October 18, 2004
A ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW, PLEASE
Couples vote sex hotel a hit (Patrick Barkham, The Guardian, October 18, 2004)
Upstairs, Gina Walker toys with the black straps hanging from the ceiling. "You sit here, your arms go in there and your legs are spread out there. The big ladies, they have a whale of a time swinging all over the place. Oooh, it's a fab club."Downstairs, surrounded by smoked-glass mirrors in a softly lit bar, thirty something couples in smart casuals sip champagne cocktails on leather sofas. The Ricky Martin song She Bangs plays on the sound system.
The Liberty Hotel squats in the Leicestershire countryside on the edge of the A5, a convenient 10 minutes from the M1 and the M6. BMWs and Mondeos line up in the car park. It looks a comfortable stop for a sales rep.
But at weekends Liberty becomes Liberation, a high-class club for swingers that is set to transform the seedy image of swinging and the staid hotel industry. What once seemed an outréé lifestyle is fast becoming a common secret for an estimated 500,000 couples in middle England. [...]
The club is the brainchild of former KPMG accountant Neil Armstrong-Nash, 37, and his wife, Lianne, 35. They tried several swinging clubs but were put off by what Mr Armstrong-Nash calls "the shag and go" concept: sleazy dives with drinks in plastic tumblers, where couples are plagued by that habitual irritant of the swingers' scene - the single bloke who has paid to get in and feels entitled to sex.
Liberation is "couple centred" - 90% of its 1,000 members are heterosexual couples. It has strict rules - no cameras or mobile phones; a closed door means a couple don't want to be disturbed; staff never join in - and an emphasis on people only doing what they are comfortable with.
No professions are barred, but single men and women are vetted. "We have one 25-year-old single guy who comes here," said Ms Walker. "It's his recreation. He's really good-looking and the women just love him."
Stories like this tend to bring out the Savonarola in every good conservative, but what is really fun is to spend a pleasant evening arguing this one with a modern progressive. It is his dream--the perfect, risk-free separation of sex from life that is clearly harmless. He is particularly charmed by the “honesty” of it all. No sordid lying or subterfuge here, just Barry and Martha taking a well-deserved break from the kids and garden for a little consensual rough trade.
The discussion starts with a confident, even defiant, challenge. Where is the harm? Arguments about the overall effect on the divorce rate and the sex trade are waved aside as statistically unprovable, and therefore illegitimate. “Tell me how this could possibly harm YOUR marriage!”, he cries. He will usually say that he, himself, would never patronize such an establishment, but after a few drinks will aver he might some day, not because he ever would but because he sees vaguely that such a position is key to his argument.
And then, when the evening is late and the bottle near-empty, you look him in the eye and say: “If you went, would you tell your daughters about it? If you did, would they be glad?”
While I don't see a problem with this place being legal, the hygiene-obsessed part of my personality would keep me miles away.
Posted by: Bart at October 18, 2004 12:29 PMI've been in a number of sex-related venues in my day and the one thing that I've taken away from all of them is that they smell terrible. Not the musky human sex stink, but of industrial generic disinfectent and mildew and rotten beer soaking into shag carpet. That's a mix of smells that follows you around for a couple of days.
"Would you tell your daughters about your sexual swinging" is far from a coup de grce.
Why would anyone tell their daughters ?
What normal couple tells their kids at breakfast that they had sex last night ?
Far from being a mark of shame, not telling one's children is simple common sense.
What's the link in your editorial between "statistics about the sex trade" and clubs for swingers ?
I suspect it was just thrown in because it vaguely seemed to fit, but surely it's not being suggested that the sex trade would disappear if only we could shut those filthy couples' sex clubs.
Michael, for cryin' out loud. OK, replace all graphic talk of sex with "hugging and kissing". Feel better?
Posted by: Peter B at October 18, 2004 2:10 PMI still think the hotel rooms in centerfield at the SkyDome in Toronto were more interesting, at least until they mandated all guests keep the curtains closed whenever game time and intamacy time happened to coencide.
Posted by: John at October 18, 2004 2:49 PMWell where is the virtue in such an activity Michael?
Posted by: Scof at October 18, 2004 2:57 PMMichael,
The time will come when the daughters will figure out where babies come from and will one day be old enough to have that realization we all did -- "Oh my God! My parents had sex!"
Another point comes when all that money for movies, nights at grandma's, the locked bedroom door, and the those days when mom and dad were floating on cloud 9 instead of being their usually cranky selves will make sense. And the kids will come to the realization that not only did their parents have sex, but that they still do.
I think Peter is asking the question what would you tell your daughters on that day. "Yes dear, we prefer room 3B with the trapeze and faux fur straps. We kept the door open so that the neighbors could join us. Mommy forgot to take her pill that day, and that's why you have red hair."
Some parents will have no problem with that. I've met their children. They do get off the drugs and stop their sexual acting out behavior, and in the end the family is all love and kisses.
That isn't to say that a sexually repressed society is any better. There is a middle ground somewhere. Personally, I think that if a couple needs this kind of excitement in their lives, then they should put off having kids until their wild oats are sowed.
Posted by: Remy Logan at October 18, 2004 11:52 PMRemy:
Thoughtful, but did you really intend to equate fidelity with repression?
Posted by: Peter B at October 19, 2004 7:03 AMPeter B:
Fine with me, but then your point is lost.
Scof:
I see no virtue in such activities, and it is in fact sinful, in the sense that it's not of the very highest moral order.
However, most everyday activities fall into the same category.
If we are to order our societies based solely on what's virtuous, safe sex swinging clubs with couples only policies wouldn't be the first to go.
Remy Logan:
Parents should be able to talk about sex to their adult children.
It doesn't strike me as probable that telling your thirty year old daughter that her parents like(d) to swing will send her into a frenzy of self-destructive behavior, unless she was so inclined without telling her.