The Public-Sex Breakthrough

Plato's Retreat isn't quite what the old Greek had in mind, but it's close. A dark cave. An underground den with walls of black tile and shadowy block-print cotton tapestries. The floor is an ebony carpet of Astroturf. Above and behind you, there is a blazing row of spotlights and strobes. Hanging from the ceiling in front of you is a long, low mirror that seems to draw the available light from the room like a giant, silent ventilating system. Still, you are dazzled. You see figures in the glass. Some of them are fucking, others lie quietly. The love-makers' bodies ripple, as though caught in a tide within the glass. You see a man's back arch as he rears back on his knees, a woman spread wide to receive him. Her legs spell out a secret message in semaphore. It is a strange image; but then, you are a strange audience, captive, a prisoner of the scene, prevented by the chains of astonishment from turning your head. You are watching what the Supreme Court coyly terms an ultimate sex act. These are people who love people. Your guide turns your eyes from the mirror and points to a blue air mattress in an alcove next to the Olympic-size whirlpool bath. She asks you to name the activity, to untangle the anatomical knot--it appears to be one young lady taking one man in her mouth, two in her hands and a fourth between her legs. A man old enough to be her father hovers nearby, slapping his hand on the mattress like a referee at a collegiate wrestling match. Yes. She is pinned.

Something is happening here and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? You find it hard to believe that less than 100 steps from the corner of Broadway and 74th you are watching complete strangers enjoying complete intimacy.

A blonde, long-haired girl approaches. She reaches out and shakes your hand. Except that it is not your hand: You are led by a sudden arousal toward a room filled with mattresses and overstuffed pillows. "Let me show you what this place is really about," she says, and pulls you down beside her.

•

Less than a year ago, Playboy ran an article on the public-sex movement in New York. At the time, there were two bars that offered on-premises swinging: Percival's, a tiny haven on the Lower East Side, and Plato's Retreat, a slightly larger facility in Gramercy Park. By the time the magazine hit the stands, Percival's had closed its doors, hassled by local politicians and the New York State Liquor Authority, an organization devoted to the principle that Western civilization will crumble if alcohol is served in the presence of nude bodies. Agents for the S.L.A. scuttle about Manhattan, trying to mend the social fabric with G strings and tassels. Under similar fire, the owner of Plato's Retreat had supposedly let it be known that he was moving out of the place on Fifth Avenue, going underground. The public-sex phenomenon had been short-lived. As far as most of us were concerned, the whole episode was remote enough to have happened in ancient Greece.

A few months later, rumors spread that the movement had not died. Larry Levenson, the former soda-pop salesman who had organized Plato's Retreat, had moved into the basement of the Ansonia Hotel. Having raised the $150,000 needed to renovate the old Continental Baths, he was going for broke. The new Plato's Retreat would become the ultimate couples-only club: It would become so big it couldn't be busted.

Levenson's scheme was simple, elegant, inviting. Or, if you please, ballsy, raunchy, disgusting. For $30, a couple could visit the club for one night. Five dollars of that entry charge would go toward a six-week membership. If they wished to return, the cost per visit would drop to $25. What did they get for their money? The new Plato's Retreat offered a disco, a pool, a Jacuzzi, a steam room, a free locker and towel service, an unending labyrinth of private swing rooms, a free beverage bar and buffet. All the accouterments of home, if home happened to be the Playboy Mansion or Xanadu. It seemed like a great idea. One wondered why God hadn't put a place like Plato's into the Garden of Eden. Maybe because He had only one couple to work with.

The return of Plato's Retreat was a hit. Open five nights a week. On weekends, more than 300 couples would pour into the club, forming the largest permanent floating orgy in the history of New York City. Everyone was welcome: You could keep your clothes on and no one would bother you. If the spirit was willing, you could change into a towel (or less) and join the activity. It didn't hurt. No one freaked out or got carted off to Bellevue.

One of my New York friends, a film maker and professional sex fiend, called my Chicago office with a firsthand report: "Plato's Retreat is the counterculture of the Seventies. People come to Plato's the way they went to drug parties in the early Sixties, where pot was the guest of honor. The next day, they huddle to gossip about who did what under what influence. It's incredible. I feel reborn. Like, I missed Woodstock, but I made Plato's Retreat."

Inevitably, the New York media began to take notice. Howard Smith, a Playboy contributor and columnist for The Village Voice, did a series of stories on the new club in "Scenes." New York magazine sent a finance writer to cover the phenomenon. Tom Snyder hemmed and haw-hawed with Levenson on the Tomorrow Show. For a while, it looked as if the "King of Swing" were going to make the covers of Time and Newsweek. Plato's was a reporters' paradise. In fact, there were so many writers, TV commentators and such hanging out that a movement was begun to have the club's name changed to the Columbia School of Journalism. Forgive us our press passes.

Meanwhile, Screw magazine's directory of swingers' bars began to list places with names like Botany Talk, Clique Lounge, Flippit's Hideaway, Noah's Ark, Our Gang, Phoenix and Underground. Some clubs were more discreet than others, requiring that initial contact be made by mail or by telephone. But the premise was the same. If you like bowling, go to a bowling alley. If you like balling...come here. It was only a matter of time before companies would start sponsoring teams.

Finally, the editors of Playboy decided to send Robert Scott Hooper and Theresa Holmes, their eyewitness news team, to bring back photographic evidence of the phenomenon. (Hooper and Holmes are used to such things, having performed above and beyond the call of nature in the December 1977 issue of Playboy with a feature called Swingers' Scrapbook.) Two of the magazine's best couldn't go unescorted into such a gentle night, so the entire editorial staff volunteered to go along. I was the only one who made it back to my typewriter. The rest of the staff stayed in New York to open an East Coast editorial office.

For three nights, Hooper and Holmes visited Plato's Retreat, recruiting volunteers to go back for an official shooting on a slow night, when the crowds of tourists would be home in Westchester County. The people you see in Hooper's pictures are the sort you are likely to meet if you visit a couples-only sex club. And having seen these pictures, you probably will.

The shooting at Plato's was a complete success; our eyewitness team decided to keep the ball rolling. Hooper and Holmes visited two of the second-generation sex salons--Night Moves and Midnight Interlude. The modus operandi was the same, but at the smaller clubs, they encountered a slightly different reaction. The couples didn't want to go back on another night: "Why wait? Do it now." They simply went on doing what they had been doing before we got there. You can see for yourself how well they did.

•

You emerge from the mattress room. The blonde-haired girl congratulates you on your good fortune. This time, though, she shakes your hand, squeezing it quickly, affectionately. The memory of the first introduction causes a rapid change in blood flow. Your center of gravity drops. You rearrange the suddenly undersized towel. She laughs. You lean against a pillar by the pool. You look around the room at 200-odd bodies, breasts of every size and shape, penises of every religious and racial persuasion. They all work. Far fucking out.

•

Interview a random assortment of couples at a swing club and you will find them to be intelligent. Middle class. Successful. A surprising number of them are self-employed. Among others, Hooper and Holmes met an architect, the owner of a burglar-alarm company, a real-estate broker, a lawyer, an actor, a Brooklyn cop (in New York, policemen are considered to be self-employed). Long before the media discovered Levenson's operation, Plato's Retreat was locker-room gossip in every precinct station in New York. Murphy, the cop, is 40 years old. He looks like an unmarked car. He's been coming with his wife to Plato's for 25 weeks. "Listen, I've gone most of my life without. I've got some catching up to do. Everything I ever wondered about is here in one room. I don't even look at National Geographic anymore."

Walter, a divorce lawyer trying to get away from his work, explains that the crowds have changed since the place first opened, from middle-aged swinging junkies to a younger, hipper crowd, from the kind of people you find in the Catskills and Miami Beach to the kind you find backpacking in Yosemite or skiing at Vail. Walter gives credit for the change to the series of columns written by Howard Smith. "Right now, this place looks like an ad for 'What kind of couple reads The Village Voice?' When your magazine hits the stands, it will look like an ad for 'What kind of couple reads Playboy?' "

Stanley, the swinger emeritus of Plato's Retreat, is dark-haired, muscular and well dressed, when he is dressed. (He runs a $3,000,000-a-year apparel business.) In a past life, he was the manager of Percival's, the city's original on-premises swing club. He is the originator of the first commandment of swinging: "Swans fly with swans. Ducks fly with ducks." When he talks, his attention slides to the edge of his eyes, looking for swans. You are reminded of the round, shallow plates used by miners to pan for gold. Stanley has been interviewed by every reporter to visit Plato's. On the day after one article appeared, he walked into his factory. Fifteen employees lined up and began taking off their clothes. "We just thought it would make you feel at home."

Stanley's girlfriend and wingman is a trim blonde endowed with what appear to be permanently erect nipples. She is into lust. Nonchalant. She wears a towel like a gun belt around her hips. She agrees to come to the official shooting, but only if the pictures don't show her face. Business. Stanley agrees, but only if (continued on page 222) Public Sex (continued from page 160) the pictures don't show his ass. "I have a very well-known ass. Show it and everyone in New York will recognize it."

•

I consult with my friend the film maker prior to making my first reconnaissance mission to Plato's. He provides a typical scenario: "It's the fall of Rome with a bar mitzvah buffet. At first, you are struck by the numbers of people. You know that if God catches you there, it's cookies. Fortunately, God is preoccupied with the Middle East crisis and hasn't gotten around to Plato's Retreat yet. But the rush when you walk through the door is something else. It will be a couple of hours before you can even focus on individuals. Then you study specifics. You become a connoisseur of technique. You won't see anything you haven't tried yourself at one time or another, but to see someone trying the 11th position of the lotus with a half twist as a regular gig, in public, in front of an audience, is a flash. It's nice to know that someone has mastered that trick. The third stage is personalities. You single out a beautiful girl and watch her for the whole evening, trying to figure out from her behavior why she's there. Last week, I watched a woman in the pool go through 21 guys. She was into underwater oral sex. Maybe she was training to be a pearl diver. Maybe she had always had the fantasy of giving head to a crowd."

Some fantasy; do you think it can be taught? There's the fourth stage. Of actually doing it yourself in public. My friend has never gone that far. "I'm not an easy lay." He confesses to suffering from acute voyeurism, an occupational hazard of his trade. "If you don't change into a towel right away, I find that you tend to remain fully clothed for the whole evening. Keep that in mind."

•

I enter the club, pushing through two sets of mirrored doors into a small foyer. A maitresse d'hôtel directs me to the hatcheck girl. I feel a slight moment of panic. Exactly how much am I expected to check? Remembering the film maker's advice, I begin to disrobe. Just this side of my undershorts, the hatcheck girl looks up. "No, there are lockers downstairs for your clothes."

"Sorry, my mistake."

•

I stash my coat in the locker, grab a drink from the bar and set out for a tour of this dark underground den. I am poised, cautious. My eyeballs are walking barefoot, trying to avoid the slivers of glass, the sudden glimpses of graphic acts. The Jacuzzi holds four or five couples--I lose count by the second or third set of thighs. The girls fondle penises beneath the water with absent-minded care, like Captain Queeg rolling his ball bearings. The couples peer out into the room, toward the disco dance floor, or the pool, or the chaise longues, waiting for something to trigger a response, the slight involuntary muscle contraction that produces an erection, that corners the faint pulse of arousal. A short-haired girl with a bearded sociology major realizes that her hand is full. She turns and faces her partner, slips him inside her with a swift, assured gesture. He braces himself against the edge of the pool and kisses her breasts. She grasps him by the neck and pulls him closer, pumping. The clinical details are hidden by the water. It is almost a private act. It is a sculpture soon duplicated by the other couples in the pool.

I become a connoisseur of style. On one of the chaise longues, a brunette crouches over a reclining man. She is performing fellatio--if not with passion, then with purpose. My escort agrees that the girl is diligent. Trustworthy. Courteous. Kind. Etc. "It's the Brooklyn style of oral sex. P.S. 49, if I'm not mistaken. The school was half Catholic. Half Jewish. The girls learned to give head instead of learning to fuck. They're famous for it."

•

I begin to focus on individuals. Immediate undying love strikes three times in the time it takes to walk the length of the 40-foot pool. A very short brunette with a body one size larger than skin and bones walks by swaddled in a towel. Her feet are obscured by gray-wool socks. Charming. In a place like Plato's, is she really worried about catching a cold? A magnificent amazon with a Farrah Fawcett haircut sits on a chair at the end of the pool, her legs crossed, eating potato salad from a paper plate. When she stands up, I see that she is wearing a white-cotton T-shirt imprinted with a map of the New York subway system. My eyes take a quick ride to the Staten Island station. Yes, this is where I get off. An athletic brown-haired girl attracts my attention. She is wearing a towel around her neck. She looks like a poster of Sylvester Stallone with tits. She is proud of her body from the waist up, she is dangerous from the waist down. Later, I watch her in action on her back on the mattresses, her legs wrapped around her partner, her breasts alive with surface tension. I feel privileged to be in the same room with someone so vital. She is a sexual saint: Hands reach out to touch her brow, her breast, her thigh. She is a force, attracting bystanders as a magnet attracts iron filings on a sheet of paper. She emerges from the mattress room and goes to join three friends, fully dressed, standing at the bar like trainers in the corner of a prize-fight ring. Their eyes worship her animal grace. I think her name is Jan. If she would be so kind as to contact the author....

•

On the night before the shooting, I stand by the pool. The air is filled with an acrid chlorine smoke. Near my feet, a middle-aged man with sideburns and a waterlogged mustache floats on his back, his arms outstretched along the gutter of the pool. His erection juts like a buoy from the water: His partner clings to it with her mouth and one hand, treading water. The bodies are weightless, squeaky clean. The woman pulls away, reattaches herself. I look at the pool, consider a quick set of laps. I ask one of the regulars if it would be all right. "You'd look pretty ridiculous. A jock doing laps in a pool filled with people sucking and fucking. Maybe if, at the end of ten laps, you pull yourself up, screaming, 'I'm coming, I'm coming,' they'll think it's some obscure sexual practice." The regular changes his tone of voice to one of mock horror. "Besides, do you realize what kind of diseases you can catch from a public pool?"

"Maybe I should wear a wet suit, a head-to-toe prophylactic."

Most of the reporters who have written about Plato's have worried in print about the possibility of disease. I recall reading in The Journal of Sexology that people who are afraid of venereal disease, and who use the specter as an excuse to abstain from sex, are usually ignorant about V.D. People who lead an active sex life tend to be informed. They know the symptoms, the consequences and the treatments available. They take care. I depend on the awareness of strangers.

•

I change into a towel, suck in my stomach and walk to the pool. Swim ten laps, complete with flip turns that would leave my old coach at the Stamford Y.M.C.A. turning in his grave. In junior high school, I swam on a championship team. Backstroke. Between the junior meet and the senior meet, the swimmers would lie on top of a locker and tell sexual horror stories. The one story I remember from that period goes like this: A guy has been dating a girl for months, trying to get past second base. She has put up an inspired, impenetrable defense. On his birthday, he takes her to the movies. Sitting in the balcony, he tries yet again to make it. She resists, saying, "Not now. My parents aren't home. We can go there later. Everything you ever desired will be yours." They leave without watching the credits, drive to her house, walk to the door. In the darkened foyer, she says, "Don't turn on the lights. I'm shy. Go into the living room and get ready. I'll change into something comfortable." He does as instructed. He hears her return. "Are you ready?" she asks. He says yes. The lights go on and he is surrounded by classmates.

"Happy birthday. Surprise!"

I hate that joke. Honest desire is not a laughing matter. The guy had nothing to be ashamed of. If his friends had really thought things out, they would have been naked, applauding. Celebration, not mortification.

Later that night, I meet a couple of college kids from New Jersey. They are having a party for one of their classmates. They have brought an unsuspecting couple to Plato's as a birthday treat. I tell them my joke. They are amused. Times have changed.

•

For two dollars, at Plato's, you can buy a tiny leather pouch on a long string. You fill it with cigarettes or whatever and wear it around your neck. Some of the patrons fill their pouches with courage pills. Quaaludes. Drop one, hit the mattresses and fuck your eyeballs out to the pulsing bass of the disco music. The disco beat provides a script that even the most addled amateur can follow. It gives two strangers something in common. If you like to make love to ballads, you're in big trouble at Plato's. (Although it's rumored that if you bribe the disc jockey, he will slip some acoustic rock--James Taylor--onto the turntable early in the morning.) By all accounts, 'Ludes seem to make it easier to get to know someone. Take the following story, from a man who got a standing ovation at Plato's.

"I was in the mattress room, wailing away, really in sync with the music, when I noticed that there were a lot of people standing in a circle around me, watching. Strange. I looked down at the girl I was with. She was waving her legs in the air, screaming, scratching my back. I still got the scars. She was totally out of her mind. I guess she was enjoying herself. I went back to what I was doing, and when I finished, everyone applauded."

•

My partner wanders off to the bar to find a drink. A few feet beyond my perimeter, she is approached by a couple who ask if she is alone, if she wants to swing. She declines. By the time she gets back from the bar, she has handled the following approaches: a single guy, whose life dream is to land a bit part in a porn movie, who has come with a blind date whose phone number he got from a friend. A girl who's been asked by every guy in her office to go with him to Plato's. Another couple who want to know if the woman is my partner's type, or vice versa. My partner is impressed with the low-key quality of the approaches. "There are no heavy hitters here. The guys are more relaxed, less desperate than the stand-up comics you meet in singles bars. You know, this is the Goodbar that Diane Keaton was looking for. If she'd come here, she could have had all the sex she wanted, then gone home alone--safe. She wouldn't have gotten killed."

•

My partner joins me in the pool. Her presence produces an immediate response. She wraps her legs around me, pulls me into her, an act as casual as the way some people hold hands. Thus connected, she feels secure, out of circulation, protected from the crowd of strangers. Our bodies move. The orgasm takes shape, a round sphere batted back and forth over the net of nerves between us. We prolong the volley. Eventually, one of us decides to go for the spike, to thrust home the moment at an angle well beyond recovery. It isn't me. The point is scored. I wonder at my response. I become absorbed in the rhythm, the interior space that I know by heart, following the road map of blood-filled arteries. Beneath every skin is a pulse, behind every pulse a heart. I know the way home. I finish and look up to see 20 other couples doing the same thing. We are in this thing together. My erection does not fade. The crowd is an aphrodisiac. Two feet away, a Puerto Rican girl clings to the chrome ladder for support. Her lover is in front of her, taking on water. We help out, to prevent them from drowning.

I don't feel half bad. My lady and I have our act together. We've practiced at home for ten years. I look at the crowd and think: If you're going to strut your stuff in public, you might as well play for a full house.

We go home and find one.

"There's the fourth stage. Of actually doing it yourself in public. My friend has never gone that far."