The Lifestyle (44 page)

“Whenever you’re ready!” Steve called to us.

“I’m not impressed with this batch,” I said.

“Pascal says he likes the old gal in white,” Sheilah told me.

“Yeah, I could go for her,” Kerri said.

“You like the harem one, Terry?”

“Only as an erotic costume on a good-looking body—but it didn’t take much effort,” I said. “Besides, I don’t like being bribed.”

“Yeah.”

“How about the one with the plume and feathers?” Sheilah asked. “Or the roses and the lights. That’s cute.”

“Come on, you guys!” Steve shouted. “Jesus—choose two!”

“Well, which one takes the most work to make?” I asked. “Let’s go by that.”

“None, really,” Sheilah said.

“I like the one in white,” Kerri said.

“Yeah, the one in white’s kinda cute. My vote is the one in the white,” Sheilah agreed.

“The harem girl’s erotic.” I second-guessed myself. “But the one in roses took more work.”

“All right, the one in roses and the gal in white.”

We relayed our choices to Steve, who relayed them to a tuxedoed Care Team leader on stage, who tapped our choices—to the crowd’s approval.

“Well, that worked out pretty good,” I said beaming. “I’ve never judged a costume contest.”

Over at the security table run by Jerry Baker, the two sex
cops flashed their ID. The California statutes say that ABC inspectors are to be allowed entrance onto any licensed premises twenty-four hours a day without warrant or warning. The convention had been held at the Town and Country on nearly this scale and with exactly these activities in 1977, 1991, 1994, and 1995 without a single complaint from undercover police, the staff, or the resort’s management—who had followed up every event with letters praising LSO for its smoothly run show. Baker wasn’t nervous, and let the agents by, his eyes as usual scanning the crowd for any obvious misbehavior. The agents crossed through the lobby and entered the main ballroom, observing the events out in the lobby on a huge monitor towering over the dance floor.

Six or seven couples were on stage before me now. One was actually a triad consisting of a six-foot-tall, bronzed muscle lady in silver stacked heels, her solid bare breasts draped by thin gold chains and her pubis covered by a tiny gold triangle. Beside her stood a fellow in a baseball cap and wearing a sandwich board, which read: “Ladies, Attention! Get your official boob exam here! I am Fred, ‘boob inspector’ of San Diego. You must have a ‘boob exam certificate’ in order to visit my room tonight.” On the muscle lady’s other side stood a woman dressed like one of the Blues Brothers and holding a sign: “I am Carla, Assistant Boob Inspector of San Diego. Men! I will also examine and certify your penis on the side!!” Asked to step forward for the judge’s inspection, the boob inspector Fred reached over and squeezed the muscle lady’s left breast—an act that I would later read in a government manual violated Section 143.2, Subsection 3 of Title Four of the California Administrative Code, which deemed it “contrary to public welfare and morals” to “touch, caress or fondle the breasts” on a licensed premises.

On the left side of the stage, the harem girl and her Sheik of Araby husband stepped forward. Hamming for the cameras,
the harem girl bent over in fluid dance movement and her sleek sheik rubbed her buttocks—another apparent threat to public welfare and morals, according to the Code.

One couple were dressed as a six-foot penis and a five-foot vagina. The fellow was an airline engineer, and he’d been working since January designing and fabricating these anatomically accurate renditions of male and female genitalia. In a way, they were self-parodying works of art. The penis wore a Superman S on his corpus cavernosum and a red cape trailing from the back of his glans; the vagina had the wife’s head poking through the labia just above the clitoris. When they stepped forward, the wife embraced the penis, and the crowd roared as he shot a green stream of ribbon skyward.

“Oh, he came! He came!” I laughed, giving them my vote, not realizing they could have been accused of violating Section 143.4 of the California Administrative Code, which governed “Visual Displays,” and which forbade, on a licensed premises, “visual reproductions depicting: (1) Acts or simulated acts of sexual intercourse, masturbation, sodomy, bestiality, oral copulation, flagellation or any sexual acts which are prohibited by law;” and “(4) Scenes wherein artificial devices or inanimate objects are employed to depict… any of the prohibited activities described above.”

“This is the most successful convention we’ve ever had,” Bob told me after the applause-o-meter judging, which awarded a Lifestyles holiday to the penis and vagina. “You know, we’ve already got over two hundred bookings for next year—and this one’s not even over.”

In that lobby and ballroom, thirty-five hundred mostly married mainstream people partied on till 4 A.M. Eight hours later, many without sleep, they got on airport buses and returned to their 437 cities around the world. They’d had the time of their lives, and the government was now going to put a stop to it.

J
im Otto was in a panicky state. He was the director of sales of the Town and Country and he had just received a letter from the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control regarding the Erotic Masquerade Ball. Not only had an unnamed male “caressed and fondled the exposed breasts” of one female, but, according to the ABC agents, “a female, while straddling the male’s lap, did simulate sexual intercourse.” The agents maintained they’d seen eleven more acts of lewdness perpetrated by a few of the thousands in the lobby and Atlas Ballroom during and after the judging of the costumes.

It was October 2, 1996, and the ABC was putting the entire Atlas hotel chain on notice that a revocation of its California liquor license was possible—which if enacted would drive the corporation into bankruptcy. Jim Otto phoned McGinley with the news.

The same week Otto received his heartstopping missive, Agent Gilson Grey from the Long Beach Bureau of the ABC paid a visit to the Seaport Marina Hotel, where McGinley was to hold his Halloween Banquet and Ball at the end of the month. Grey met with the Seaport’s controller and appraised him of “the problems” the Lifestyles Organization was causing down in San Diego. He handed him a copy of the California Administrative Code, Title 4, Sections 143.2—4, which regulated sexual conduct and attire in licensed establishments. The Long Beach ABC followed up its visit with a call: agents from the ABC would be attending the Lifestyles Halloween Ball “in force.” As stated in the ABC’s mandate, the bureaucracy had
the power to revoke the liquor license of an establishment for any infraction of the “morals” rules—including something as minor as displaying “visual reproductions” of the genitals, say in a painting or a costume. The Seaport’s very worried catering director phoned McGinley, and McGinley—now very worried himself—phoned Agent Gilson Grey, only to discover that Grey had no interest in discussing the matter with LSO; the ABC’s sole concern was with liquor-license holders.

Sitting in his office beneath his framed photographs of fighter aircraft, McGinley pondered whether the moment he had anticipated had finally arrived. For almost a quarter of a century he had sponsored public events at mainstream hotels and had never given the government any legal pretext to stop him—at least a pretext that would stand up in court. An officer spotting an isolated incident at an LSO dance or convention would have had to testify that McGinley’s Care Team and security guards were constantly on patrol to stop any couple who violated community standards, much as guards did at a rock concert or at a sporting event where beer was served. But something had suddenly changed in the government’s attitude toward the Lifestyles Organization.

Taking the government’s point of view McGinley reasoned that the growth in his organization in just the last year would have caused officials to try to stop that growth through punitive actions against his venues—without having to prove a thing in court. And he was certain that if they got away with excluding playcouples without due process there would be a long list of others whose self-expression they would also exclude. That hunch turned out to be so completely accurate that David Gutcheon, the executive editor
of Art Collector International
, would soon label the ABC “an over-funded, crypto-fascist shadow agency.” The American Civil Liberties Union would declare the ABC “drunk with its own power.” And the president of the board of directors of the UCLA law
school, Robert Burke, would accuse the agency of practicing “state Gestapoism.”

These words were not chosen lightly; they were meant to describe the ABC’s “clear awareness that their activities [were] violations of free speech and due process,” according to Gutcheon (whose nom de plume is Morris Fischbein). “Indeed, the way in which they conduct themselves offers every indication that their policies are
intended
to implement a behind-the-scenes chilling effect through the use of intimidation and the threat of financial devastation.”

In accordance with that intention, the ABC refused to deal directly with the Lifestyles Organization, over which it had no legal power, and moved instead on LSO’s venues, over which they had absolute power without having to bother about due process in court. McGinley pushed ahead with his contractually arranged Halloween dance in the face of the ABC’s intimidation of Seaport’s management. Six weeks afterward he received a letter from the law firm representing Atlas Hotels stating that the ABC had suspended the Town and Country’s liquor license for five days and had informed Atlas it was keeping the resort on probation for three years. “Atlas simply cannot afford to risk its alcoholic beverage license by permitting further Lifestyles events on Atlas’ premises,” their lawyer, William Shearer, informed McGinley. Atlas was therefore summarily canceling all its contracts with LSO for the next three years and holding LSO responsible for “all loss it sustains in this matter.” McGinley at first tried to negotiate, arguing that the Town and Country had competitively campaigned for LSO’s business. He then sued for breach of contract. LSO had already taken in some twenty-two thousand dollars in advance bookings for the 1997 convention, and now McGinley had to find other accommodation for an expected four thousand attendees—with, he was sure, the ABC informing all prospective hotel hosts of the bad karma that would accrue if they held the playcouple gathering.

As reservations for Lifestyles ’97 poured in from around the world, McGinley put the word out that he was looking for a new venue. Unaware of the ABC’s machinations, the Palm Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau came actively courting by phone, fax, and mail. Virtually deserted in the 110-degree summer, but loaded with hotels and a grand convention center, Palm Springs collectively realized that the influx of $1.65 million Lifestyles always brought to a city would give the town a great boost in the off-season. McGinley thought Palm Springs would do fine, and in April Lifestyles signed a contract for its convention with several hotels—the Spa, the Marquis, the Hilton, and the Wyndham—as well as the convention center, which adjoined the Wyndham and which would hold the Masquerade Ball, the Erotic Arts show, and the Adult Marketplace. As the Wyndham would book the majority of playcouples, all the seminars would be held there, as well as the Car Wash.

The ABC decided this would be morally inadvisable. The ABC’s district supervisor, Dave Gill, called a meeting on May 9 at the Wyndham for all parties concerned—except the LSO. McGinley showed up anyway, with a First Amendment lawyer from San Diego named Paul Murray, whom McGinley had met on a Lifestyles Tours and Travel holiday to the Eden Resort the month before my own visit. Murray and McGinley took seats on the dais right beside Gill, who, like McGinley’s old nemesis, Cronin, was six feet tall and clean-cut. McGinley’s life seemed to have come full circle.

Gill opened the meeting by saying the reason he had called the hotel owners together was because of the “incidents by Lifestyles in San Diego last year.” He reminded the assembled hotel owners of the ABC’s legal mandate, as stated in the California Constitution: “To deny, suspend or revoke any specific alcoholic beverages license if it shall determine for good cause that the granting or continuance of such license would be
contrary to public welfare or morals.” Gill made it clear that the ABC would revoke the license of any venue that fulfilled its contract with LSO, since the activities of the LSO convention—in particular the Erotic Arts show, the Car Wash, and the Adult Marketplace, to name just three—could be
expected
to violate public welfare and morals. Murray interrupted Gill to point out that no liquor would be served at these events, but Gill replied that that was immaterial under the law. All activities that took place on a licensed premises had to obey the California Administrative Code: no sex, no nudity, and no representations of sex or nudity.

Then he added a statement that struck terror into the hearts of every hotel owner in the room. The ABC rules of morality applied even to the sleeping rooms of guests, since they were on the premises of the license holders. Attendees at the hotels, by inference, could not have sex in their rooms, nor could they walk around in those rooms naked, since ABC agents were empowered to enforce the regulations in those areas of a licensed premises. A light went on in McGinley’s mind: it suddenly became clear to him that one of the goals of all this intimidation was the regulation of the
private sexual behavior of citizens
.

After the meeting Murray wrote Gill’s boss, the ABC’s deputy director, Manuel Espinoza, relating the gist of Gill’s amazing statements regarding the private rooms. “Mr. Gill has subsequently refused to engage in any further discussion,” he wrote, “and has advised the hotels in question that allowing LSO, Ltd.’s convention to proceed would jeopardize their licenses.” Twelve days after Gill’s meeting, in fact, the Spa backed out of its contract with Lifestyles.