By
MIKE STROBELWed, February 6, 2008
Swinging's their thing ...
We should all pile in the family wagon and see what the heck is going on down in Viagra, I mean Niagara, Falls.
The Cheese Capital of Canada never fails to amaze.
Where else in the world can you imagine a daredevil in a barrel surviving the plunge only to drown in a heart-shaped bathtub?
Where else are wax figures and whack-a-moles the biggest ethnic groups?
Where else could an army of swingers, and I don't mean Tarzan, take over a major hotel and convention centre?
Charles Blondin, meet Sexyboots.
Both acrobats, but in different ways.
Blondin walked a tightrope across the Falls.
Sexyboots, well, she just walks a tightrope.
"There's a fine line between love and lust," she tells me down the line from her home in Barrie.
"I can love my husband, but lust after someone else."
And vice versa.
Sexyboots is not her real name.
"We're where gays were 50 years ago, when if you admitted it, your career and family and social life were ruined." So, Sexyboots it is. Let me guess.
"It'd be obvious if you saw me in a club," she says. "I have a large collection of 'hooker boots.' "
I hope the carpets at a certain Niagara Falls hotel are up to the challenge.
Two hundred couples will convene for a Valentine's Day weekend called Take A Bite Of The Apple (TABOTA).
This is not for the faint of heart.
The exact location is hush-hush.
(I'm sworn. But it's not Motel Sex ... um, Six.)
And single men are NOT welcome.
"It may seem like a double standard," says Sexyboots, 37, "but we find single men far too pushy. A lot of couples don't like that. They feel pressured.
"There's also the 'creep' factor. They're single for a reason."
By the by, don't call it "wife-swapping" or risk a face-slapping.
"Swinging" is still okay, but "The Lifestyle" and "lifestyler" are preferred. Rita DeMontis will be tickled, I'm sure.
The bumph from TABOTA organizers says this is the first hotel "takeover" by swingers in Canada.
A Super Bowl of group sex, with teams from the many clubs that dot Ontario, even bedroom communities like Barrie.
"A whole hotel works better," says Sexyboots. "Otherwise you might have a floor of swingers next to a floor of peewee hockey players.
"What I do in my bedroom is my business, but I have no right to expose my lifestyle to others.
"We won't be making out in the halls."
Mind you, the promo does promise "a hedonistic and sexually charged atmosphere."
Seminars include erotic photography and tantric sex.
The pool parties, speed-dating and theme dances sound like fun.
So do the group sex and bondage rooms. Gives "smoking floor" a whole new meaning.
Sexyboots will be there with her hubby, a computer guy who goes by Mr. Boots.
They were college sweethearts and have two kids.
She works for Queen's Park.
Five years ago, after he'd been hinting for months, she said, "Let's do it," and they went to a swingers' Halloween party dressed in army fatigues.
Isn't this adultery, Sexyboots?
"My definition of cheating is doing it behind your spouse's back.
"But I'm not. He's right there with me."
"Playing," swingers call it. As in: Listen, I'll play with Buffy over there, you play with Lars and Sven, and later we'll play Simon Says with Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, play a little Flying Burrito Brothers on the hi-fi and if we have any energy left, maybe play some Scrabble.
As the promo says: "What do committed couples do to relieve the seven-year itch? Scratch it together!!"
"Wha...?!" says Niagara Falls Mayor Ted Salci, just back from a chili cook-off.
Your honour, that's a real swingin' town you got down there.
"This is the first I've heard of it." He laughs.
"They're local people!?"
From all over. The hotel's not exactly broadcasting it.
"If they're law-abiding, I suppose it's fine."
Even in a God-fearing place like the Falls?
"Well, I won't be cutting any ribbons for them."
Too bad. There goes the swing vote.
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