Swingles Live Together and Love It

by Bonnie

One is a girl whose goal is a “very sexy pad.”

“I want everything to be very tactile. You know, lots of big, plushy velvet pillows, fur rugs, mirrors in the bedroom. Maybe a waterbed. I’ve never tried oe but they’re supposed to be super for making love…”

Her roomate has other ideas. “I’m more the antiquey type, I guess. I wouldn’t trade one piece of real Tiffany glass for ten waterbeds.”

Young adults of 1972, living in hot-tub infested singles’ apartment complexes needed a guide and Gwen Gibson Schwartz was there for them.

Gail, a gray-eyed brunette, is down on the living-room floor with a do-it-yourself astrology book, charting a horoscope for a boy she met the night before… Linda, deeply tanned, her wheat-colored hair in pigtails, is eating a cottage-cheese lunch at the low, eight-foot-long table, made of two-by-six boards, which sits in front of their wood-burning fireplace…

“Lin, my brother’s coming over. He wants to stay here tonight.”

“No problem. He can join the party.”

“Li-in. Are you out of your mind? He’s fifteen years old. I don’t want anybody screwing in front of him… they’ll be four couple tonight.”

“So, we’ll get out the sleeping bag and put it in the backyard. Your brother can sleep out there.”

Not so hard, was it? Day to day conflicts will arise, but can be easily worked out among like-minded, stoned individuals. Can’t you just feel the heady freedom of it all? Everyone was young and outdoorsy and fun, looking to share apartments and find the hottest singles’ bars.

The kids on the ski train were friendly. We were all changing seats and getting to know each other. So I thought, why not ask around? I went all up and down the aisles, asking if anyone knew of a good apartment. One girl said she did, in an incredible old Victorian up on the hill.

As soon as I got back from skiing, Annette and I went to see the apartment. It was fabulous. Flooded with sun. A beautiful view, and the rent was right.

It was all so right. What could possibly go wrong during such a party decade? Well, it was also the decade in which people learned to talk about their feelings. People named Bonnie.

Bonnie is 24, a big girl with the kind of athletic body of a championship swimmer. Mary Jean, 25 is secretary to an insurance company executive…

The two are very serious on this particular Monday evening. They are sitting with coffee and cigarettes at a small Formica-topped dining table in one corner of the kitchen of their two-bedroom apartment.

Bonnie: “Well , you know, you didn’t say a word about the weekend all morning, so I was thinking you just didn’t care, you just weren’t interested to want to know what happened or whether I had a good time. So I felt hurt and shut up too.”

Mary Jean: “Well you didn’t say anything either so I was thinking you didn’t care what happened to me. I mean why didn’t you say something?”

“I don’t know. I guess I thought because I was away, and you stayed home alone all day Sunday, that maybe you were a little depressed, and if I started telling you what a great time I had, it would make you feel worse. I was waiting to talk to you about it…”

Ladies! You are living in the golden age of Californian hot-tub encounters. Are you certain you’d rather sit smoking around a Formica table? Jeez, get back out there.