“Swinging is like any other social activity, just dialed up to 11,” says Andrew*, 41. He and his wife first began swinging shortly after they began exploring nonmonogamy in 2018. Before the pandemic, the couple would frequent a western-suburb location every two months.
Dr. Mary Madrake, a clinical psychology postdoctoral resident at Balanced Awakening in Chicago, says, “Much of society still views different types of kink, including swinging, BDSM, and other aspects of kink as abnormal or deviant, which can take a toll on the mental health of those who identify as part of these communities. Having a place in which individuals within these communities can express their authentic selves without experiencing stigma and judgment is really important.” Online communities are also imperative: social media, FetLife, Facebook, Twitter, and OnlyFans have become a way for kink communities to thrive safely.
Carla, AKA the Purple Diva, 45, runs an inclusive members-only lifestyle club, Always Wanting More (AWM), out of the western suburbs near Elgin. When I mention the closure of swinger clubs due to ordinances, she laughs and says, “There’s a lot of us.” Last year I attended Karen Yates’s Wild & Sublime talk show event at Constellation where Yates read aloud quotes from folks who were upset over a recent club closing in the southwest suburbs. Carla reassures me that there are clubs popping up everywhere.
“My landlord knows what I do. They don’t have a problem. My neighbors, however, don’t exactly like me,” she explains. She’s had issues with parking, where folks legally take up all of the spots for ten hours one day a month. Every now and then, a disgruntled neighbor will call the cops. “I’m not hurting anybody. I barely play music in the house. You can’t even tell that I have 100 people in my house other than the parking. It could be anybody on the street. So that’s the slight issue I’m having currently, but that’s my own issue because I’m using my own residence,” she says when we talk before the pandemic. Before she moved into the house, she specifically checked the parking and city codes. The city is aware of what kind of parties she’s throwing and they do not care as long as she doesn’t violate parking or noise. “My next house will have a parking lot!” she says.
“I did not want to be around heteronormative people. I knew enough about swingers to know that it was extremely heteronormative. The men were content to see two women getting it on, but God forbid two men actually touch,” explains Yates. “What I did was I spent a month or two researching online trying to find a party.” She decided to look for explicitly bisexual male-friendly parties. As a result, she found a party called Private Encounters which was held on the property of Couples Choice. Dawn and Dave ran Couples Choice in Markham for 16-and-a-half years before it was closed down by the town’s mayor. Yates explains that while Couples Choice is incredibly heteronormative, this particular party was “explicitly bi-friendly and a larger number of men are allowed.” While it wasn’t a queer scene by any means, it was still largely open and accepting. Through Couples Choice, she found folks having parties in Chicago inside of people’s homes.
One woman in particular who threw private parties recently moved away, leaving Yates feeling crushed. The guest list was curated and invite-only which eradicated any feelings of uneasiness for Yates. “It’s a very real factor. It’s like a dance club. Like, ‘Hey babe, wanna dance?’ and you’re like, ‘No . . .’” Although Yates assures me the parties are a safe environment, there is still an effort to navigate the space and manage single cis men. Hosts and hostesses have to calibrate how many guests make sense. There can’t be too many single cis men, but there do need to be enough. “If there are too many single men, the men who are partnered feel threatened. Again, this is a hetero thing,” so hosts of the parties have to make sure there is an even ratio where certain folks don’t overpower the others in the overall setting.
