Pick Me Up

At Hedonism III in Montego Bay, Jamaica, positive emotion was required. There would be no frowning, yawning or pouting -- unless, of course, the pouts were sexy. The perky, tanned pageant contestants were vying for the chance to represent the nudist resort in national lifestyle promotions -- to become, in effect, the official Queen of Swing.

The homemade-bikini competition presented unique challenges. How do you tease a crowd that's already naked? It was a pressing issue, given that victory in most of the competitions would be judged by applause. Payton covered her breasts with two butterflies. She strutted across a deck, and a nipple jiggled out. Even so, the callipygian Alicia, whose private parts were plastered in colored beads, easily took the round.

Alicia's skills were prodigious. During round two, the pole-dancing competition, the middle-aged Latina from Los Angeles bent down on all fours. She clenched her butt cheeks alternately to the beat; they moved like Jell-O domes atop a subwoofer. She was equally hardworking offstage. She and her husband shagged other couples with abandon, Payton says. Every day Alicia's fan base -- and the clapping that meant victory -- grew larger and louder.

Payton was flagging. She didn't go in for orgies, didn't like making togas and wet T-shirts, and didn't enjoy waiting around for camera crews. She looked bored and glum. Meanwhile, Tucker, who had been rehired as a pilot with Continental, was chilling out on the vacation by getting drunk at nine in the morning and spending too much time in the sun. "I burned my willie," he says.

The final competition required the contestants to answer a question in front of a panel of judges. Alicia walked bare-breasted onto the stage wearing an S&M collar and flailing her rotund derriere with a whip. Asked what she would do if she won, she said, "If I did win, there would be an orgy in my room!"

Payton struck a different tone. She showed up fully clothed. The emcee asked her which household appliance she most closely resembles. She interpreted the question loosely. "A dildo would be good," she said, flashing a rare smile, "…my fiancé is a pilot and he's gone four days out of the week." Maybe it was an invitation, maybe it was an ode to love. Either way, the judges ate it up. They pronounced her Miss Hedonism III. She was handed a bouquet and wiped tears from her eyes.

Payton later realized that Alicia never had a chance. She was older and she had a gut and she walked like a truck. She would never work in advertising brochures.

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Payton's victory catapulted her from the lifestyle into a budding profession in the porno business. The Hedonism III promoters flew her to the Adult Video Network conference. She shopped nude photos of herself to magazines. Playboy has recently expressed interest.

As the lifestyle grows, it's going commercial. And young people will be the first to be exploited or enriched, depending on how you look at it. Almost all swinger Web sites use photos of models in their twenties. Greg Humble, a film producer who visited Houston last month, says he's interested in doing a reality show with swingers, who presumably will be young. Nobody's going to watch grandparents getting it on.

Yet making sweeping commitments to the lifestyle -- commercial and otherwise -- can be tough for young people, who sometimes find that their desires are moving targets.

One night in March, an attractive young woman at Radiance rubbed and kissed Tucker. She was eager for a ménage à trois -- one of Tucker's fantasies. He brought up the idea that night with Payton, who was drunk. "I was getting the fantasy thrown in my face before I had time to deal with it," she says. Payton vented her anger to Scott's wife, Kaylee, who suggested the couple talk it through. Instead, Payton screamed, railing into Tucker for unauthorized flirting. Tucker yelled back, calling her drunk and jealous. They went home in a rage.

Payton and Tucker resolved that week to drink less and communicate more. "The older you get, the more you learn, the more wisdom you get," Payton says. "It's the same thing in a relationship with this [lifestyle]. You have to learn what boundaries are. I know when he starts to get bothered by something; he knows when I get bothered by it. You have to learn to get through."

Their education was just beginning. Payton and Tucker agreed two months later to go home with a couple who had struck both of them as caring and sensitive. They undressed and began having sex. When the man started pounding Payton like a two-dollar hooker, she cried out. "He was just hammering," says Tucker. "And all of the emotion, all of the compassion that we thought he had was gone."

Tucker called off the sex mid-orgy and they went home.