I would text Lynette and my lesbian group chat at the airport before my red-eye flight, suddenly struck with the reality that this was all actually happening. We decided to bring our knowledge, experience, and expertise to the table and share some of our favorite swinging sites. She and Matie also hung up a white board outside their door and encouraged their neighbors to invite them to their play parties.

I was captivated by what Eileen Myles told me at the time: “I know how to fight for what I want, to say no, when to wait.

Lynette had been chatting with a few women the day before, more than one of whom confronted her in the cafeteria the next morning. I thought I’d mostly meet a lot of Midwestern, dutifully monogamous couples in their fifties and sixties. Surveying the room and watching women kiss and laugh, I’m momentarily struck by how nice everyone at the party is. Later that week, we’d have a couple long dinners, just the two of us, indulging in the obscene number of courses you’re afforded during a cruise meal and bonding over the strange particularities of being a professional homosexual. It was a perfectly nice experience, but when I got home and spent the day on my couch, sick from binge-drinking my way into someone else’s bed, I tried to figure out how to feel.

She’s only ever dated men, and never really identified as bisexual, even though, she admits, she probably is. Since 1999 we have attended prominent swinging events from the Pacific Southwest to the Atlantic Northeast.One of the half-dozen Skirt Club volunteers – a tall woman in her 20s wearing a black lingerie top, tight black pants and heels – greets us, champagne flute in hand. Another woman caught us goofing around in the pool and reported to Lynette that we were causing a bit of a scene. I’m a little ashamed of how, over the years, living beside various permutations of my partners’ easy masculinity, I’d defend my own femme rituals with I’m-not-like-other-girls insistence: Hey, at least I don’t shave!

The only thing Lynette said to me, in the brief window after introductions and before we went our separate ways, was that my accent made me sound like an American newscaster.

One of the guys running the boat, a youngish dude with dreads, took pity on me and brought me a glass of water. At our evening activities, Jamie was frequently flagging, via colored handkerchiefs placed in her back pocket.