Looking Forward to Swinging in Florida This Fall!!

Kate took to swinging like a fish to water.

She’s got a politicians gift of gab, and can work a room with the best of them. This is just who she is, she’s the consummate people person. This was honed over decades as a small busniess owning hair dresser. She also has an internal switch that’s tripped when she’s wearing a dress like the one pictured a few paragraphs below; she’s a good swinger for sure….

I mentioned last week that I’m on the introverted side. That’s true particularly when first meeting people. I’m engaging and pleasant but reserved. At this point in life, I’ve accepted it, and it doesn’t bother me. There are a couple of groups of people that I’m much more open and myself with from the very first hello; people in recovery, and swingers.

There’s a baseline of intimacy I share with each group. Sure, the intimacy is ever so slightly different, but it’s 100% there. With recovering folks, it’s the bond that comes with looking someone in the eye who’s been to the bottom of the addiction pit and knows what that’s like. At the risk of sounding trite, it’s the OG if you know you know thing. There’s a sense of shared joy for living that’s difficult to express to “normies”. Swingers have a similar joy for life, but it comes from a different place. It’s the removal of several layers of pretense and a shared willingness to explore sexually. It’s the knowledge that sex on the other side of monogamy is one of the big secrets to life. Well sex with others openly and without running around; the ethical part.

Kate and I love to people watch when we travel. A trip to an airport is kind of the Super Bowl of people watching. It’s always fun to try to pick the sober people out, and to pick the swingers. If you’re stuck sitting at the gate, it can be a tall order.

Of course, stumbling across either in the wild is the exception and not the rule. The second A in AA goes a good way to keeping things on the DL. On the swinger side, every now and then you’ll see a (typically overtly joyous) couple sporting upside down pineapple Hawaiian shirts or something like that. Not common tho.

Where then to find either group? It can be done, fairly easily, one just has to be a bit intentional about it.

Not much of a plot twist, but AA is right at the beginning of the phone book, assuming you can find a phone book. Regardless, I’ve rarely struggled to find a meeting. English speaking meetings in SE Asia before covid were the exception. Swingers? Not so much in the phone book. Fortunately, a Google search of something like “local swinger events” will get you started. We found the trip to Puerto Vallarta we wrote about a few months back just that way. Google is your friend. Perhaps the best way to find out about swinger events is to network with, well, swingers. Kind-of exactly what you’re doing right now if you’re reading this.

Splash events are couples only swinger hotel takeovers. They seem to do 3 a year; one each in Atlanta, Houston, and Ft. Lauderdale. They’re 3 day and night events, at larger business / convention type hotels with various activities scheduled across the long weekend. Kate and I have been to the Ft. Lauderdale event in the past, and we’re going again this September. We may go to next year’s Atlanta event as well, that’s a bit too far off to say for sure.

The environment at Splash (or any takeover we’ve been too) isn’t a nonstop Roman orgy in the hallways. There’s a great vibe and energy, it’s the only environment where swingers can be swingers and not worry about anything or anyone. It’s a safe space. It’s a boozy environment, but we’ve yet to see it tip over into alcohol fueled chaos; there’s no “get your hands off my woman” energy to help that along. Everyone is friendly and typically a little flirty; eye contact held a moment longer, a sly knowing smile. There’s no nudity in public spaces (well…..) but no shortage of bikini’s and less in the hallways.

The lobby at Splash is taken up with an understated and not pushy at all shopping area. Sex toys and sexy clothes, some swinger friendly travel stuff as well. We got Kate a couple of things; pictured is by a country mile the more modest outfit.

To be clear, we’re not affiliated with Splash in any way. We’re paying customers who are going to be there for the same reasons as everyone else. Given there’s multiple events, and we had a GREAT time at our first, we want to write about it a bit. See the above networking with swingers part.

An option when booking with Splash is to extend your stay at the hotel either before or after the main event. Since we were getting on a plane for this, we added two days on the front end and made a vacation of it. Worked out so well for us last time, we’re doing the same thing this year.

We flew in on a Tuesday, on Wednesday morning we hosted a couple for coffee. We met them on the swinger site SDC; there was a group chat going for Splash attendees. Given that we’re not boozers and were going to be there a couple extra days, we decided to buy a coffee pot. We put out that we’d be hosting morning coffee in the group chat; among the responders was this couple.

He had two first names, she was a smoke show from South America; I don’t want to go much further than that. They were semiprofessional lifestylers; they had some experience in the public eye and she had an Only Fans presence that was decidedly more than insignificant. She was on the stiff side when they arrived, but warmed up quickly as it became clear that Kate and I are the decent humans that we are. We had a really great conversation for an hour or more with them; fascinating people with no shortage of stories that got a “shut the fuck up!!!” from Kate or me. As it happened, it became clear that our energy was different and great conversation and friendship was where it was going to stay. I’ll circle back to that in a few paragraphs.

Anyway, before they took their leave, they asked if she could do a livestream from our room. Of course, was our response. She flipped a switch. She went from an engaging funny kind of goofball to serious faced pseudo porn star. She had the look and moves down for sure. After a couple minutes of breathless banter and various positions and degrees of grinding, to whoever knows how many subscribers, she finished just as quickly as she started and was back to herself. It was quite the “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” moment. We saw them a few more times over the course of the weekend, she was easily one the most over the top women there, and a sweetheart to boot.

Honestly between her and The Actors Husband (talked about in our Swinger Hotel Takeover post) I’m not sure who the bigger character on that trip was. I still hear ZZ Top in my head when I think of The Actors Husband…..

Circling back to our Only Fans friends. We never played with them, and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a loss for any of the 4 of us. Among the things we’ve learned is that a great conversation in swinger spaces with swingers, doesn’t mean you’re going to have sex with them. Understanding this, that you’re just not going to have sex with every couple you share a degree of mutual attraction with, makes navigating swinger spaces easier. It’s one of the shared intimacies among swingers, knowing that while everyone is willing, to one extent or another, it’s not necessarily with you.

The opposite of that is also true and decidedly in the realm of possibilities at a big event like Splash. Our best sexual connection at an event stemmed from an hour’s conversation that ticked all the boxes one night. All four of us were on board, and the sex was fantastic; vulnerable and intimate, flowing and no awkwardness at all.

If you’re looking for something to do this September 19th to 22nd, come on down to Ft. Lauderdale, it will be a great time!!!

Thanks for reading!!! Be kind to yourself and others…..

Sam & Kate

(Kate and I (Sam) are a married couple in our 50’s whose relationship is Ethically Non-Monogamous (ENM). We’re swingers, our marriage is open; we have sex with other people. We’re in a committed relationship, and somewhere on the polyamorous spectrum; Kate has a boyfriend and is a Hotwife. It’s neither of our first marriages. We met in an AA meeting; we’re each more than a decade sober now. If you’re curious about how this all works, we talk about our relationship in varying degrees of depth in other posts. We have an email address listed in our “about” page if you like to contact us.)