Stripping and Other Stories by Pagan Kennedy

Like most other hosts, Ed prohibits single men from his soirees. When he hears a male voice on the line, Ed will say, “Can I speak to your lady?” Often, there is no lady, which means Ed will refuse to reveal party details. In an average week, several people contact him about his parties.

He himself is not even married, which makes him an anomaly in this world instead, he takes his girlfriend to events. In fact, Ed admits that organizing the parties has become tedious, but for some reason he keeps doing it anyway. He also gives off the same vibe that seemed to emanate from Garcia in the 1980s-deep and inconsolable boredom. When Ed slides into the seat across from me at the Taqueria Mexico in Waltham, he’s vintage Jerry, right down to the aviator frames. This description turns out to be spot-on. Before our first meeting, Ed tells me how to pick him out of a crowd: He’ll be the guy who looks like Jerry Garcia in his senior years, if Jerry had gone on a diet and the diet sort of worked. He still runs one of the most venerable house parties around, from his base in a town just west of Boston-though of course the actual house itself has changed many times over the years. The éminence grise of the Massachusetts swinger scene, he’s a relic from the old, labor-intensive era of swapping, and as a host, he makes an effort to keep his parties full of strangers if his guests so request.

She says it’s still common for swingers to drive out of state to attend events-because who wants to go to an orgy and run into your yoga instructor?Įd would know. It was that whole I-don’t-want-to-do-it-with-someone-from-my-backyard thing,” says Kim Airs, a sex educator and founder of the now-closed Brookline sex-toy shop Grand Opening. “If you lived in Boston, you’d read swinger ads from Pittsburgh. Often, people traveled hundreds of miles to swing. To contact someone, you had to send money to the newsletter staff after days or weeks, you might be able to set up a date. In this smudgy samizdat, you would find a few hundred ads. To gain entrée to “the lifestyle” (as it’s called), you had to schlep to an adult bookstore for one of the newsletters that acted as clearing-houses for swinger activity. But in fact, the logistical hurdles to spouse swapping used to loom so large that it’s amazing anyone managed it all. Mention the word “swinger” to most people and they flash on the 1970s: hot tubs, key parties, shag rugs, and Barry White booming out of the eight-track.

Stripping and Other Stories by Pagan Kennedy