Is There Life in a Swingers' Club?

There's nothingplatonic about Plato's Retreat

As TIME'S Behavior writer, John Leo diligently strives to keep up with fast-changing U.S. sexual mores. In this pursuit, Leo and a companion visited Plato's Retreat, a swingers' club in the basement of Manhattan's Ansonia Hotel. His report:

An orange plastic ball zips through the air, occasionally caroming off an onlooker or one of the swimmers. Two giggling women start to push a third into the water, then pull her back just in time. It is normal poolside fun, except that everyone is naked and three couples are copulating in the water.

"When you write about this," says Larry Levenson, 41, the amiable co-owner of Plato's, "don't leave out all the material that could make this place look upstanding." Levenson is harassed and sweating profusely. He has 200 couples on hand, a waiting line for lockers, and some prospective orgiasts are edgy because the bar is closed--the result of a court injunction by the state liquor authority. Without booze, he says, "it just takes everyone an hour longer to get all their clothes off."

Swinger clubs have operated furtively for years in most major cities and many small towns. Now they are going public. At least half a dozen operate openly in Manhattan. Though their legality is uncertain, revenues are high enough to justify the risk of prosecution. Open five nights a week, Plato's attracts some 6,500 fun seekers--and grosses $90,000--a month. Six-week memberships cost $5 per couple. For the $25 admission price ($10 for single women, no unattached males allowed), couples can use the disco, pool, steambath and pool table. Next to the disco is the "mat room" for orgies, and down the hall are 20 "mini-swing" rooms for one to three couples.

Levenson walks through the locker room. "This is the only place people are modest," he says. "They want to undress alone." One of the mini-swing rooms, he notes, is reserved for Plato's staff. Unlocking the door to the staff room, he finds a man and a woman inside, both naked. "Hey, that's my lady," says Levenson. "She lives with me. How are you, Mary?" Mary, a divorced mother of three, chuckles and tries to cover up until the door is re-locked. "Whatever gives her pleasure gives me pleasure," Levenson says, talking loudly over the moans coming from the cubicles. "People separate when they're finished here and no phone numbers are exchanged." Exchanging phone numbers is the cardinal sin of swinging, because it can lead to emotional attachments.

A tough-looking woman stands at the liquorless bar, wearing only a flowered blouse and high heels. A bartender whispers to her. "Tell him to ask me himself," she snaps. "I don't deal through intermediaries." She has been married for 15 years and swinging for 13. Now she is jaded. She will only settle for "a man with hunger in his eyes," and no hungry-eyed man has happened by for three nights. So she strolls off to proposition a woman.

A young Israeli couple, both clothed, are sitting in voyeurs' row, just outside the orgy room. "It's a very immoral place," says the woman, giggling. Trouble is, the voyeurs' view through the narrow entrance is blocked by the "matman," a craggy fellow who stands with arms folded like Mr. Clean. Is his job to police the orgy? Matman looks incredulous. "We never have any trouble here. These are good people. I am more of a shepherd looking after my flock." The shepherd's main role is to see that customers join and leave .the orgy in pairs. Once inside, partners do not have to stay together, but if a man leaves to go to the bathroom, he has two minutes to return, or his girlfriend will be ejected. A pudgy woman is protesting her expulsion from paradise. Matman latches on to her arm and gently guides her out. Even orgies have rules.

Matman makes a revelation: he and his wife--a hatcheck girl upstairs--are volunteers who work regularly at the club without pay. Does he at least get some free sex out of his labors? "Oh no, I never do it here," he says, staring at an enormous male derriere rising out of a sea of jiggling flesh in the mat room. "I don't want to be second, third or fourth. I do it at home where I know it's clean."

Customers try hard to brush aside fears about one possible consequence of uninhibited swinging: venereal disease. Says one: "We don't get it because swingers are just cleaner than other people." But one female newcomer, still a wallflower after two hours, admits nervously: "I'm terrified of coming down with something. How do I know who these people are and where they've been?"

Most of the patrons appear to be between 20 and 45 years old, and the staff estimates that 65% are married suburbanites, who are presumably interested in sex that does not threaten family stability. "It works," says Levenson. "You wait around until 6 a.m. when we close, and you'll see these people walking to their cars kissing and holding hands. Swinging brings them closer together, and who gets hurt by it?"

Still, there are losers even at orgies. An enormously fat woman has been sitting around in her underwear for hours, wanly looking for a man. "Swans fly with swans, ducks fly with ducks," a thin-faced young man says, glancing at her as we step around a writhing couple at the edge of the pool. Thin Face, who says he is a member of swing clubs in Chicago, San Francisco and Montreal, thinks Plato's should be more selective about people it lets in. "I mean head-wise, not body-wise," he says quickly. "Look at all those sightseers. It's not like the old days. Now it's too much of a freak show." Across the pool, the stout lady grasps the hand of a tiny Oriental man and pulls him resolutely into the mat room.

Oddly enough, there is less sexual electricity in the air than at a Rotary Club party. All the trappings of the normal sexual dance --talk, gestures and clothing--are stripped away as unessential, and emotions are under tight control. As a result, the proceedings are amiable, but flat. Like the tough-looking woman at the bar, many patrons seem bored. A pleasant young woman with a distressing overbite is standing at the bar, staring aimlessly into middle distance. "I don't know why I'm here," she says. "I'm only nude because there's nothing to do here with your clothes on."

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