Partner Swapping: A Study in Campus!
Knock knock; I banged on the door for the second time yet, no response. I decided to push open the door this time as it wasn’t locked from the inside. The room was dark, but I could hear noises – a few moments later, I realized that our college guard was inside, and he was busy banging this lady – oh no, wait a minute; she is my classmate, Rupa. But what is she doing with the guard who is double her age? And besides, she has a boyfriend. Well, I guess it’s boredom, or perhaps like many other girls, she might have been seeking favour from him in exchange for this.
Random sex or hooking up is a common culture on our campus. Wait, isn’t it prevalent in almost every residential college/university these days? After all, sex is not about love and romance anymore; it is more of an escape from monotonous monogamous relationships, a stress buster, or simply an adventure. Speaking of random sex – another pertinent feature of campus life is ‘partner swapping.’ Shocked? Well, don’t be. In our University – I can’t disclose the name – group sex and partner swapping are pretty common.
Partner swapping may sound shocking to many, but it is discreetly practiced in almost all societies. However, human beings tend to keep it under wraps for some reason. In fact, even in our history, you find kings who had indulged in polygamous relationships. It is not astonishing to note that some kings even had sex with different women/wives every night. Although this is not partner swapping, it is something closer like ‘changing partners’.
Let us go back in time to the 19th and 20th centuries where orgies, group sex, experimental sex – are all in vogue, so is partner swapping, but it happens within a community and is a well-guarded secret. But how do one swap or change partners? Do you remember this popular ‘keys game’? In this game, all the car keys of participants are collected in a bowl. Blind-folded women are asked to pick a key from the bowl. She has to spend a night with the owner of the key. Her relationship status really doesn’t matter here. The idea is to experience something new. Now, although this isn’t something that happens on our campus – it intrigued me, and just out of curiosity, I gathered some more information.
Let me share an experience with you today. One day, I was with a very close friend; we were partying and drinking like a fish. She introduced me to some of her friends – who returned from a terrible protest in Jantar Mantar. ‘Sex – is just an exchange of fluid,’ explained one of my friend’s friend (it is very common to bump into friends’ friends on our campus) to me – as we ended up discussing sexuality, after an hour of ranting about politics, life, and Sartre. ‘Even Nietzsche emphasized that there is no such thing as right or wrong,’ he added, trying to make his point. ‘One of the ways of expressing yourself is through sexuality.’
Somehow, his argument was convincing enough for me. After all, what is wrong with indulging in safe sex with consent? ‘Sex could be one of the most exciting ways of knowing a person. If that’s where you begin with a total stranger,’ he continued.
Apparently, sex to these folks is as easy as drinking water from a bottle – open to and necessary for everyone around that bottle of water, after all, ‘sharing is a beautiful thing.’
As we were in the middle of this conversation, he suddenly stood up, trying to balance his body. He was certainly intoxicated but not intoxicated enough to not know what he was doing. He grabbed my friend – and started kissing her. My friend, to my surprise, started kissing him back – and soon, the casual kiss grew into a steamy make-out session, both of them started making noises. My friend moaned and tried to reach his pants to unzip them in excitement. At first, I was totally embarrassed. Then I felt like stopping her – as her boyfriend was around. I looked around and gosh – there he was. He was busy making out with another woman. I felt nervous and had no clue what to do. A friend of hers came around and whispered – ‘It’s okay. They know,’ she said.
‘What do you mean, they know?’ I asked.
‘They have been swapping since some days; it’s cool.’
That was the first time I heard about partner swapping. Now, I had heard a lot about partner swapping – but here I am witnessing it in front of my eyes. In an ideal swapping scenario, two or three couples indulge in group sex where only the sky is the limit. Both women and men indulge in random sex with people they know. Sometimes it can be strangers too. There have been many cases where women shared that partner-swapping has been liberating for them and has broken their inhibitions.
The ‘ bottle trick ‘ is the other popular method often practiced to swap partners at parties. Now I know that sounds filmy. But, yes, it happens for real and not just something you see in movies or trashy B films. Both men and women sit around a bottle. One of the participants then twirls the bottle, and it starts rotating. When the bottle stops rotating, it points to a woman, who should have sex with the man who twirled the bottle.
I even found out that it is a ritual to swap partners after a hectic day. The idea is not to ‘cheat, or just be promiscuous,’ but to be able to ‘express’ oneself and to experience freedom. As my friend later added, ‘It’s no big deal. If we know we love who we love – there should be some freedom for them.’
Another friend was like, ‘I would prefer it when I am drunk or high – because other times, my guilt and consciousness don’t allow me to do such things.
Well, the fact is that in many universities across India, partner swapping is well prevalent and widely practiced. They think it spices up their sex life. It is like an open secret where everyone knows about it, but no one is ready to come out about it. Sex is a conundrum that astonishes me. It is something that defines our love and passion – it certainly is mysterious because it exposes our darkest desires as human beings.
