All Inclusive. Farzana Doctor

from Malika. The accompanying card read: Hooray, your Saturn Return is over! (Or over soon!) When are you coming back to the armpit of Ontario? Love, Malika.

      I didn’t believe in astrology but did sense a change coming as I neared the end of my twenties. I was ready for a more grown-up life, even if I didn’t exactly know what that looked like. I pulled a mixed CD out of the envelope and smiled at Malika’s choice of artists, ones she knew I liked from a few years ago: M.I.A., Lykke Li, Santigold, Erykah Badu. She’ d written “Fierce Women” on the case. I laughed at the title, but loved that she remembered my birthday.

      Also in my mailbox was a brown paper mailer envelope containing a DVD about suburban American swingers, which I’d ordered six weeks earlier.

      Back in my room, I put on my headphones and popped the DVD into my laptop. A mostly naked and gleeful sixty-seven-year-old woman climbed into a sling and beckoned her lover over. She was chubby, veiny, wrinkled. In another segment, an eighty-two-year-old man gave a tour of his basement party room where he’ d laid out wall-to-wall mattresses for a summer barbeque. There must have been twenty bed-nests.

      At first I was shocked that most of the interviewees were senior citizens, but then I understood. They could speak candidly about the lifestyle, allowing the filmmaker into their homes and parties. They no longer harboured concerns about being seen as exemplary employees and parents. I envied them that freedom. I tried my best to watch without my hang-ups about old people having sex interfering. I didn’t succeed.

      I thought about Jan and Larry then, the couple who had introduced me to “the lifestyle.”

      It happened on a September evening, four months into my contract. Jan and Larry were in their late thirties, on a second honeymoon, their two kids at home with the grandparents in Edmonton. In hindsight I realized that they’d been courting me for days, lingering at the Oceana kiosk, trailing me on an excursion, offering gluten-free snacks they’d brought from home.

      I could tell from their nervous small talk that they were about to ask me something important. Finally, Larry blurted, “Ameera, would you be open to a threesome with us?”

      “A threesome?” I didn’t know what to say. I studied their expectant expressions and realized that while a surprise, the invitation wasn’t unwelcome. I looked into Larry’s brown, sincere-looking eyes. I had noticed his developed quad muscles and pot-belly when he’ d lazed by the pool and thought he was cute.

      “Geez, I hope we haven’t offended you,” Jan said, laughing. I looked at her intelligent face and smiling green eyes. What would it be like to kiss her mouth? To be naked with her? With them both at the same time?

      “No, I’m not … offended. You just caught me off guard,” I rushed to explain. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”

      On the way to their room, I was so light-headed and awkward that it was all I could do to pay attention to placing one foot before the other. We passed other tourists and a few colleagues I recognized. I stumbled on a stone and fell and scraped my knee. Jan and Larry rushed to help me up and cast worried looks my way.

      “Are you sure you want to do this?” Larry asked.

      “You look a little pale, sweetie,” Jan added.

      “I’m fine.” A stray idea, light and airy and cautious, drifted in, and I paused to listen to it. Maybe this is a bad idea. But then I was overpowered by a sense that what I was about to do, what we were about to do, was important. Pivotal. My body thrummed with a sudden feeling of being sure. Few of my decisions had felt like that. I couldn’t turn back.

      They choreographed the evening so that I could be passive, wide-eyed, a beginner. Jan offered instructions that sounded like suggestions: “Perhaps you’d like to lie between us on the bed? Can I kiss you? Would you like Larry to give you a massage?” Soon, she became more directive, telling me to take off my clothes, undress her husband, how to fellate him. Her take-charge approach was both reassuring and kind of hot.

      Later, they told me there was something about me that hinted at open-mindedness, but they didn’t reveal what that quality was. They joked about how it was rare to find a “unicorn” — a single woman on the scene. I scoffed at their lingo, insisting that I was neither a swinger nor a unicorn, that I’d just had my once-in-a-lifetime experience.

      “Why only once in a lifetime?” Jan asked, eyebrows raised.

      “I don’t know.” I really didn’t.

      “So … how’d you end up in the … scene?” I ventured, borrowing from their vocabulary. As I dressed, they told me that they were from conservative families. After marriage, they’d settled into a pleasant domestic routine filled with shared interests and activities. They had two children. By their tenth anniversary, something was missing. They tried salsa-dancing, rock-climbing, partner massage. Later, they visited adult stores and purchased sex toys. Then one day, Jan saw a newspaper article covering a controversy over a swingers club opening in Calgary.