Naked truth about swingers
Naked truth about swingers
Ling: I’ve covered war zones and I’ve never been this uncomfortable
- By LINDA STASI
- Last Updated: 12:00 PM, August 3, 2012
- Posted: 10:32 PM, August 2, 2012
Linda StasiLast week, a swingers’ club in New York City got in touch with me —no, not to invite me to join, but to get an advance peek at footage they took of Lisa Ling taping one of their parties.
No, Ling wasn’t trying out the “lifestyle,” as swingers call their unconventional ideas of marriage and monogamy. What the swingers’ party planners were offering was never-before-seen-footage of one of their parties, which take place in lofts and fancy spaces around this city with mostly good-looking, high-end swingers.
After viewing the raw footage, I decided I’d rather speak to Ling about the whole thing instead. Turns out that party run by BCD (Behind Closed Doors) wasn’t even included in the episode of “Our America With Lisa Ling,” which airs Aug. 21 titled, “Swingers Next Door.”
SWING WITH ME:Lisa Ling (left) interviews a swinger.Why? Because Ling says these paid-for parties are not typical of the vast majority of swingers in this country — emphasis on “vast.”
Yes, there are an estimated 15million swingers of all shapes, sizes, races, ages and physical conditions swinging even as we speak.
Ling told me the “typical” swinging couple are regular people who can be doctors, electricians, house cleaners, lawyers and you name it.
The episode features three couples, the most bizarre being Roxy and Jeff, a wealthy couple in Arizona who have recently retired. He was an enormously successful doctor and she a nurse. They have three grown kids, have been married for 29 years and just started swinging when they moved to Arizona.
Not only aren’t they ashamed of revealing themselves, they revel in it. For a party they are throwing, Roxy dresses up in a see-through, elastic-strap, mini, elastic dress with hooker heels and Jeff turns into Howdy Doody, all done up in a rhinestone-studded cowboy shirt.
You’d think they’d be concerned that their children may have to throw themselves in front of moving vehicles to overcome the shame, but no.
In fact, they tell Ling that when they told their kids, they only said, “What took you so long?” Presumably the children meant why did it take them so long to ’fess up rather than why did it take them so long to start swinging.
The doc and his wife take Lisa along to the naughty sex shop where she buys a giant chrome dildo and some sort of fetish something or other while he checks out the rubber-spiked condoms. Hello! These are retired people!
How did Ling feel being an observer to the absurd? “I’ve covered war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, and, frankly,” she said, “I’ve never been this uncomfortable.” That’s because she’s a “vanilla” — the swinger term for someone who observes without participating.
But make no mistake, Ling says she likes everyone she met and has done a helluvajob recording it all without being in the least judgmental. Me? I would have been thrown out for laughing.
And damn, I’m still laughing. I mean, a chrome whoozit and a dress made of straps on a retired nurse? She probably would have done better at their sex party if she dressed up as a nurse. A naughty one of course.
