I’ll tell you something. When I first got to stew school, I thought, wow, what a total mistake. Because I had always had this picture of stewardesses having this really wild life, really wicked, and here stew school was like entering a convent. I’m serious. No exaggeration, I felt like a Carmelite nun. There was an electrified fence around the place and no men except the decrepit gardener, and honest to God I thought we were going to have to swear an oath of poverty, chastity and obedience.
JWW: Not chastity, but—
LAUREN: Right, I was going to say that. Poverty and obedience are part of the game, all right. But not chastity.
Well, actually it was just as well that there was nothing much to do during training. They really teach you everything all at once, and drinking during the evenings would have been too much, not to talk about anything sexy. There were some girls who would sneak out and meet a boyfriend on the sly, and sneak back in again, and one of them got caught and thrown out of the class just when I had almost made up my mind to try it. So that taught me a lesson, and I stayed with the straight and proper life until I got my wings.
I learned an incredible amount. Part of what I learned was internal and personal. This was the first time I had been away from home, you know, and although I was smack in the middle of a regular beehive full of women, still in all I was away from home and away from people I knew, and in a sense I was alone. When you have a heavy dose of yourself for company you have to learn things about yourself . . . but that’s pretty heavy to talk about now. Beyond that, you learn so many things in stew training. How to make yourself attractive, how to have a bright personality, how to establish warm feelings with a passenger with just a smile and a friendly word—all of the shit they throw at you in the airlines commercials about how we make it so much of a groove to fly, but really it’s all true, because we are experts at this and we care about it, and that makes a difference.
To understand this, to really get the message, all you would really have to do is take a good long look at the entering members of a stewardess training class. Look them over and talk to them, and then come back when they finish their training and look at them again and talk to them again.
Everybody knows that stewardesses are attractive. I understand they were better-looking some years back, when there were fewer flights and the airlines could really afford to be choosy, but even now the average stew is a very attractive girl, let’s face it. But if you saw what we look like before we become stews, you might be in for a shock. Because if you peel the average stewardess down you come up with a girl who isn’t that much better looking than the average all-American girl.
But we know how to wear clothes and makeup, and our posture is perfect, and we handle our faces well, and smile a lot, and that makes all the difference. Here’s something similar—if you go to New York and walk down Fifth Avenue during lunch hour, you’ll see so many pretty girls, and if you did the same thing in Chillicothe there will be a much lower percentage of girls that you would look twice at. I was going to say Los Angeles along with New York, but that’s another matter because there really are more pretty girls there, what with so many going out to Hollywood. But the point isn’t that girls are prettier in New York, but that they are more sophisticated about dressing attractively and getting their hair styled in a fashionable way and using makeup creatively, while the girls in a small town in the Midwest don’t know how to do this, or don’t take the trouble. And it’s much the same way with stews.
So the point is that stew training was worth it, even if it was a lot like going to jail . . .
When I got my wings, I got into the center of things in a hurry. I had a deep yearning for something. I knew it was out there but I didn’t know just what it was.
JWW: Do you mean simply that you wanted sex?
LAUREN: No, it was more than that. I sort of sensed that there was a world of excitement that I didn’t really know anything about, and I was impatient to get connected with it. I guess you could say that I anticipated the swinging scene even though I had no real understanding of what it was or what went on there.
At the beginning, I was dating constantly and having a whole lot of sex, and yet, I don’t know, I was vaguely discontented, vaguely, oh, disappointed about the whole thing. I would be on a flight, and I would be having a ball just going through the stewardess role. I dig flying to begin with, and I dig meeting new people, and I was so excited about what I was doing, actually being a stew and doing all the things I had been trained to do. I was like a little kid. Anyway, I would be on a flight, and guys would flirt with me, which I enjoyed from the start, and I learned how to size them up and guess which ones would be fun, and I would take dates. Also I went out with pilots now and then, but I sort of sensed from the beginning that this wasn’t my major scene. I have always had the feeling that it would be a mistake to get involved with someone you have to go to work with the next day or the next week.
So for the most part I dated passengers. I knew the things all stews know—how to tell if a man is married or single by looking not only for the wedding ring but for the white mark that shows he took the ring off. There are a lot of different ways to interpret that white mark, incidentally. First of all, it’s an obvious tip-off that the guy is looking for action. He’s married and he’s trying to hide the fact, so if he appeals to you, there’s no question that you can get something started with him. On the other hand, the man who makes a play for you but leaves his wedding ring on, with him you have the advantage of knowing exactly where you stand. Everything is right out there in the open. He’s saying, Dig, I’m married, and I wouldn’t insult your intelligence or your character by trying to hide the fact, but we’re both grown-up people and we know what we like, so why be sneaky? A man with that attitude is likely to be enjoyable company. It’s funny, really—the guys who take off the wedding rings would probably do better if they left them on . . .
Of course you can read too much into this. I know a fellow, for example, who had that telltale white mark on his finger, and it turned out that he was married and very straight about it, he never played around as far as I know, but he had been on a diet and lost so much weight that his fingers actually got thinner, and the ring was too big and he had left it at a jeweler’s to have it made smaller. He wasn’t a swinger, he was just a weight-watcher.
JWW: I had something similar. I took my ring off when I was divorced, naturally, and girls would think I was being coy when they noticed the white mark. As a matter of fact, I got a little monomaniacal on the subject and took to holding my left hand in front of a sunlamp.
LAUREN: That’s too much . . . another thing, and this may seem snobbish, and actually I guess that’s exactly what it is, but one thing you learn before you even set foot on a plane is that you’re better off dating fellows who fly first-class than the fellows in the tourist section. It’s not that they’re more likely to be wealthy. I don’t even know that that’s the case. A lot of rich men just don’t like the idea of paying extra money for first-cabin service. But the ones who do are the ones who believe money is to spend, and that’s the kind of person I’d rather have dinner with, all things considered. On domestic flights, you know, it just doesn’t cost that much extra to fly first class. I know the corporations usually send their men tourist class, but even so if you have any style you just take the tickets the company gets for you and turn them in for first-class, and pay the difference yourself. And if a man won’t do that, well, he generally doesn’t care much about having a really good time, and if that’s so I’d rather not go out with him. Of course this is a generalization, and it’s probably unfair to a lot of swinging guys who travel tourist just as a matter of course without even thinking about it. But, you know, up in the sky you have to make generalizations and snap judgments, and this is one easy way to do it.
But to get back to the subject, I was dating these fellows and having plenty of great dinners and drinking at all the best night clubs and seeing the ceilings of a lot of hotel
rooms, and it was fun, believe me, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. I felt something was missing. Now when a lot of girls say this what they mean is that love was missing. The whole scene of fast meetings and going right off to bed and never seeing the guy again, this gets to a lot of girls after a while. You’d be surprised, because some of them are very enthusiastic about it at first, and they’ll give you a whole line about how they’re liberated young ladies and they can really cut loose and swing this way, and after a couple of months of instant sex they find out they’re not so free after all, and they want to be loved for their sweet and beautiful souls and not just for their tits and asses.
Look, I’m inclined to say the words, you know, but you can change it when you write it all up . . .
With me, it was the opposite. I didn’t want any love scene. That was the last thing I wanted. Maybe someday, and with the right guy, and with God knows how many other qualifications, but in the meantime, like, forget it. I have enough to think about inside of my own head without getting involved with somebody else.
What I wanted was something more thrilling. Well, kicks, really. Sexual kicks. Let’s not beat around the bush—I wanted really swinging times. Something more than just having ordinary sex with one man in the course of a night.
To put it simply, I wanted to get involved in the whole scene of swinging. The parties, the swap groups, the whole trip.
JWW: You knew about the scene?
LAUREN: I did and I didn’t. I had read about it. Some of the books were fairly straight, and then there are other swap books you see around, I’m sure you know the kind I mean, which are obviously phony. Just a device for descriptions of orgies designed to get the reader hot. But even so, I guess all of those books have a germ of truth in them somewhere. So I did have an idea of what was going on, but you know, it was something that happened in books. I might have fantasies about it but at the same time it wasn’t, oh, real for me.
JWW: You liked the idea, but you couldn’t believe those people really existed.
LAUREN: Right. They weren’t real.
Then this one flight, Boston to Denver with a stop at I think Kansas City, there was this very groovy passenger going straight through to Denver, and I got to talking to him. He was the advertising manager of a company in Denver and he had been in New York getting wined and dined by the advertising agency, and now he was on his way home. He was making a nice pitch to me, not too heavy but coming on fairly strong, and he was a very attractive man, tall and handsome and I guess late thirties, and, oh, sexy. My type.
But he was wearing a wedding ring, and although I had nothing against going out with married men, I also realized that, you know, he was going to Denver and Denver was his home base, so it was a cinch I wouldn’t be dating him that trip. Now under those circumstances a lot of guys will try for your phone number and make arrangements to call you when they get to your home base or something like that, but he wasn’t playing it that way. He was talking about my joining him for dinner that night.
So I thought, what the hell, and I looked at him and said, “You know, we could probably have a swinging time together, but do you think your wife would approve?”
“Oh, she’s liberal,” he said.
Now this is a common answer, generally meaning that the wife doesn’t care what the husband does out-of-town, and generally it’s a load of shit anyway. So I said something to the effect that she might want to see him on his first night back in town.
“She will,” he said. “But she likes company. You’ll join us for dinner, and maybe the neighbors will drop over, and we can always dig up an extra man to make it an even six.”
I thought at first he meant he could get an extra man as a date for me. Then he sort of spelled it out and, bright girl that I am, I got the message. Light dawned.
“We’re swingers,” he explained. “You seem like a pretty swinging kid yourself, and you really appeal to me, and I thought maybe you’d like to join us. Why don’t you think it over?”
I didn’t have to think it over. I told him I was game and that was all there was to it.
JWW: How did it go?
LAUREN: Like a dream. Literally like a dream. I checked into my room at the airport inn and then met him in the lounge for a drink. He had called his wife and everything was set. We drove out to his place, a very plush split-level on the hillside with a view that went on for miles. His wife was just a few years older than I was, a redhead with a fantastic body and a very wicked smile. And one of those low voices, she sounded like Lizbeth Scott in those Bogart movies. I’ve always wished I had a voice like that, and instead I’ve got this perky squeaky little voice that I hate.
We had dinner, and then we sat around talking, and we had a few rounds of drinks, and then his wife excused herself and while she was gone he made a pass at me. He took me in his arms and kissed me, and I was excited instantly, and he put his hand under my skirt and played with me and I came almost immediately. I’ve always been able to come quite easily but this was different. The whole scene was turning me on, see. The idea that his wife was in the other room and that she knew what was going on and that she grooved with the whole thing, this made it all very exciting to me.
JWW: You didn’t feel at all inhibited?
LAUREN: I can honestly say that I didn’t. At the very first it was a little awkward going into the house and meeting the wife, but swingers know how to put a person at their ease. Swingers are very much like stewardesses in that respect, as far as that goes. Incidentally, of the swinging wives that I have met, you might be surprised what a high percentage of them are former stews . . .
But after the first few moments with the two of them, no, there was no inhibition on my part. And certainly none on theirs. You know, they had made this scene before.
JWW: Yes, I would imagine.
LAUREN: So we got out of our clothes, you know, and he played with me some more, and went down on me, and then we screwed on the couch. It was really great. Part of it, of course, was what I already mentioned, the whole excitement of the involvement with his wife and all, but there was also the fact that he was particularly good at making love. This is one really wonderful thing about swingers, incidentally. Both the men and the women are very much better at sex than the ordinary run of people.
JWW: In terms of sexual technique?
LAUREN: Definitely. There is just no question about it. For one thing, they aren’t uptight about sex. They get plenty of it all the time and they don’t have to worry about their ability. Also they make it with a lot of different people and they experiment constantly, and this has to make a big difference. They learn different things and they have, you know, a very open attitude about sex. It’s a big point of honor with them, a source of pride, to be very well versed in sexual technique.
Another thing, and that is that swingers are just more attractive than the average person. Physically attractive. Not because they were born beautiful but because they take the trouble. They exercise and keep fit. Most married women, even the ones who want to go on looking young and beautiful, well, they wear girdles all the time and let their stomach muscles go flat and flabby. Because they only care how they look with clothes on. But swingers are concerned about looking good in the nude. Some of them don’t dress well at all, but you can be sure they undress well, and that’s how they keep score. The men, too, keep attractive. And they keep their nails clean and their breath fresh and bathe frequently—they do all the things that keep them from being in any way offensive. Little things can turn people off, and swingers are very careful not to do anything that will turn anybody off.
JWW: Was that the extent of your first swinging session?
LAUREN: Are you kidding? That was barely the beginning. After we had made it, we were sharing a cigarette, and his wife walked in. She had all her clothes off and it was then that I realized what a really stunning figure she had. She pulled up a chair and sat down next to us, and the three of us were talking casually, and then with
out a word she began performing fellatio on her husband. This was really startling to me. Not the act, Christ, I had learned to do this years ago, even before I lost my virginity. But the whole situation, the scene. Here I was still lying in his arms, and there was his wife kneeling over him and sucking him off. It was tremendously exciting to watch. It was really fantastic. At first I watched, and then I had to get into the act, and I started kissing him on the chest and throat and like that, and he fingered me a little and sucked my breasts, and you know, figure it out for yourself, but it was all great.
The couple from down the street came over later on, and we all got tangled up together. They were also very groovy people, very attractive. I never did get back to the hotel room until the next morning. I must have dozed off from time to time but I didn’t get any actual sleep to speak of, not really. The five of us were busy all night. In the morning the guy drove me back to the airport and gave me a couple of Benzedrine pills to get me through the day, because I had a flight coming up and I wanted to be half-way human for it. No problem at all, as it turned out. The bennies did the job and I was bright and bushy-tailed, in addition to being very goddamn well laid.
Oh, believe it! You know all about the swinging scene so I don’t really have to tell you about it, but you can imagine the tangles that can get going when you have three girls and two guys. And I was just so receptive to all of this. I had been reading and fantasizing about it for so long, getting all of these wild ideas in my head, and now it was all there for me and all I had to do was participate, and God, did I ever participate. I had this tremendous desire to have two men at once. I think every girl must think about this. Don’t you think so?
JWW: Perhaps.
LAUREN: I would think so myself. At this time, for instance, I had learned to enjoy eating a man, and of course I had always enjoyed intercourse. So how could you help wanting to see what it was like to experience both of these things at the same time? Of course I wanted to, and I tried it that night, and, well, it was great. In fact I liked all of the things I did that night.
Sex and the Stewardess (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior) Page 7