So, You Wanna Know The Truth?

Jamie Joy Gatto: the face of a bisexual, kinky pervert

You Tell Me... Am I a Swinger?
By Jamie Joy Gatto

(Updated for 2002 including a real live photo sent in by a swinger)

"Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love,
nor stop me from wishing it were." --WH Auden

You probably got to this page because you wanted to know if I'm a swinger. Well, that depends. It's a question bis hear all the time, "So, are you a swinger?" It's a predictable and often misled assumption made by folks of all orientations, especially regarding openly bisexual people who happen to be part of a married couple. The answer is not a simple one. You see, labels are a highly subjective matter, especially sexual ones. It all depends to whom you are talking, what their opinions and biases may be as well as their possible (mis)information on the matter.

Let's start by saying this: I hate the label "swinger." Seems like swingers don't even like the label these days. I recently visited a swinger's newsgroup and found that they now like to be "lifestylers".

Frankly I can't stand it-- whatever you want to call it. The term conjures images of the old 70s Saturday Night Live skits by Dan Akroyd and Steve Martin, "We Are Two Wild and Crazy Guys!" along with cheesy mustaches, cheap perfume, and the fear of STDs due to sexual irresponsibility. You know, those people who are prone to eyeing you up, talking right at your titties, not your face, with the not-so-hidden agenda of "let's all fuck whenever possible," the ones that send you e-mails intimately describing their penises, their breast size and other idiotically irrelevant bodily measurements.

[Ok, so I caved in and posted ONE LOUSY ad recently in a bi newsgroup and I get this picture. Isn't he adorable? Flexing his biceps by pushing them out with his fists... and what a SEXY box on his head!]

We get a lot of those e-mails since my husband and I had posted an Internet personal ad: "Married Bi Couple Seeks Possible Long-Term Relationship with Bi Guy." My favorite letters are from those who write to say, "I may be coming to town, so let's get together," often including a photo of their nude body, minus their face. These e-mails are inappropriately written to a couple who obviously want more than a one-night stand. I actually got one naked photo of a guy holding up a paper-plate in front of his head, proud to show his genitals, but not his face. I wondered if he may have somehow been disfigured. Turns out he was just shy, imagine that!

My other favorites included the unoriginal passages, "I'm always horny..." or, "well-hung...", "my wife doesn't know I'm bi...", "We must be discreet" and "my dick looks like...". Tell me, don't all dicks pretty much look the same, give or take a couple inches?

And, more importantly, would these men have written the same kind of letters to a single woman they were attempting to date? I doubt it. I often wonder why bis have gotten stuck with the raunchy swinger's rap. Frankly, I find it quite disrespectful to meet a suitor dick-first, face excluded, and frankly, we don't want

a "discreet" relationship or to cheat with a man on his wife. Can you imagine how awkward it would be to go to restaurant with our date wearing a bikini with A BOX ON HIS HEAD?

Then there were all those nice guys who wanted to respond to our ad with "friendship" (allegedly well-masked with some rather heavy sexually-oriented flirting thrown in). But really, they were obviously assuming, "we are going to get together and all have sex," just in case they happened to pop in town, "well, because we're bi, they're bi, and because they are so nice." How do I know? It all comes out in the wash. Honey, I aint stupid. I've been reading these e-mails for over three years now, with thread-bare luck. Do you wonder why I've since removed that ad?

If we, as a couple, are interested in a long term relationship with a third, it stands to reason we'd want the guy to live in or near the same city, right? If we are looking for a boyfriend it also stands to reason there will be some dating and quite possibly some hit or miss sexual encounters, hopefully with a variety of guys. It doesn't mean our bedroom has a revolving door. It doesn't mean that if you are bi and we are bi then, "Let's Swing!" It also doesn't mean our Saturday nights are booked with every bi guy in town. There are no bi night clubs, bi support groups in our area, secret handshakes or hanky codes for bis. How the heck are we supposed to meet this fellow, anyway?

So, now that you know what I'm not, and what I definitely don't like, let's start with how I'd like to be considered. I prefer to simply be called "sexual." What I really am is quite picky! I used to be more sexually open to encounters, but with time, I have become more protective of myself. Here's one example of why:

We actually met a guy on-line one time. We corresponded for a few months before meeting him, therefore we felt we trusted him. We had much in common, including sexual attraction, which we talked about in great detail. He lived in Texas, we live in New Orleans, not a far jaunt, so a relationship seemed doable, reasonable. We took a chance. He traveled to meet us, we had a great time together, we had great sex together, until we invited him to a party that weekend, a party which we hosted for a small group of friends. Let me clarify this further-- a nice little cocktail party, with swimming, music, fancy hors d'oeuvres, not a wild sex party, not a swap-mates swinger's party.

We invited him to attend this party as our date, so that he could meet some of our friends. He then decided to spend all his energy and time for the rest of the weekend meeting and mingling with a single female friend of ours who was also a party guest. He seemed to forget about the last three months of correspondences with us, the last three nights of great sex, and that we were housing and feeding him for the past few days as our both our guest and romantic date-- that he had come here to New Orleans to be with us, to be intimate, to be together, as we’d discussed, or so we thought.

The two singles exchanged phone numbers in front of us, flirted in front of us, and he later began to correspond with her instead of us. Neither seemed to feel that they were in any way impolite or out of line about this matter, "because WE ARE MARRIED," they each said separately in their own defense. I guess that meant to them we somehow lost all rights to having emotional feelings for a person, to wanting to enjoy a closed non-monogamous relationship with a single man, and that we lost all rights to being treated with respect as being a date to another person. Had we been one person, a single, they rationalized to us, it would have been a different matter all together. The two party-goers never even actually dated, or met again thereafter, so spare me the thought that it may have been “true love.”

To make matters slightly more insane, he later wrote us a detailed letter filled with gut-wrenching guilt confessing that he "was going to give up the bisexual 'lifestyle' and go straight." What is this "lifestyle" everyone keeps referring to? Bisexuality is a sexual preference. Being a work-a-holic is a lifestyle, being a full-time parent is a lifestyle, being a sports player is a lifestyle. Bisexuality simply means I like boys, I like girls-- sexually. It’s a very simple concept. Most people just don't get it.

Now and then I'd like to think I could meet a nice lady with whom I could have a relationship, a relationship outside of the one I have with my husband (with his agreement, of course). Maybe a sweet, sexually submissive woman (I am a seasoned sexual Dominant) or someone who is simply more than a friend. I've had some hard luck with the ladies, so I tend to steer clear. My heart is easily broken and for some reason, the ladies seem to break it worse than the guys. That's not to say I've completely given up, but I'm not actively seeking a sexual relationship with a woman.

So what makes people often think we are sex maniacs? My husband and I are both highly artistic. We love aesthetics, beauty, decadence and all things sensual, including creative sex. We like food, music, literature, dancing and all the good stuff in life. We are both extremely intelligent and intuitive, not to mention attractive. Add all this up and the fact that we're bi

• Does it mean we are having or attending sex swap parties on the weekends?
(never been to one)
• Does it mean we are non-monogamous?
(sometimes, but always ethically and respectfully AND responsibly)
• Does it mean we are "anything goes" as a couple?
(no way!)

I'll make it simple: just because we are both bi has nothing to do with whether or not we are monogamous. We are married, we are life partners. We share common goals and that includes sexual ones, bisexuality aside. We decide what we want to do, when we want to do it, then we do it together. If we want to remain monogamous for years at a time, we do and we have-- quite blissfully, orgasmically and happily! If we want to pick up the local bartender and take him home and wrap him in kisses and/or cellophane-- that is if we can even find one who's willing-- we do, we may, only if we want to, if the mood strikes us and then, we do that happily. No deep regrets allowed, but lots of talking and communication beforehand, that's for damn sure. We've definitely had some torrid, erotica-worthy interludes, but that's not to say we haven't made our share of mistakes in choosing a third sex partner.

Some psychotherapists and mental health workers would call any casual sex destructive behavior, but I like to think of it as learning through experience. As they say, live and learn. This type of communication and relationship did not happen overnight. It takes sincere trust, nurturing and care-- and so much damn talking I wonder sometimes if it's worth it. But, you've got to remember we are both wading through what society and our families and religion have dictated to us, and dictated to our ancestors since well before we were born. This is no easy task, especially if we want to remain sane, stay together as a couple and still have a happy life.

My husband and I come from different backgrounds. I was raised as a teenager by a zealous, fundamentalist Christian grandmother. Sometimes I wonder how I made it through that part of my life with granny's rigid rules, and how I came to be a sex activist. Her rules consisted of many, but most hard-hitting were: read no secular books, allow no mental health help, don't discuss issues, simply pray, pray, pray. She often proselytized her beliefs that women are completely inferior to men and that sex without marriage is a horrible, horrible sin. At her insistence, beginning at age thirteen, I worked every day after school and every single weekend. I didn't have much time to date, but I tried, oh how I tried! She agreed heartily in the Protestant work ethic: work, work, slave 'til you die and your reward: Christian heaven, with boring angels floating on puffy, white, misogynistic clouds. I'll take Hell any day!

Meanwhile, my husband spent his teenhood traveling around with the Grateful Dead on tour, stoned in a VW van and having sex with anything that moved. When he was in school, he went to a liberal, co-ed boarding school, with his first long-term relationship being simultaneously with two different girls, who happened to be in lust and in love with one another as well as him: the perfect bi triad.

But strangely enough, it is my own mother who reads every piece of erotica I write, whether kinky or bi or graphically hard-core or whatever I happen to come up with, and she lovingly encourages me to write, to write more and to never give up. She may not ask to read it, but if I send it, she surely does. Meanwhile my so-called "liberal" mother-in-law damns my husband and I both for even being bisexual, much less openly talking about it, or writing about it, even going so far as to blame herself in muttered "secrets" to other relatives regarding my husband's sexuality. She is so frightened my writing will somehow cause her to lose an inheritance, when she merely needs to realize her true fortune lies in those who care about her. For that, she has truly lost all. If she cannot be proud of us, her children, then shame, shame on her.

As you can see it takes a lot of guts to write openly and frankly about sexuality. But, I have the sincere wish to help educate others, to make them feel as if they are not alone. I do not use a pseudonym in my sexuality writing, sexual philosophy essays or my published erotica. I'm proud of who I am: kinky, bisexual, some may call it perverted, but I'm living in a happy, closed, non-monogamous relationship with a brilliant and handsome bisexual man. Perhaps one day we will finally meet the lovely, polite and sexy third man of our dreams for our perfect, equilateral triad... our lifemate. And I can't wait for my Mama to meet him, face first, of course!

(And let this be a lesson to anyone who sends me another asinine photo like the one above: I WILL POST IT ON THE INTERNET and make fun of it freely!)

Ok, so I'm a raging perv! I love bisexual MMF porn.
This is my FAVORITE sex site. Check it out...

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