The Book of Vice
The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (And How To Do Them), by Peter Sagal, takes a look at seven vices: 1) Swinging or Dinner Parties Gone Horribly Wrong; 2) Eating or Sodom’s Restaurant; 3) Strip Clubs or Sure, They Like You. Really.; 4) Lying or This Chapter Will Change Your Life and Make You Millions!; 5) Gambling or Dice, Cards, Wheels, and Other Lethal Weapons; 6) Consumption or How to Keep Up with the Joneses When the Joneses Are Insane; and 7) Pornography or You Can Look, but You Can’t Admit It.
In the following excerpt from Swinging, the author and his wife visit a swinger’s group:
There are already about ten couples in the main room, some of them huddled by themselves, looking around bashfully, some of them already talking with old friends. As soon as we arrive, Ross, apologizing, turning the TV from a basketball game back to the porn channel, and everybody proceeds to ignore it. The couples here seem to be mostly over forty, some of them past fifty, with a few younger people already radiating a King of the Prom glow. They’re dressed neatly and casually, though some of the men are wearing blazers and ties. Nobody is naked. Nobody is spraying whipped cream on one another. It’s not so much an orgy, at this point, as a Casual Friday postwork gathering of a small accounting firm. With porn on the TV.
………..(cut)…………
We realized that the population of the main room was strangely depleting. We had noticed no assignations being assigned, no public propositions, certainly no gropings. The cans of whipped cream by the chocolate fountain remained undisturbed. People were just… gone. We wandered out into the darkened entrance foyer. There, in the Orgy Room, two couples were slowly copulating on the mattresses. We quickly backed out of the doorway, feeling, despite the circumstances, that we were prying. In the Semipublic Room, a single bare foot protruded from the curtain hiding one of the two beds. We heard groans and various other noises. I stared at it awhile, trying to figure out both the sex and the posture of the whole person by judging the part. But the foot did not move.
Back in the main room: some of the women, having partially disrobed, were putting on some pretty impressive displays with the chrome pole sticking out of the dance floor.
Sagal’s narration is witty and sometimes a bit “above it all” but I enjoyed his comments as he either participated in or watched these vices being experienced by others. This isn’t a book of depth; it’s just a fun read.