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A young Israeli couple, both clothed, are sitting in voyeurs' row, just outside the orgy room. "It's a very immoral place," says the woman, giggling. Trouble is, the voyeurs' view through the narrow entrance is blocked by the "matman," a craggy fellow who stands with arms folded like Mr. Clean. Is his job to police the orgy? Matman looks incredulous. "We never have any trouble here. These are good people. I am more of a shepherd looking after my flock." The shepherd's main role is to see that customers join and leave .the orgy in pairs. Once inside, partners do not have to stay together, but if a man leaves to go to the bathroom, he has two minutes to return, or his girlfriend will be ejected. A pudgy woman is protesting her expulsion from paradise. Matman latches on to her arm and gently guides her out. Even orgies have rules.
Matman makes a revelation: he and his wife—a hatcheck girl upstairs—are volunteers who work regularly at the club without pay. Does he at least get some free sex out of his labors? "Oh no, I never do it here," he says, staring at an enormous male derriere rising out of a sea of jiggling flesh in the mat room. "I don't want to be second, third or fourth. I do it at home where I know it's clean."
Customers try hard to brush aside fears about one possible consequence of uninhibited swinging: venereal disease. Says one: "We don't get it because swingers are just cleaner than other people." But one female newcomer, still a wallflower after two hours, admits nervously: "I'm terrified of coming down with something. How do I know who these people are and where they've been?"
Most of the patrons appear to be between 20 and 45 years old, and the staff estimates that 65% are married suburbanites, who are presumably interested in sex that does not threaten family stability. "It works," says Levenson. "You wait around until 6 a.m. when we close, and you'll see these people walking to their cars kissing and holding hands. Swinging brings them closer together, and who gets hurt by it?"
Still, there are losers even at orgies. An enormously fat woman has been sitting around in her underwear for hours, wanly looking for a man. "Swans fly with swans, ducks fly with ducks," a thin-faced young man says, glancing at her as we step around a writhing couple at the edge of the pool. Thin Face, who says he is a member of swing clubs in Chicago, San Francisco and Montreal, thinks Plato's should be more selective about people it lets in. "I mean head-wise, not body-wise," he says quickly. "Look at all those sightseers. It's not like the old days. Now it's too much of a freak show." Across the pool, the stout lady grasps the hand of a tiny Oriental man and pulls him resolutely into the mat room.