OK, Punish Me, but Bondage and Discipline Is <i> Weird</i>

You never know unless you ask. So I did.

“What’s B&D;?,” I asked.

“Bondage and Discipline,” came the response, a bit surprised, in that oh-come-on-where-have-you-been tone.

OK, guess this is the time for a little context. It was sex we were talking about at the offices of the Lifestyles Organization, an average, plain-brown wrapper kind of place in Anaheim. Sitting across the table from me were the experts, or at least they claim to be, and who was I to challenge their credentials?

“Bondage and Discipline?” I said. “What’s that mean? You tie someone up and tell him he’s been a bad boy?”

That wasn’t bad, the experts thought. But it was wrong.

Jenny Friend, the director of educational research at the Lifestyles Organization, gave me a friendly, educational explanation.

“Let’s say a couple goes out somewhere and one of them forgets to hold the door open for the other and let’s say that this was a breach of the rules of their relationship,” she said. “When they get home, the one who broke the rule would be punished.”

Well, forgive me all you readers who can’t believe where I’ve been either, but I thought that was a little funny. Fact is I laughed out loud when I heard Jenny Friend’s friendly explanation and OK, I may have used the word weird .

“Now, let’s examine why you think that’s weird,” said Dr. Robert McGinley, president of the Lifestyles Organization and the North American Swing Club Assn.

The doctor (he has a Ph.D. in psychology) was very serious when he said this. I think he may have been stroking his beard.

But I wasn’t interested in examining my own fetishes. It was their fetishes I was interested in.

Which is how we got to talking about B&D; in the first place. B&D; was just one of the many fun offerings at the recent Lifestyles ’89 convention, the 15th annual, in Las Vegas. About 3,000 people with so-called alternative life styles showed up and as usual, the experts reported, they had a wonderful time.

(At least a G-string was required at the Erotic Masquerade Ball, but other than that, the rules of the two-day convention were pretty flexible.)

Now since I missed the convention myself, McGinley was kind enough to supply me with a program, similar to a college course catalogue, except that this one has helpful illustrations and photographs.

I confess that I was rather intrigued by one seminar, “The ABCs of Swinging,” but then again, I would have been intrigued with “Motorcycle Maintenance Made Easy,” if it were taught by someone named Honey Bear Rivers.

After checking out Honey Bear’s photograph, the one where her husband, John, is clutching her knee to a place well above his own, I wouldn’t be surprised if Honey Bear knew something about motorcycles as well.

That was the point that McGinley and friendly Jenny were trying to make about people with “alternative life styles” in general. These are people in touch with the world and with themselves. They are sensual explorers, with a strong sense of curiosity and wonder, people who have thrown off the shackles of the so-called “traditional life style.”

These are people who are really into sex.

Not that sex is all they do, mind you. (I mean, people have to sleep, don’t they?)

Jenny wanted to make sure that I understood this point.

“People have this idea about swingers, that all we do is trade off sexual partners, go into separate rooms and have sex. It’s not like that. It’s not a bartering system. There is a whole social interaction. I know my husband and I, for example, we never go into separate rooms. It’s a group of people interacting with each other.”

“Oh, you mean an orgy?” I said, rather knowledgeably I thought.

That was when McGinley jumped in. There I went, the media , using one of those “very biased words” like orgy . Fleshpot was another one that McGinley mentioned, but I’ll have you know, it never crossed my own lips.

“It is a respectable community,” McGinley said. “Your neighbor, your lawyer, your policeman, the kindergarten teachers; these are the swingers of America!”

In Orange County alone, he claimed, there are “thousands and thousands” of swingers. The active mailing list for the Lifestyles Organization--”there’s no other organization like it in the world”--stands at 16,000. There are an estimated 3 million swingers in the United States alone.

“And Orange County probably has more swingers in it than any other part of the country,” he said.

This got me to thinking--about my neighbor, my lawyer, my policeman and all those kindergarten teachers. I mean, what do I really know about these people? How much do I really want to know about these people?

I decided that I didn’t really want to know that much. After all, it was a professional interview I was conducting here.

“What about AIDS?” I asked, professional-like.

“AIDS is not a problem,” McGinley said.

Oh.

So on my way out, I asked if the doctor would mind parting with a few more pieces of educational literature on the North American Swing Club Assn. and the Lifestyles Organization. It was the scholarly approach I was after.

But as long as I’ve got you this far, I’ll pass on a little practical information as well.

There’s a one-hour photo shop in Buena Park that will develop all your “personal erotic photography” with no questions asked. Make sure to mention Lifestyles for a discount.