It's a peculiar thing, but the older one gets the more one thinks about the past. Perhaps it's a preparation for death or something?
Anyway, I've been thinking lately about the swinging lifestyle, how I got into it and my swinging career. I think my very first awareness of the lifestyle dates to the late 60's, when I was working in an office in London during the three months between finishing school and going to University - so I would have been 18. The office manager was a swinger, and he and his wife used to have parties at their house. I overheard him telling his closest friend in the office about the events of one particular Saturday night and I was gobsmacked! - I never thought that kind of thing went on! So that was how I became aware of the contact magazine scene - this was in the days before the internet, of course!
Contact mags were small booklets - about the size of a folded A4 sheet - called names like "Rendezvous". The idea was you wrote an advert - "Hunk wants to meet sexy lady, etc", and if any other reader was interested they wrote you a letter saying so, enclosing a stamped addressed envelope for your reply. Needless to say the ladies advertising must have received hundreds of such letters - and it usually turned out that they were "working girls". Buying stamps and envelopes and writing letters was a real chore every month! Funnily enough, though, I did meet a couple of nice ladies through this system - although the party scene eluded me.
I went to Northern Ireland to live, though, and sex in Ulster in the 70's was NOT ALLOWED - let alone swinging! I heard about the "car keys in a bowl" suburban parties that were meant to be going on in England but of course never got to one. There were rumours that in Belfast the presence of a packet of Omo washing powder in the kitchen window was an invitation placed by bored housewives - "Old Man Out" - but I never ever saw one - despite looking!
By the late 80's there was a Northern Ireland contact mag! - although it only had about five or six adverts in it! However, I did meet people from it so it was a start. By that time, however, my increased income meant could go on trips abroad - paris, Amsterdam, etc. - and that's where I discovered the swinging clubs - in particular, the Candy Club in Amsterdam. What a place - small, intimate, very friendly and full of dedicated swingers! I was just knocked out. I tried the Paris clubs as well, but the French in Paris don't like the English very much so that wasn't such a great experience - despite being very careful I was dreadfully ripped off one night to the tune of about £200 in a club that was actually full of working girls. The Candy Club was the place for me, though, and I went back a number of times.
And then came the internet!!! Younger readers will have no idea just how ground-breaking this was - just how quickly and how widely the opportunities opened out! I discovered AdultFriendFinder in about 2003 and started to use it to meet people - changing circumstances and mores in Belfast helped immensely in that.
And when I returned to England a couple of years ago it was an easy matter to track down the swingers' clubs in Manchester that I like to go to, after a false start going to a couple of crappy ones in Blackpool. And I found that there were women on AbFab who wanted a taste of what goes on in the clubs and who were keen for me to escort them there - which brings us up to date!
Now I get to a club whenever I can and it's always good to take an enthusiastic woman. Sometimes I wish I were 35 years younger!
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