Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles (34 page)

Twenty-somethings in string bikinis dance around a stripper pole to

promote rental stages for swingers who want to take their house par-

ties up a notch. I recognize several of the vendors from Fetish Con, and

they seem to remember me.

proof

Swinging clearly isn’t just a pastime for many conventioneers: It’s

a business. Dixie Does Florida, an attractive middle-aged blonde from

Pompano Beach, specializes in swinger travel. Today she’s promoting

her “Splash Parties,” which are in essence weekend swinger takeovers of

various hotels around Florida. The profit potential is nothing to sneeze

at. Dixie charges $125 and up for day passes, and two-night hotel pack-

ages can run north of $700. Swinging clearly isn’t a poor man’s lifestyle.

No wonder hotels allow the clandestine events, especially when they

are knee-deep in a recession.

But even on the convention floor, the crowd is surprisingly light.

Where is everyone?

We take the elevator up to a floor of private hotel rooms. The long,

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carpeted hallway is as quiet as a school on Sunday. No naked people

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running from room to room. No blaring music. No trail of undies. But

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a handwritten sign on one door hints that the stillness is deceptive—

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“Come On In.”

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Instead, we head down to the pool for fresh air and another drink.

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An attractive couple in their forties, dressed in swimsuits and sporting

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wristbands of every color, ride with us. They’re contemplating a jaunt

to Miami’s Haulover Beach, the only official nude beach in Florida. I

initiate small talk and immediately declare my research purposes to es-

tablish that I’m not hitting on them. They’re happy to talk once I agree

not to use their names.

“We’ve only hooked up with one couple,” the husband says. “But the

scene really turns us on, and the party last night was totally crazy, in a

good way.”

“We have to get to know people and both like them before anything

is going to happen with them,” the petite wife says. “But we’re only into

soft-swapping anyway.” She gathers I’m lost. “No penetration,” she ex-

plains. “It’s much safer that way.”

Later, another swinger gives me a lesson in the lexicon. Hard-swing-

ing means full penetration with a nonspouse. Although the definition

of soft-swapping can vary, generally it means sex with a spouse in the

presence of others who are also having sex or heavy petting with some-

one other than your spouse. Each couple sets their own boundaries for

what’s permissible; for example, some forbid their spouse from kissing

another sex partner.

Our elevator companions got into swinging six years into their mar-

riage, which is typical. Studies show that most swingers get into the

proof

lifestyle around their seventh year of marriage or commitment, when

mystery has left the bedroom.

“Do you swing?” the husband asks, studying us a little too closely for

comfort as the elevator doors slide open.

“No,” James barks, a bit hastily.

They look at one another and grin back at us before sashaying into

the crowd.

James doesn’t think they bought my story about being there for

research. “They were probably thinking, ‘Yeah, you’re writing a book.

Sure. Wink. Wink. Whatever your fantasy.’”

I pretend he’s being paranoid.

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Elevated above the pool crowd, a topless girl hula-hoops to reggae

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and is silhouetted by the sun. The potted palms, pulsing island house

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mix, and Latino waiters in crisp white Habaneras ground us in Miami.

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Even though November is just hours away, the sun is piercing and the

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air, sticky. So much for catching our breath.

The pool deck is packed with oiled bodies. We squeeze through

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to the bar on the far side on the pool, hopelessly out of place in our

conventional wear.

Couples line up at the low poolside stage when the spiky-haired

emcee announces the contest for Mr. & Miss Swingfest. Their chal-

lenge is to demonstrate as many sexual positions as they can within

one minute. Accompanied by a throbbing musical beat, couple after

couple whizzes through every position in the
Kama
Sutra
and more.

Handstands, back to front, feet to earlobes, 69, and a few contortions

beyond description. The women are topless and the men more mod-

estly dressed in swim trunks, with the exception of a gray-haired hippie

couple who chose to do their entire routine painfully nude.

The crowd cheers for each couple with a vigor that suggests they’re

already half-lit. Beside us near the bar, a young couple who look not

far beyond college years grind to the music as they watch the salacious

show. The young man wears wraparound sunglasses and plaid Quiksil-

ver shorts. He keeps looking over at me, which I assume is because I am

dressed like a schoolteacher amidst the crowd of skin.

We move away to isolated lounge chairs at the far end of the pool, the

closest ones to the exit in case we need to make a quick getaway. Only a

sip or two into our screwdrivers, the scene devolves into bacchanalia.

I blame the blonde in braces. She, with the rigid melon breasts. She

proof

started the sex wave.

“Is that girl actually giving that guy a blow-job?” James asks incredu-

lously as Blondie’s head bobs over the lap of a naked man sitting on the

pool’s edge. Her long hair spreads flaccidly on the water with each dip.

All at once, head-bobbing, breast-fondling, and bare-buttock mas-

sages spread around the pool like a sexual flu. Most appear to be playing

with their mates, leaving the rare singles, like an older fellow dressed

like a Nantucket yachtsman, to circle the pool and watch. It doesn’t oc-

cur to me that people might assume we are also sexual voyeurs. Lust

keeps all eyes on the action. So despite our self-consciousness, we feel

invisible.

Mr. Wraparound sunglasses and his girl change that delusion.

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They saunter over from the bar and take ownership of the chairs

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adjacent to James. She removes her thin top and stretches out her tiny

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nude body on the lounge chair. Wraparound lies down on top of her.

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She squeals with pleasure. Loudly. I attempt not to notice.

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I’m sure it’s some unconscious defense mechanism, but I start to

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worry about missing the University of Alabama football game. I turn

to ask James the time and—bam! Mr. Wraparound’s fully erect penis in

penetration mode is in my line of vision. I look up. He’s grinning at me!

I cannot look away fast enough. My cheeks burn with embarrassment.

“What is it?” James asks, somehow oblivious to the carnal pleasures

going on just inches from him.

Without turning to face James, for that would mean another penis

view and possibly invite some interaction, I whisper, “They are actually

doing it.”

James glances over his shoulder and snaps his head back around.

“Yes, they are.”

Mr. Nantucket strolls by, ogling.

A passing waiter carrying a tray of empties notices the couple, too.

His eyes bulge in shock. He moves quickly. He has seen enough.

I have, too. For me, this sexually charged environment is about as

arousing as changing a baby’s diaper.

James and I sit in silence, facing straight ahead to avoid eye contact

with Mr. Wraparound, whose gaze I still feel on my blushing cheeks.

“I kind of have a headache,” James offers.

I welcome the cue.

There’s no dabbling in swinging. You can’t playfully try it on like a

proof

human horse bridle or feel the excitement of it by climbing atop a roll-

ing pontoon boat. You are either into it, or you’re not. We are clearly

not. So, I grab my half-ton purse and we tiptoe away from the pool with

our plastic bags of swinger swag, hoping that no one approaches us be-

fore we reach the car.

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Alien Riviera

proof

Something bizarre is happening again outside a ranch-style home

in Gulf Breeze. Blow-up aliens have touched down in the yard. A red

trolley pulls up filled with a cast of characters straight out of a B sci-

fi movie. Out pours a green Martian woman wearing bug-eyed sun-

glasses. A dorky man scurries by and appears to be incubating a foot-

ball-sized egg. Other trolley passengers wear strange foil hats: one is

strung with lights, another has eggbeater antennas. They wave light

sabers. A gray-colored alien in a tuxedo and black fedora enters the mix

carrying a sign: “I Saw Elvis in a UFO.”

The merry band of local actors and UFO-loving tourists have landed

at the house where Gulf Breeze’s legendary UFO sightings all began.

This is the former home of Ed Walters, the man who in the early 1990s

put the coastal town on the paranormal map.

Local UFOlogists warned me that so-called real aliens don’t visit

Gulf Breeze much anymore, but I’ve come to town anyway, determined

to soak up some of the afterglow. I find enough to keep even the most

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skeptical entertained.

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A UFO presentation this weekend at the Gulf Breeze Recreation

Center promises a chance to meet witnesses and maybe some alleged

alien abductees. Not long after checking into my Pensacola Beach mo-

tel, I discover you can throw a shell and hit a local who’s seen a UFO

or knows someone who has. I’m halfway through my first drink at the

adjoining bar when the man next to me confesses he’s had a close en-

counter. “I don’t really ever tell anybody about it because I know they’ll

think I’m crazy. But I know what I saw. And my mom, my uncle, and my

brother saw it, too.”

Back in the early 1990s, his family was heading home to Gulf Breeze

from Pensacola. They were in a long line of traffic on the Pensacola Bay

Bridge when they spotted a green light glowing in the bay. “There was

a stream of brake lights. Everybody on the bridge just stopped,” he

recalls.

A glowing eerie green craft passed underneath the bridge. Once on

the other side, it zoomed out of the water. “It hung there in the sky for

a few seconds, then zipped one way, then another, then just shot off

and disappeared.” When his family got over to the Gulf Breeze side of

the bridge, his mom insisted on stopping at a pay phone to report what

they had seen. She couldn’t get through to the police, he says. The lines

were busy.

proof

Now you might suspect his tale is induced by the Budweiser he’s

drinking, but it’s his first, and he doesn’t strike me as someone prone

to conjuring fairy tales. A fisherman by profession, he adds that he’s

seen other strange lights out on the water at night.

The crowd begins to clear out to watch a different sky show. Coin-

cidently, the Blue Angels, the Navy’s hotdog aviators, are performing

over the beach this weekend. Based at Naval Air Station Pensacola, the

Blue Angels take their daredevil show on the road as an unadulterated

recruiting tool for the military. Every July they give locals a buzz and

attract more tourists to the area than at any other time of the year.

Thousands are gathered, some knee-deep in the surf. Blue and yel-

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low jets whiz past at seemingly impossible speeds, leaving thin trails of

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smoke, deafening roars, and the smell of burnt fuel. They do loop-de-

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loops, face off in faux chicken fights, and sometimes climb straight up

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to disappear vertically into the heavens.

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Their speed is a marvel of man’s ingenuity; the pilots’ stunts, a testa-

ment to how far man will go for the sake of giving and getting a thrill.

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Living just across the bay from Pensacola, “The Cradle of Naval

Aviation,” and less than 40 miles from Eglin, the Southeast’s largest

Air Force base, Gulf Breeze residents have a natural fascination with

what goes on in the sky. But given that the sliver of a town sits in the

Bible Belt, it’s not exactly the kind of place you’d expect to find fervent

believers in little green men.

Most tourists probably don’t even recognize Gulf Breeze as a town

as they pass through on their way to Pensacola Beach. The stretch is

more a bottleneck of red lights and the last place to pick up groceries.

Nestled on the narrow end of a peninsula and surrounded by water on

three sides, it’s the only stop between historic downtown Pensacola

and Pensacola Beach and separated from each by miles-long bridges.

To understand how Gulf Breeze came to warrant a UFO parody takes

a glimpse back at how it all started, at that bland ranch-style house on

a typically quiet residential street.

The Walters Files

On a temperate November night in 1987, Ed Walters took Polaroids of

what he claimed was a spaceship hovering over his yard. Frozen in a

beam of blue light, he claimed a voice telepathically told him to calm