I once knew a young actress who had this problem. She auditioned, was repeatedly rejected, and came close to breakdown, believing that it was because she was inadequate or undesirable in herself. It took her years to realise that she was very good, and was turned down because she did not fit in with the rest of the cast or did not correspond to a director’s pre-formed vision of the character.   

So in swinging, we do not woo by laying out our entire personalities, status, property and history and therefore regard a ‘no’ as a rejection of our entire lives. We are all friends or, at least, fellows, and the request to play is a kindly and approving gesture, an invitation to share pleasure. Its refusal is no more significant than a refusal to dance or to share a drink.

So we are free to talk with our eyes and our bodies, to laugh and to touch without inhibition or fear of misunderstanding. It is a very wonderful freedom.

Sometimes hardcore swinging parties never turn into orgies, and we stand in the kitchen or sit in the living-room, chatting about books, television, gossip, clothes or relationships just like partygoers the world over. A few couples may vanish into the playrooms without exciting remark and drift back in again, hair perhaps a little disordered, dress a little crumpled. Occasionally a woman may follow one of these couples, leaving her partner chatting, and reappear with them later. The fact that these have been waffling at one another’s groins, gasping, grunting and growling and mingling sweat and saliva as they play the primal game is of precisely no significance.

On the other hand, for no more apparent reason than that for which customers at a restaurant will order steak one week and fish the next, the same party may catch fire. Then the kitchen is mysteriously empty and the playrooms are packed.