Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles (33 page)

the libido of eighteen-year-old male, enthusiastically explains over the

phone how she turned her intimate pastime into a group experience.

It started when she met her second husband and confessed that she

liked to masturbate fifteen times a day. For a first date, they visited a

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swinger club with the goal of finding a place where Lynda felt comfort-

able pleasuring herself. This proved to be a challenge. At most parties,

oral sex or full penetration in front of an audience is encouraged, but

going solo is considered poor form. One swinger party host even asked

Lynda to leave when she started masturbating. She was incensed. “I

enjoy watching people have sex while I masturbate, but they call that

aberrant behavior. I consider it safe sex!”

Lynda and her partner started their own swinger club in 1991. Twice

a month, Lynda and forty to fifty other voyeurs and exhibitionists take

the show on the road. With a cache of industrial-strength vibrators,

double-ended dildos, and a club favorite they call the “Relate Wand,”

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a device that stimulates a woman’s G-spot and a man’s prostate at the

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same time, they set up in hotel suites in Orlando, Daytona Beach, and

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Tampa and get to business. Although masturbation is the club’s theme,

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just about anything goes. As Lynda explains, “Everybody is doing what

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they want.” This might include men masturbating while watching nude

women dance (“Women love to see men masturbate”) or a pack of wives

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pleasuring one another on a king-size bed (“Men love to see women

together”). “New people always say they are just going to watch,” Lynda

says. “Everybody else laughs because they know it’s not going to stay

that way.”

Lynda claims Club Relate’s membership numbers in the thousands

and hails from around the globe. Parties are limited in size and slots fill

fast. One member books his reservations two months in advance and

takes the train all the way to Florida from Washington, D.C. Another

travels from Germany. Some have even moved to the state to be party

regulars. “We’re good for Florida because people fly in to come to our

parties. We increase tourism,” Lynda says with a laugh.

Unlike most swinger clubs, single men are warmly welcomed at

Club Relate, and the membership ratio of men to women is two-to-

one, something for which Lynda is thankful. “Men don’t last as long

as women,” she confides. “When it’s even, it’s ‘oh dear, there just aren’t

enough!’” That’s when the electronic accoutrements come in handy.

What makes Florida a magnet for this erotic fringe? People in the

lifestyle give a familiar litany of explanations: the sunshine, the sandy

beaches, the theme parks. Plus, Florida has the infrastructure. The

same goliath convention hotels that host defense contractors and

Tupperware distributors offer ample room for risqué gatherings.

Susan Right, of the National Coalition of Sexual Freedom, explains

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that unlike New York, Florida doesn’t have strict health codes that pro-

hibit on-premise private sex clubs. That’s not to say Florida swinger

clubs haven’t had their run-ins with the law. Intent on stamping out

such places, Broward County sheriff deputies went undercover at Club

Trapeze, the private Fort Lauderdale nightclub, in 1999. They returned

armed and masked when the place was filled with about two hundred

customers—lawyers, doctors, teachers, and law enforcement officers

among them—and arrested twenty-four people for lewd and lascivious

behavior. Most were having sex with their married partner.

The charges didn’t stick. A judge ruled that the activity wasn’t illegal

as long as no one, other than police investigators, was offended. The

judge added that “the Legislature did not make it a crime to operate

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a place for sexual activities.” The ruling sent a message to club owners

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that anything goes as long as everything is consensual. Following the

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ruling, Club Trapeze became so popular that the owner had to turn

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people away at the door.

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Aside from the fairly permissive legal environment, there’s also a

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more elusive quotient, an implicit social acceptance that works to make

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Florida the largest swinger playground in America. Call it a libertine

aura, an uninhibited mojo that emboldens people to try anything from

driving around with a pet tiger in the front seat to having sex on a

crowded hotel pool deck.

Inside the Arena

Swingfest organizers laid out my ground rules weeks in advance of the

convention. No press pass, no interviews. However, I could pay my way

and attend like everyone else. James insisted on accompanying me,

arguing that a single woman at a swinger convention would be like raw

meat in a den of lions.

To ensure privacy, the 585-room Hilton is closed to all but 2009

Swingfesters. For four days, one of Miami’s premier business hotels

crawls with more than 3,500 conventioneers, far fewer than the 12,000

who attended the prior year. Organizers chalk up the drop in registra-

tions to the poor economy. “For sale” signs are posted in condo win-

dows and lawns all over south Florida. The housing bust here was one

of the keenest in the nation.

The entry fee isn’t cheap. Sure, for a mere twenty-five dollars anyone

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can peruse the Swingfest exhibit floor. But everyone knows the real ac-

tion at a convention doesn’t occur in the aisles of vendors exhibiting

their wares, which are not unlike what I’d seen at Fetish Con. When

you’re talking about a swinger convention, one can only assume the

nitty-gritty takes place in the designated “play rooms” or in actual ho-

tel rooms. We pony up two hundred dollars for a couple’s day pass.

At the registration table, a convention employee hands us bags of

swag, which turn out to include gels, lotions, razors, raspberry-scented

shaving cream, condoms, and ads for pornos, sex-toy stores, swinger

clubs, and nudist resorts.

In a twist of sexual discrimination, unescorted men pay three hun-

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dred dollars for a day pass, while single women pay only one hundred.

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“We don’t really cater to single men,” says the convention rep as she

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fastens fluorescent-pink day-pass bands on our wrists. “It’s safer that

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way. The ones we do allow are interviewed and tested.” She’s not talking

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IQ tests. Single men must supply proof that they are free of sexually

transmitted diseases.

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“We weed them out, but we don’t really want them here,” she confides

in a hushed tone, as if speaking of an unmentionable found in a swim-

ming pool. “Who wants a bunch of creepy guys hanging around?”

This helps explain why there are fewer than a handful of unescorted

men roaming the brightly lit corridors of the convention hall. There

also are fewer than a handful of single woman, the convention rep says.

“We call them unicorns.”

Well-dressed and bejeweled couples with wrists ringed in multiple

bands of color to signify their level of participation—a four-day full ac-

cess, a day pass, and others of unknown significance—move purposely

between the classrooms, the exhibit floor, the hotel restaurant. None

give us a second glance.

They seem more far more interested in learning how to run their

own swinging enterprises and swinger parties than hooking up. Except

for a handful of women in skirts that barely cover anything, the crowd

is not much different from one at an Amway convention.

The list of seminars is fairly business related—creating successful

adult websites, how to run a swinger party, and record-keeping for

taxes, a reminder that even the most titillating subjects can be dulled

by the IRS. The snoozers make our selection fairly easy. We are just in

time to catch “Female Ejaculation,” presented by a duo from Montana

called the Squirtinators.

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We join about forty couples filtering into the seminar room where

rows of folding chairs hold Hilton-inscribed notepads. You never know

when you might need to take notes. A pale man who looks like a small-

town southern politician (comb-over, perma-press slacks and all) and

his equally conservative-looking wife take seats in front of us.

Up front, a middle-aged man with linebacker biceps faces the audi-

ence, waiting expectantly. This must be Tim. His eyes light up as an at-

tractive blonde of equal age in a low-cut, tie-dyed bathing suit cover-up

sashays up the aisle. Her hefty natural breasts threaten to escape with

every step, and her carefree smile suggests she doesn’t care if they do.

Despite the audience’s attempts at small talk, every eye in the room

follows her as she heads to the front and stands beside Tim. This must

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be Tammy, the other half of the Squirtinators.

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Tim and Tammy teach women how to ejaculate like men. They work

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the swinger circuit from Las Vegas to Spain. They offer their up-close-

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and-personal lessons on adult cruises, at nudist resorts in Jamaica and

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Mexico, and anywhere else people will book them and pay their travel

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fees.

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They stand beside a padded table, and Tim breaks the ice with a joke

about masturbation. He then relates how he became fascinated when

he was only a teenager by a woman’s ability to shoot fluids from her

vagina.

While Tim is still in the introduction, James accidently knocks over

my full drink. As I pick ice cubes off the soggy carpet, James cracks the

tension by whispering, “Watch your fluids.”

The seminar is clinical in many ways. Tim explains the physiology

of women and what happens in the process of arousal, offering that he

gained much of his knowledge from a porn director. He describes how

a woman’s ejaculatory fluid comes from an area in the female anatomy

akin to the male prostate. Despite the scientific biology lesson, he’s a

funny guy and keeps the audience entertained.

I’m assuming the seminar is about to end when Tammy stretches out

on the table. Then it hits me. They are actually going to demonstrate.

Tim lifts Tammy’s skirt and his hand disappears between her bent

legs. She immediately starts to moan. He narrates what he’s doing with

his unseen hand as if giving instructions for fixing a faucet.

And then, there it is. No sooner than he had started, a stream of

fluid shoots up about six inches above Tammy’s crotch. It happens so

fast that I barely catch it and turn to James for confirmation. His red

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face tells me all I need to know.

Mission accomplished, Tim puts his hand to his mouth. “Tastes like

chicken,” he jokes. The audience laughs.

He asks for volunteers, adding he once squirtinated a stranger in

front of two hundred people. An up-close view was projected onto a

large screen. James elbows me. I give him a death look. With no volun-

teers, Tim offers to give one-on-one lessons in their hotel room.

Instead, we head straight for the bar.

It’s one thing to see extreme sexual lifestyles on a cable channel

or even pantomimed in a Fetish Con stage show. It’s quite another to

watch someone have an orgasm in front of a crowd of people in folding

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chairs in a bland hotel seminar room. As the lunchtime crowd of swing-

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ers begins to surround us, I lose myself to a screwdriver and the college

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football game on the TV above the bar.

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So far, we have yet to see any couples showing the slightest interest

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in other twosomes. But it’s only noon and we still have other areas to

explore.

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The “play rooms” are set up behind closed doors right across from

the seminar rooms. This is where Swingfesters get the chance to prac-

tice what they’ve learned and show off any old tricks. The Chocolate

Room is billed as a perennial favorite. A conventioneer explains that

couples pour chocolate sauce and cream on one another’s privates and

then lick it off, satisfying two cravings at once. We screw up our cour-

age and open the first door. The room is empty. A few homemade, glit-

tery, poster board stars and cloud cutouts—like you might see at a high

school prom—are taped to the walls.

The exhibit floor is a one-stop-shopping center for swingers. The

cavernous hall is filled with more than seventy booths, in essence small

storefronts pushing everything from vibrating gloves to a variety of

the sex-toy standards—lubricants, dildos, vibrators. Women are get-

ting flowers and butterflies painted on bare breasts. The Shoe Guy

pimps red platforms with a 7-inch heel. A man in a white ship captain’s

uniform tries to sell us a chartered couples cruise out of the Port of

Tampa. Florida, a capital of cruises, is quite naturally a jumping-off

point for those want to swing at sea.