There's an old folk song titled, "One Tin Soldier" that seems to apply to the swinger's lifestyle; though not in the way you'd think. I'm not talking about how vanillas view swingers... I'm talking about how we in the swinging lifestyle view our vanilla neighbors.

Perhaps in order to alter perception we need to change reality.

I have a buddy named Joe, who I have known for a really long time. When he "came out" to me, and announced he was gay over lunch one day, I really wasn't surprised. It was almost the year 2000, and I didn't think anyone actually cared about stuff like this anymore. He could have told me he was moving into a new condo, and my reaction would have been the same; one of any self-absorbed-asshole-of-a friend: "Oh yeah... does that mean that your girlfriend is single now"?

Still, in the interest of friendship, I felt obligated to ask him a few questions, just to make sure that my pal wasn't trying to provoke a reaction. Maybe he wanted a little attention or he was watching too much MTV. Maybe he saw how all the gay guys were constantly surrounded by hot chicks (a great plan if you can get past the occasional yam bag bouncing off your chin).

So I asked Joe, "When you jerk off, do you think of men, or women?"

Without hesitation he responded "Men."

"Holy shit, you really are gay," I replied. "So, how are the burgers here"?

...he thought that I would be the least judgmental
towards him. After all; I had my own socially
unacceptable lifestyle to deal with.

And so began our friendship, post admission. It was essentially the same as before, but without him having to feel like he had to make up stories about some hottie he was banging. And, I was able to selfishly begin to take advantage of what I believed was his genetically encoded sense of fashion. Joe was the only person at my wedding (my wife and I eloped to Las Vegas) and he, conveniently, was able to double as best man and maid of honor.

Truthfully, I am honored that when he chose to out himself, he chose me. He was frightened, and out of all of his friends and family, he thought that I would be the least judgmental towards him. After all; I had my own socially unacceptable lifestyle to deal with.

In a way, we were kindred spirits.

Eventually Joe introduced me to his "other" friends, who all seemed to be nice enough. There is a certain liberation that comes with "outing" oneself, and as time wore on, Joe began to find the inner peace that can only occur when a person discovers who they truly are. Joe was a flaming fag, god bless him, and I'd never seen him happier.

One late afternoon, we found ourselves at a happy hour in Tribeca. We were joined by Joe's boyfriend, whose name was also Joe (however, he insisted on being called Ricardo because he felt an Hispanic name would get him more "man-ass" - his words). After a few phone calls, several of their other friends arrived and there I was, the Belle of the Ball...the only straight guy in a gaggle of gays. As the evening extended into the night, and as the alcohol started to make its way into our blood streams, I couldn't help but notice that Joe's lisp became more pronounced. In fact, in all the years that I had known him, I had never noticed a lisp before. But as the bar started filling with a mix of Wall Street yuppies and construction workers, the flamboyance of my new drinking buddies quickly established a defined perimeter around us. Inevitably, the women of Wall Street were striking up conversations between our little crowd of fashionistas and the other penis owners in the bar. They "subtly" suggested to the other men in the bar that they could take a few pointers (no pun intended) from us "more sensitive" guys. Predictably, the message was heard loud and clear and it didn't go over well. I expected Joe and his friends to ignore the interactions. However, something odd happened.

My new alternate lifestyle pals felt that their best course of action was to go on the offensive, unprovoked, and insult some of the guys in our vicinity. No one had called them a name, or done anything to express any bias. Sure, a few of the guys in the bar were probably jealous that they were losing the battle for the attention of the fair Wall Street maidens. However, the response from my friend Joe and his pals was not in proportion to what was easily-dismissible envy (the fact that we were getting the women's attention, rather than a commentary on anyone's sexual preferences).

The war of words started from our crowd. It started with labeling the guys at the table closest to us as "breeders", and challenging their manhood through a series of hetero-phobic insults. The bad tie wearing, Budweiser guzzling, drunken stockbrokers had little choice but to respond with equally hurtful hate-speech... and the verbal brawl was on. In this particular case, the would-be victims of sexual-orientation bias were the carpenters for their own cross. They provoked the bad reaction that they were hoping to receive so that they could justify their own boorish behavior. As he admitted to me when he sobered up, my pal Joe and his buddies acted like real assholes that night.

That experience made me consider my own community, and how many times I have seen Swingers "act out" in public in the hope of provoking a response from our Vanilla counterparts. In thinking about behavior I've witnessed, I tried to differentiate between simple exhibitionism and behavior meant to provoke a bad reaction from the Ward and June Cleavers of the world. Have people in the lifestyle been unconsciously fighting an unnecessary war?

I thought about the Las Vegas lifestyle conventions I've attended. Busloads of swingers descended on nightclubs around the Vegas strip to attend parties. I saw how the casino crowd reacted to our group, as we exited the buses, parading through the casino. En route to the party location, the exhibitionist inherent in many swingers had little difficulty seeking expression. Imagine seeing hundreds of great-looking people, with bodies that generally have been known to take a pass on the doughnuts. We didn't so much "walk" though the casino, as much as we collectively "swaggered".

Let's face it: swingers are not your typical Kmart shoppers. When it comes down to it, a few hundred "man-scaped" guys wearing designer clothes and women with club-wear clad, toned bodies , wearing 8" platforms and huge fuzzy hats don't walk through a crowd of vanillas without getting attention. Some of that attention was bound to be negative.

Yet, I still didn't think this was equivalent to what happened in that bar in Tribeca; this was Las Vegas, not the suburbs. Many people go to Vegas so that they can experience the things that they can't experience back home. In the Tribeca case, my flamboyant drinking buddies would have had the right to take umbrage with a bunch of oafish straight guys in Fire Island. That is their turf, Vegas is ours.

I decided to take my observation back to the burbs which, after all, is Vanilla turf. I didn't want to make excuses for intolerance, but I also felt that the Dr. Phil-watching suburbanites might need to be much more open to things that fall outside of their comfort zones. I tried to objectively watch how my own swinger community interacted with others, to discern when we might be our own worst enemy.

This may be a revelation to some in the swinger community, but not every non-swinger will think it's cute if our scantily-clad wives start tongue kissing in a hotel lobby filled with church-going family types.

I recently had the chance when my wife and I attended a lifestyle party in suburban New Jersey. The host of the event was able to get a nice block of hotel rooms close to the venue at a reasonable price. This helped ensure that attendees wouldn't have far to travel at the end of the night (or at whatever time they decided it was time to stop paying $12 for a Red Bull & Vodka), and that any willing foursome (or threesome or group) decided it was time to engage in some naked play time. However, our group was sharing this hotel with other people – people who may have just wanted a clean room and a decent night's sleep... not to have our lifestyle thrown in their face. I would be lying if I said that, as a group, we were inconspicuous.

This may be a revelation to some in the swinger community, but not every non-swinger will think it's cute if our scantily-clad wives start tongue kissing in a hotel lobby filled with church-going family types. Asking a soccer mom to come join your foursome isn't always going to be well received. Pawing one another in front of someone's hormonally-challenged teenager would not make Miss Manner's list of polite things to do in mixed company.

How can we ask for acceptance from a community when we show no respect for ourselves? Astonishingly, our group wondered why we weren't allowed back to the hotel for the next party – when we had shown less restraint than an addict in an "all you can smoke" crack house.

As a member of this community, I think we have something terrific to share with the Vanilla world. I don't think I'm going out on a limb by suggesting we need to find the proper balance between exhibiting our lifestyle and tempering our libidos.

Reaching back to the 1970s, we swingers are like the Mountain people in "One Tin Soldier". We have what we see as a wonderful truth that we want to share with those Vanilla Valley people. Our actions are often well-intentioned. Being part of a community that revolves around the honesty that comes with negotiated non-monogamy, and wanting to share that mindset is an honorable ambition. However, "truth" is not universal. What is truth for swingers, is not necessarily truth for Vanillas.

"Go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of heaven, justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowin' come the judgment day
on the bloody morning after one tin soldier rides away."

Effective change occurs slowly over time, and not because it is forced upon people. The same is true with our swinging lifestyle. Sometimes, the best way to win a battle is not to fight it at all.

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