The Swingers's BBQ (22 of several): That nipple thing.

When I ran into the rough blonde woman outside a bit later on the porch, she asked me to squeeze her tits, and I did.

The woman next to me squeezed her tits too and then flicked the little silver bell hanging off her left nipple with the tip of her index finger, and the little silver bell got knocked off, and the rough blonde woman dropped to her knees to start looking for it, and was like, "Oh no, I lost my pretty bell!"

Her guy was standing next to her, and he was like, "You'll find it."

With his tone of voice, though, it wasn't so much a comforting statement, but rather the statement of the fact that she would go on her hands and knees under the porch if necessary to find it, because he was telling her to do so.

The Swingers's BBQ (21 of several): More from the rough blonde woman.

So, at some point prior to this, I had gone into the bottom floor of the house, and the rough blonde woman is there without her top on (just the bra part, the part around her stomach was still there), and her dude has this roll of black electrical tape, and he's holding a strip of it in his mouth and cutting off chunks with these really mean-looking pliers, that look mean but probably are actually less harmful than scissors of equivalent size, and then he's putting the strips of tape in circles around the rough blonde woman's nipple - a small piece vertically to the side of one nipple, and another small piece vertically to the other side of the nipple, and then a small piece below the nipple, and another one above, and then maybe a couple on each side, so that it's like this sunburst of black tape, with her nipple sticking out over a quarter inch.

"[The swinger lady's first name] says no nudity outside, but she says this is okay!", the blonde woman said, brightly.

Then, since he was just finishing up, her guy took these two small silver bells and hung them on her, one on each nipple.

The Swingers's BBQ (20 of several): More from the hairy young blonde guy.

The hairy young blonde guy then told me that he grew up in a really fundamentalist family and that they moved to Dallas when he was young, and that when they moved to Dallas his family got very obsessed with pre-millennial theology, and that reading Ernest Sandeen's "Roots of Fundamentalism" let him realize that that wasn't something that was around forever, but that that theology had a history and a past and was actually very localized.

I then tried to imitate the pedagogical technique of one of my professors and give someone else another book to read to involve them in the scholarly conversation, and suggested that he look at George Marsden's "Fundamentalism and American Culture", since it took Sandeen's thesis and said how fundamentalism involved a lot of pre-millennial theology, but ultimately went beyond that and responded to a whole bunch of cultural changes that happened during the 2nd half of the 19th century, including the rise of Darwinian evolution, but he didn't seem too interested.

So after a pause, I was like, "So are you like a swinger?".

He seemed very uncomfortable after being so confessional, but he took up my question anyways and said that he wasn't, but he was interested, and his friend who he came with was very liberated, and it seemed like he both wanted her and wanted to be like her, only he couldn't.

He then asked me if I was, after another pause, and I was like, "No."

Then, I was like, "But I kind of want to see people fuck."

"Me too," he was like.

After that, there was another uncomfortable pause, and he just kind of got up and left and went off from the porch where we were to where people were sitting, even though his lady friend was still chatting up my friend, and his half-Asian friend had started talking with some decently pretty white girl who had appeared from somewhere.

The Swingers's BBQ (19 of several): The young people who chatted up my friend.

My one friend kept getting chatted up by this not-unpretty curvy white girl with dark hair and a little jiggle in her middle and a double chin, though she packed it all into her shirt pretty nicely and was kept getting circled by one of the two guys she came with, this tall blonde guy who was really cut and had really hairy arms with the hair going all the way around his forearms and up at the same length under his t-shirt sleeves, which were short and relatively high up on his upper arms.

The other guy she came with, who wasn't circling around her, was half Asian and half Caucasian, and was good-looking enough but something was fucked up with his head and his one half of his face wasn't symmetrical with the other (maybe his mammy drank too much sake when he was in the womb?, who knows).

Anyhow, the girl kept telling my friend she was bi and they kept wanting to take the conversation further, so I went to go grab a new beer from the cooler by the blonde dude, and I was like, "How you doing?"

It turned out that he and his friends knew each other from work at the hospital system associated with my university, and then when he asked what I did and I said I studied religion, he was like, "One of the most important books I've ever read in my life was Ernest Sandeen's 'Roots of Fundamentalism'."

The Swingers's BBQ (18 of several): The young people.

There were a notable number of young people at the barbecue...

All the guys for the most part were in their early 30s and were neatly shaved and cleancut or had neatly trimmed and hip goatees and collared shirts and jeans and shiny shoes, and they all had too much cologne, and their girlfriends all tended to have bleached blonde hair and too-short black cocktail dresses on. They were like the straightest people ever, and were dressed like they would just make it past the guard into a club, since they all were shiny but seemed a bit shabby around the edges, or a little bit rough.

(Everyone there seemed a bit rough, for the most part.)

One girl eyed me a few times, but my one friend who I came with said that she got eyed a lot, and always by the girlfriends, never by the guys. The one girl who eyed me would walk by being led by her boyfriend, and she would turn back and smile at me, and this happened like twice.

The Swingers's BBQ (17 of several): Chit-chat with the UU sex educator.

So, the UU sex educator who comes a lot to the movie series was at the bbq with this really nice musician/carpenter guy who I guess has been her boyfriend for years now... They have a blended family, and met through a breastfeeding support group when they were both married to other people.

(I was actually surprised they were together, for a while I thought she was with the older ethnically Italian guy who used to be a thug but is now a sexologist, they have a very good and intimate conversational style...

For example, a couple social hours ago, the ethnically Italian guy was reminiscing like old people often do, only about this one German bar where the owner used to get hammered along with the patrons and fall asleep on the counter, and how it was a surprise that no one ever used to rip off the cash register.

"And was this last year or 30 years, ago, [his name]?", the UU sex educator asked, and it turned out that it was in the early 80s.

I think the Italian guy is right, that his sexology has allowed him to have intimacy with a greater number of women in ways unconnected to sex, as he told me one time - I could have sworn they knew each other more than they did.)

Anyhow, she was talking about how living in the city like 15 years ago, the big baseball team here didn't pre-sell the bleacher seats, but rather sold them on game day for $5, and so you would wait in line for hours with friends drinking and it was this whole culture of "bleacher bums", and then you would sit there even before batting practice started, and by the time the 4pm game rolled around you were already toasted.

The Swingers's BBQ (16 of several): The salons.

"So," I was like, "Where are these salons anyways?"

"Well, I'm not supposed to tell," she was like, "But I will," and she told me the intersection, and it turns out that it's right near this major intersection on the way to the Puerto Rican neighborhood where my one Dutch friend used to live.

"You should go," she said. "They have BDSM and swingers mixers for the younger set and they're great."

"And," she was like, "You would have no problem actually going in."

"What do you mean by that?", I was like.

"Well, it's a set of rickety stairs that smell like urine. But you're young and brave, that shouldn't be a problem for you."

Then she paused again. "And plus, I'm probably thinking more of how tough it is to leave the place sometimes, especially when you're in really tall high heels."