If his backdrop weren’t a dimly lit stage with two gold stripper poles and wall-sized image of a nearly naked woman, you might think Jack Cohen was lamenting society’s loss of, say, sit-down family dinners, or that kids these days don’t play outside.

The 70-year-old speaks in nostalgic, things-ain’t-like-they-used-to-be tones while explaining his latest specialty night at Jay Jay’s Inn, the dingy south Etobicoke bar and hotel he’s owned for more than 30 years.

“We need to go return to the basics,” he says. “I want it to go back to the old days.”

Swinging, that is. The practice of couples playing tradesies with their sexual partners has lost touch with its roots in conversation and seduction, Cohen says. He has recently started hosting “professional” get-togethers on Saturday nights.

Unlike swinging clubs that allow sex anywhere on-site, Cohen is restricting what those in the industry euphemistically call “play” to his partially renovated second-floor, above the dance floor and bar area. The separation encourages the return of flirtation to the lifestyle, he says.

“Couples meet each other, they sit here, they socialize, they dance, and if they want to play, it’s upstairs,” he says.

Cohen, dressed for the country club in tan khakis, circular tortoise shell glasses and a gingham scarf, proudly shows off the second floor, featuring a communal shower and rooms with windows in the walls to peep into the next. Those wanting to spend the night can rent bedrooms, complete with decor that, incidentally, pays homage to swinging’s ’70s and ’80s origins.

No stranger to oddball ideas — he once planned to convert the bar into a boutique hotel with units catering specifically to little people, or dwarfs — Cohen is tapping into a growing sentiment amongst older swingers, says Edward Fernandes.

A psychology professor at North Carolina’s Barton College and longtime academic of swinging culture, Fernandes said that in the last five years the scene has undergone a shift, brought on by the inclusion of younger members.

Thirty years ago, the average swinger was middle-aged, due in part to the ‘seven year itch’ phenomenon — a reference to the average time some couples start to look outside the marriage for sexual excitement.

Today, the possibility of having non-monogamous relationships is striking some at a much earlier age — all-out sex parties in college aren’t that unusual, Fernandes said. As a result, people in their early 20s are going to sex and swingers’ clubs in droves.

“What I’m finding is that some of the older swingers are starting to complain about the kids who are coming in, changing the music and changing the behaviours, because the under 35 crowd tends to be a lot more aggressive — they tend to go for it, while the older generation is more reserved,” he said.

Across the street from Jay Jays, through unmarked grey doors wedged between a Pizza Pizza and TD Bank, is Menage a Quatre, or M4, another swingers’ club. Here, you will find many things — a sex swing, a flogging post, a human-sized cage. Reservation is likely to be in short supply.

“It’s full-premise play so everywhere from the bathroom on, you’re allowed to play,” said employee Barb Kinney.

On a recent Wednesday morning, Kinney was cleaning up after T-Girl Tuesday, a night catering to transgender and cross-dressing patrons (“I’m a little bit of a germaphobe,” she says cheerily. “You should see the gloves I use.”)

Open seven nights a week, M4 has been branching out beyond swinging. Though Saturday nights are couples and single women only — solo men are often restricted or banned from swingers’ clubs, in part because they tend to be overly eager — the club has added specialty and themed nights, including fetish parties.

The vibe is undoubtedly forward. Members, who range from middle-aged right down to 19, tend to remove their clothes and wander around naked or in a towel, Kinney said. The sprawling back section is filled with oversized mattresses. A rope rule is observed for individual rooms: if it is strung across the doorway, it’s watch-only. If it’s not, anyone is welcome to join in.

M4 and Jay Jays are just two of many of the GTA’s swinging and sex clubs, some of which have set up shop on a main street and hung a big sign on a door to boot. The soon to be relocated Wicked sex club has for years been a visible staple of Queen St. West.

But swinging clubs as businesses are a fairly recent phenomenon, said Fernandes. When the movement began in the 1970s, it was based in social clubs, not so much for profit as to create a space for the lifestyle. These clubs were typically located in discreet locations, somewhere that didn’t loudly proclaim what was happening inside.

Fernandes, who has studied swinging in the U.S., Europe and Canada, said one of Toronto’s early sex clubs was in a hotel near Pearson International Airport.

“They were always located in places which were traditionally not suburbia but not Toronto per se. They were trying to stay away from places that attracted attention, for the obvious reasons.”

That two have now set up across the street in south Etobicoke’s family-oriented, suburban community could speak to a slow but steady growing acceptance of the lifestyle — though M4’s lack of sign is no accident; Kinney said the club has only been egged once, whereas her former employer, the now defunct Hers swingers club, was hit on a weekly basis.

Just six years ago, 33 of Toronto’s city councillors voted in favour of an ultimately failed motion to close M4 and Hers, which was also located in Etobicoke, saying such clubs do not belong in a residential community. Then-councillor Rob Ford supported the motion, saying swingers’ clubs did not reflect what the city stands for, according to a 2008 published by Sun Media.

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But the community has not been up and arms about Jay Jay’s Saturday swingers’ nights — even though it gathered in protest in 2008, when Cohen reintroduced stripping after a decade of running the club as a country and western bar (Cohen has since halted the strippers’ nights, though he leases out a peelers’ bar downstairs, Klub Kave).

“I think it’s one of those things that’s become acceptable in the neighbourhood. I think it’s blown over,” said Dallas Dyer, the chair of the Lakeshore Village Business Improvement Area.

But there’s still demand for the old fashioned, secret-location swinging venues. Kimmie Jacobsen has hosted sex parties for seven years, moving from place to place, at one point operating out of a mansion near Keele and Lawrence.

Today, she holds parties in a four-storey home in a residential Scarborough neighbourhood. Among the bonuses of the current spot is a large, nondescript parking lot nearby, she said. Guests get the address once they’ve become members.

Membership — and the fees and regulations that accompany it — is common place for swingers’ clubs. Not only does that allow some operators to practice discretion about who enters, but legally, it means they are granted a long leash.

“Anything that is classified as a social club, anything that goes on inside is considered a private meeting,” said Const. Victor Kwong, spokesperson with the Toronto police.

Other laws, such as noise bylaws, can be enforced, he said, but the fact that they are having sex inside is not of legal consequence. A Supreme Court of Canada decision enshrined that in 2005, ruling that clubs allowing swinging or group sex should not be considered criminal.

Like Cohen, Jacobsen is aiming to maintain the old-school swinging values of pre-sex socialization and fun. Her house parties are “more about people coming together, and gathering dressed and talking, and then going into a room.”

Jacobsen, who got into the business after becoming a swinger herself, says she does not enjoy taking off her clothes and walking around naked, and wanted to create a space for the like-minded.

For all his talk about returning swinging to its former glory, Cohen says he has never been part of the lifestyle. When first approached by a promoter about opening up a swingers’ club, he says he thought they were talking about big-band shows.

Cohen, a single man who lives in Thornhill with his two Shih Tzus, said the adult industry has for him always been strictly about the business.

And it’s a family one at that: his brother, Roger Cohen owns The Manor, a Guelph strip club that received international attention last year when Shawney Cohen, Roger’s son, made a popular documentary about the joint. The Cohens’ French father and Greek mother were supportive of their sons’ adult industry endeavours.

Cohen is gradually getting accustomed to the lifestyle, through exposure and “baby steps.” But he says he’ll never mix business with pleasure at his own club.

“I have been approached. But I’ll be honest with you,” he said, chuckling. “I have difficulties trying to make love to a woman if her husband is sitting right there.”