Winnipeg Free Press
For an estimated two per cent of the population, that classic one-liner has an automatic — and quite serious — retort: “OK, as long as you take mine.”
In the 1950s, the media dubbed it “wife-swapping.” Today, it’s known by the less male-centric term “swinging.” Or just “the lifestyle.”
Regardless of the name, this free-love, mate-sharing lifestyle — which Penthouse magazine once described as “the primary indoor sport of suburbia” — definitely did not fall out of fashion after Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice crawled into bed together on the big screen in 1969.
In fact, you might say folks took that movie’s tagline, “Consider the possibilities,” to heart: The swinger movement in North America is four million strong, according to a 2005 segment of ABC TV’s newsmagazine 20/20. And some say it’s just now coming out of the closet.
“It’s huge,” says Kevin, a Winnipeg swinger and entrepreneur who’s planning to open Ooh Zone, a private “adult-lifestyle nightclub” in the city next winter.
“I think there’s a whole younger generation that’s more sexually free-spirited. It’s not the old wife-swapping days,” says the 42-year-old construction industry executive, who asked that his surname not be published. Kevin and his wife, a local business owner, have been married 20 years and swinging for nearly three. …