Pick Me Up

"Yes, I'd like to meet somebody," the 30-year-old says casually. "Would I like to do it forever? No. But at the moment, yes. I'm pretty sure that maybe five years from now I'll change my mind and I'll hate everybody here."

Single guy recently broke up with his girlfriend of two years. She told him that she didn't like the idea of his sleeping around. Perhaps aware that he's not the best cultural ambassador, he introduces Peter and Cherie to a middle-aged couple who have been dating since January and swinging since June. Barry, who sounds and looks like Barry White, asks why they're interested in the lifestyle.

"We want to do something different," Peter says. "The excitement. We're both very sexual beings. Part of that is being able to talk to each other and say, 'Hey, there's something I want to try.' "

Barry thinks extreme openness allows swingers to grow closer to each other. "Intimacy literally means Into me, you see, right? So if we're intimate with each other, we look inside each other," he theorizes as his girlfriend nods. "So this lifestyle keeps reaffirming that we're committed."

Such nifty formulations don't always work on sex therapists, however. Dr. Susan D. Delaney of Plano, a member of the American Board of Sexology, says swinging is wrong any way you look at it. She likens swingers to binge drinkers who can't stop cracking open new bottles. She has counseled women who have been pressured into swinging and feel hurt and bewildered. Delaney is a stickler for monogamy. A member of a Benedictine spiritual group, she advises clients to remain faithful through sexual thought control. "If you don't ever think it," she says, "you're not going to do it."

Less prudish people, like some swingers, for example, are also against swinging -- at least when it comes to young people. Girls can't separate sex from love, says a 47-year-old swinger who goes by Candy Bear. She recently advised Brandon, a 33-year-old friend, against bringing his new girlfriend into it. "You've been dating her for a month," she scolded. "She loves you. It is going to kill her to see you fuck somebody else."

Swingers often go to great lengths to ward off potential wreckage from hookups, with varying rates of success. Many online postings ask that couples be not only disease-free but also "jealousy-free."

Still, some sex therapists consider swinging a legitimate option. Stripped of its taboos, it can be an enjoyable hobby, just like golf or bowling, says California marriage counselor Dr. Marty Klein. He says he has observed the same marital success rate among monogamous couples and swingers. When swinging causes problems, it's usually because one member of the couple has coerced the other into it. "That's not because of swinging," he says. "That's because of one person dragging somebody into something they don't want to do."

Cherie jokes that Peter has been trying to drag her to a swinger event for months. She always puts him off, saying she needs new clothes. But tonight has momentum, and the couple is swept out of the Old Heidelberg, down Fountainview and up to Encounters, which sits next to a faux antique wedding chapel. Inside, they walk past posters of naked women. They plop nervously into deep armchairs near a dance floor throbbing with lights and hip-hop and grinding hotties.

A couple of muscular regulars attired in tight club clothes introduce themselves. "Everybody is very friendly," the man tells them. "It's kind of like church."

Cherie gazes across the dim room. Crouched beneath a table, a woman is giving a blow job to a man on a bench. Against another wall, two men, one graying and one younger, are leaning back into their chairs. Two young women with their dresses pulled up are bobbing up and down on top of them. One climbs off the old man and the other goes down on him.

"I would be lying if I didn't say I'm really uncomfortable right now," Cherie says.

"Do you want to leave?" asks Peter.

"We don't need to leave," she says, and asks what he thinks. He says it's more important what she's thinking.

"I thought I'd be safe here," she says, "and I wouldn't see it here, and it's just very uncomfortable because I've never actually seen adults have sex before. I mean, except in a movie."

The drive home is icy. Neither of them speaks. They don't have sex all weekend.

Sunday evening Peter and Cherie meet with me again at a bar. "If we're still feeling uncertain about this," he says, "then maybe it's better left as a fantasy.

"But then," he quickly adds, "in all fairness, that was our first time out. Maybe we just needed to be a little bit slower about it."

Cherie timidly smirks.

"Maybe," she says.