The Lifestyle (41 page)

He meant the one in the
Star
. “Top Dole Aide in Sex-Orgies Scandal.”

And the
National Enquirer:
“Top Dole Aide Caught in Group-Sex Ring.”

And from Associated Press: “Dole Aide Quits in Sex Scandal.”

And
Newsweek
. “Private Lives, Political Ends.”

But those headlines would appear two weeks hence.

Now a passing young waitress guessed correctly at the union boys’ bewilderment in the face of this shindig, and leaned down over her platter of beers. “How you guys doin’?”

“Who
are
these people?” one of them asked, with heartbreaking sincerity.

“If you can believe it, they’re
swingers
, they’re all
married”
she shouted above the roar. “It’s their convention. They take over the hotel every year. Nice people, but
re-E-E-ally
friendly—so you guys watch yourselves!” she said protectively.

Swingers?
the Teamsters wondered in unison. Didn’t that go out with the sixties? Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice? Free love, open marriage, naked orgies? Since when did they hold
conventions?
Where the hell were
we
when it came back?

“We love you! We love you! You are already booked until 1999, and furthermore, we are going into the next century with you!
Long live the lifestyle!”
the vice-president of the Town and Country, Felipe Ortiz, declared to the full house of long-married Care Team couples assembled in the Tiki Hut halfway across the grounds. Loud cheers and applause erupted from the hundred teachers and physicians, construction workers and computer programmers—most of whom were wearing nothing more daring than green Lifestyles golf shirts and jeans. Among them were George and C.J., Cathy and Dan Gardner, plus the whole LSO staff, including Joyce and Richard, who would be heading the Care Team from Wednesday night to Sunday afternoon. Leslie had flown down that afternoon and I’d introduced her all around. (“He’s so ugly and you’re so beautiful,” old George had said.)

“Okay, guys, we have a fair amount of material to cover here,” McGinley announced, mounting the podium with the high-headed posture of a small general in charge of giant matters, “but first I want to take a moment to say that this convention wouldn’t take place if it wasn’t for you people. You guys are out there really making this place function. Not only are you helping to make this a great convention but, when you think about it, you’re also affecting the lives of thousands of people. And that’s part of what we’re all about—to give people more joy in their relationships, more joy out of what they’re doing, more joy out of life itself! I just want to thank you very, very much.”

“And thank-yow, Bob!” Joyce called. “Thank
everybody!”

The Care Team couples applauded, perhaps feeling a warm sense of community. For years they had read the published reports that labeled them banal fornicators who hadn’t a clue about the difference between joy and pleasure. But they themselves believed they had a handle on the total picture, and that
if the world viewed them in disbelief, confusion, and irritation it was only because they were threateningly normal.

“I want to introduce to you our head of security, Jerry Baker,” McGinley continued, holding his hand out to the well-muscled African American who was the manager of Alternative Security Concepts, which would have a dozen equally well-muscled agents wandering the forty-six acres for the next four days. “Jerry is a symbol of our success because Jerry is kind of the reverse of a prison guard. A prison guard keeps people in, Jerry keeps people out.”

“And Dr. McGinley is
not
joking,” Jerry said, taking the mike. “And thank-you for allowing me to do that job for you. I can’t tell you how many people try to sneak into this convention every year—and more often than not, they’re the ones who cause the very few problems that we’ve ever had, not the guests. But with that in mind, I can tell you that members of the vice squad of San Diego will be attending as couples, undercover, making sure all people are obeying the laws of San Diego and California. All I can ask is for your help in discouraging activity that you know in your gut would make a police officer unhappy.”

“You mean happy!” someone called.

“I know how to make a cop happy. Haven’t had a ticket in five years.”

“Hey! We got two cops right here!”

Two fellows stood up and bowed. “Go ahead, make us happy!”

A blond woman in her early sixties ran up and embraced both.

“No, no—joking aside, this is a point that can’t be overemphasized,” McGinley said. “As you know, beginning tomorrow we have this whole resort at our disposal, but that does not mean we own the resort or that the resort is considered a private party in the eyes of the laws of the State of
California. There are people from the outside working here—they are considered the public. As a consequence, we will permit no public nudity, no sex in public, no doors left open while sex is taking place within the rooms.”

There were moans and groans from the audience, even hisses.

“I might add, however, that when the doors are closed, all the rooms are clothing optional, and private parties are private parties!”

To this, the Care Team couples offered hosannas.

“Well, with that, I’m going to give the podium over to Joyce now,” McGinley said. “This convention is also a lot of work, it’s a fun kind of work, but it’s got to be organized: we have three big dances, forty or so seminars, a luncheon, costume judging, the Erotic Arts show—you name it—and we want to make sure that everybody knows what everybody else is doing. As you know, we have Care Team captains, and each captain is responsible for a particular area and for the groups of you who’ll work with them. So I’m going to ask Joyce to discuss your roles. Then, afterwards, if you haven’t already been over there, the hotel has set up a tent and made other arrangements for us at Charlie’s—just to make it a very social place for people to meet and talk and have drinks and whatever else, so you’re all invited over there after this.”

A big round of applause greeted General Joyce as she skipped to the podium.

“Okay, first,” she said, “I think what I’d like to do is have everybody introduce themselves. A lot of people in this room don’t know each other, many of you are from different parts of the country—so the first thing I want is for all you guys to stand up and show us who you’re with and tell us where you’re from.”

This sparked a near riot of protest from the women, who gave Joyce the good-natured raspberry.

“Whaddya mean,
the guys?”

“Let the
gals
stand up and show themselves!!”

“We dragged
them
here!” a popular Lifestyles employee by the name of Juanita shouted above the rest, to thunderous applause, leaving the female members of an HBO TV crew, who were here to do a ten-minute segment for
Real Sex
, feeling as if they had passed through Alice’s mirror into a swinger’s version of Wonderland.

After their first vision of high-octane swingers, the four Teamsters decided a few more beers were in order. Seven hours later two of them were still at the same table while their buddies played pool with the partygoers. By then they’d spoken with a good sampling of the marrieds who’d crammed into Charlie’s for the Early Arrivals Social. “I gotta tell you, I’m amazed, but they’re really great people,” remarked Tyler, a specialist in uniting Teamsters locals of different cultures under one contract. The raucous ladies performing their poly-amorous acts around him kept inviting themselves to his table for a chat—Tyler being as dark and handsome as Omar Sharif in his
Dr. Zhivago
days—but as soon as they realized he was a straight Joe married to a straight Jane for umpteen years, they relaxed and answered his queries without reservation. “The things they’ve been telling me and the way they talk—it’s a whole other world I didn’t even know existed. Like they love their husbands, but—.” He furrowed his dark brows and laughed. “Well, they say they’re monogamous: they don’t have sex with someone without him being there. It’s definitely not for me, but I can’t get over there’s no jealousy. No games, no pretension—”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said his squinting colleague, Stuart, who moonlighted as a clinical psychologist for trial
lawyers when they needed jurors’ minds assessed. “There’s something else just below that surface. How do I know these people aren’t acting out? Why would a normal woman—”

“I didn’t say it was
normal”
Tyler laughed. “But my preconception would be that it’s a man’s thing. But they’re saying, ‘Yeah, maybe my husband got me into it, but now that I’m into it I’m more enthusiastic than he is.’ So you just sit back and question why a normal wife would behave like this—even if her husband said, ‘Okay, let’s spice up our marriage.’”

Stuart looked sourly on that. “For who?” he asked. “For
him
—not for her.” He was certain these women weren’t here for the sex. The difference between a man’s sex drive and a woman’s was the same as the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing a bullet. Maybe these women were deeply distressed.

Stuart looked sideways at a passing redhead, youngish for this crowd—no more than her late twenties—in a sweetheart dress and garter get-up that stretched taut her French-seamed stockings. Stuart swiveled his head to follow her image on his other side and inadvertently caught her backward glance. She turned, her hands fluttering down upon his shoulders, violating the swing-club etiquette of no-invite, no-touch.

“Uh, oh,” Tyler laughed, then called me and my wife confidentially close, since Steely Dan was loud on the jukebox. “I think he’s threatened by the whole thing,” Tyler told us while Stuart archly questioned the intruder. “The flirting’s going in the wrong direction; he can’t get his mind around it.”

“True, it
is
a different way of thinking,” the woman was saying. “But if you look at these different cultures—”

“Okay, fine, fine: what I’m saying is that from where I’m sitting you’re making yourselves into objects,” Stuart enunciated. “Not my object, but every other guy’s.”

“Gee, we probably never thought of that,” she said.

“So the simple question is, Why is it necessary to do that?”

“We’re making ourselves into objects for
ourselves”
she
shot back, as if she’d debated the point before. “Women
always
look at magazines and think, That’s what I should look like, a sexual object. And what they’re doing here is
ultra
indulging it, and feeling it’s
natural
—as a
group
, not like I’m going to steal a husband. It’s a game.”

“Oh, I see,” Stuart said. “Perfectly natural.”

“Well—one thing—we don’t cheat on each other like everyone else,” she replied; then—petulantly:
“Huh?”

“Hey,” he said, putting his hands up. “Don’t get personal. I just wandered in here.”

She shook her head at this hopeless case and walked away. “I guess I questioned a few of her assumptions. Presumptions,” he laughed.

The collegiate young waitress leaned a long way down and asked Stuart if he’d like another beer. “Well-1-1 now, I don’t know,” he said, looking sidelong at her, suddenly suave as James Bond. “Do you think it’ll ease the tension?”

“Oh,
that
he can handle!” Tyler said to Leslie. “Now that it’s on his terms!”

It was about half an hour later, perhaps one-thirty in the morning, that someone on one of the high balconies of the West Tower that overlooked the entire resort sent up a rocket. It whistle-screamed into the black sky trailing silver sparks, and everyone in front of Charlie’s turned and peered through the palms to follow its arc. Its light went out, there was a quarter second of silence, and then it exploded in a shower of silver balls, like the Big Bang spraying galaxies in the eyes of the swingers and on the calm, blue pool below. “Eeee-haaa!”

“Something tells me that we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto!”