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“I want you to imagine the sexual energy inside you as a hot red light,” says Kate Shelor, a hypnotherapist and OnlyFans star who—other than me—is the only person in the room not wearing a blindfold. She stands in the center of a circular stage like the leader of a megachurch, her beatific blond face tilted toward the 50 or so daybeds arranged in a perfect ring around her.

On those daybeds, couples kneel or straddle each other, naked except for the blindfolds covering their eyes.

“Remember,” Shelor calls out, her voice syrupy and practiced, “the difference between simple touch and intimacy is attention. Feel your partner. Talk to them with your hands. Tell your partner what you need, want, and crave.”

To my left, the only gay couple in the room is already sucking each other off, heads bobbing with impressive enthusiasm. To my right, a girl in a baseball cap appears to be dozing off while a guy with tribal tattoos dutifully goes down on her.

In the background, shamanic beats swell, and Shelor’s voice rises to match. “It’s getting more powerful now,” she says. “You feel your body responding. Tune in to the sounds around you as they grow.”

As if on cue, a moan ruptures the silence. Across the auditorium, bodies rise and fall, blindfolded couples riding each other’s faces and cocks in eerie synchrony.

“Go slow. Make it last. Stay with me,” Shelor says, as whispers turn to whimpers and then, finally, a chorus of deep, open-mouthed O’s.

I look up from my reporter’s notebook, past the couples and at the ceiling, where a shimmering disco ball—formerly stationary—is swinging back and forth like a hypnotist’s pendulum. For a moment, I can’t tell whether the ship is rolling beneath us, or whether it’s the synchronized rhythm of 50-odd blindfolded swingers making the entire vessel move.

Either way, it seems like my cue to exit, so I pocket my notebook and slip quietly out of the playroom onto deck 13. The sun, unimaginably bright, shocks my eyes as I look out at my surroundings: a clothing-optional pool deck the size of a small soccer stadium, occu­pied by hundreds and hundreds of nude Americans on the wildest vacation of their lives.

For months, my phone has been pitching me adults-only vacations, probably because it overhears me talking about reporting on sex parties and then about needing a vacation from reporting on sex parties. I’d been clicking away from these ads, mildly bemused, until one day, in late October, I woke up to a text from Playboy: Did I want to go on a swingers’ cruise called Temptation, and would these dates work? I’ve never said yes to anything so fast.

Billed as “a playground for grown-ups,” Temptation offers a city on the water: a fully chartered 13-story cruise ship where guests can enjoy everything from air-conditioned casinos and breakfast buffets to fuck machines. The goal? Create an all-inclusive fantasy for American adults, spiriting them away from their worries and toward international waters, where they’ll be free to indulge in a level of hedonistic pleasure-seeking absent in everyday life. One friend of mine—who I learn is a swinger only when I tell him about this story—aptly describes such experiences as a “Chuck E. Cheese for sex.” Mario Cruz, Temptation’s programming director, prefers “spring break for adults.”

Over his six years overseeing Temptation’s cruises, Cruz has played host to NFL players, lawyers, the presidents of major universities, and, if the rumors are to be believed, more than a few celebrities. “In their private time, they’re just humans,” he explains. “Everyone has a private life; they fantasize about these things. We just give them a space to turn that fantasy into reality.”

Before embarkation day, I’d expected being one of the only solo women on board would grant me the status of a minor celebrity. “People are going to be lining up to make you their unicorn,” my friends assured, predicting a profusion of threesome proposals. But at the Port of Miami, where I wait patiently in line to board the Norwegian Jewel, this is not the case. Instead, I spend the first hour and a half of my journey inching my luggage forward, surrounded by muscle-bound men with religious tattoos, Miami housewives with fake lashes and perfectly plumped lips, and tanned blondes lugging beach totes adorned with cheesy phrases like “Sea You Later.” Everyone is so grumpy that, for a minute, I even question if I’m in the right line.

I needn’t have worried. “When they’re waiting to board, they’re still in the outside world,” Cruz later tells me, describing the peculiar transformation that happens when people cross the ship’s threshold. The sea, I realize, is a liminal space, where the boundaries and norms of everyday life no longer apply. This is a metaphor, but also literally true: When at sea, the pool deck and balconies are clothing-optional, but everyone has to button up when the boat docks.

Now that we’re on board, everyone seems 10 times more outgoing, happy, and naked than they were before. And by the time I make my way to the Sapphire pool deck, I get the sense that I’m late to the party—one populated by 500 couples slathered in sunscreen and buoyed by the Black Eyed Peas blasting through the speakers. I haven’t been on a ship since a fifth-grade field trip, and the Norwegian Jewel, with its 16 restaurants and numerous swimming pools, is more than I was bargaining for.

Temptation charters the whole ship, hiring not only the Norwegian’s team but a group of sexologists, entertainers, and DJs to offer on-site activities ranging from workshops on anal pleasure to massage for sciatica.

In the coming days, there will be pamper parties and acupuncture, beer pong and belly dancing classes, body shots and sensual fitness sessions, and, in one case, a meet and greet that devolves into couples miming various sex positions. I will be lent prescription anti-nausea patches by not one but two different DJs, gifted peach-flavored lube, and offered a loofah with an elderly couple’s phone number Sharpie’d onto it—which, I later learn, is a common mode of communication for swingers in Florida’s retirement community.

But I don’t know any of this yet, and my first night on the ship, which also happens to be the eve of my 31st birthday, passes in a blur. By 7 p.m., I’m eating oxtail stew at a restaurant at the aft of the ship as Moe, a Floridian DJ who works for Temptation, explains the nuances of pickup artistry. “Think about it: You wouldn’t ask a fish how to catch a fish,” he says. “You ask a fisherman.” He pauses. “You’re the fish.”

By 8, I’m sipping margaritas with Catherine Drysdale, one of the onboard sexperts and a female pleasure specialist. “I have an average of 30 orgasms per session,” she says, “but my best is 72.”

By 9, I’ve fallen in with a boisterous group of 20-somethings from Miami who—as some of the youngest people on board—have pledged to usher in my birthday with a round of shots.

By 10, I’m in the grand dining hall, an opulent expanse of sunset-colored decor with a chandelier that tinkles menacingly when the ship rocks in choppy waters. Eventually, everyone is funneled into the Stardust Theater for a variety show meant to preview the week’s programming. There’s a stand-up comedian who asks the crowd what they look for in a partner (“Breathing,” one man in a baseball cap responds); an aerialist with impressive flexibility and corn silk blonde hair that appears to be permanently blowing in an invisible breeze; and a Canadian singer who bears a striking resemblance to Chappell Roan—at least until she follows her performance of “Lady Marmalade” with an unexpected, very competent rap break. She gets a standing ovation.

Afterward, it’s straight to the on-site playroom, previously known as the Spinnaker Lounge. On a normal cruise, it serves as a destination for daytime activities like bingo and dance classes—but in preparation for the week’s festivities, it’s been given a complete makeover by Temptation’s team to create an ambience befitting a sex party. They’ve brought in 36 fireproof mattresses, covered the ship’s fluorescent lights with colored gels, and replaced the usual dining setup with a series of play spaces, including a custom-built black-and-red BDSM area, a jungle-themed enclave full of fake plants, and a thinly disguised voyeurs’ area where individual rooms are demarcated by sheer white curtains. On the door is posted a series of rules, from “No means no” to guidelines around responsible alcohol consumption. “Clothing is optional, respect isn’t,” Temptation’s rules state, noting that, to protect everyone’s privacy, cameras and phones aren’t allowed in clothing-optional areas.

Usually, the playroom hosts a variety of sex-related workshops during the day before reopening each evening at around 9 p.m. But tonight, ahead of the week’s official playroom parties, they’re holding an open house, where guests are encouraged to wander around and take stock of the amenities: everything from glory holes to spanking benches, a Saint Andrew’s cross, and one very advanced-looking fuck machine. “We wanted them to have time in the playroom where there’s no pressure to perform,” one Temptation employee tells me, noting that the week’s programming, which includes guided workshops and meet and greets, is designed to help couples break the ice.

The clock is creeping toward midnight, and I’m becoming pathetically aware of not wanting to spend my birthday alone. Lucky for me, I reunite with the rowdy Miami crew from before and my new friend Glenda, who also isn’t dressed for the night’s theme—which, apparently, is Candyland. This explains why everyone around me appears to be sucking on lollipops, but honestly, I didn’t question it. There are different dress codes for each event—from the Hawaiian-style Get Lei’d to Wild West to Stone Age—but as Glenda explains, people will be quick to lend you accessories: “Plus, most of the people here don’t really care what you’re wearing, but rather how much you’re wearing.” She gestures down at the pool deck, where hundreds of people in pastel colors are moshing to DMX’s “Party Up (Up in Here).” “I love this song,” says a beautiful 25-year-old from Miami, handing me a birthday shot.

We chase our tequila with lime 10 minutes before midnight, too impatient to wait before heading to the playroom—so at the exact moment of my birthday, I’m sitting on a banquette watching an elderly couple fuck onstage, the man’s hand resting on his hip in a red carpet pose as Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” drifts languidly from the speakers. To their left, a woman with a rainbow butt plug is going to town on her partner’s admirably average-sized penis.

For the most part, I find the experience of watching people have sex humanizing, even charming. I like seeing sensual moments between people, and with these mostly married couples, there’s a degree of familiarity I find sweet. Glenda is less impressed. “He just put it in, with no foreplay or anything!” she points out. “And that guy still has his Converse on!”

By this point, we’re sitting with our new friends Diego and Alejandra from Miami, who, like a majority of couples in this piece, have opted to have their names changed for anonymity. Things are heating up in the playroom, and when I feel Diego’s hand on my knee, I know it’s my time to go. “I’m really tired,” I tell them before slipping out the door and onto the pool deck, where the party is in full swing.

As I look down from the veranda, it’s a surreal sight. I was right, I think, to go in blind—because nothing I looked up online could have prepared me to spend six nights on a swingers’ cruise, a rare solo woman among 1,000 couples ready to mix, mingle, and fuck. In the days to come, I will see women in candy bras and self-proclaimed sugar daddies in bright-yellow suits. I will see sun-leathered hippies and pearl-clutching Republicans, high school sweethearts and Midwestern moms reduced to panting obedience by their own appetites. I will learn the difference between soft swap and full swap, unicorn and bull, cuckold and hotwife—and be assured, by no less than half a dozen enthusiastic strangers, that every woman has the capacity to squirt.

I will ride the crowded tourist bus to white-sand beaches, endure the lukewarm buffet eggs, take tequila shots with strangers, vomit in a cruise ship bathroom, and sample Mama-juana, an aphrodisiac concoction I later learn is made with the penises of nature’s most well-endowed turtles. I will be called a unicorn more times than I can count. I will feel strangers’ hands on my thighs and be kissed by soft-lipped girls who don’t care that I’m a journalist or that I won’t be fucking them and their boyfriends, who are always named something like Kevin, or Paul, or, God forbid, Matt.

But tonight, I’m exhausted, drunk, and freshly 31—so I slip away to my stateroom, where I order a chocolate cake and a single hot dog before drifting off into a dreamless, amniotic sleep.

I may be the only journalist on the cruise, but I’m not the only outsider—and as I wait for the cheerful barista to prepare my morning coffee, I ask him what he thinks of the crowd. He pauses, steam wand whistling, and thinks for a moment. “Everyone’s very … free,” he says delicately, noting that the clientele seems to be in high spirits—smiling wider and tipping bigger than the average American. It makes sense; everyone’s here to drink and get laid, and they’ve already paid for their all-inclusive packages (ranging from $2,300 for windowless staterooms to $31,000 for a three-bedroom villa).

The ship’s main demographic is Americans in their late 40s and 50s, though there are some in their 30s, 60s, and even 70s, as well as a smattering of international guests. On my way to breakfast, I pass the room of two self-proclaimed Frenchies, who’ve decorated the door with a banner and declared themselves “fluent in English, French, and sex.” It seems that, overnight, nearly everyone’s door has received a full makeover, with many now sporting holders for business cards that bear not professional emails, but pictures of couples with QR codes and headings like you’re cute, let’s fuck. Many of the doors are covered in upside-down pineapples—the universal symbol of swinging—and one couple even has a large and vibrantly purple dildo suctioned to the door; it quivers rapaciously whenever the ship itself pitches or rocks in the rolling seas, which, as it turns out, is pretty often.

Today’s our first full day at sea, and the hours on board are filled with a series of activities—including this morning’s workshop, “Handjob Mastery,” which, if you ask me, should have been called “All Hands on Dick.” I was excited to attend, but by the time I show up, it’s already over; as it turns out, daylight saving required us to turn our clocks back. As pleased-looking couples filter out of the double doors, I commiserate with Tina and Theo, tan 50-somethings who also missed the memo. “We had a bit of a late night,” Tina tells me, explaining that one of their friends had smuggled illicit drugs on board: something called PT-141, which is used off-label to treat erectile dysfunction. “We thought it would make us all horny, because of the increased blood flow,” Theo says—but instead of raging hard-ons, they all got raging headaches. Drugs, I learn, are strictly off-limits on Temptation cruises; but if you know the right people, they’re not impossible to find, especially if they’re prescription.

Tina and Theo are staying in one of the ship’s Haven Suites, an ultra-luxury private enclave reserved for the one percent—or technically two percent, if you look at the exact passenger ratio. The Haven has its own entrance, private villas, and a list of lavish amenities I don’t fully grasp until later that night, when I’m doom-scrolling cruise facts on Google. That’s when I discover that Melania Trump is the ship’s “godmother” and that, 20 years ago, she smashed a bottle of champagne against its hull in a ceremonial christening. It feels both ironic and oddly fitting that a ship once blessed by the First Lady—the very image of mainstream Americana—has since been repurposed as a floating playground of ritualized sex.

Swinging, too, is a quintessentially American pastime: According to one oft-repeated anecdote, the phenomenon of wife-swapping took root in U.S. military communities during and after World War II, when some savvy pilots framed it as a way to care for their friends’ wives in the event of their deaths. Riding the heels of 1960s sexual liberation, the practice spread to the suburbs and later to formalized scenes, like clubs, and magazines, which were, at one point, among the most practical ways for couples to connect and reach one another.

“At that point, you really had to want it,” says Bryan, a 40-year-old swinger from Oklahoma whose wife bought him a collection of old lifestyle magazines as a gift. “Back then, it was difficult. You had to put out an ad, and you had to travel to someone. Now you can hop online and meet someone in five minutes.”

Much of this networking, I learn, happens in Facebook groups; there’s even a designated one for this cruise, where couples post photos and introductions in the hopes of connecting pre-embarkment. It’s a small community, but a tight-knit one: Only 2 to 4 percent of American adults self-report as swingers, though this statistic can hardly be accurate given the fact that almost none of them admit to the practice.

Only a handful of couples I meet are open about being “in the lifestyle,” which is how swingers refer to it. There are childhood sweethearts who’d never been with anyone else; high-powered lawyers looking for an opportunity to let loose; and tense middle-aged couples who were headed for divorce until they admitted they wanted to sleep with other people.

In almost every case, their families have no idea what they do in their free time: “I told everyone I’m going on a different cruise that’s departing on the same date,” a middle-aged woman tells me, one of several couples who have chosen an “alibi cruise” to throw nosy family members off the scent. At the Temptation Resort in Cancún, they even have what’s called the “vanilla phone,” a separate phone line with a separate number, which employees answer with the name of a different resort to preserve their guests’ anonymity.

Despite the size and scope of the ship, I find I still run into the same handful of people. There’s Miranda and Cory, an interracial couple from Miami who pride themselves on their adventurous spirits and are regularly seen tying up willing volunteers in red shibari-style rope. There’s “the Quad,” a pair of non­ monogamous married couples who started dating a few years ago and are now moving across state lines to integrate their lives, work, and families. Many are first-timers, but some—like Margaret and John, two 70-somethings who got into swinging only after retirement—go on adult cruises every single month. “We have the most amazing sex life,” says Margaret. “But none of our friends would ever know.”

Others are candid about it. Sarah Jolicoeur, an author and coach, wrote openly about her non-monogamous relationship in a memoir, “Journey to Paradise.” She got into the lifestyle after falling for her personal trainer post-divorce but found she enjoyed the benefits—and a dozen years later, they’re still swinging. “We’re not looking for a unicorn,” she tells me. “We’re looking for a wife.”

This type of arrangement is not common. Most of the swingers I meet engage in a more structured form of play. They start with soft swaps, which means messing around without penetrative sex. Others allow penetration, but draw the line at kissing, finding the kissing more intimate than physical sex. Full swap, which is what most people think of as swinging, includes sex with another couple but often has an array of rules attached—such as everyone being in the same room at the same time or specific activities that are off-limits.

Many couples emphasize the importance of doing things together, but a few people I meet allow one-on-one play or grant their partner the occasional “hall pass” when they don’t find the other half of a couple attractive—a frequent complaint I hear on the ship from people who bemoan the common conundrum of gorgeous women paired with older or otherwise less-appealing men. Though, as one swinger named Ellie tells me, it’s common for older swingers to invest more in their appearance than their monogamous counterparts: “When we’re in the outside world and see a fit older couple, we immediately think swingers.”

As she tells me this, we’re sitting in bed in a stateroom with her husband, Jackson, and their friends Bella and Jase, two high school sweethearts who got the itch to experiment in their mid-20s. Having grown up together in a small town, they had never been with anyone else until one day, Bella—who identifies as bisexual—posed a question. “I was like, ‘Have you ever wondered what it would be like to kiss someone else?’ ” she recalls.

Now they’re making up for lost time: Before boarding, they spent seven days with Ellie and Jackson on a competing lifestyle cruise called Bliss, with only one day of rest in between.

This seems like a lot of hedonistic revelry, but for Bella and Jase, it’s also work: The pair are among the most prominent “lifestyle influencers,” which—in this lifestyle—has less to do with pictures of private jets and avocado toast, and more to do with sharing their most intimate experiences with the world.

After opening their marriage, they started creating content about swinging on TikTok under the moniker 4OurPlay; the business now spans from video games to merch and is their primary source of income.

For them, swinging has offered a kind of second adolescence: a way to experiment with other people together, forge strong friendships as an adult, and develop new sexual skills. Recently, they crossed a new item off their bucket list, the “airtight experience,” which is pretty much what it sounds like: “Sex where all your holes are filled,” says Ellie with a shy giggle.

Some couples, I learn, approach the cruises with a set of rigid sexual goals, whether that’s an exact number of hookups or specific fantasies they wish to enact. “Personally, we don’t have, like, a checklist that we need to cross out,” says Theo. “But we were talking to some friends of ours, you know, and they’re like, ‘Oh no, I need to suck a dick every single day. Ideally two dicks.’ ” He pauses: “Again, these are people who are surgeons.”

Others approach the cruise not as swingers, but as what Bryan likes to call “dirty vanillas”: people who are essentially monogamous but just like to take their top off and get the party started. And some, like Ellie and Jackson, start as dirty vanillas and wind up as swingers. “We love to party, and it’s a party cruise,” Ellie says, explaining that when they first embarked on a Temptation cruise three years ago, they had no intentions of swinging until a couple invited them back to their hotel room to “chat” on the final night. “When we arrived, the girl was fully naked, and she asked me, ‘Have you ever seen your wife kiss another guy?’ ” recalls Jackson. “I looked at her across the room, and she gave me two thumbs up.” The rest, as they say, is history.

Over the course of these conversations, I come to realize that Temptation offers a vibe, a background, and a mood: a space where anything could, theoretically, happen. When I ask guests what they and others are looking for from the cruise, the answers are immediate and unanimous: “a fantasy,” “an escape,” “a release,” a space to be themselves, free from the confines of everyday life. “It’s a walkable community of like-minded people where you can just let your freak flag fly,” says Jolicoeur, “and be whoever you want to be that day.”

What she doesn’t say is that you can do that without committing to being that person every day—which, for many in the lifestyle, is an essential part of the arrangement. “People want a secret for themselves,” says Davia Frost, a sex and intimacy coach charged with teaching workshops on the basics of erotic power dynamics. “By day, they get to be the doctors and professors, and at night, they get to be the kitten and the bull.”

As a sex writer, I find this tracks. But after talking with numerous couples, I’m struck by how many people struggle to make sense of these desires. “I was raised very conservative, and my entire business and career is built upon destroying other men and taking their shit. So it’s difficult for a man like that to be like, ‘I like the idea of watching you be fucked by another guy,’ ” says Theo, a self-identified alpha male who kept his desires secret for years. At first, they manifested as jealousy over Tina’s prior partners—but after going to therapy, he realized he just hadn’t had the tools to interpret what he was feeling. “I had big emotions, and I thought it was anger,” Theo says. “But I was actually just tremendously curious, and I wanted to hear all about it.” Now the pair is exploring swinging for the first time, an experience they credit with introducing new depth, intimacy, and understanding to their relationship.

Our conversation sticks with me, both because of Theo’s surprising honesty and our apparent political differences. Throughout our interview, he expresses his emotions with impressive self-awareness but also throws around words like “soyboy,” “cuck,” and “loser” to describe other men who want the same thing he does. “I just have a feeling that they’re really, really conservative,” I later tell Alexa Andre, an on-site sexologist, podcaster, and veteran of Temptation cruises. “Have you seen that before?”

“Oh yeah,” she says breezily. “On one cruise, I even saw a MAGA hat. Here, they’re all free love and sexual liberation. But everyone’s a Republican when they get off the boat.”

I’m on a private island in the Bahamas when—for the first time all trip—I pull out my book and decide to relax. Then, like clock- work, a voice calls out from 10 or 15 feet down the beach. “Hey, Camille!” shouts a naked man, walking toward me with an equally naked woman by his side. “Miss lady journalist! We want to talk with you!”

Ten minutes later, I’m deep in conversation with Billy and Mary, two native Floridians who met on OurTime, a dating site for 50-plus singles looking to find love. This is their first adult vacation as an established couple. Though, as it turns out, Mary had previously worked as a booking agent for a cruise line in the ’70s or ’80s and says that while there were still swingers then, they had to operate under the radar: “I knew a captain once who said, ‘Don’t send those people down here. I don’t want people fucking in my dining room.’”

These days, Mary suspects the ship’s crew enjoys witnessing the festivities. “It’s come a long way,” she says, gathering her sarong loosely around her exposed breasts and looking out at the ocean. “Over the years, things have gotten more accepting.”

She’s right: Open relationships have been gradually destigmatized, with polycules and ENM (ethical nonmonogamy) becoming common parlance, at least among a certain segment of Brooklynites. Which is why, to me, the idea of swinging seems oddly quaint, even old-fashioned: a form of nonmonogamy where the carrots don’t touch the peas, and the essential fantasy of the American family is preserved, save for a knowing wink.

The longer I spend at sea, the more I come to see that swinging provides the same sort of experience proffered by the luxury cruise itself: a high degree of stimulation, pleasure, and indulgence offered within a safe, controlled environment. Swingers can indulge in hedonistic fucking with the knowledge that this is only a vacation from monogamy, not a betrayal of their relationship. It’s indulgent, self-contained, and, like all good vacations, almost more fun to think about than to actually experience.

In David Foster Wallace’s famous cruise article—which I read only later, on the way home— he describes the despair and loneliness of a week at sea, drawing a contrast between what these vacations offer and what they actually deliver. The luxury cruise industry is steeped in irony, a symbol of American excess—and ironically, it positions consumption as the solution to the deeper, unmet desires of life under capitalism. But if the typical luxury vacation is designed to induce relaxation, then Temptation is selling guests a vision of community, freedom, and pleasure that’s absent in their day-to-day. Instead of being pampered, people want to let loose, to check their inhibitions at the door, and explore who they are outside the norms and obligations of work, parenthood, and everyday life.

In short, Temptation provides the ingredients for people to have a good time, which, ironically, is more a process of subtraction than addition. Because people take their clothes off, there are no phones or cameras to pull you out of the moment—and while alcohol and food are free, Wi-Fi will cost you hundreds of bucks. As a result, many people choose to part ways with their devices, making plans through word of mouth, notes left on doors, or dialing one another’s rooms. The result is not just a sense of unplugging, but of embracing spontaneity.

“On Temptation,” says Cruz, “what creates the success of the brand is the sense of community that happens when everyone is in the same state of mind.”

That’s certainly the case on the final day at sea, when Cruz takes the stage to announce the afternoon’s entertainment: a naked wrestling match. I look out from the veranda down to deck 12, where a tub of red Jell-O beckons, glittering and emulsive in the Caribbean sun. Next to it, the two competitors are announced: Miss Mexico, a curvy Latina with heaving breasts, and Miss USA, a heavily tattooed blonde. They take a moment to get acquainted, making out in the pool of Jell-O as porno music pipes through the speakers. Then Cruz—who is dressed in head-to-toe Mario- themed regalia—blows on a whistle, and the match is on.

“Who do you think will win, short stack or blondie?” asks a nude middle-aged man, jerking his head toward the center of the action. “I’m thinking short stack,” says his wife, and together, the three of us lean over the railing to watch. As Miss Mexico lunges at Miss USA, everything jiggles: her ass, the Jell-O, the boat. The deafening roar of the crowd quiets my inner monologue, and all I can do is look out across the ship at hundreds of tan, sunscreen-slathered Americans, hooting and hollering as the spectacle unfolds. These are CEOs and lawyers, firemen and judges, dental hygienists, interior decorators, and your next-door neighbors. And in less than 48 hours, they’ll all be back on dry land, saying please and thank you and making Zoom appointments and definitely not, as is happening right now, forcibly motorboating Miss USA before twerking their way offstage.

I entered this assignment with a sense of skepticism—about swinging, about cruises, and certainly about the intersection of the two. But by day five, the energy has rubbed off on me, and I can’t help but smile when I see people expressing their sexuality with such reckless abandon. What it says about society at large—that so many Americans need this much permission, choreography, and spectacle to feel free—is perhaps more troubling. But looking around, it’s clear that beneath the lube and the sunscreen and the themed costumes are people who, like so many others, are looking for space to be themselves. And for the next 27 hours, we’re all dedicated to the same thing: keeping the fantasy afloat.