Mr. Fuse

We've played a couple of times with a black couple that we like a lot. She was the first non-white woman I'd ever been with, but I can truthfully say that the color of their skin made no difference whatsoever, at least to me. The fact that they are black was neither a positive nor negative when it came to what we liked about them when we met them. They did tell us that they'd been to a party where they were the only black couple there and felt uncomfortable because they were treated as a novelty. He said men were approaching him all night asking him to sleep with their wives while they watched. Some of the couples in our area goes as far as explicitly writing in their profiles that they're not interested in blacks or interracial couples. If that's how they feel, why don't they just turn those couples down, or do what most people do and just ignore their emails? We try not to associate with those couples.

Dito to what the love of my life said. I was thinking of your advice, Thrax, during a platonic meeting we had the other night. I felt that she and I hit it off best when we were discussing topics of mutual interest and I was really engrossed in the conversation, and would forget that I was supposed to be afraid to make eye contact and keep my personality bottle up. Unfortunately, that was about the only chemistry going on at the table. I haven't had a chance to try the strategically-timed touching of the hand or arm, but it's been done to me a couple of times recently and danged if ain't like a little zap of electricity right through the whole body! Strangely enough, I've discovered that a good topic of shared interest is . . . swinging! I've been surprised how comfortable I am talking to the other woman, and the man, about swing-related topics, such as how long they've been contemplating trying the lifestyle (if they're newbies), what kind of good advice they can share (if they're not), etc. We Fuses always make sure we put in a plug for this board. I think in the distant past when I was single and dating, a lot of the lack of comfort during dating came from all the uncertainty: is she interested, is she not, am I acting too interested, etc. Now, I know she's at least a little interested because she saw a picture of my butt and she still showed up! Also, you don't have to worry about when to switch to the nudge, nudge, wink, wink stuff; you're already there!

Thanks again everyone for you suggestions. We have three first meetings in the next week, so I should have plenty of opportunity to work on my flirting. Sorry, intuition897, I don't think I can pull off the James Bond or cowboy images, but if The Fuse says she wants to do a little role playing I can always work on it in private. She says she's willing to help me out with in4alook's idea of practicing at the mall so maybe we'll try some of that out.

Thanks everyone for your excellent suggestions. The Fuse and I don't have any qualms about expressing our affection for each other in public, so we have that going for us. I'm not very touchy-feely with other people (in platonic settings ) so I tend to make up for it by holding hands, hugging, etc. with her. She doesn't complain too much. We've always sat on our respective sides of the table when we meet a new couple. Do other people mix it up? We've been working on under-the-table signals so that's one advantage of sitting together . Mrs. Fuse suggested I make more eye contact with the lady, so I'm gonna work on that. Our first meeting, all I could think of was the fact that we were getting together to see if we wanted to have sex together, so I was very self-conscious when trying to make eye contact with her. I spent most of the time looking at the other guy instead, so I'm glad they didn't get the idea that I was interested in him!

My question to the more experienced swingers out there (especially the ladies) is this: what qualities are you looking for in the other couple (especially the man) when you have your first face-to-face meeting over drinks or dinner? Where is the line between flirting and plain old creepiness? I'm pretty shy and unexperienced at flirting, so I tend to play it safe and I'm afraid I'm just coming across as boring. We've had a few meetups to date, and in subsequent email exchanges they always show obvious interest in Mrs. Fuse but rarely any acknowledgement that I was even there. Any tips on ways I can open up some and be a little more attractive to the ladies without being phony? I'm not trying to be whiny, I'm just trying to keep from holding us back.