Welcome to sexual liberation — California style. Dispatches from LA's hottest new (and very exclusive) nightclub.
Illustration by kozyndan
Sat-05-Feb-2005In the congested concrete freeway-off-ramp jungle that is Los Angeles, the nightclub LA Couples is a discreet venue for couples who want to be part of what has come to be called, euphemistically, the “lifestyle” — that is, public sex, group sex, exchanging sexual partners and the like. Inside, LA Couples is by no means euphemistic — a giant fiberglass penis hangs in the bar, and last New Year's Eve, it sprayed masses of white confetti out of its tip onto the revelers.
Lynn Borman, a former paramedic turned champion of the swinger lifestyle, founded LA Couples in 2002. Her mission? To help committed couples, married and otherwise, “keep it fresh” — without cheating. The club's huge success is largely due to her rigorous attention to a set of rules that ensure a woman's comfort above all else. Prominent among those rules: single men are simply not allowed in.
Along with fairly standard nightclub trappings — a dance floor, a stage for pole-dancing — LA Couples
is 30,000 square feet of themed fantasy rooms designed
Lingerie or less, a semiprivate room at la couples where you have to be wearing practically
nothing to enter and no solo men are allowed
— door guards make sure of that.
not just to scintillate and titillate, but to deliver the goods.
The décor: tarted-up, tulle and velveteen, billowing curtains, haremesque pillow lounges. Oddly, though, it's anything but sordid. Walking through the club on a Saturday night, during the post-mingling phase of the evening (about 11 pm to 2 am), moving from the gritty jailhouse-themed room to the plush Arabian Room, one feels more like a wide-eyed child — innocent and vulnerable yet strangely not intimidated — surrounded by patently happy naked and half-naked couples cavorting in all manner of positions in stark red-tinted light.
Each weekend, roughly 100 couples make their way here to attend an LA Couples “private party.”
Entry is limited to couples (almost exclusively heterosexual). Male homosexual activity is verboten, but there's a healthy
amount of what one participant terms “female bi-curiosity.” The club also hosts gay-only nights.
Taking the private swingers party out of its suburban roots and into the hipper
fringes of downtown Los Angeles,
...AND THIS WAS WHAT WAS SAID THERE
“The swinger lifestyle is not as dark as you think.”
“It's so open here, and we've made really great friends.”
“Our relationship has never been better. It's more loving...and if it ended today, I'd be thankful because it's been an awesome journey.”
“
You're either going to control your husband, or you allow your husband to do everything. Women hate the way men are — and men are always going to be that way.”
“You're giving each other approval, the utmost trust. I have to pinch myself — how did I get so lucky?”
“We've had a great sexual experience with off-duty cops.”
“Ninety percent of men have performance issues, until they reach a comfortable level.”
“
You're either going to control your husband, or you allow your husband to do everything. Women hate the way men are — and men are always going to be that way.”
Borman is offering her small solution to what she very earnestly sees as a toxic social contradiction: the desire of people for long-term commitment and the antiquated institution of monogamy in a society that frowns upon infidelity. She is, she says, doing her small part to reduce a high divorce rate.
“Men are pigs,” she says matter-of-factly, with a laugh, explaining that the institution of monogamy doesn't accommodate men's sexual natures. “They'd do it in the parking lot, if they could.” She cracks jokes when she works, standing up to address the crowd and reminding people not to take it all too seriously. Sex here can get pretty funny.
Samantha,* one half of a “head host couple” — which means they're regulars
who pair up with newcomers to help them acclimate — says that typically it's the man who initiates a visit to
LA Couples, but it's the woman who tends to keep the couple coming back. “I feel that I'm being good
to people,”
Samantha says of her host role, before admitting that her LA Couples activities are part of a double life.
“Our friends don't know, business associates don't know, and family doesn't know.”
Samantha's husband Steve claims that the couple is at “the height of the lifestyle,” and that they view “sex as a recreation.”
Steve says that LA Couples works because of Borman's rules, which create a safe environment: “No means No,” “Ask before you touch,” and “Yes means Yes.” Samantha and Steve have a rule of their own: “We never do anything behind each other's backs.”
Walking down the hallway of private rooms adjacent to the main lounge,
one sees a bustle of activity. Couples duck in and out of rooms, looking for action. The sound of women
moaning floats out of the Director's Room, which contains a viewing platform from which couples watch other
couples having sex on the padded floor. At one point, it's hard to tell
whether couples are swapping or just having sex with their own partners.
Tim and Megan, who have been dating for a year, call themselves “swayers.” Sitting like ringleaders in the Arabian Room, the couple only indulges in “Soft Swing” activities — touching, looking, kissing — but they haven't moved on to intercourse (either with each other or others) in the bedecked red satin orgy rooms. Yet.
“If I ever saw him having sex with someone, I'd kill him,” says Megan, a 39-year-old high school English teacher. She says their nights at LA Couples are not so much about the sex, but the friendships. “We meet so many cool couples. We invite them over to our house for Pictionary.”
“We looked for two and a half years before we found this place,”
says Borman. “We made this happen.” The club keeps its operation discreet — photography
is forbidden, and so — until now — is the press. In the last two years,
LA Couples has spawned a spate of southern California copycat clubs based on Borman's “couples
and single
women only” rule. She has also started a couples-only “lifestyle” hotel called Aquafinity in the desert east of Los Angeles.
“We gave up our lives to do this,” she says.
The club was her husband John's idea. “He was an Alaska fisherman.” — Heseon Park
