The Night the Swingers Came Knocking

Eve Marx

Word Count 838

I gave up smoking when the whole world condemned it. I thought that was a pity because the calming effect of a cigarette was good for averting panic. In hindsight I think having a cig to light up might have derailed my first bonafide panic attack as a newlywed. I married another writer, a city guy, but due to circumstances too tawdry to relate, we’d run away from the cruel world to work on our writing in an isolated, snowbound, sparsely populated environment firmly set in the middle of nowhere. The first attack came on while I was driving on an unfamiliar highway and it was getting on to dusk. I was forced to take a detour that rattled me into taking a wrong turn that left me hyperventilating and stranded on a grassy median. I won’t bore you with the details but the state trooper was very kind, patiently directed me to get out of the car and sit on the ground with my head between my knees. He stood by to direct traffic until I was ready to drive again.

One dark night when my husband was out of town, I was unhappy to see a pair of unfamiliar headlights zig zagging up our long and treacherous driveway. A pickup with a plow attached pulled up and the driver, owner of the service station in town and also its appointed judge, stepped out. He wobbled up onto the porch and rapped his knuckles on the door, hard.  

It’s me, Harry, he said. Let me in. 

I opened the door and said, Rick’s not here. Months earlier, Harry (not his real name) persuaded my husband to join the local chapter of a fraternal order which met weekly at their lodge. Harry schooled him in the secret handshake and my husband took the necessary oaths to become a member. I joked he underwent the process just so we could get the car serviced. He only attended a few meetings, describing them as fifteen minutes of discussing new business before the screening of an old porno film released a decade earlier. He described the brethren as affable guys with whom he had little in common. They were dairy farmers, plumbers, electricians and carpenters and he was a screenwriter. So it wasn’t like I didn’t know Harry. I let him in. 

He went straight for the refrigerator and helped himself to a beer. He opened it and settled himself at the kitchen table. I had no choice but to sit down, too.    

From my experience at the garage, I knew Harry liked to talk. He enjoyed gab and gossip and let on he knew everything about everyone in town. I figured he’d run out of people to talk about in twenty minutes and go home to sleep it off. His red face and unsteady gait told me he was intoxicated. 

Much to my surprise, he immediately launched into a conversation about swinging. Swinging! He talked about the local wife swappers and invited me to join in. He let on he’d already discussed this with my husband, which was news to me. I thought about the unwashed, unshaven, inarticulate men I’d met so far and tried not to vomit. 

Shouldn’t you be getting on home, I said. Isn’t your wife waiting?

Haw, haw, she’s with the electrician tonight, he said. Didn’t I just say we’re swingers?  C’mon. Don’t you want a crack at this? He smiled and puffed out his chest and smoothed his thinning hair with blackened, grease stained hands. I could show you a good time. Get a taste of a real man, he said. Suddenly, I was afraid. 

I’m a happily married newlywed, I responded, bluffing at staying cool. 

I pointed at the pack of cigarettes Harry tossed on the table. He removed one and retrieved a Bic lighter from his jacket pocket. I placed the cigarette between my lips and leaned close and he fired me up. I took a decent drag off it before exhaling a plume of smoke straight into his face. 

I think you should go. 

Harry heaved himself up from the table. He hadn’t finished his beer. He walked to the door and opened it, letting in a blast of frigid air. 

I’m leaving because I want to, not because you say so, he said. 

I said nothing as he made his way off the porch and got into his truck, backing into a snow drift, his rear wheels making a dreadful grinding sound. At last he got himself adequately turned around and drove off. My gaze never wavered from his taillights until they entirely disappeared.

The cigarette burned down near the filter where I’d left it in the ashtray. The cabin smelled of it and woodsmoke. I left the front door open a few more minutes to air the place out, locked the door and turned off the outdoor lights. I realized I wasn’t shaking. There was one more hit to take. That cigarette saved me from panic and possibly much worse.

Eve is a journalist and author currently scraping out a tiny living crafting police reports for newspapers in New York and Oregon. She is the author of What’s Your Sexual IQ?, The Goddess Orgasm, 101 Things You Didn’t Know About Sex and other titles bearing some relation to her stint editing Penthouse Forum and other ribald publications. She makes her home in a rural seaside community near Portland, OR with her husband, R.J. Marx, a jazz saxophonist, and Lucy, their dog child.