You’ve gone ahead and joined the ranks of... people with sex swings. It’s safe to say you’re not playing at the amateur level anymore. Congratulate yourself on your excitement, your perviness, and most importantly, your willingness to hang yourself (or others) from the ceiling. Most people don’t give it much of a thought when purchasing the swing, but in order to make sure no one crashes to the ground and hurts themselves, you’re going to want to put a big ole eye hook in a beam in your ceiling.

By doing this you are making a bold statement, and one that most people, even in the vanilla world, can figure out. Something big gets hooked there. Looking around your bedroom will likely yield nothing in the way of punching bags or other miscellany that might be hung from it.

But what’re they doing in your bedroom anyway? Narrowing their eyes, clucking their tongues, and knowing exactly what you get up to in the wee small hours, that you get incredible kicks from things they’ll never know. This is not their business. They have no right to form negative opinions based on this newly discovered information. We all make sometimes significant concessions to friends and family in what should be our private space. Or at the very least only open to those who wouldn’t mind (or those who would immediately call “dibs on next!”)

Humbly, I suggest you tell them to fuck off.

I’ll assume, however, that since you are reading this essay, you’d like to know how to hide a sex swing. Throw it in the closet. Hidden.

[Cooper brushes his hands and walks off. Yes, now he’s putting stage directions in his essays.]

Oh, the swing isn’t really the problem, you say. It’s that eye hook that you ran over to Home Depot to pick up. The massive one. The one that’s going to gleam its stainless steel gleam from your ceiling, daring your guests to wonder what its nefarious purpose might be. And it’s not like it’s the seventies or eighties and you could just throw a macramé planter on that bitch.

So, what’re we going to do?

Step 1: Buy a Sex Swing.

I’m going to just go ahead and assume you have this step covered. If not, why don’t you go ahead and take care of that? I’ll wait.

Step 2: Determine Where to Hang It.

This is important because you want to have freedom of movement as well as floor space for partner two to stand to, um, put it in, fit it up, do one or two odd jobs. (Name the movie/play and win our prize: Cooper’s voice on your home answering machine.) The other part of determining where to hang this swing is figuring out the support structure. So, find a stud, then ask him to use a stud finder to find the stud in the ceiling. Drill your hole, screw that eye hook in and hang that swing up. Why? Because then you can do step 3.

Step 3: Fuck in the Sex Swing.

Oh c’mon, you’ve been waiting long enough, don’t you think? Parents aren’t coming over now to inspect your bedroom ceiling after all. Hang the swing, throw your partner in it, and go to town! This is also a good opportunity to check your aforementioned freedom of movement. Because you want to make sure that this thing is in the right place for real. If not, sadly unscrew that bolt and add spackle to your next Home Depot shopping list. Then repeat Step 2.

Well, then, you’re done! Congrats, you have a sex swing that you’ve fucked in. That’s gotta be a sexual bucket list thing to check off, right?

Wait, what? Oh. You’re not ready to tell your parents to fuck off? Or the niece that likes to lay on top of all the coats late at night on Thanksgiving? Gotcha, well, we can’t all be as belligerent as I am. You’re probably better at that whole “winning friends and influencing people” thing. Don’t worry, we’ll move onto phase two of this project:

How to Hide a Sex Swing Eye Hook

Step 4: Buy a Smoke Detector.

This one is easy. Remember that this thing won’t actually be detecting smoke, so don’t read the box to find out its features. The only burning it’ll be detecting is the one in your loins in that soft-core-porny way. With that in mind, just head over to your local dollar emporium and pick yourself up the finest piece of shit smoke detector you’ve ever seen. Just make sure it’s as deep as your eye hook’s eye.

Step 5: Break that Smoke Detector.

Open that bad boy up and take out its guts. You don’t want to have to change the stupid battery on this thing after all, or spend an eternity trying to ignore its incessant chirp. Pull out as much of the electronics inside as you possibly can. Drill a hole in the center with that same drill bit that you used to start the hole in your ceiling.

Step 6: Attach Smoke Detector to the Ceiling.

Line up the holes (something you should be relatively good at, being non-monogamous [didja see what I did there?]) and screw that thing up. Something else you should be — oh, never mind. Odds are that eye hook in the center is going to be more than enough to hold the smoke alarm in place, but if not, go ahead and use the screws that came with it.

Step 7: Fuck in the Sex Swing.

Do this again to celebrate. Also to make sure the shell of the former smoke alarm doesn’t crash down upon you.

Step 8: Hide that Sex Swing!

Throw the sex swing in the closet (or possibly the laundry first, depending on how filthy you are, and how washable your swing is), and put the top of the smoke alarm onto the base, hiding the eye hook and creating a perfect camouflage. No one will be any the wiser. You know, except that firefighter guest who notices there’s no red light to indicate that it is working. But then you could always show him its true purpose. And seduce him.

Just a suggestion.


This article is an excerpt from my book, My Life on the Swingset: Adventures in Swinging & Polyamory.