Being gay you tend to think you have the upper hand when it comes to sexual deviancy – we did, after all, invent anal sex and rimming.

Then again, some of the things certain loose-tongued straight friends get up to must surely put me to shame. Take Linda, for example: she really is Queen of the Butt Plug and has never been interested in giving her arsehole mere supporting status.

Turns out we’re being out-sexed in the suburbs too. Rich and I have kept a fairly low profile within our street since we moved here. It’s probably that thing of pre-empting any homophobia by distancing yourself before they get the chance to reject you. Which is sad, I guess, but such an easy habit to pick up when you grow up gay.

Anyway, we decided to make more of on effort this Christmas. We get the posters through our door from the local residents’ group, including an invite to this year’s (well, last year’s now) Xmas party and so we went along for sugar-dusted mince pies and sugar-dusted questioning…

It was fine; mostly middle-aged couples who were all friendly. One couple seemed particularly friendly: Scottish, early 50′s I’d guess and very attentive with the alcohol. They own the big house on the corner and seemed very interested in us.

We ended up talking most to this couple and the husband became more and more affectionately physical: bear-hugging and thigh slapping etc. in the way that some straight men do once the booze has pounded their inhibitions and self-consciousness.

As the party thinned and the couple drank more, their loud and colourful language, innuendo, rude jokes and general sauciness got some disapproving looks from the straight-laced members of the residents’ association.

We decided it was time to make our excuses and leave, thinking we’d leave the Rude 2 behind, but they wanted to walk with us. It was quite a raucous walk back, but as we neared our own house their conversation suddenly became more serious and little more than a whisper. We were being invited to their New Year’s eve party.

They reassured us that none of that ‘boring, old-fashioned’ crowd would be there, just lots of fun, ‘like-minded’ people and even some ‘nice, young men,’ the woman said, leaning in… oh my god, we’d just been invited to a swingers party!

We both made some fumbling, non-committal response with the intention of saying “thanks, but no thanks” but without sounding rude or judgemental.

We didn’t go, but I would love to have been a fly on the wall. It explains the grotto-type thing they’ve got at the bottom of their garden with fairy lights and what I suspect is a hot-tub. I bet they’re disappointed that they haven’t managed to recruit the local gay couple to their sex parties – maybe gays are the latest must have for married swingers’ parties.

Needless to say we’ll be keeping ourselves to ourselves again when it comes to the neighbours.