and kinky people both catch shit from outsiders, you’d think that would make for camaraderie between us. But when we’re thrown together socially, sometimes it’s like the Gryffindors and the Slytherins. Over here, the swingers who think BDSM is sick and wrong. Over there, the BDSM people who find casual partner-swapping sleazy and shallow. We aren’t terribly friendly.

I admit I’ve been a bit dismissive about swinging. I went to some swing parties, and while nothing awful happened, I was left with an “is that it?” feeling. The sex seemed flat and mechanical, and I was put off by some swinger cultural norms. For example, in BDSM circles, it’s a faux pas–or worse–to touch casual acquaintances unless they’ve invited you to do so. I’ve verbally flayed strangers who put their hands on me without asking permission. Such reserve doesn’t fit well with swingers, who are given to lots of social touching, even with people they’ve just met.

So when the gentleman sitting beside me at the picnic table touched my leg several times in our first five minutes of conversation, I knew, without being told, that he was a swinger. But, hey, I was nice; I didn’t bite his head off. And I’m glad, because as we continued chatting, he told me about how he used to be extremely anti-BDSM. Then a sexy young thing said to him, “I’ll fuck you if you let me flog you.” After a short brain vs. cock struggle, he accepted and–surprise–he enjoyed it. It changed his whole point of view about kink.

It was an encouraging story, and his candor about his revised perceptions made me think I should be more open-minded about swingers. I’m still not sure swingers’ parties hold anything for me, but it might be worth another pass, just to see. Besides, I’m thinking I could make an offer to some of those Slytherin people that would bring them over to Gryffindor House. Hey, I’ve gotta be true to my school.

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