My First Orgy

A few months ago, I was having dinner with my Playboy editor in a Chinese restaurant in Chicago, and midway between my Beef and Snow Peas Thousand Fragrance and my Hot and Sour Sherbet, he matter-of-factly slipped me the information that the guys at the mag had come up with what they thought was a rather amusing assignment for me: Basically, how would I feel about going to a sex orgy and writing what it felt like?

"What do you mean," I said, "just go and observe and sort of take notes, or what?"

"Well, we were thinking really more along the lines of your actually taking part in one," he said.

My chopsticks suddenly became too heavy to hold and I lowered them carefully to the table. I should tell you at this point that I am so shy with women that it took me till the age of 23 to lose my virginity, till 30 to get married, and today, at 36, I am still unable to go to an ordinary cocktail party and chitchat with folks like any regular grownup person. The idea of sending old Greenburg to take part in an orgy was, frankly, tantamount to sending someone with advanced vertigo to do a tap dance on the wing of an airborne 747.

True, I had recently done an article on New York fire fighters and in my research had managed to overcome a deep phobia of fire by spending five months riding on fire trucks and racing into burning buildings with firemen--yet somehow that seemed tame by comparison with what I was now being asked to do. After all, the worst that could have happened to me in a burning building was that a flaming ceiling might have collapsed on me and crushed me to death. At an orgy, there was the distinct possibility that I might be seriously laughed at.

"How about if I just go to an orgy and take notes?" I said.

My editor shrugged. "Don't you think that'd be sort of a cop-out, journalistically?" he said.

"I suppose you're right," I said. "Look, give me a few days to think it over."

• • •

"They want you to do what?" said my wife.

"Go to an orgy and kind of take part," I said.

"How about if you just go and take notes?" she said.

"Don't you think that'd be sort of a copout, journalistically?" I said.

"No," she said, "I don't."

"Oh," I said.

• • •

Several days later, having mulled over all facets of the situation, having pondered the feats of Sir Edmund Hillary, Sir Francis Chichester, Ernie Pyle, Robert Capa, Thor Heyerdahl and others, having decided that, my experiences with fire fighters notwithstanding, I had led a comparatively bland life and that only through the continual meeting of challenges and overcoming of fears was I going to attain any growth as a writer and, mainly, having learned from my agent the exact sum I was being offered for this particular adventure, I was at length able to dispel most of my own doubts and a few of my wife's and I called my editor and accepted the assignment.

• • •

The first person I contacted was an unattractive middle-aged lady in New York who is legendary for throwing the biggest orgies in town. I introduced myself to her on the phone, gave the name of a good mutual friend as a reference and asked if I might see her to discuss in a sort of general way the broad spectrum of the group-sex experience.

"I don't know why so many people call me and ask me about this subject," she said. "Just because I once gave an interview to some magazine in which I expressed a few opinions on group sex, suddenly I'm supposed to be some kind of expert on orgies. I really don't understand it. You probably thought I could get you invited to an orgy, didn't you?"

"Well...."

"Well, I can't. I don't have any contacts in that area at all and I never did. Besides, I don't know a thing about you."

I offered to send her a copy of my recent book, Scoring: A Sexual Memoir. I said that reading it would tell her more about me than she might even wish to know. She said I was certainly welcome to send her the book, but she still didn't have any contacts in the group-sex circuit and didn't see how she could possibly be of any help to me. Then, just as she'd almost persuaded me that the several hundred stories I'd heard about her were complete fabrication, she asked rather offhandedly: "Tell me, is there a photo of you on the dust jacket, dear?"

• • •

The lady never did grant me an interview, but I was just about to leave for Los Angeles, where, I was assured, the orgy scene was definitely more in the open. A writer on the Coast, who had himself done a piece about swingers, promised to provide me with not only several bona fide orgy contacts but also a young lady who would willingly accompany me to whatever far-out type of get-together I could get invited to.

"A thing you might start off with when you get here is one of the group-grope places, which they have a lot of in L.A. They're supposed to raise your consciousness, heighten your sensitivity toward your fellow human being, put you in touch with your feelings and stuff, but they're really mostly an excuse for a lot of people to get together and take off their clothes and screw."

I said that sort of deviousness had a certain comforting appeal. I flew to L.A.

• • •

It is three minutes after I have checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel. I have given the bellhop what I consider to be a fairly generous tip. He stares at it as though I have just deposited several rabbit turds in his palm and stalks out of the room. I am now on the phone with the writer, thirsting for names of group-grope places, bona fide orgy contacts and the identity of the wanton woman who has offered to be my consort.

He gives me the name of the wanton woman and I burst out laughing, because it is a dear Platonic friend of mine from years back whom I'll call Linda Leeman, who is also a writer and who is about as wanton a woman as, say, Princess Margaret.

I ask for the names of the group-grope places. Actually, says my writer friend, now that he thinks about it, the group-grope places are not such a good idea for me after all. Another writer he knows is doing a major piece about changing life styles, and group-grope places figure prominently in it. I am better off simply going to a normal no-nonsense orgy, he says.

I try to hide my disappointment at missing out on the less-threatening group-grope places and ask him for my normal no-nonsense orgy contacts. This, too, proves to be something of a disappointment.

"The main guy I wanted to put you in touch with is a guy named Mandell, who is, in fact, writing a book about orgies. But it turns out that Mandell is somewhat miffed that they've asked you and not him to do this article. He sort of considers L.A. orgies his turf. The other thing is, he claims his contacts aren't that fresh anymore. He used to be very into the orgy thing, but no longer. He says he's settled down to a fairly meaningful relationship with two chicks he really digs. I do have one other contact for you, though. A guy named Artie throws orgies at his place every Saturday night. Call him up and tell him you're a close friend of Mandell's."

• • •

I call Artie and tell him what a great friend I am of Mandell's and ask him whether it's OK to attend his orgy this Saturday. Artie is polite but evasive. He says he may be having an orgy this Saturday, and then again he may not. "It all depends on where my head is at," he says.

"Where do you think your head may be at?" I ask. "I mean, the thing is, I hate to be crass about it, but I do want to get to an orgy on Saturday, and if you're not having one, I'd like to find someone who is."

Artie says to call him about five o'clock on Saturday, by which time he will definitely know where his head is at.

• • •

It is Saturday about five o'clock. It doesn't matter where Artie's head is at, because my friend Linda has done some checking around and heard that Artie's parties are fairly well known among media people and, although she is willing neither to partake of the sexual activities nor even to take off her clothes, she fears meeting somebody she knows there. Instead, she has come up with what she considers a much better orgy. This one is deep in the San Fernando Valley and is not apt to contain any people she knows. She already has the driving directions and the password and the information that the address we seek is a private home with Christmas-tree lights strung outside. Since it is the beginning of July, I figure the house should be fairly easy to spot. I tell Linda I will pick her up in about two hours. She seems very nervous. Her nervousness somewhat allays my own. Then I learn that her nervousness stems mainly from such decisions as what to wear, and I realize that our respective nervousnesses are not even in the same ball park.

• • •

I take a leisurely shower, then spend time applying after-shave lotion to places it has never before occurred to me to apply it. I grow perceptibly more nervous. I grow so nervous that I begin to have contempt for Linda's nervousness. After all, what does she have to be nervous about? She's already decided she will neither have sex nor take off her clothes. I, on the other hand, am more or less philosophically committed to both.

What if my body, slim and trendy by New York standards, is thought to be skinny and slug-white by well-muscled, sun-bronzed Angelenos? What if my dork, regulation-size by New York locker-room standards, is dwarfed by acrobatic hyperactive Valley orgiasts? What if I'm unable to keep it up or even get it up into a polite state of erection? What if--the thought now strikes me as my nervousness creeps over the line into panic and nausea--what if I get really sick and puke my guts out all over everybody at the orgy? What if, God forbid, I contract a venereal disease--not the syph or the clap but the new kind we've learned about from terrific Dr. David Reuben that you don't even know you have until about 12 years later, when suddenly your brain turns to zabaglione and your dork into an ocarina and the virus that causes it not only doesn't respond to antibiotics but thrives on them?

I take a flask of vodka out of my suitcase and gulp down half of it. It has no apparent effect. I go into the bathroom and take another shower. Why am I taking a second shower? To wash off future dirt?

I must snap out of this. I must pull myself together. I must do this for the sake of my editor--my sadistic, seriously deranged editor--who is counting on me and my professionalism to complete this assignment.

I polish off the rest of the vodka in the (continued on page 250)My first orcy(continued from page 148) flask. I snap out of it. I pull myself together. I lurch out of my hotel room and into the lobby, nearly colliding with a succession of guests, and manage to make it all the way to my rented car without actually falling onto the ground.

• • •

Saturday, nine P.M. We park the car by the house with the July Christmas-tree lights and ring the bell. From inside comes the tinkle of music and merry, possibly unclothed voices. A stocky, clothed gentleman comes to the door and asks if he can help us. Linda has forgotten the password, forgotten who sent us, forgotten everything, and begins babbling hysterically. I withdraw into a state of quasi catatonia. Well, what is the gentleman at the door going to do, after all, call the cops? ("Hello, police? There's a couple of writers here trying to crash our orgy....")

At length the man at the door wearies of Linda's babbling, mumbles that the usual practice is to prescreen guests, but that in our case he'll merely take our seven-dollar admission fee and let us in.

I hand him a crumpled ball of sweaty dollar bills. He reaches for a card and asks our names.

"Uh ... Linda Lyman," replies Linda Leeman in a strange high voice.

"Dan Greenburg," I gasp, not having the strength to even make it as far as Greenstein.

The man laboriously prints our names, then turns to me.

"It's a soft swing," he says pointedly.

"Uh, what?" I say.

"It's a soft swing. If a chick says no, don't push it."

"Oh, all right," I say, hoping to give the impression that I'm more used to hard swings, where, presumably, if a chick says no, you throw her up against the wall, slap the hell out of her and rape her.

We enter the orgy. We look around.

If we did not absolutely beyond any doubt know that it was an orgy, we might very well have mistaken it for a high school bring-your-own-bottle party. Most people present have, in fact, brought their own bottles. They have also brought things in homey covered-casserole dishes. The lighting is soft and multicolored. Dance music comes from a radio. Everyone in sight is fully clothed.

Directly ahead of us is a sort of combination kitchen-ballroom. That is, it contains a sink, stove, refrigerator and tiny dance floor. About three couples are dancing. The rest are talking in twos or standing around looking pitiful.

The age range is early 30s to mid-50s. The men wear mainly short-sleeved flowered shirts and slightly too-short slacks, the women a wide variety of things from pants suits to hotpants to long dresses. There is one woman who is well over six feet tall. There is another who may weigh as much as 300 pounds. There is a moderately attractive Eurasian lady with a high-necked shiny silk dress slit all the way up her thigh who looks as though she spends her nonorgy time seating people in Chinese restaurants. There are many men with long sideburns but skinny mustaches. They are not--how shall one put it?--the sort of folks one would have voluntarily selected as sex partners. On the other hand, one was not consulted.

There is a great profusion of signs in Day-Glo lettering posted all about, exhorting one to smile, to have a happy day, to be friendly, to do one's own thing. There is one particularly prominent sign that catches my eye and that I am told is the Swinger's Credo:

I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.

--Frederick S. Perls

Questions of whether I am I or I am me aside, it seems a reasonable enough credo. Linda and I stand there, reading the credo for perhaps the 10th time, terrified of doing anything else, when I spot a person who looks like someone I might be able to talk to without passing out. He is a young person wearing blue jeans (as I am) and wearing rather long hair tied back in a ponytail (as I am not), but the point is that he looks about as out of place as I feel.

Linda and I introduce ourselves to him and discover that his name is Jesse, that he is from Oklahoma and that he is a guitarist. I see this as hopeful--a person in the arts. Actually, says Jesse, to fill in the gaps, moneywise, between guitar gigs, he sells tires. How long has it been between guitar gigs? I ask. About eight years, Jesse figures.

We ask Jesse to show us around and he does. He points out a room adjacent to the kitchen-ballroom that contains a movie projector, screen, several cans of stag film, and that also contains several clothed couples sitting around getting acquainted. He points out a large empty bedroom with a large empty bed and indicates that there are three more bedrooms, a shower and a sauna right up those stairs there.

"Say," he says, "how'd you like to see the caves?"

We say sure, wondering whether we are in for a stalactite-stalagmite-distinction thing and whether, in fact, this entire setup is really an orgy or merely a giant seven-dollar put-on.

Jesse leads us through a beaded curtain into an area that looks like a fourth-rate Jean Cocteau fantasy of a Pullman sleeping car. It is a room that has been divided into cubicles on two levels, the floors of which are mattresses covered by sheets, the walls of which are flush with the edges of the mattresses and the ceilings of which are scarcely high enough to sit under without bumping your head against them. The whole thing has been covered with a charcoal-gray foam rubber spattered with Day-GIo paint and lit with black light. The effect of the black light is that white things such as teeth and sheets appear fluorescent purple and vaguely stained. Whatever else one may want at an orgy, it cannot possibly be lighting that reveals teeth and sheets as fluorescent purple and vaguely stained. And vague stains there assuredly are. On every tooth and sheet in the place.

Jesse excuses himself, saying he must get back to his little woman and introduce her around. He steps over us as we huddle in the crawl space between cubicles, and just as we are deciding what to do next, a clothed couple comes straight through the beaded curtain, ducks into a cubicle to our right and immediately articles of clothing come flying out into the crawl space. I turn to gape and, although my view of the couple is limited to toes at one end and lower thighs at the other, I can see by the position and the motion of the legs that definite intercourse without foreplay has just commenced.

Scarcely has the first couple begun than a second couple enters and steps into the cubicle to our immediate left. Clothes once more come flying out, and although my view of this couple is only from shoulders to waists, it is apparent that these folks also have little truck with foreplay.

A third couple enters the sanctuary (has someone outside blown a whistle?) and climbs nimbly over our backs and up a ladder into a cubicle directly above our heads. More articles of clothing come flying out and soon we are surrounded on three sides by copulating (and, one might add, mysteriously lubricated) couples.

Since Linda and I are loath to make the commitment of crawling out of the crawl space into an actual cubicle ourselves, and since we are clearly about to become a major traffic jam, we back out of the caves and return to the staging areas.

The rest of the house is much as we left it. Couples still dance in the kitchen and sit chatting in the porno-movie room. Most of them are still clothed. One clean-cut young lad in Jockey shorts enters somewhat breathlessly and is razzed about copulatory fatigue. He is unsuccessfully picked up by a poignant-looking middle-aged lady in toreadors who promptly turns to me and asks something about ice cubes that sounds faintly suggestive. The lad in the Jockey shorts jogs off and is replaced by a definitely naked, seriously pudgy fellow.

Linda is standing three yards away from me with her back turned, as the naked pudgy fellow approaches her from behind and puts his hands on her waist. Linda, thinking it is me, grasps the hands, turns around, sees the pudginess and the nakedness and bolts for the bathroom. The naked pudgy fellow shrugs and pads away.

Up the stairs one can see a great deal of frenzied activity. Several naked persons of both sexes, most with dumpy bodies, are running back and forth between bedrooms, shower and sauna, giggling immoderately. A clothed person at my elbow notes my absorption with the upstairs activity and suggests I take a shower. I say thanks but I've already had two so far this evening. Then I spot Linda darting out of the downstairs bathroom, still somewhat shaken.

As we stand there, trying to decide whether leaving is a permissible cop-out, a stocky man with a short-sleeved shirt and a pencil-thin mustache approaches, introduces himself as Freddie, informs us he is a stunt man at MGM and indicates in no uncertain terms his immediate fondness for Linda. The way he indicates this fondness is by placing his hand behind her neck and drawing her toward him by her hair. I recall aloud the admonition that this is a soft swing and wonder whether Freddie has heard. He has. Freddie has been a member of this particular club for years. He and his wife are members of five swingers' clubs, he says, but this club is definitely the best.

"What makes this one the best?" asks Linda, deftly disentangling her hair from his hand.

"The people," says Freddie, "the people."

Our minds boggle as we try to conjure up images of the caliber of people at the four other clubs.

Freddie asks whether we have seen the pool. We have not. Leading Linda now by the hand rather than by the hair, he escorts us into the back yard and to a floodlit swimming pool that is both unoccupied and unheated.

"This is the pool," says Freddie, perhaps fearing that we believe it to be something more sinister.

I stick my hand into the water and remark how cold it is, whereupon we are treated to our first bona fide tacky sex joke of the evening:

"No sense ruining a perfectly good member in that cold water," Freddie says.

We chuckle politely, but apparently Freddie fears that the double-entendre has somehow eluded us.

"No sense ruining a perfectly good member in that cold water," Freddie says once more.

Fearing yet another repetition of the joke, we swiftly change the subject. We ask Freddie how he came to be a swinger.

"Well, sir." he says. "I guess you could say I became a swinger in order to save my marriage."

"How's that?" I say.

"Before we became swingers," he says, "hell, I was screwing every single one of my wife's galfriends."

"And now?"

Freddie's face breaks into a beatific smile.

"Since the day we became swingers," he says proudly, "I have been completely faithful."

"Tell me, Freddie," I say, "how do you feel when you know that your wife has had sex with another man?"

"Just great," he says. "Matter of fact, I'm never so turned on to her as when she's just got done making it with another guy."

"So do you sometimes just make love to her right then and there?"

"Oh, no," says Freddie, as if explaining to a very small child that we do not make ca-ca in our pants.

"Why not?" I ask.

"Well, sir, we tend to frown on that sort of thing around here," he says. "Oh, I don't mean that it never happens that a man has sex with his own wife at one of these parties, it's just that we tend to frown on it. Why, I remember one time a guy and his wife started upstairs to one of the bedrooms"--he chuckles at the memory--"we booed them all the way up the stairs."

It now occurs to me that although I have thus far this evening heard the phrases "We don't put that down" and "Do your own thing" a number of times, I have also heard the phrase "We tend to frown on that" quite a little, too. I ask Freddie what other types of things they tend to frown on at these shindigs.

"Well, we tend to frown on things like ... oh, like more than two people making it with one another at the same time ... on people watching other people while they're making it.... We tend to frown on people who come here without partners.... We frown on homosexuality.... And we very definitely frown on somebody seeing somebody on the outside that they've met at one of our parties."

"Why is that?" I ask, but I think I already know.

"Because," says Freddie, "that's adultery."

• • •

The orgy in the Valley has not been devoid of value, but neither has it provided me with the opportunity I so ambivalently seek: to take part in the festivities and take note of my reactions.

"There's a place I've heard of that we probably ought to check out," says Linda. "It's called Topley Too."

"Where is it?" I ask.

"I don't know exactly, but they run ads in the Free Press."

• • •

Celebrate the Fourthwith aBang!

In factspend the holiday atour place and you'llprobably getBanged a lot!

Special events Jul. 1-4

*And then we have*

Mon.

Get naked night

Tues.

*As if that's not enuf*

Wed. night

Strip Contest

Cash prizes * Bare asses

Thurs. Couples Night

Would you like to have

a strip contest at our

Thurs. night couples party?

* Dancing nightly *

No door chg.--No cover

* * *

Topley Too

8875 Pico * 271-4370

* * *

Bankamericard & Master Ok

--Ad in the Los Angeles Free Press, June 30, 1972

• • •

I decide to skip Topley Too.

Notwithstanding admonitions to steer clear of what were termed the group-grope places, I feel this type of place may be the least traumatic way for me to get my feet (or whatever) wet. I recall that a well-known writer I am friendly with in New York has mentioned visiting one of these places and I put in a long-distance call to him.

My writer friend has, indeed, spent time at the best one of these places, but seems somewhat disturbed to learn of my interest. He is writing something about this topic himself and feels a certain proprietary interest in the place. I assure him I have no intention of trying to scoop him and that if I do write about the place. I won't even identify it by name. He says he can't in all conscience ask another writer not to write about something just because he happens to be covering it, too, but I sense his extreme discomfort and I don't push it. I don't even ask him the name of a person to call there.

It has begun to seem to me that so many writers are now writing articles and books about orgy-related topics that it's like the Communist movement of the Forties and Fifties, when half of the people at every cell meeting were FBI men. I would not be surprised to find that half the people present at any given orgy in Los Angeles or New York are writers doing research, all interviewing and/or fucking one another, professionally if not carnally.

I telephone the place my writer friend has spent time at and I'm referred to its public-relations man. Unwilling for the moment to dwell on either the sociological ramifications or the punning possibilities of its having a public-relations man, I tell him quite straightforwardly of my interest in visiting. He agrees to the visit and gives directions for getting there.

After nearly an hour's drive along the ocean and up narrow winding roads into the mountains, Linda and I arrive at our destination. It's 5:30 P.M. and the view in all directions from our mountain-top is spectacular. We discover we are both every bit as nervous now as we were at the orgy in the Valley, so we each take long pulls on my flask of vodka.

The grounds seem deserted. The only sounds to be heard are the soft splashes of water from the several outdoor fountains. We approach the nearest building and enter. What we have entered is the immense living room of the main house. A dozen attractive young people sit reading, playing cards or chess or chatting quietly. They are all quite nude. One of them comes over to say hello. This is our PR man, and he leads us off to a corner of the room to sit down, drink some hard cider and talk.

The PR man is about 30, nice-looking, very tan, very healthy, very intelligent and articulate and gentle, and very nude. It is at first difficult to overlook the fact that you are talking to an actual nude person and then, fairly soon, not so difficult. As we talk, I feel my tension and apprehension and nausea gradually dissolve and a great feeling of peacefulness overcome me. The feeling is so peaceful it's almost corny and I begin to be embarrassed about how peaceful I feel. I say this aloud and the PR man smiles and tells us that the entire place has been designed to elicit just such feelings of peacefulness--the sounds of fountains, the earth colors and the natural materials used in the buildings, and so forth. It's all part of the theory behind the place itself.

Ah, yes, I think, here comes the pitch. The rationale behind it all. The what-we-believe-in-and-why. But no pitch is forthcoming. I learn that the place is a sort of nudist colony, for want of a better term, that has ten full-time adult residents and about 200 or so members who come here to swim, sun-bathe and, mainly, make love to any of the other members who happen to be in the mood. The feeling is that members should be free to have one primary intimate love-sex relationship and a number of secondary ones, that the secondary ones won't detract from the primary one but will make it even better.

Before we know it, we've been talking an hour and a half. He asks if we'd like to go for a swim. (It is clear one does not swim in swimsuits here.) Linda is hesitant. I say sure. He gets us towels and points the way to the indoor swimming pool.

• • •

The pool is deserted. First I, and then Linda, take off our clothes and our glasses and enter the warm bathtubby water. We are not splashing around for more than ten minutes when we perceive that a small blurred group of people has come into the pool building and shucked its clothes and entered the water. Tragically, both Linda and I are so nearsighted without our glasses it's impossible to even see what they look like. There is a certain amount of splashing around and there are voices, and then the voices become still and it strikes me that what we may have a scant few yards away from us are two or so couples engaged in some level of foreplay. For all I know, they may even be screwing.

"Listen," I whisper to Linda, "I don't want to be so obvious as to actually paddle over and ask what they're doing, but what do you think is going on over there to our right?"

Linda squints unobtrusively in the proper direction.

"It's either a guy hugging and kissing a lady or hugging and kissing a beach ball," she confides.

There is a certain stunning irony in the fact that we have both progressed to the point of total nudity in the company of equally unclothed people and that we are both so blind we can't even tell if we are in an orgy.

After a while, whatever assortment of people and/or beach balls is present gets out of the pool, dries off and leaves. We get out of the very warm water and are suddenly freezing in the brisk night air. We dress hurriedly and return to the main building. After a pleasant dinner and no visible orgying, we prepare to go. We learn that the main reason we haven't seen any lovemaking (assuming that what we vaguely saw in the pool wasn't lovemaking) is that their major get-togethers happen to take place on Wednesday and Saturday nights and today is Tuesday.

Back in the car, I can't stop raving about the place and its people. I ask Linda if she's as impressed as I am.

"It's a very nice place, and the people are really sweet. But I think one reason you're so knocked out by it all is that you're just not used to the California life style," she says gently.

• • •

It is two weeks later. I am back in New York and have spent a fruitless 40 or 50 phone calls trying to drum up an orgy to go to and I am running out of contacts, patience and time. My editor keeps calling to find out when he can expect the manuscript. I tell him I can't even begin writing the manuscript till I've taken part in an orgy. There is no denying the pressure. I have less than a week now to either come up with a viable orgy or else miss my deadline and be forced to beg out of my assignment.

And then--success. A friend of a friend of a friend has found a chap who used to be very into the orgy thing, and although he has mostly dropped out of it now (he has a meaningful relationship with three chicks he really digs), he has agreed to throw an orgy in my honor. It is to take place this coming Wednesday in his posh East Side apartment and it will begin promptly at nine P.M. Sensing my nervousness (no mean trick, this), the host kindly suggests I stop by his place about 4:30 Wednesday afternoon to meet him and look over the apartment, eliminating two of the many unknown factors I'll be forced to deal with when my hour of trial arrives.

• • •

Wednesday, 4:30. My host is a tall, athletic-looking guy in his 30s--intelligent, articulate and nice. His name is Walt. It is not clear what Walt does for a living, although one has heard he is a gambler and has managed to gamble away a Chris-Craft, a Maserati and a much more sumptuous apartment than the not-unsumptuous one we are standing in. He shows me around. Good modern furniture. Chrome and leather. Fur rugs. Large wall mirrors in the bedroom. "In my last apartment," says Walt wistfully, "the mirrors were on the ceiling."

"What do you do, Walt?" I ask.

"What I do, Dan, is make love. That's mainly what I do. It's what I like best, it's what I do best, and everything else is just to fill in the gaps."

Walt estimates he has made love to about 1000 women in his 15 years of orgygoing.

A dog of spaniel descent enters and gives me the once-over.

"That dog," says Walt, "just happens to give the best head in town. He's not pushy about it, though. He won't come over and do anything unless you invite him."

Walt fixes me a Scotch and water, as an attractive young woman finishes tidying up and as delivery boys arrive with cases of liquor and mix. Another young woman--the caterer, says Walt--has just left, after laying in a supply of delicacies such as Devil Dogs, Good Humor bars and Reddi-Wip. Walt himself has already spent a lot of time in preparation.

"A good orgy has to be as carefully choreographed as a good ballet," he says. "I've already chosen the cast, set the lighting, planned the flow of the evening. I preprogramed all the music you'll be hearing tonight on the tape deck. I polished up the vibrators and the dildos and I told the maid to put out the dark sheets."

My host is obviously getting a great kick out of his role, and when I leave, I feel I could not be in better hands. He says he'll see me at nine P.M. sharp.

• • •

My date for the evening is an attractive young actress named Mary-Jenifer Mitchell, who has been in Oh! Calcutta! and The Dirtiest Show in Town and who is on loan from her preposterously generous boyfriend. (When you call them and they aren't home, their answering machine says: "Please leave your name, phone number and favorite erogenous zones.") Mary makes no pronouncements about nonparticipation in this evening's festivities, she merely requests that I use her real name in my article.

"Have you been to lots of orgies, Mary?"

She thinks a bit. "I don't guess I've really been to any," she says. "But of course I've thrown a couple."

Mary, like Walt, is somehow able to sense my nervousness and suggests I meet her an hour before the orgy for a drink. What makes anybody think I'm nervous? Just because I've been nauseated and unable to eat every day I thought there was the remotest chance I was going to an orgy? Just because I've lost 15 pounds since I began my research?

• • •

Wednesday, nine P.M. I have showered, shaved, cologned and anointed my body with precious oils, staving off repeated attacks of nausea and the shakes with the better part of a bottle of Myers's rum. I have met Mary at a bar and together we have consumed more liquor and I have gotten us a cab for the remaining three blocks to the orgy, due to serious doubts that I will be able to keep putting one leg in front of the other for so vast a distance. We are leaning against our host's doorjamb and ringing his bell. He opens the door and ushers us into the apartment, which has been magically transformed into a pleasure garden.

There are candles. There is incense. There is exotic music. There are my host's three attractive girls, clothed. There is my host himself, clothed. I am to put myself completely in his hands. He will guide me through this entire experience. He will tell me exactly what I ought to do at every step.

"I think you ought to sit down," he says.

I do. Mary sits down next to me. There is a definite lack of spontaneous conversation among those present. There is a ring of the doorbell. There is another couple. There are passed around for sniffing certain powders, certain poppers. There is yet another ring of the doorbell. There is our final couple.

"I think we need your chairs now," says my host to me and Mary. "Why don't you two go into the bedroom?"

We certainly can't fight logic like that. We get up. We go into the candlelit bedroom. This is it. This is really it. There is absolutely no way to chicken out now. We have passed the point of no return. I smile at Mary. She smiles at me. We take off our clothes. I take off my glasses. I can't see a thing. We get into bed. We get to work.

A personage has materialized at our side, divested himself of his clothing and joined us in the bed. It is our host. He graciously helps me make love to the wondrous young woman whose answering machine requests one's erogenous zones and who insists that her real name be used in my article. I wonder how I feel about having another guy make love to my date and decide the thought is not appropriate to the situation. My host disappears. Then he reappears, this time with one of his girls. There are four of us in bed. Then six. Six naked people in a huge bed somewhere on Manhattan's posh East Side, all having some form of sex together, and I, by God, am one of them.

I keep thinking to myself, "Look how I'm really doing this, Look how I'm at least physically a part of all this, Look how I'm at least intermittently potent, Look how God is not hurling bolts of lightning to incinerate me," and I keep thinking how detached and on-the-out-side-looking-in I feel and it's like being at a screening of a very blurred stag film and I keep wanting to yell "Focus!" to the projectionist.

At one point in all this activity, I hear my host say, "OK, Greenburg, time to fuck a stranger," and I feel myself being lifted up off one lady and onto another. Good old Walt. Keeping things moving. Choreographing. Bless him. I adjust myself to the new lady, nod a shy hello and set to work.

At another point in the evening, I find myself fondling and kissing an arm I believe belongs to the young woman I am currently entertaining, then discover that the arm belongs to my host. I mumble apologies but see they're not needed. My host's concentration is somewhere other than on his arm. He and another lady are, by coincidence, busily at work on the same lady I'm at work on. I apologize for apologizing and return to the task at hand.

It is two A.M. We all stop and go into the living room for snacks and such. I learn that one of the men present is an investment banker, one is an attorney. One of the women is a graduate student in English lit, another of the women some sort of fashion designer, a third, it seems to me, is a manicurist. I could be wrong about this. I could be wrong about a lot of things. Like whether or not I'm really here.

By 3:30 it is over. We put on our clothes, thank our host and stand at the door exchanging polite nice-to-meet-yous. I want to ask, "Was it good for all of you, too?" but I don't. I say to the possible manicurist that I'm not sure whether I've had her, but, if so, it was nice. She laughs, thinking I'm kidding.

I put Mary into a cab and walk slowly home, feeling very odd, indeed. I have managed to fulfill my mission by severing both the peaks and the valleys from my emotional electrocardiogram and the result is that I cannot be completely sure of what has happened. I feel very detached. Surreal. Sophisticated. Blasé. Fatigué. European. Old. How do you like that--me, a fella that's been to orgies.

My wife awakes as I get into bed.

"How was it?" she asks.

"I don't know," I say. "I'm trying to figure it out."

• • •

It takes me a full day to get over the hangover, a full three days to get over the sense of surreality. I call my editor in Chicago with the news that I've finally finished my research, had my orgy and am going to be able to make my deadline, after all.

"How did it go at the orgy?" he asks. "Any trouble?"

"Oh, no, not really," I say.

"There wasn't any trouble?"

"Not really."

"You mean you didn't even throw up?"

"Not really," I say. "I did feel a little nauseated beforehand, but that went away by the time we actually started. Everything worked out fine."

There's a brief silence at the other end of the line.

"You son of a bitch," says my editor, and now, suddenly, I realize just how much of a setup this whole assignment has been: Let's send old Greenburg into a situation where he can't fail to make an ass of himself, and what a fine giggle we'll all have afterward at his expense.

"I'm sorry things didn't go worse," I say, "I really am."

• • •

I finish the first draft of this article and that night my wife and I are at a cocktail party and I am trying very hard not to act too overpoweringly blasé/fatigué/European/oId. A rather straight married lady we know announces she has just had her first experience skinny-dipping. Before I even have time to appreciate the irony, I have completely forgotten how blasé/fatigué/European/ old I am, I have forgotten all about the six naked bodies on the bed in the posh East Side apartment and I am pumping the straight married lady for every last detail of her skinny-dipping experience like some horny high school sophomore.